David Pinsof argues that human rights do not exist as objective moral truths. He views them as strategic tools used in a complex social symmetry. Humans form alliances to gain status and power. They do not fight for rights because of altruism. They fight for rights to recruit allies against a common enemy.
The history of human rights begins with the struggle against monarchy. Early activists used the logic of universal rights to undermine the authority of kings. If every individual possesses inherent rights, then the king loses his unique claim to power. This framing allowed a large group of subordinates to coordinate. They signaled to each other that the king was a tyrant. They turned the king into a common enemy. This recruitment strategy worked because it offered a shared benefit to everyone except the monarch.
The French Revolution shows this Alliance Theory in practice. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen functioned as a rallying cry. It did not just describe a new moral reality. It established a new set of rules for social competition. Those who supported the declaration formed a powerful coalition. They used the language of rights to justify stripping the aristocracy of its land and influence. The underdog becomes the new dominant power by claiming to represent the interests of all humanity.
During the twentieth century, the scope of human rights expanded. Alliances moved beyond the nation-state. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 served as a coordination point for a global coalition. Superpowers used human rights to criticize their rivals. The United States attacked the Soviet Union for restricting political speech. The Soviet Union attacked the United States for racial inequality. Each side used the rhetoric of rights to recruit unaligned nations. They did not care about the rights themselves. They cared about the reputational cost they could impose on their opponent.
Modern human rights discourse often focuses on smaller marginalized groups. Alliance Theory suggests that high-status individuals support these groups to signal their own moral virtue. By advocating for the rights of a specific minority, an individual gains status within their own elite circle. They distinguish themselves from those they deem bigoted or backward. The pursuit of human rights becomes a way to compete for prestige. The victim functions as a useful mascot for the coalition.
That we see rights as sacred is part of the strategy. If people recognized rights as mere tools for alliance building, the tools would lose their effectiveness. The belief in objective morality masks the underlying power struggle. Humans hide their true motives from themselves to become better recruiters. DTG might suggest that the evolution of human rights is an escalating arms race of social coordination.
In Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, Samuel Moyn provides a history of human rights that aligns closely with Alliance Theory. He argues that human rights did not emerge as a purely altruistic moral discovery but as a tool in a shifting social symmetry. Groups used the language of rights to recruit allies and coordinate against common enemies.
Early activists used the logic of universal rights to undermine the authority of monarchs. If every individual has inherent rights, a king loses his unique claim to power. This framing allowed subordinates to signal to each other and coordinate. They turned the king into a common enemy and used rights as a recruitment strategy that offered a shared benefit to everyone except the monarch.
The French Revolution demonstrates this interplay. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen established a new set of rules for social competition. Support for the declaration formed a powerful coalition. They used rights to justify stripping the aristocracy of land and influence. The underdog became the new dominant power by claiming to represent all humanity.During the twentieth century, human rights served as a coordination point for a global coalition. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 emerged from a consensus that citizens required new, powerful states. Superpowers used human rights to criticize their rivals. The United States and the Soviet Union each used rights rhetoric to recruit unaligned nations. They used the reputational cost of rights violations to impose losses on their opponents.
Modern human rights discourse often focuses on marginalized groups. Alliance Theory suggest that high-status individuals support these groups to signal their own virtue. By advocating for minority rights, individuals gain status within elite circles. They distinguish themselves from those they deem backward. Human rights become a way to compete for prestige, with victims functioning as useful mascots for the coalition.That we see rights as sacred is part of the logic. If people recognized rights as mere tools for alliance building, they would lose their effectiveness. The belief in objective morality masks the underlying power struggle. Humans hide their motives from themselves to become better recruiters. DTG might argue that the evolution of human rights is an escalating arms race of social coordination.
In Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, Samuel Moyn argues that the rise of human rights as our highest moral ideal occurred precisely as faith in Marxist and other egalitarian socialist projects collapsed. This transition allowed former leftists to maintain a sense of moral righteousness by shifting their focus from broad material equality to a more limited program of global sufficiency and individual liberties.
The Disenchantment of Socialism
The shift began in earnest during the 1970s, a period Moyn identifies as the “disenchantment of socialism”. For many activists, particularly in Eastern Europe, the state socialist regimes had failed to deliver on their promises of material justice and had instead become sources of brutal oppression. Dissident movements, such as Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, adopted human rights as a “moral lingua franca” to indict these states without necessarily proposing an alternative economic system.
This move was often strategic. By framing their struggle in terms of universal human rights rather than partisan politics, dissidents could form broad coalitions that included both disillusioned socialists and liberals. However, this “apolitical” stance had long-term consequences:
Avoidance of Programmatic Politics: By focusing on a moral critique of state violence and repression, activists sidelined discussions about how a just social and economic order should be structured.
The Sapping of Socialist Imagination: The focus on political liberties and the right to be free from torture left little room for the egalitarian aspirations that had previously defined the left.
Human Rights as a “Last Utopia”
As Marxism lost its status as a viable political project, human rights emerged as the “last utopia”. For those who still wanted to change the world but were wary of the “totalizing” claims of socialist ideology, human rights offered a way to remain ethically committed without the baggage of past failures.
Moyn notes that this new moral culture was often about “saving the activist’s soul” rather than building structural social justice. It replaced the difficult work of class struggle with a more professionalized, informational politics of “naming and shaming”.
From Equality to Sufficiency
The most significant ideological shift in this transition was the abandonment of material equality in favor of sufficiency.
Marxist Egalitarianism: This tradition had sought to constrain material hierarchy and redistribute wealth broadly across society.
Human Rights Sufficiency: The human rights movement focused instead on establishing a “global floor of protection” for the worst off—ensuring people had enough to survive, but remaining silent on how far the rich could tower over the rest.
This focus on sufficiency made human rights “unthreatening” to the rising neoliberal political economy. While human rights activists felt righteous in their pursuit of basic needs, they inadvertently became the “powerless companions” of a system that allowed global inequality to explode. Moyn concludes that while human rights made the world more humane by addressing atrocity and extreme poverty, they left the underlying structures of unequal wealth and power entirely unchallenged.
In Alliance Theory, human rights function as a mechanism for status competition and moral recruitment rather than as a set of objective truths. People use the language of rights to signal their membership in elite coalitions and to distance themselves from rivals they wish to characterize as low-status or immoral.
One primary way individuals advance in status is by using human rights as a tool for moral signaling. By championing the rights of a specific marginalized group, a person signals their intelligence, their “evolved” sensibilities, and their adherence to the dominant norms of high-status social circles. This creates a clear distinction between the advocate and those who are indifferent or opposed. The advocate gains prestige by positioning themselves as a protector of the vulnerable, effectively using the victim as a mascot to validate their own moral superiority.
Human rights also serve as a method for coordinating against common enemies. In a professional or social hierarchy, an individual might use a rights-based framework to attack the legitimacy of a superior or a rival. By framing a rival’s actions as a violation of inherent rights, the accuser can recruit allies who might otherwise have no stake in the conflict. This turns a private dispute into a public moral crusade, allowing the accuser to leapfrog over others in the hierarchy by claiming the “moral high ground.”
The shift toward human rights after the decline of more radical ideologies, such as Marxism, provided a new path for righteousness. When collective economic projects failed, the individual pursuit of human rights offered a way for people to feel morally significant without requiring the sacrifice of their own material wealth. This form of “virtue” is particularly useful for modern elites. It allows them to maintain a high status by advocating for a “floor” of basic protections for the poor, which is unthreatening to their own position, while ignoring the “ceiling” of their own accumulation.
DTG might suggest that human rights are less about the liberation of the oppressed and more about the ongoing symmetry of elite coordination. That people view these rights as sacred is necessary for the strategy to work. If the quest for status were transparent, it would fail to recruit allies. By believing their own rhetoric, individuals become more effective at navigating the social hierarchy and securing their place within the most influential alliances.
In Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, Samuel Moyn argues that the human rights movement is struggling with a loss of relevance because it was built on low ambitions that are fundamentally unsuited for the current era of populist rage and escalating inequality.
The Human Rights Crowd as Palliatives
Moyn contends that human rights advocates have become palliatives that denounce the symptoms of material inequality—such as political catastrophe and refugee crises—without facing the structural “disease” itself. He suggests that:
Informational Politics are Ineffective: The movement’s chief tools—”naming and shaming” to stigmatize state repression—are unfit for mobilizing support for economic fairness.
Missed Connection with Equality: Human rights focus on a floor of sufficient provision rather than a ceiling on material hierarchy. This makes them “unthreatening” to neoliberalism and irrelevant to those suffering from material stagnation.
Loss of the “Reformism of Fear”: Unlike the 20th-century welfare state, which used the threat of organized labor and communism to secure material equality, the human rights movement has never offered a functional replacement for that sense of fear to drive redistribution.
Populism as a Symptom of Failed Ambition
Moyn argues that the rise of populism is a direct consequence of the human rights crowd’s failure to address material outcomes. Alliance theory might suggest that:
Elite Coordination Failure: High-status individuals use human rights to signal moral virtue and prestige within their own circles, distinguishing themselves from those they deem “backward”.
The Victim as Mascot: By treating the marginalized as “mascots” for their own status competition rather than as partners in a structural economic program, elites have lost the ability to recruit the working and middle classes into their coalition.
Populist Backlash: Without egalitarian pressure from the human rights movement, populist leaders have successfully capitalized on a sense of unfairness among classes that feel stagnant even as the wealthy soar.
A New Program for Relevance
For human rights to return to “defensible importance,” Moyn suggests the “crowd” must save itself from its companionship with neoliberalism. This would require:
Focusing on Labor Rights: Promoting labor rights as mechanisms for collective empowerment rather than just individual entitlements.
Scaling Welfare Globally: Moving beyond national borders to imagine and institutionalize a global welfare structure that addresses standard-of-living differences between countries.
Relearning Socialism: Elevating the choice between “socialism or barbarism” to a global project, recognizing that a world of basic rights fulfilled in the midst of escalating inequality is destined for instability and ruin.
In The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Samuel Moyn argues that human rights did not slowly emerge over centuries but burst onto the scene in the 1970s as a “last utopia” when other political projects failed. Alliance theory suggests that this was not a moral awakening but a strategic shift in how people coordinate to gain status and recruit allies.
The 1970s saw the collapse of revolutionary socialism and anti-colonial nationalism as viable paths to a better future. People who previously sought to transform the state or the economy found themselves in a state of ideological exhaustion. Alliance theory views this as a moment where old coalitions became liabilities. To maintain moral authority and social relevance, activists needed a new signal. Human rights provided a way to remain righteous without the messy, failed alliances of the past.
By pivoting to human rights, individuals could coordinate against the state rather than through it. This allowed for a “purity of struggle” that looked down on the compromises of power politics. From an alliance perspective, this was a brilliant recruitment strategy. It allowed Western elites to signal virtue by criticizing distant dictatorships, creating a high-status coalition that felt morally superior to both the “dirty” Cold War warriors and the failed Marxist revolutionaries.
Moyn highlights that the human rights movement often focused on individual suffering and state atrocity while ignoring the structural economic issues that socialism once addressed. Alliance theory explains this as a shift toward more sustainable signaling. Fighting for global material equality is difficult and requires significant sacrifice from the wealthy. Fighting for the “right not to be tortured” is low-cost for Western supporters but offers high reputational rewards. It creates a symmetry where the advocate gains prestige by protecting a distant victim, all while the advocate’s own economic status remains unthreatened.
The movement also benefited from the professionalization of international law. This created a new class of experts—lawyers, NGOs, and academics—who used human rights to build a new hierarchy of expertise. By defining rights as technical and legal rather than political, they excluded the “unwashed masses” from the conversation, ensuring that only those with the proper credentials could lead the moral charge.
That these advocates view their work as purely altruistic is a necessary feature of the alliance. If they admitted that human rights were a status-seeking tool used to replace failed leftist projects, they would lose their ability to recruit. The “sacred” nature of human rights serves as a coordination point that hides the underlying logic of social competition. DTG might suggest that human rights became the last utopia because they were the most efficient way to maintain elite cohesion in a world where bigger dreams had died.
In alliance theory, the major power players in the human rights field are not moral discoverers but strategic coordinators. They manage a system of social symmetry where human rights serve as the currency of elite status and the logic for global recruitment.
The primary power players are the high-status professionals within the “Human Rights Blob,” including leadership at major NGOs, international legal experts, and academic theorists. These individuals function as the gatekeepers of moral legitimacy. By defining what constitutes a “human right” or a “violation,” they set the rules for social competition. Alliance theory suggests that these elites use rights to distinguish themselves from “low-status” nationalists or populists. Their power comes from their ability to signal that they belong to a sophisticated, globalist coalition that is morally superior to provincial or tribal interests.
NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International act as recruitment hubs. They do not just report facts; they provide the “moral lingua franca” that allows different groups to coordinate against a common enemy, usually a state actor. In the current age of populist nationalism, these organizations are struggling because their traditional recruitment strategy—the “reformism of fear”—has lost its teeth. When leaders like Donald Trump or other nationalists openly disregard these moral signals, the NGO elite loses its ability to impose reputational costs. This creates a crisis of use for the human rights crowd, as their tools of “naming and shaming” no longer effectively recruit the broader public.
International legal elites and judges in bodies like the International Criminal Court represent another tier of power. They use the technical complexity of International Humanitarian Law to maintain a hierarchy of expertise. By making the discourse of rights inaccessible to the average person, they ensure that only those with specific credentials can participate in high-level moral coordination. This isolation reinforces their status within the elite alliance, even as it alienates them from the populist movements they seek to constrain.
Philanthropic foundations and billionaire donors also play a critical role. They provide the material resources that allow the human rights alliance to persist. From an alliance perspective, this funding is an investment in status. By supporting human rights causes, wealthy individuals can transform their economic capital into moral capital. This allows them to signal virtue to other elites and secure their position within high-status social circles without necessarily supporting structural changes that would threaten their own wealth, such as radical economic redistribution.
The current struggle for these players is that their alliance is being out-coordinated by populist coalitions. Populists use a different symmetry—national identity and “common man” rhetoric—to recruit allies. DTG might suggest that the human rights crowd is currently in a defensive crouch, attempting to re-brand their “last utopia” to regain the recruitment power they held in the 1970s and 1990s. Their survival depends on whether they can find a new enemy that is useful enough to reunite their fraying coalition.
In her 2015 article A Short History of International Humanitarian Law, Amanda Alexander argues that International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is a recent invention from the 1970s rather than an ancient code of chivalry. Alliance theory suggests that this “invention” was a strategic move by legal and activist elites to create a new platform for moral coordination and status acquisition.
The 1970s marked a period where traditional military codes and state-led treaties were losing their prestige. Alexander notes that the term “International Humanitarian Law” was coined to merge the laws of war with human rights. From an alliance perspective, this merger allowed human rights activists to colonize the domain of warfare. It provided a new way for non-state actors to recruit allies by judging the conduct of sovereign militaries. By framing war as a humanitarian issue, activists could signal their moral superiority over generals and politicians.
Alexander highlights that the 1977 Additional Protocols were vague and contested. Alliance theory treats this ambiguity as a feature, not a bug. Vague laws allow for flexible interpretation, which is a powerful tool for those in the “IHL elite.” If the rules are clear, anyone can follow them. If the rules are vague and complex, a specialized class of lawyers and “humanitarians” is required to interpret them. This creates a hierarchy of expertise where high-status professionals control the “moral lingua franca” of conflict.
The article describes how, by the late 20th century, international lawyers followed the lead of human rights organizations to declare these protocols authoritative. This was a successful “takeover” of the narrative. It allowed a new coalition—composed of NGO leaders, UN officials, and academic lawyers—to become the primary chroniclers of legitimate violence. They gain status not by fighting wars, but by setting the standards for who is “humanitarian” and who is a “criminal.”
This shift also created a new form of social symmetry. In the past, the laws of war were a pact between states. In the new IHL paradigm, the alliance is between the “humanitarian expert” and the “global victim.” The victim serves as the mascot that justifies the expert’s power and status. By advocating for the victim, the expert can coordinate global pressure against state actors, effectively raising their own prestige by lowering the prestige of the state.
That these actors believe they are merely uncovering objective legal truths is essential to the logic. If the IHL elite acknowledged that they were building a new infrastructure for status and power, their recruitment power would vanish. The “humanitarian” label masks the underlying struggle for control over the narrative of war. DTG might suggest that the rise of IHL is not a sign of increasing compassion, but a sign of a more sophisticated arms race in social coordination.
In her 2007 article The Genesis of the Civilian, Amanda Alexander traces how the concept of the “civilian” was constructed during and after the First World War. Alliance theory suggests this transition was not a natural evolution of compassion but a strategic reconfiguration of social symmetry to create new categories of victims and enemies.
Before the First World War, international law spoke of “citizens.” Alliance theory views the pre-war “citizen” as a high-status, high-agency figure. Citizens were considered part of the national body and therefore legitimate targets or potential threats. There was little social prestige in “protecting” a ferocious, able-bodied citizen who was expected to sacrifice for the state. Because they were seen as strong, they were ignored by the emerging humanitarian alliances of the time.
The First World War broke this symmetry. The technological and ideological demands of total war made the citizen a desirable target. To counter this, a new alliance emerged to construct the “civilian.” Alexander notes that the civilian was framed as weak where the citizen was strong, and feminine or childlike where the citizen was ferocious. From an alliance perspective, this shift was a masterstroke of recruitment. By stripping the non-combatant of agency and emphasizing their vulnerability, activists created a “protected victim” who could serve as a moral mascot.
This construction of the civilian allowed a new class of international lawyers and humanitarian actors to advance in status. They positioned themselves as the necessary protectors of this weak, exposed figure. This created a new hierarchy: the humanitarian expert at the top, the civilian victim at the bottom, and the “barbaric” military actor as the common enemy. By advocating for the civilian, the legal elite could coordinate global disapproval against states, thereby increasing their own prestige relative to traditional military and political power.
Alexander points out that the 1923 Draft Rules of Aerial Warfare entrenched this paradox—the civilian was both a target and a protected victim. Alliance theory explains this paradox as a result of competing coordination strategies. Militaries wanted to maintain the ability to strike the enemy’s resources, while humanitarian alliances wanted to maximize the reputational cost of such strikes. The “civilian” became the site of an escalating arms race in social signaling.
That this category feels like an objective, timeless reality is part of the logic. If people recognized the “civilian” as a strategic construction designed to facilitate elite coordination, the moral power of the category would diminish. DTG might suggest that the civilian was “invented” because the “citizen” was no longer useful for the recruitment needs of the emerging international legal order. The civilian’s supposed weakness is, in fact, the source of the humanitarian advocate’s power.
In her 2016 article The “Good War”: Preparations for a War against Civilians, Amanda Alexander argues that the bombardment of civilians in World War II was not a sudden violation of law but the realization of a narrative established after the Great War. Alliance theory suggests that this narrative was a coordination strategy used by various elites to redefine the enemy and the “fairness” of conflict.
After the First World War, a powerful literary and cultural alliance emerged that was deeply antagonistic toward civilians. Soldiers and writers who had experienced the trenches felt a sense of “betrayal” by the home front. From an alliance perspective, these veterans formed a high-status coalition based on shared suffering. They signaled to each other that the true “enemy” was the safe, comfortable citizen who cheered for war but bore none of its costs. By portraying the civilian as parasitic and ungrateful, they stripped the non-combatant of the moral protection previously afforded to them.
Military strategists adopted this narrative to justify the necessity of total war. If a fairer war was one that affected the entire nation, then the civilian population became a legitimate target. This provided a new logic for military coordination: air power could bypass the stalemate of the trenches and strike the “vitals” of the enemy nation. Alliance theory views this as a symmetry where the military elite and the cultural elite agreed on a common enemy—the civilian—to justify a new, more expansive form of violence.
Alexander shows that international lawyers were also swept up in this narrative. Constrained by their disciplinary conventions and the prevailing cultural “common sense,” they found it impossible to mount strong legal objections to aerial bombardment. In alliance theory, lawyers often follow the strongest social coalitions to maintain their own relevance. By failing to protect the civilian, lawyers aligned themselves with the dominant military and literary powers of the interwar period. They prioritized their status within the “realist” elite over a “humanitarian” defense that had no powerful allies at the time.
The “Good War” narrative that followed World War II served to retroactively sanitize this destruction. By framing the conflict as a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil, the victors could justify the mass killing of civilians as a moral necessity. Alliance theory suggests this is a form of moral recruitment: by casting the enemy as uniquely monstrous, the alliance of victors can ignore their own violations and maintain their status as the rightful chroniclers of justice.
That the bombardment of civilians was seen as an “ethical possibility” reveals how moral frameworks are tools for coordination. DTG might argue that the “civilian” is a category that is expanded or contracted based on the recruitment needs of the most powerful alliance. In the interwar period, the civilian was a useful target for a coalition of resentful veterans and ambitious strategists. Only later, when the “human rights crowd” needed a mascot for their own status competition, was the civilian reconstructed as a protected victim.
In her 2023 essay Filling the Gaps: The Expansion of International Humanitarian Law and the Juridification of the Free-Fighter, Amanda Alexander tracks the “juridification” of the irregular fighter, showing how international law expanded to cover those who once stood outside state control. Alliance theory suggests that this expansion was a strategic “territory grab” by legal elites to eliminate rival sources of authority and ensure that they remain the sole arbiters of legitimate violence.
Historically, the Hague Conventions left the “free-fighter” or “franc-tireur” outside the law. Alexander notes that this was often intentional; delegates believed true freedom and moral codes existed outside the state’s reach. From an alliance perspective, this created a symmetry where the state controlled its soldiers, but irregular fighters were governed by their own decentralized social logic. This “gap” in the law was a threat to the prestige of international lawyers because it represented a domain where their “moral lingua franca” had no power.
The transition to modern International Humanitarian Law (IHL) closed this gap. By extending legal status to irregular combatants, the legal elite brought the free-fighter into their own jurisdiction. This was framed as a “humanitarian” victory, but alliance theory views it as a way to domesticate the “enemy” of the state and the law. By applying formal legal criteria to these fighters, the IHL crowd signaled their authority over all participants in a conflict. They replaced the fighter’s own moral code with a complex, technical language that only high-status experts can navigate.
This process also reinforced the status of the state. Alexander argues that the expansion of law outside the state has led to a reaffirmation of the law that is synonymous with the state. In alliance terms, the legal elite and the state formed a mutually beneficial coalition. The state gains a more precise mechanism to identify and “legally” eliminate those who rise up against it, while the legal experts gain a monopoly on the narrative of justice. The free-fighter is stripped of their independent “will” and turned into a legal subject whose actions can be “coded” as either legitimate or criminal by the expert class.
The “humanitarian” framing is the recruitment strategy that makes this expansion possible. It attracts allies by promising to protect the vulnerable and regulate the “wild” elements of war. However, the result is a system of “juridification” that silences alternative moralities. DTG might argue that “filling the gaps” is not about making war more humane, but about making the social symmetry of the legal elite more complete. By leaving no “outside” to the law, the experts ensure that their status is never challenged by those who refuse to speak their language.
In her 2023 essay The Ethics of Violence: Recent Literature on the Creation of the Contemporary Regime of Law and War, Amanda Alexander reviews the recent shift in scholarship toward seeing International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as a “paradigm of ethical violence.” Alliance theory suggests that the humanitarian regime is not a path toward peace, but a sophisticated system of social symmetry that allows specific elites to define which forms of violence are prestigious and which are barbaric.
The central concept in this literature is the “juridification” of war. Modern IHL has expanded to cover almost every aspect of conflict. Alliance theory views this as a “territory grab” by a global legal elite. By creating a complex, technical language to describe war, these experts exclude the public and military practitioners from the moral conversation. They maintain their status by ensuring that only those with high-status legal credentials can judge the legitimacy of violence.
This regime functions as a tool for moral recruitment. Humanitarian advocates use the “sacred” status of the victim—such as the civilian or the irregular fighter—to recruit allies against state actors. By framing their work as an objective moral necessity, they hide the underlying power struggle. They gain prestige by positioning themselves as the protectors of humanity, effectively using the victim as a mascot to validate their own moral authority.
Alexander notes that this paradigm is “encompassing” and hard to escape. From an alliance perspective, this is a sign of a successful “moral monopoly.” The humanitarian crowd has established a symmetry where any critique of their methods is framed as an endorsement of atrocity. This makes it socially costly for rivals to challenge the elite coalition. Even when the regime fails to prevent violence, the advocates maintain their status by calling for more law and more expertise, rather than questioning the utility of the framework itself.
The literature also highlights the “companionship” between humanitarianism and modern warfare. Instead of stopping war, IHL “humanizes” it, making it more palatable for high-status audiences. This serves a strategic function: it allows powerful states to continue using violence as long as they follow the “rules” established by the legal elite. This creates a mutually beneficial alliance between states and lawyers. The state gets moral cover for its actions, and the lawyers get to remain the primary chroniclers of global justice.
DTG might suggest that the “ethics of violence” is simply the current logic of elite coordination. That we find it difficult to imagine an alternative to this humanitarian paradigm proves how effective the alliance has been at securing its position. The “traps” Alexander mentions are the inevitable result of a system designed for status competition rather than the actual elimination of conflict.
In alliance theory, the best novels about human rights are not those that celebrate moral progress, but those that expose the internal status games and competitive signaling of the people who manage them. You want stories that show how the “humanitarian” label is used as a tool for elite coordination.
The Professionalized Moralists
A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis by David Rieff: While technically a work of narrative non-fiction, it reads like a grim autopsy of the humanitarian alliance. Rieff describes how NGOs became “powerless companions” to state power during the 1990s. It shows the status jockeying that occurs when activists realize they are being used by governments as moral cover for political inaction.
The Ghost of the 19th Century: Joseph Slaughter argues that the Bildungsroman (the coming-of-age novel) is the literary engine of human rights. It shows how stories about individuals “finding themselves” serve as recruitment tools for international law. These novels naturalize the idea that the individual is the only unit that matters, which conveniently sidelines collective economic demands.
The Bureaucracy of Suffering
The Missionaries by Phil Klay: This novel captures the modern interplay between NGOs, military contractors, and journalists in Colombia. It is a perfect study in alliance theory. Every character is jockeying for a different kind of prestige: the aid worker wants “ground-level” moral authority, the journalist wants the status of the “truth-teller,” and the military tech expert wants the prestige of efficient control. They coordinate against each other as much as they do against the local “enemies.”
Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.: This science fiction classic explores how a monastic order preserves “sacred” knowledge across centuries of barbarism. Through the lens of alliance theory, the monks are an elite coalition using the “mystery” of their documents to maintain a hierarchy of expertise. It shows how the status of being a “guardian of humanity” can be maintained even when the content of that guardianship has been forgotten.
The Collapse of the Last Utopia
The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth: Though a thriller, it provides a cynical look at how human rights and “liberation” rhetoric are used as tools for corporate and mercenary coordination. It reveals the symmetry between the idealistic language of the anti-colonial activist and the cold logic of the man funding the coup. The “right” is a mascot for the “might.”
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee: This novel explores the breakdown of old moral certainties in post-apartheid South Africa. It shows what happens to high-status individuals when the social symmetry they relied on—their “buffered identity” as enlightened liberals—is shattered. The protagonist’s loss of status is absolute because he can no longer successfully signal his virtue to the new dominant coalition.
That we find these novels “cynical” is a sign of how deeply we have internalized the sacred status of rights. If we admitted that these organizations are sites of intense careerism and status-seeking, the recruitment strategy would fail. DTG might suggest that the truly “human rights novel” is the one that convinces the reader that the advocate is a hero, thereby securing the advocate’s place at the top of the social hierarchy.
In The Last Utopia, Samuel Moyn argues that the 1970s “naming and shaming” model succeeded by turning human rights into a minimalist moral signal that required no commitment to structural economic change. This allowed a new class of activists to recruit allies without the “contamination” of state power.
Alliance theory would decode the 1970s breakthrough as a move toward a more sustainable form of social coordination. Earlier movements, like anti-colonial nationalism or socialism, demanded the redistribution of wealth and the seizing of state power. These projects were “expensive” for allies because they required sacrifice and often resulted in violent, low-status outcomes. By contrast, the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions—which Amanda Alexander identifies as a turning point—merged human rights with the laws of war. This created a new social symmetry: the “Humanitarian Expert” and the “Global Victim” coordinating against the “Violator State.”
The “naming and shaming” tactic is a perfect example of moral recruitment. By publishing reports on distant atrocities, NGOs allow high-status Westerners to signal virtue at zero cost to their own material position. The victim functions as a mascot whose suffering validates the expert’s authority. This creates a powerful elite alliance between the legal professional, the billionaire donor, and the academic theorist. They gain prestige by being the “primary chroniclers” of justice, while the actual victims remain useful only as long as they remain weak and in need of protection.
DTG might suggest that the 1970s saw the birth of a “professionalized” morality. The shift from “citizens” to “civilians” described by Alexander reflects this: citizens have agency and can challenge elite coalitions, but civilians are defined by their vulnerability. This ensures that the humanitarian elite remains at the top of the hierarchy, as the only group capable of interpreting the complex, technical rules of the “ethics of violence.”
This model is currently facing a crisis of use because populist nationalists no longer care about the reputational costs imposed by “naming and shaming.” When the signal of the human rights crowd no longer effectively recruits the public, the elite alliance loses its leverage. The “last utopia” is being out-coordinated by rivals who use more visceral signals like national identity and economic resentment.
