  It is important to recognize, however, that embracing cosmopolitanism does not necessarily require one to endorse open borders, because one might develop an ‘indirect cosmopolitan’ defense for protecting a state’s right to exclude outsiders. Such an account might take any number of forms, but one particularly interesting version is to suggest that wealthy liberal democratic states must be allowed to exclude foreigners (for the time being, at least) so as to be better able (and more willing) to build the international institutions which are most likely to put the world’s poor in a better position to live minimally decent lives (Christiano, 2008).