is a dangerous fantasy. States are the main actors in an international anarchy, and they either will or should always attempt to act rationally in their own interests. So, in response to the three central questions above: moral universalism is either false, or merely says that nothing is forbidden to any state in pursuit of its interests. There is no obligation to help the poor, unless doing so helps to further a state's strategic aims. And the state system is taken as the fundamental and unchallengeable global institutional arrangement. The theoretical roots for this realist view are found in the tradition including Machiavelli and extending back to Glaucon's challenge to Socrates. International relations between states in the realist view exist in what Charles Beitz describes as a Hobbesian state of nature, a state of anarchic war where might makes right and which is realist in the sense that it advocates viewing states as they “really are,” rather than portraying them in idealistic circumstances or according to their purported ideals. Particularism Particularists, such as Michael Walzer and James Tully, argue that ethical standards arise out of shared meanings and practices, which are created and sustained by discrete cultures or societies. Moral and social criticism is possible within the boundaries of such groups, but not across them. If a society is egalitarian, for instance, its citizens can be morally wrong, and can meaningfully criticise each other, if they do not live up to their own egalitarian ideals; but they cannot meaningfully criticise another, caste-based society in the name of those ideals. "A given society is just if its substantive life is lived in a certain way—that is, in a way faithful to the shared understandings of [its] members." It is unjust if not. Each society has its own, different standards, and only those inside it are bound by those standards and can properly criticise themselves. So, moral universalism is false, because objective ethical standards vary between cultures or societies. We should not apply the same criteria of distributive justice to strangers as we would to compatriots. Nation-states that express their peoples' shared and distinctive ethical understandings are the proper institutions to enable local and different justices. For Charles Blattberg, however, there exists a particularist approach to global justice, one based upon what he calls a "global patriotism." Nationalism Nationalists, such as David Miller and Yael Tamir, argue that demanding mutual obligations are