ABSTRACT
The morality of states is a morality grounded in the requirements of survival. The morality of states, established by the seminal writings of Niccolo Machiavelli and John Hobbes, denigrates the moral standing of international economic relations and of distributive justice as a normative guide to interstate behavior. The Liberal International Economic Order will continue to face the challenge of having to become a realm in which both the morality of states and the cosmopolitan morality of distributive justice serve as fulfillments of each other. The major obstacle to the achievement of a cosmopolitan egalitarian morality supportive of distributive justice within the international regimes of the Liberal International Economic Order remains, in Keohane’s view, the morality of states. When poor countries are taken into account, it seems even more clear that the principles of contemporary international economic regimes would be found morally deficient by the standards of cosmopolitan moral theory.
