Syrian Refugees & Why Realists Are The Real Ethicists by Ryan Evans, War on the Rocks.
… Syria is twice afflicted this winter. This convulsing country is suffering through the most deadly conflict in its history and just experienced its most violent winter storm in a century, making life all the more intolerable for those caught in the middle. I am writing to you today, War on the Rocks readers, to ask you to help Syrian refugees.
In no small part because of statements like the one that introduces this article, the realist school of thought is often portrayed as being disdainful of humanitarianism and ethics. Critics charge that realism’s professed amorality makes it, in effect, immoral and accuse realists of handicapping the “better angels of our nature” by emphasizing a pessimistic view of human nature. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, according to some…
Comments
An interesting way of looking at it, but the natural contrarian in me wants to disagree, and so I will. If you take away the real pain of seeing your children suffer; if you make their life tolerable, aren't you in fact removing the incentive the sides to settle their difference. Aren't you, in fact, extending the life span of the insurgency?
And what happens to all that UNICEF support once the insurgency ends, or a more interesting fights starts up in the CAR or South Sudan? Doesn't this reward the sides for not only continuing the fight but ensuring that it stays on the front pages with ever more horrific acts? Doesn't it put them in competition to create and advertise ever worsening conditions to tug on the heart stings and the purses of others around the world?
I think a true realist would quote Ebenezer Scrooge. "If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Merry Christmas