This article highlights two of the most influential normative perspectives upon the ethical character of global civil society in Anglo-American political thought. These are considered under the headings of liberal cosmopolitanism and subalternist radicalism. Within international political theory, the main alternative to cosmopolitan arguments is usually regarded as provided by moral theories that invoke the continuing significance of national boundaries in relation to political community. The rivalry between cosmopolitan convictions and nationalist ethics is deeply entrenched within Anglo-American thinking. As a result, international political theory seems to throw up a fundamentally antinomian choice: either we possess overriding duties and obligations to others, irrespective of our nationhood; or the borders of a settled nation-state substantially define our sense of political identity and justify a marked ethical partiality towards our fellow nationals. Such is the hold of this antinomy upon the Western political imagination, it seems, that alternative conceptions of the relationship between territory, community and ethicality have been neglected or dismissed as unduly heterodox. Given the continuing purchase of this dualistic approach on international political ethics, the recovery and normative evaluation of various alternatives is a task of some intellectual importance.