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United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s creation of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in 1999 inspired great hopes. As we explain, however, the noble initiatives of the UNGC are undermined by the arms industry. Arms are expensive. The expenditure on arms diverts a nation’s “resources from ‘productive’ to ‘unproductive’ ends.” The arms industry is a major employer in most arms manufacturing nations. It generates much needed revenue for those countries. Therefore, attempts at thwarting the supply of arms are doomed to failure. Instead of halting the supply of arms, we argue as to the advantages of restraining the demand for arms. Michael Walzer is the only moral philosopher who has considered the ethics of appeasement. We explore Walzer’s arguments for appeasement and consider how a United Nations Secretary-General could appease those nations demanding arms. In doing so, the UN Secretary-General would make it possible for the UNGC to achieve what was initially envisaged for the UNGC.

The issue of the existence and persistence of a labour aristocracy in advanced capitalist countries is connected with the emergence and persistence of an extremely unequal international economic order. The emergence of that order is the direct result of capitalist colonialism. That colonialism helped garner and control resources for the pioneering capitalist countries, which also emerged as the top imperialist countries of the world. The colonial resources were used to support and augment the profits of the capitalist class, but after the immiserizing phase of industrialization had passed, they also helped increase the incomes of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. Workers’ struggles and the threat of such struggles in some phases of development of capitalism led to increases in their incomes. However, there are instances in which the ruling class in the USA and UK deliberately used the lure of private property or acquisition of colonies to try and get their support. Thus, the debate between Post and Cope can only be resolved by invoking the complexities of the patterns of exploitation and governance under actually existing capitalism.

Despite the apparent philanthropic concerns of the new imperialism and the rhetoric of the civilising mission, the Second Boer War (1899–1902) revealed British irrational ambition, military reverses, scandals and evidence of inadequate administration. In this context, the South African concentration camps where the Boers, mostly women and children whose houses and farms had been destroyed by the British forces, were concentrated, stand out as examples of a seemingly arbitrary power. The controversies over such camps, and over the War itself, were heightened after Emily Hobhouse's Report was made public. Emily Hobhouse, an active humanitarian, obtained permission to visit the camps in order to write a report on the living conditions there. Upon returning to England, she had a meeting with Campbell-Bannerman, the leader of the Liberal Party, who eventually denounced the methods of barbarism carried out in such places. The Report appeared soon after the meeting and waves of protest ensued. Both Emily Hobhouse and Campbell-Bannerman were under crossfire.

My intention in this paper is, firstly, to briefly address the social, political and economic context underlying British imperial expansion and struggle for space at the turn of the nineteenth century, as far as controversies over the Boer War are concerned; secondly, to study the characteristics and living conditions in South African ‘concentration camps’ relying, to a great extent, on Emily Hobhouse's account; and thirdly, to analyse the social and political impact of the denunciation of such camps as places of wholesale cruelty in Hobhouse's (in) famous Report.