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Professor Roth's book addresses what � if it were new, as he suggests � would be an extremely alarming development: namely, the tendency of "strong" states to intervene in the affairs of their materially "weak" but formally equal counterparts. Because such interventionism is invariably justified as necessary in order to defend the core principles of a supposedly universal morality (usually, in the UN era, associated with human rights), Roth argues that this practice must be discouraged if the Charter system's commitment to "moral pluralism" is not to be undermined. As he sees it:
The post-World War II order, as constructively amended in the era of decolonization, established the priority of peace and respectful cooperation among judicially equal states; the ethos was one of ideological pluralism and forbearance, qualified only by a Security Council mech anism requiring an extraordinary cross-cutting consensus. That the system leaves unredressed all but the most extraordinary injustices occurring within state boundaries is not an aberrant consequence; the system, mindful that great-power predation has typically flown the flag of righteousness, prioritizes the impeding of impositions (at 284).
On a continuum he sets up, running from "transcendental justice" to moral relativism, Roth therefore argues that the morally correct position to take is one of "bounded pluralism". Such a position is "pluralistic" in that it respects the right to non-intervention even of states ruled by "ruthless" governments on the grounds that '[w]hat appears "disproportionate" to someone else's cause, however just, frequently appears exigent in the service of one's own' (at 120). Such a position is "bounded", however, in that this respect is limited by the existence of a few clearly universal moral standards. It is clear to Roth, for example, that "[t]he duty to refrain from coercive interference" can legitimately be "overcome in some class of unambiguously catastrophic cases" �
