I have drawn on Kant's essay "Perpetual Peace" and in turn on major moral, religious, and political traditions to propose a set of four moral constraints (1) (see Chapter II). They satisfy the prerequisites for an international morality that can give a strategy for peace the strongest, most focused impact. Of the four, two are the widely acknowledged curbs on violence and deceit and, through them, on the many forms of harm--such as torture and theft--that people can do by means of one or both. To cement agreement about how and to whom these two curbs apply, and to keep them from being ignored or violated at will, a third constraint--on breaches of valid promises, contracts, laws, and treaties--is needed.

      Whether expressed in religious or in secular form, these three values are shared by every civilization, past and present. Any community, no matter how small or disorganized, no matter how hostile toward outsiders, no matter how cramped its perception of what constitutes, say, torture, has to impose at least some internal curbs on violence, deceit, and betrayal in order to survive.

      But because persons acting clandestinely easily bypass or ignore the three constraints, a fourth one is necessary: on excessive secrecy. While its roots are not as ancient as those of the first three, and though it is not as common--least of all in police states, it is as fundamental to the preservation of democratic traditions as the first three are to the survival of communities more generally. It serves two functions: first, to limit practices of secrecy whenever they conceal or facilitate violence, deceit, and breaches of trust, as was the case in the French assault on the Rainbow Warrior; and second, to offer as a test for morally acceptable actions or policies whether its sponsors can defend them publicly. (2)

      The four constraints may be experienced to different degrees as personal inhibitions by individuals and expressed through custom and law in societies. International law attempts to codify and enforce them among nations. At all levels, the proportion of trust and distrust present in social relationships reflects the degree to which such constraints are seen as effective.

      In considering the four constraints, some might object to the prerequisite suggested above that they should be few in number. Surely cultures require more than these four constraints, such critics might argue, and with good reason. After all, more is clearly needed among family members, friends, and fellow citizens. "Love thy neighbor'' has counterparts in many religions, to go along with prohibitions such as those against lying and killing in the Ten Commandments. Thus Confucius spoke of the need for respect and benevolence; Micah enjoined men to observe "only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God"; and Kant insisted that human beings owe one another both love and respect. (3) Fraternity and support for the weakest and most vulnerable in a society is a related political ideal voiced in many communities. Why not, then, urge nations to abide not only by the four constraints but also by familiar and shared positive injunctions such as those calling for love, sympathy, and mutual benevolence? Surely they, too, serve to build or restore trust.

      Certainly, a strategy that stresses the need to restore rather than to erode trust is incomplete so long as it emphasizes only the four constraints I have suggested. They are generally granted priority, however, in law as in morality. Even someone who is incapable of generosity or kindness toward others must refrain from assaulting them. These constraints are only a beginning; but they are indispensable for relationships not only between individuals but also between states.

      In addition, the positive values are hard to institutionalize even within nations; between nations, apart from particular alliances and agreements, such values, however desirable, can never serve as requirements. Even if they did, disagreement would be rife as to just what response they might call for in specific cases. Thus, many nations offer support for the victims of earthquakes and famines abroad; but efforts to require such support on an equal basis from all countries would encounter great resistance. The four constraints are different in these respects. It is much clearer what actions they rule out. Most people recognize, at least in principle, that they owe it even to strangers not to injure them, not to lie to them, not to break promises to them, or try to harm them in such ways secretly.

      In choosing the constraints essential to a workable strategy for peace, we must keep in mind that they are to serve as guides not only for private individuals but also for government officials and all others in their public activities. The constraints cannot substitute for a complete personal morality, anymore than they can replace the principles needed to found a just society. Rather, they form a minimal moral framework in a world where many individuals and nations are very far from working out complete moral and political principles by which to abide, yet must somehow achieve closer coordination for the immediate purpose of common survival. Without the four constraints, it will not be possible to preserve enough trust between nations (or, when needed, to restore it) to allow for such coordination, no matter how great the threat they face.

      The risk, should one multiply the constraints regarded as indispensable to begin with, is that they will all be ignored. The opposite risk is equally great: of acknowledging no moral limitations at all--thinking it sufficient, perhaps, to rely solely on what one takes to be one's common sense, or the welfare of one's client, company, or nation; or, for that matter, on one's love for mankind. Those who give themselves such leeway from specific constraints assume, rashly, that they need no internal compass to compensate for their own errors and biases. As soon as they skip past ordinary requirements for justifying their choices, they open themselves to the risks of partisanship and often end by condoning abuses for the sake of their particular cause or ideal.

      Not only are the four constraints indispensable separately; they must also be seen as linked. All talk of morality that focuses only on one value at the expense of others risks collapsing into moralizing of the most dangerous kind: the trampling on fundamental moral principles in the name of promoting some particular ideal or combating some particular evil (see Chapter V). The remedy lies in seeing the four basic moral constraints as forming a framework and as thereby both limiting and enhancing one another. In this framework, the constraint on betrayal buttresses those on violence and on deceit, while the limit on excessive secrecy prevents abuses of the first three.

      With respect to this framework, another question may arise. Why not see the constraint on violence as foremost in the context of war and peace, with the other three shoring it up? What nations fear most is surely the violence of invasions, of bombardments and the laying waste of cities and countryside. I would agree that the goal of the framework of constraints is indeed to forestall such violence in the first place. The constraint on violence clearly has the most direct bearing on that goal, but it is also needed, along with the other three, to rule out actions that erode trust and increase the threat of war--sabotage or assassination, say, or cheating on arms treaties. The four are then equally important. If you cannot trust a government's pledge or treaty of nonaggression, then you can have no trust that it will refrain from such aggression.

      A further objection may be raised with respect to the requirements that the constraints chosen should be simple enough to be easily grasped and specific enough to offer practical guidance. For although the four constraints do satisfy these requirements in principle and often also in practice, their applications are not simple to work out in situations where they conflict or appear to do so. This is a valid objection to any attempt to suggest constraints easily applicable to all possible conflicts. But it does not invalidate the present effort to set forth the constraints most needed in a strategy for peace. Such a strategy cannot aspire to resolve all existing moral dilemmas. Rather, so long as it offers specific guidance in clear-cut cases and succeeds in reducing the number of conflicts that are more resistant to efforts at principled resolution, it will make considerable progress in reducing distrust.

      In order to cut back the number of these conflicts, it is indispensable, first of all, to recognize exceptions to the moral constraints selected. They must be seen as strict without being unconditional. Yet how can one allow such a modification, an absolutist like Kant might ask, without compromising the very notion of a framework of moral constraints? Certain acts, even if carried out under duress, are such as to destroy a person's integrity and self-respect; once people allow for even a few exceptions to moral principles they can slip into every form of abuse and misjudgment, the more easily if their judgment is skewed by partisanship. As Kant pointed out, unless we take moral principles to be absolutely binding at all times, we are especially likely to make an exception just for ourselves and "just for this once."

      These warnings should carry great weight for anyone who considers violating a moral constraint. But it would be self-defeating for a strategy aimed at reducing the chances of a nuclear catastrophe to insist on hewing to principle even at the cost of making just such a disaster more likely. Less than ever, in the nuclear era, can we afford to hold, with Kant, that one should "do what is right though the world might perish"--refuse to tell a lie, say, even to a band of nuclear terrorists in order to keep them from precipitating a global catastrophe. (4) Kant buttressed his absolutist claim by relying on what he admitted was no more than a hope: that Providence would keep the world from perishing. Yet to gamble on being rescued by Providence in our present circumstances would be far too casual. It is noteworthy, in this respect, that the American Catholic bishops and other religious groups that have contributed so forcefully to the debate about war and peace in recent years have, to the best of my knowledge, consistently steered clear of such an assumption.

      "Do what is right though the heavens should fall" still guides some, who regard such a maxim as divinely ordained and are willing to suffer the consequences for the sake of their faith, But they cannot demand that those who disagree with their religious beliefs should nevertheless accept their uncompromising maxim. It cannot serve as a universal precept in the nuclear era and would find few adherents among public officials responsible for choices involving life or death.

      The desire for absolute certainty about every issue of right and wrong is tempting in theory but can never be satisfied in practice. Even those who grant no exceptions to certain prohibitions still have to draw lines with respect to what should count as falling within the prohibited category. If they rule out, say, all killing, do they mean to prohibit capital punishment and the killing of animals? Or are they speaking, rather, about the killing of innocent human beings? If so, how do they categorize noncombatants in war? And can they always be sure who is and who is not a noncombatant? Between nations, do they rule out even the killing that takes place in wars of strict self-defense? If not, how do they draw the line, among all the wars that states brazenly claim are strictly in self-defense, between those that are genuinely such and all the other ones? And regardless of how they come out on all these questions, how do they classify policies or acts that, while not directly taking lives, place large numbers of people at risk of near-certain death? Moderate risk? Indeterminate risk? In all such cases, line-drawing will still be needed, no matter how rigidly moral rules may be defined.

      Similarly, problems of line-drawing come up for anyone who admits exceptions to moral constraints. It then becomes necessary to weigh marginally different cases and to ask how clear it is that a particular action qualifies as an exception, and on what grounds. If you have concluded, for example, that it is legitimate to lie to deflect a would-be assassin on the trail of an intended victim, what about those borderline cases in which you are not sure of the pursuer's intention or of his capacity to carry it out? How do you demarcate the kinds of cases where you take lies to be justified from among the many marginally different cases where you are no longer sure?

(1) The four moral constraints on violence, deceit, betrayal, and excessive secrecy can be seen as corresponding to four positive moral principles of nonviolence, veracity, fidelity, and publicity, and, in turn, to certain virtues or excellences of character.

(2) This fourth constraint is different from the first three in two additional respects. People do not experience secrecy as harming them directly in the way violence, lies, and betrayal do. Indeed, they must often rely on secrecy in order to protect themselves from harm. No one should have the right to demand full openness from others. Nor can citizens properly demand such complete openness from the state. Rather, what is at issue, in this fourth constraint, is excessive secrecy alone.

The constraint on secrecy also differs from the first three in that it has always been much weaker between states than within them. Democratic traditions insist on open government, but this imperative does not apply equally with respect to outsiders. While the French government had no more right to take the life of a foreigner than of a French citizen in the Greenpeace affair, it had every right to try to keep its military secrets from foreign surveillance, so long as it acted in a lawful manner. Yet this second difference is diminishing. Modern technology and communications systems render all efforts at secrecy more vulnerable. And the stress on verification in concluding arms agreements requires far more openness to outside inspection than most governments would formerly have tolerated.

(3) Kant specifies that while we owe others both respect and love, the first represents a strict duty, whereas the second leaves us free to choose how best to carry it out and with respect to whom. The injunction to love one's neighbor, he suggests, asks us to wish to further everyone's well-being and happiness; but since doing so at all times in practice is impossible, one has more latitude in what one actually does: "the degree may be very different according to the differences in the persons loved (of whom one may concern me more than another. ") Like Confucius, Kant claims that individuals must learn to practice both respect and love in family and community experiences to begin with, in order to be capable of extending them to larger groups. He would have appreciated the view attributed to Confucius, that those who practice respect, good will, and trustworthiness in the family and with close associates can hope, by degrees, to learn to see "all within the Four Seas" as their brothers.