L’impérialisme humanitaire de Michael Ignatieff : le cas d’un « liberal hawk »
Michael Ignatieff, a former Harvard professor who is now active in Canadian politics, represents a school of thought which may be called humanitarian imperialism or liberal imperialism whose most famous representative in Europe is Bernard Kouchner. He argues for US interventions in the world (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq) on account of UN weakness and unwillingness to stop massacres or genocides. In his calls for the US to assume this new burden, Ignatieff mentions all the arguments usually invoked against empires and imperialism only to reject them in a rhetorical twist. He is one of the most articulate advocates of military intervention with a clear conscience. Though he often ends up in agreement with neoconservative or neoliberal imperialists his justifications are more intellectual and convoluted and therefore address a different audience.
The American Empire? Not So Fast
The one thing that Noam Chomsky and Paul Wolfowitz might agree upon is the reality of an American Empire. Of course, Chomsky regards the American Empire as a monstrosity and Wolfowitz regards it as the savior of humanity, but of its existence neither has any doubt. Commentators make comparisons to the great empires to the Roman Empire; to the nineteenth-century British and French empires. Is the so-called American Empire a fitting successor to these historic empires? Certainly the overwhelming military, economic, and cultural power projected by the United States at the start of the twenty-first century should qualify as imperial. But does its history commit the United States to an imperial destiny? Historians who believe in the American
Socially responsible enterprise in Cuba: a positive role model for Corporate Social Responsibility?’
This article examines the unique institutional environment of socialist Cuba, where currently a process of controlled marketization and expansion of private enterprise is taking place. The article investigates business behaviour in Cuba with particular reference to implicit assumptions relating to socially responsible enterprise, or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as the term is understood in Western Liberal Democracies. It draws upon a series of interviews with business practitioners and business commentators (both Cuban and non-Cuban residents on the island). The interviews focused on the participants’ awareness of business ethics and socially responsible enterprise, and the cultural differences in assumptions and expectations relating to the concept of CSR between the Cuban and non-Cuban interviewees. We find that Cuba at this early stage of tentative marketization presents a positive role model of socially responsible enterprise. Both the highly regulated State economy and the embedded norms and values of social equity that have emerged as a consequence of Cuba’s socialist revolution facilitate business social responsibility. The relevance of this research to current debates in relation to CSR is discussed and it is argued that capitalist economies may similarly benefit from tighter regulatory control and by cultivating more pro-social business norms that prioritise ethical over economic concerns.