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The United Nations and its member states often face agonizing decisions about whether to recognize states and governments that fail morally in important ways. Some of these states and governments gain power through violence or maintain it that way. Others perpetuate injustices -- ethnic, religious, or gender discrimination, persistent failures of due process, denials of political participation -- in which a weary public acquiesces. If we recognize these states and governments, we seem to be condoning their moral failures. Yet if we deny them recognition, we can make matters morally worse by increasing their insecurity and excluding them from international institutions when allowing them to participate might actually give the international community some leverage over them to improve. With NEH support, I will complete a book that examines this dilemma.