Humanitarian Intervention

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS | March/April 2013
Resolved: The United States is justified in intervening in the internal political processes of other countries to attempt to stop human rights abuses.
Victory Briefs Topic Analysis Book: Lincoln-Douglas March/April 2013 12NFL4-Humanitarian Intervention 2013 Victory Briefs, LLC Victory Briefs Topic Analysis Books are published by: Victory Briefs, LLC 925 North Norman Place Los Angeles, California 90049 Publisher: Victor Jih | Managing Editor: Adam Torson | Editor: Adam Torson | Topic Analysis Writers: Stephen Babb, Mollie Cowger, Adam Torson, Nate Zerbib-Berda | Evidence: Jeff Liu, Adam Torson For customer support, please email help@victorybriefs.com or call 310.472.6364.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com
Page 2 of 158
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................. 2 TOPIC ANALYSIS BY STEPHEN BABB ......................................................................... 7 TOPIC ANALYSIS BY MOLLIE COWGER .................................................................... 17 TOPIC ANALYSIS BY ADAM TORSON ........................................................................ 22 TOPIC ANALYSIS BY NATE ZERBIB-BERDA.............................................................. 29 FRAMEWORK EVIDENCE ........................................................................................... 36
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS ONLY LEGITIMATE WHEN IT MEETS THE TRANDITIONAL CRITERIA FOR JUST WAR ..........................................................................................................................36 THE PRINCIPLE OF LAST RESORT REQUIRES STATES TO WEIGH THE COSTS OF INTERVENTION AGAINST THOSE OF OTHER POSSIBLE MEANS ......................................................................................37 THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY RESTRAINS THE MEANS OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ............................................................................................................................................38 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS ONLY JUSTIFIED IF IT HAS A REASONABLE CHANCE OF SUCCESS......................................................................................................................................................39 TO BE LEGITIMATE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION MUST BE AUTHORIZED BY INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS .........................................................................................................................................40 THE ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR JUST WAR THEORY COMES FROM NATURAL LAW ....................41 JUST WAR THEORY IS NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT TO INTERPRET .......................................................42 THERE ARE FIVE CORE PROVISIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF JUST MILITARY INTERVENTION ........43
AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE ........................................................................................... 44

THE LIMITS OF SOVEREIGNTY ........................................................................................................... 44
SYSTEMATIC GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION AND ATROCITY BOTH UNDERMINES A STATES CLAIM TO SOVEREIGNTY AND JUSTIFIES INTERVENTION TO STOP PRACTICES THAT SHOCK THE CONSCIENCE ..............................................................................................................................................44 IN THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES THERE HAS BEEN AN INCREASING EMPHASIS ON HUMAN SECURITY RATHER THAN NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY .............................................................................45 STATES FORFEIT THEIR RIGHTS TO SELF-GOVERNMENT WHEN THEY VIOLATE THE RIGHTS OF THEIR PEOPLE .............................................................................................................................................46 NO ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO SOVEREIGNTY.................................................................................................47
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT........................................................................................................... 48
THE IDEA OF A RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT REFRAMES THE NATURE OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ................................................................................................................48 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT EXTENDS BEYOND THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE TO THE PROMOTION OF PEACE, SECURITY, AND SELF-GOVERNANCE ............................................................49 RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT IS LESS ABOUT EXPANDING LEGAL RIGHTS AS IT IS REMOVING POLITICAL IMPEDIMENTS TO ACTION IN THE FACE OF ATROCITY LIBYA PROVES ........................50 INCONSISTENT APPLICATION OF HUMANITARIAN NORMS IS A POOR REASON NOT TO ACT WHEN WE CAN.........................................................................................................................................................51
Page 3 of 158
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY .................................................................................... 52

THE OBLIGATION TO ENGAGE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS BASED ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITY TO THE COMMUNITY OF NATIONS .....................................................................52 IN THE 1990S, MANY HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES SHATTERED THE HOPE FOR A NEW POSTCOLD WAR PEACE ......................................................................................................................................53 THE 1990S SAW A TURN TOWARD MORALLY-ORIENTED FOREIGN-POLICY NORMS.........................54 MORAL DISCOURSE HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY ACCEPTED IN GLOBAL POLITICS ......................55 THE ORTHODOX CONCEPTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ASSUMES THAT THEY ARE UNIVERSAL RIGHTS DERIVED FROM MORAL REASONING .........................................................................................56 HUMAN RIGHTS ARE BY THEIR NATURE MORE FUNDAMENTAL THAN OTHER MORAL CLAIMS ......57 HUMAN RIGHTS IS CLOSELY TIED TO AN INTERNATIONAL CULTURE OF RIGHTS THAT HAS DEVELOPED SINCE WORLD WAR II ..........................................................................................................58 AFTER THE COLD WAR, THE POLITICAL REALITIES OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND THE ADVANCE OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY MADE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION A PRESSING POLITICAL PROBLEM .....................................................................................................................................................59 THE DOCTRINE OF RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT HAS BEEN UNANIMOUSLY ENDORSED BY THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY ...........................................................................................................................60 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS MORALLY PERMISSIBLE IN THE CONTEXT OF STRIVING FOR A MORE PEACEFUL WORLD ..........................................................................................................................61
LIBERAL HUMANITARIANISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM ......................................................................... 62

THE HUMANITARIAN NARRATIVE IS CLOSELY TIED TO LIBERAL IDEAS OF INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SOCIETY AND PROTECTION FROM STATE AGGRESSION .....................................................................62 TRADITIONAL LIBERAL CONCEPTIONS OF HUMANITARIAN NORMS HAVE BEEN SUPPLEMENTED BY MODERN COSMOPOLITANISM .............................................................................................................63 IT IS POSSIBLE TO DEVELOP A SENSE OF HUMAN IDENTITY THAT MAKES ONE WILLING TO DIE FOR THE SAKE OF SOMEONE ELSE SIMPLY BECAUSE SHE IS HUMAN ..............................................64 COSMOPOLITANISM HAS ITS ORIGINS IN GREEK STOICISM ................................................................65 CLASSICAL COSMOPOLITANS EMPHASIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF AVOIDING PAROCHIALISM IN SUCCESSFUL POLITICAL ORDERS ...........................................................................................................66 COSMOPOLITANISM EMPHASIZES THE VALUE OF EACH INDIVIDUAL HUMAN ...................................67 STOIC COSMOPOLITANS ALLOW FOR THE RICHNESS OF LOCAL AFFILIATIONS BUT INSIST ON IDENTIFICATION WITH A COMMON HUMANITY ........................................................................................68 STOIC COSMOPOLITANS PUSH BACK AGAINST THINKNIG OF OTHERS IN THE WORLD AS ALIEN AND HOSTILE ...............................................................................................................................................69 KANTIANISM ENTAILS A UNIVERSAL COSMOPOLITAN LAW ..................................................................70 FOR RAWLS, HUMAN RIGHTS ARE DISTINCT FROM OTHER LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS IN THAT THEY GENERATE A JUSTIFICATION FOR FOREIGN INTERVENTION ..........................................71 FOR RAWLS HUMAN RIGHTS SET STANDARDS FOR THE ACTIONS OF NON-STATE ENTITIES AS WELL AS GOVERNMENTS IN MANY DIFFERENT CONTEXTS .................................................................72 HABERMAS ARGUES THAT THE TENSION BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND A COSMOPOLITIAN ETHOS IS OVERSTATED ..........................................................................................................................................73 HABERMAS MAINTAINS THAT RATIONALITY AND THE CULMINATION OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT WILL PROPEL THE WORLD TOWARD MORE COSMOPOLITAN IDENTIFICATIONS ..............................74
JUST WAR THEORY .......................................................................................................................... 75

HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED ONLY WHEN THERE IS AN IMMINENT EMERGENCY 75
Page 4 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED ONLY WHEN IT AIMS ONLY TO STOP THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF THE CRISIS................................................................................................................................77 VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS DO NOT ALWAYS WARRANT INTERVENTION, BUT EGRIOUSLY VIOLATIONS OF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS DO .........................................................78 INTERVENTION WOULD BE JUSTIFIED IF CONSISTENT WITH THE TENETS OF JUST WAR THEORY .......................................................................................................................................................................79 JUST WAR THEORY IS THE ONLY FRAMEWORK THAT ACKNOWLEDGES THE IMPORTANCE OF MORALITY IN DETERMINING WHETHER INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED ................................................80 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED UNDER JUST WAR THEORYSUBJECT TO CONSTRAINTS .............................................................................................................................................81
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION WORKS ............................................................................................. 82

NATIONS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY ADEPT AT USING INTERVENTION AS A TOOL TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS RATHER THAN VIOLATE THEM....................................................................82 CRITICISMS ABOUT THE EFFICACY OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ARE OUTDATED ...............83 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS GENERALLY SUCCEED IN PREVENTING MASS ATROCITIES AGAINST CIVILIANS .....................................................................................................................................84 SINCE THE MODERN ERA OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION, VIOLENCE AGAINST CIVILIANS IS DOWN MARKEDLY .......................................................................................................................................85 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION HAS LED TO A SIGNIFICANT DECREASE IN VIOLENCE FROM CIVIL WAR ..............................................................................................................................................................86 THE INTERVENTION IN COTE DIVOIRE DEMONSTRATES THE INCREASING EFFECTIVENESS OF MODERN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ...............................................................................................87 THE MILITARY INTERVENTION IN LIBYA DEMONSTRATES THAT HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION CAN PROTECT VITAL MORAL NORMS ......................................................................................................88 THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY LEARNED IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM ITS EARLY FAILURES IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ................................................................................................................89 INTERVENING GOVERNMENTS HAVE LEARNED THE LESSONS OF UNDERDEPLOYMENT IN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS ........................................................................................................................90 THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS LEARNED THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVELY ENGAGING LOCAL CONSTITUENCIES IN INTERVENTION ..........................................................................................91 THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS LEARNED THE IMPORTANCE OF COALITION BUILDING ....92 INTERVENING STATES HAVE LEARNED THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A MEANINGFUL EXIT STRATEGY....................................................................................................................................................93 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION SAVES LIVES ........................................................................................94 MULTIPLE VARIANTS ARE DETERMINANTS OF SUCCESS OF US INTERVENTIONEMPIRICAL MODEL SHOWS ............................................................................................................................................95 MULTIPLE MODELS SHOW THAT US INTERVENTION HAS A POSITIVE EFFECT ON RIGHTS ............96 THE CREATION OF THE ICTY IN YUGOSLAVIA EFFECTIVELY DELEGITIMIZED LEADERS WHO HAD VIOLATED HUMANITARIAN NORMS ...........................................................................................................97
SYRIA .............................................................................................................................................. 98
INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD IS PREMATURE NOW BUT COULD BE EFFECTIVE ........................98 THE U.S. SHOULD CONSIDER INTERVENTION IN SYRIA IF OPPOSITION FORCES UNITE .................99 POSSIBLE PLAN FOR U.S. HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN SYRIA ................................................100 EVEN IF US INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD BE INEFFECTIVE, ITS TRY OR DIE ...........................101 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN SYRIA IS A PREREQUISITE TO SUCCESSFUL DIPLOMATIC ACTION .......................................................................................................................................................102
Page 5 of 158
BRINK IN SYRIA IS NOW CANNOT AFFORD INACTION .......................................................................103 US SUPPORT FOR OPPOSITION GROUPS IN SYRIA IS KEY.................................................................104 US INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD BE SUCCESSFULSHOULD NOT BE PARALYZED BY WORST CASE SCENARIO THINKING .....................................................................................................................105
NEGATIVE EVIDENCE ............................................................................................... 106

NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW......................................................................... 106
THE PRINCIPLE OF NON-INTERVENTION DERIVES FROM THE VALUE OF SELF-DETERMINATION106 THE PRESUMPTION OF NON-INTERFERENCE HELPS TO MAINTAIN INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND STABILITY ...................................................................................................................................................107 REALISTS STATIST CRITIQUE OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ARGUES THAT SOVEREIGN STATES THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM ..................................................108 THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF STATISM COMMON TO THE ANTI-HUMANITARIAN NARRATIVE ................................................................................................................................................109 STATE SOVEREIGNTY IS DESIGNED TO CHECK THE MORALIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS .....................................................................................................................................................................110 HUMANITARIANISM UNDERMINES THE SYSTEM OF SOVEREIGN STATES THAT LIMITS THE SCOPE OF WAR.......................................................................................................................................................111 THE SOVEREIGN NATION IS INSTRUMENTAL IN DESACRALIZING POLITICS AND THEREFORE CONTROLLING VIOLENCE ........................................................................................................................112 INTERVENTION IS NOT JUSTIFIED SIMPLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF ESTABLISHING DEMOCRACY 113 THE UN CHARTER PERMITS INTERVENTION ONLY IN SELF-DEFENSE OR WHEN THE SECURITY COUNSEL AUTHORIZES IT ON THE GROUNDS THAT A STATE IS A DANGER TO INTERNATIONAL PEACE .........................................................................................................................................................114 US INTERVENTION IN KOSOVO IS AN EMPIRICAL EXAMPLE OF VIOLATION OF JUST WAR THEORY. .....................................................................................................................................................................115 NO INSTITUTION OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION CURRENTLY EXISTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW .....................................................................................................................................................................116 IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO ACCOMMODATE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION DOCTRINE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW................................................................................................................................117 THE US SHOULD NOT PROMOTE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THIS DOCTRINE IN ILAW ....................118 US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA WAS UNJUSTIFIEDTHREE WARRANTS ..............................................119
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION DOESNT SOLVE............................................................................... 120

WHEN NATIONS ENGAGE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION THEY OFTEN FAIL TO SECURE A PEACEFUL TRANSITION AFTER THE CONFLICT ....................................................................................120 THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT CONCERN THAT RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT WILL POLITICIZE HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS .................................................................................................................121 THE WAR IN IRAQ SHOULD ALMOST CERTAINLY BE CONSIDERED A DISASTER .............................122 THE IRAQ WAR DEMONSTRATES THE DANGER OF INVADING A NATION WHERE INTELLIGENCE IS DIFFICULT TO GATHER .............................................................................................................................123 INSURGENCIES LIKE THOSE IN IRAQ ARE FORESEEABLE, SO ADVOCATES OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION SHOULD HAVE TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE RISK OF AN INSURGENCY IS OUTWEIGHED BY THE ADVANTAGES OF INTERVENTION ...................................................................124 IRAQ DEMONSTRATES THAT THERE ARE LIMITS TO WHAT WE CAN PREDICT ABOUT WAR AND SO IN GENERAL WE SHOULD BE WEARY OF IT...........................................................................................125 IRAQ DEMONSTRATES THAT LOCAL POPULATIONS DONT ALWAYS GREET INTERVENING FORCES AS LIBERATORS ........................................................................................................................................126
Page 6 of 158
INTERVENOR STATES ARE UNLIKELY TO SUPPORT DEMOCRATIC FORMS OF GOVERNMENT ....127 THE LIKELIHOOD THAT INTERVENOR STATES WILL SUPPORT UNDEMOCRATIC REGIMES MEANS THAT IT IS UNLIKELY THAT SUCCESSOR STATES WILL RESPECT WOMENS RIGHTS ....................128 BECAUSE UNILATERAL INTERVENORS TEND TO SUPPORT REPRESSIVE REGIMES, SUCCESSOR STATES TEND TO BE LESS RESPONSIVE TO DOMESTIC LOBBYING AND INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE TO IMPROVE HUMAN RIGHTS .............................................................................................129 THE PURSUIT OF WOMENS RIGHTS IS HARMED BY THE INSTABILITY THAT ATTENDS ANY FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION........................................................................................................130 IN STATES TARGETED FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION WOMEN TEND TO BE SUBJECT TO MORE FORMS OF VIOLENCE ...............................................................................................................................131 THE EVIDENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT THE IDEA THAT MILITARY INTERVENTIONS CAN IMPROVE WOMENS RIGHTS ......................................................................................................................................132 MILITARY INTERVENTION SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED THE LIKELIHOOD OF VIOLATIONS FOR WOMENS RIGHTS ......................................................................................................................................133 MILITARY INTERVENTION IS GENERALLY FUTILE AND INEFFECTIVE ................................................134 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION HAS NO DETERRENT EFFECT ..........................................................135 MILITARY INTERVENTION IS HISTORICALLY INEFFECTIVE .................................................................136
A2 LIBERAL COSMOPOLITANISM...................................................................................................... 137

PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICS OF LIBERALISM TEND TO OPPOSE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ....137 SOME THEORISTS CHALLENGE THE ORTHODOX VIEW THAT HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL AND REASON-BASED, ARGUING THAT THIS ACCOUNT PAYS TOO LITTLE ATTENTION TO THE POLITICAL COMPONENT OF RIGHTS ......................................................................................................138 RAWLS ACCOUNT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS PREMISED ON THE VALIDITY OF WESTERN LIBERALISM .....................................................................................................................................................................139 RAWLS JUSTIFICATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS DOES NOT COHERE WITH THE INTERNATIONAL CULTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS .................................................................................................................140 THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS INCONSISTENT BECAUSE IT IS NOT APPLIED TO NATURAL DISASTERS .........................................................................................................................141 INTERVENTION FOR HUMANITARIAN REASONS MAKES A MOCKERY FOR THE VERY RIGHTS IT IS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT .........................................................................................................................142 MILITARY INTERVENTION FOR HUMANITARIAN REASONS EMBRACES HYPOCRISY ......................143
STATES ARE SELF-INTERESTED...................................................................................................... 144

THE DOCTRINE OF JUST ANTI-TOTALITARIAN WAR (JAW) MAY BE UNDERMINED BY THE SELFINTERESTED MOTIVES OF INVADING STATES ......................................................................................144 THE DESIRE TO AVOID PUTTING TROOPS ON THE GROUND CAN DRIVE INTERVENING NATIONS TO TACTICS THAT ACTUALLY HARM HUMAN RIGHTS ..........................................................................145 UNILATERAL INTERVENTION IS LIKELY TO BE STRONGLY SELF-INTERESTED................................146 STATES AND THE UN REMAIN UNWILLING TO ENGAGE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AGAINST ENTRENCHED GOVERNMENTS LIKE THAT OF SYRIA..........................................................147 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCOMPLISH IMPARTIALLY ............................148
MULTILATERIALISM AND REGIONALISM BETTER................................................................................ 149

AFRICAS COLONIAL HISTORY MAKES MANY STATES SUSPICIOUS OF FOREIGN INTERVENTION; THEREFORE REGIONAL EFFORTS ARE CRUCIAL TO STOPPING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES ...........149 THE FAILURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO ADDRESS SHAMEFUL HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN AFRICA HAS PROMPTED REGIONAL ACTION ....................................................................150
Page 7 of 158
MULTILATERAL INTERVENTIONS ARE PREFERABLE TO UNILATERAL ONES BECAUSE THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO ADVANCE A SELF-INTERESTED AGENDA .................................................................151 IGO INTERVENTIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO IMPROVE WOMENS RIGHTS BY INCREASING INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF THE PROBLEM .............................................................................152 IGO INTERVENTIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO PRODUCE STABILITY AND DEMOCRACY ...................153 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY SUCCESSFUL AS MORE REGIONAL FORCES HAVE BEEN DEPLOYED AS PEACEKEEPERS .....................................................154
SYRIA ............................................................................................................................................ 154

INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD LEAD TO PROLONGED CONFRONTATION AND BLOODSHED ...154 US INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WILL SOUR US-RUSSIA RELATIONS ......................................................155
US STRATEGIC INTERESTS ............................................................................................................. 157

NO STRATEGIC INTEREST IN INTERVENTIONREGIONAL CONFLICT POSE NO SECURITY THREAT TO THE US ..................................................................................................................................................157 GLOBAL INSTABILITY IS NOT A THREAT TO THE US.............................................................................158
Topic Analysis by Stephen Babb

This topic may sound like a mouthful at first, but that's nothing when compared to the wide range of domestic and international policy questions it raises much less the underlying philosophical problems included therein. Put simply, this debate is a can of worms. Taking sides can be as simple as espousing a straightforward moral commitment to protecting rights we hold as universal... or as complicated as weighing the manifold costs and benefits associated with actual interventions. To be completely honest up front, I approach this topic with some unmitigated biases. In my view, appeals to cultural relativism are little more than academically situated fashionable nonsense and about as fashionable as bell-bottoms at that. It's one thing to note the origins of cultural idiosyncrasies, and they have their reasons to be sure. It's quite another, however, to naturalize those difference as acceptable on face. Reasons are not in and of themselves justifications. We'll explore (rant about?) this line of 'thinking' more later, but don't expect especially evenhanded treatment. Fair warning. Now for some quick clarification regarding what this topic is and isn't about.
"Intervening in Internal Political Processes"
The topic framers clearly attempted to go beyond the question of military action, instead referencing intervention and offering little-to-no explanation of what that intervention would entail
Page 8 of 158
in concrete terms. In practice, it could means a number of different thingsfrom diplomatic pressure all the way to more robust options like economic sanctions and military force. More importantly, we're left with a range of ambiguities concerning the severity of human rights abuses in question and the extent to which the U.S. is (or isn't) acting unilaterally. In many analysts' minds, these are important considerations. Though the topic may not address them head on, it's probably worthwhile for debaters to sort out what exactly they're advocating especially when charged with affirming the topic. Real life is littered with examples of intervention that don't fit neatly into a particular category. When the United States works through proxy actors (e.g. rebel groups in Libya or Syria), the policy isn't quite unilateral, but nor is it fully multilateral in the traditional sense of cooperating with allied nations. Such attempts also straddle the fence in terms of whether they properly constitute military force. There may be no American boots on the ground, and the U.S. may not even use its air assets in an offensive capacity... and yet, you'd be hard-pressed to ignore the fact we're providing material support to groups who aren't exactly busy negotiating. In many instances, these kind of interventions serve a very practical function, shielding the U.S. government from political disapproval at home along with the perception abroad of imperialism. Including these kinds of scenarios as part of the debate is an important step in approaching this topic with any measure of realism and accuracy.
The "Attempt to Stop" and Why It Matters
It's never been in the spirit of clean argumentation, but debaters are oft to sidestep 'solvency' burdens with semantic justifications like, "The topic implies my world solves the problem automatically." Bush-league though such tendencies may be, we've all seen it happen. This topic's wording makes that nonsense a bit harder with this explicit language "attempt to stop." That means affirmative debaters will either need to demonstrate that their policy options needn't be 100% efficacious in order to be worthwhile... or otherwise bite the bullet and instead demonstrate that that they are in fact efficacious (or, at least, efficacious enough). This shouldn't pose any serious problem for debaters who are used to, ya know, actually debating. For those more interested in absurd semantic claims, life just got a bit more difficult.
"Justified" and the Looming Meta-Ethical Nightmare
Page 9 of 158
I haven't judged many rounds in the last year or so. While the emergence of meta-ethics wasn't the reason for my departure from the debate world, it's certainly made said departure less painful. The handful of debaters who could engage in a substantive debate without making recourse to endlessly circular, ill-conceived framework debates made the activity enjoyable enough, but they increasingly became fewer and further between... overcome by a horde of gamesmanship in the guise of 'rigorous philosophy.' Maybe the pendulum has swung to some degree since I've been away. Maybe this particular varietal of shenanigans is no longer so mercilessly in season. Somehow I doubt it. In any event, there will be great temptation to make some issue out of what it really means for a policy to be "justified." Debaters will parse out disingenuous distinctions between the normative terms used to evaluate these interventions and the supposed necessary qualifications for them to be considered justified or unjustified: "You may have proven these interventions to be a good thing, but you haven't proven them justified." And so on. There may indeed be something to these kinds of arguments sometimes. To the extent they force debaters to be a bit more precise in their argumentation, fine. Of course there are circumstances in which one side or the other has taken an especially lazy approach to their normative framework, and there's something to be said for keeping them in check. It would, however, be a shame were valuable debate about policy consistently sidetracked by strategically motivated nit picking. Unfortunately, "shame" isn't in many debaters' vocabularies, and so you should be especially vigilant about these kinds of tactics rearing their heads.
"Human Rights Abuses"
Like so many unnecessarily vague LD topics, the problem with this one is that just about anyone outside a debate round would respond to the resolution with "it depends." Some human rights abuses are far less tolerable than others, and some scenarios are far riper for intervention than others. How can we possibly offer a blanket answer? After all, countries like China are no strangers to any number of well-known human rights abuses, but the United States remains in no position to intervene in any meaningful sense. Such an attempt could result in a dangerous deterioration of economic relations, if not all out military conflict. Of course, this particular topic doesn't suggest that intervention is an obligationonly
Page 10 of 158
that it's justified. So there's no reason affirming necessarily entails taking on these kind of untenable situations. On the other hand, allowing the 1AC to carve out especially narrow disaster scenarios and defend those alone is problematic. Once again, the failure to deliver a topic with more specific, descriptive wording will result in an excess of theory debates about equitable ground, etc. Debaters may be largely to blame to instigating these exchanges, but there's something to be said for the fact that it's very difficult to assess what it would even mean to affirm or negate this topic 'on balance'. As usual, it's really in the best interest of both debaters to use the empirical record as a guide for reasonable distribution of ground. It's highly unlikely that the U.S. will embark upon a substantial interventionist campaign in any case that would put our own national security at great risk. If that's unfathomable in reality, the 1AC shouldn't be responsible for defending it. Though it's less inconceivable that the U.S. would sit on its hands in the midst of a clear-cut genocide (see Rwanda), it's similarly unreasonable to expect the NC to defend a world in which the U.S. never, ever puts a stop to mass atrocity. However debaters opt to resolve this division of ground, a reasonable proposal will make everyone's quality of life far better, and that includes the judge.
Interconnectedness
One of the more popular affirmative positions is sure to be the cosmopolitan notion that borders are of no consequence for our obligations to others. If governments are obligated to respect the human rights of their own citizens, this position holds that they are similarly obligated to do what they can for non-citizens. The question up for debate largely becomes about to what extent governments have special relationships with their own citizens, to what extent jurisdiction matters. It's a debate that goes by many names, most frequently "sovereignty." In the eyes of most, it's also a debate at the very heart of this topic. Most would concede that the United States (and/or some amalgamation of the international community) should take action to stop the most extreme atrocities, namely all-out genocide. When the human rights abuses at hand are less horrific or more complicated think Syriaopinions tend to be far more mixed.
Page 11 of 158
We shouldn't be especially surprised that policy-makers and philosophers alike often seem to adopt an implicit threshold with respect to when and how we should handle these kinds of situations. We should be even less surprised that public opinion functions similarly. Interventions often impose costs on the United States, costs that we're more likely to accept when the stakes are especially high. Unless we hold to a strictly deontological sense of obligation, chances are those costs will inevitably be factored into any kind of decision-making when it comes to using American resources. Nevertheless, a cosmopolitan worldview demands that we put those utilitarian concerns on the backburner for a moment. If the United States' global responsibilities should be an extension of its domestic responsibilities, costs shouldn't enter into the equationat least not to the same degree they might in other policy decisions. The obvious consequence of working with this kind of position is that you'll need to do some work developing a moral framework. For the arguments to make sense, the state has to have obligations that go beyond the reciprocal, constitutional obligations that define its relationship with citizens. That opens up at least one discussion sure to rear its head...
Positive and Negative Rights... and the Obligations They Imply
There's plenty to be said about this conversation unfortunately. The essential premise is that "positive rights" create obligations for other to proactively protect the interests covered by those rights. "Negative rights," meanwhile, refer merely to claims against interference. In other words, I might have a positive right to shelter while having a negative right to not be murdered. According to some accounts, negative rights are more important precisely because all one need do in order to respect them is refrain from certain actions. Because positive rights may in theory create an untenable demand on resources or create unreasonable burdens on others, the idea is that they're therefor of a secondary order. As a class, human rights tend to include plenty of both positive and negative rights. The problems want might associate with positive rights are clearly compounded when talking about international enforcement. If your debate hinges only on utilitarian considerations, none of this really matters. If, however, the 1AC is premised on any kind of moral or rights-based calculus, there's a good chance the NC will go here. That shouldn't be cause for too much concern. In reality, both negative and positive rights ultimately entail institutions designed to proactively provide for them. The right not to be murdered, for all practical purposes, also means the right to have a government that tries to
Page 12 of 158
prevent that from happening with laws, police and so on. If the 1AC can successfully blur the lines between positive and negative rights, this debate should go away without too much difficulty.
National Security
Defending the topic on national security grounds is somewhat tricky business because the interventions in question are explicitly aimed at stopping human rights abuses rather than averting risks to national security. Nevertheless, in today's world, these things are often inextricably linked. Unchecked human rights abuse can lead to any number of broader problems, including government instability, refugee overflows and economic crises. Interventions may be valuable both in terms of stopping the immediate rights violations and in terms of longer-term interests. The fact that there are overlapping advantages in these instances doesn't make such interventions any less topical. After all, when we pursue a policy, it's rarely for one reason alone. The strategic advantage to these positions should be fairly self-evident. With any number of negative positions suggesting that the United States is in no position to pursue altruistic interventions, it may be useful to demonstrate that they aren't purely altruistic. There's some irony here given that so many left-leaning criticisms of U.S. policy are grounded in the belief that certain policies are disingenuous ruses covering up self-interested objectives. To that kind of criticism, this position would say, "Yes, precisely!" When we make the world safer for others, we typically make it safer for the United States as well. Improving the quality of life halfway across the globe may reduce threats ranging from terrorism to revolutions that might ultimately empower our enemies.
Sovereignty
Though it's hard to argue that another nation's sovereignty ought always be respected, there's certainly a good case to be made for accepting it as the structuring principle for international relations. In other words, perhaps there are very exceptional circumstances in which the United States should adopt an interventionist stance, but one can convincingly argue that these should be extremely rareand certainly that human rights abuses in and of themselves are not sufficient grounds to justify such intervention (that is, that only abuses of a qualitatively more severe order warrant action).
Page 13 of 158
As a general policy, intervention makes it difficult for governments to manage their own affairs and for pretty obvious reasons. Sure, that may sound irrelevant if and when the government is either perpetrating or permitting rights abuses, but these are also the institutions that best understand what's happening within their borders. Even if significant reforms are in order, it may be a mistake for outside influences to dictate those reforms. There's a reason, for instance, that law enforcement agencies respect one another's jurisdiction. If the best-equipped agencies tried to handle every situation, they would ultimately find themselves attempting to take the place of local authorities who were in fact better suited in many ways. Beyond the practical concerns with infringing on sovereignty, there's a philosophical case to be made as well. Though social contract theory has undergone plenty of scrutiny, evolution and flatout rejection, there's still something to be said for the fact that we can't live in a world where some governments simply become obsolete because other governments think they have it covered. Victims of human rights abuse may be absolved from any contractually binding arrangement with the state, but that doesn't mean they're all the sudden under the purview of the United States. At the end of the day, though, there are a lot of difficulties with defending sovereignty. It seems to justify just about anything a government wishes to do. Even when a state proves itself illegitimate in some respects, it may continue to do its job in any number of other important ways. Has its sovereignty dissolved, or is it intact? These theoretical dimensions of political relationships aren't easy to sort out, certainly not in a world where the diffusion of power has made the role of states (and other institutions) all the more complex. That's not necessarily a reason to shy away from these kinds of positions, but it's definitely a reason to go beyond the prototypical social-contract narrative.
Cultural Relativism
Despite my already-aired biases, I do think it's possible to deploy this position with at least some measure of plausibility. The problem is that the only completely reasonable expression thereof (in my view anyway) is one that's so narrow that it hardly rejects the topic with any measure of confidence. Unless you're really comfortable arguing that there's nothing whatsoever to the notion of universal rights, it's hard to get from point A to point B here. Are there legitimate differences between cultures when it comes to beliefs about what people deserve, what kind of protections they're owed? Sure. There are even differences within cultures on this count. The dialogue and legislative processes surrounding these beliefs is an evolving one, exemplified by the starkly different opinions regarding how far the 2nd Amendment should
Page 14 of 158
extend as a guarantee of the right to own firearms. If Americans can't agree about all of their own rights, why would we expect nations to find perfectly common ground? Clearly these kinds of beliefs have histories... and clearly we're increasingly reluctant these days to ignore those histories. Relativism is hardly a convincing reason to ignore all human rights abuses, but it may be a somewhat compelling reason to reject "human rights abuses" as such as the metric by which interventions are justified. Perhaps we ought rely on a more universal barometer...
Responding Cultural Relativism Positions
Even if our beliefs about rights are historically situated, there are some pretty good reasons to treat at least some rights as universally valid and binding norms. One need only be reminded of when and why we began buying into this concept of "universal human rights." The UN advanced the concept in reaction to the atrocities of that provoked the Second World War, adopting a longoverdue creed that reminded would-be rogue nations that the world is watching. To be clear, this isn't just about stopping the next Holocaust. It's also about preventing the kind of conditions created in advance of genocide, the stripping of rights and legal statuses that ostensibly replaces meaningful citizenship with a fully otherized status. In essence, the Declaration of Human Rights is a reminder that we should be protected on account of our humanity rather than in association with morally arbitrary considerations like race, religion, gender or socio-economic status. There's certainly room for disagreement about what exactly all these protections should entail, but there are a few basic entitlements you'd be hard-pressed to contest with a straight face. That's not because of any Natural Law or Western agenda it's because of the lessons we've learned about what can happen when cultural difference is allowed to shield against critique or intervention. Cultural relativists also seem to assume that everyone within a given culture has bought into the lot that they've been given. This presupposes, of course, that individuals even have the opportunity to do so in an informed and uncoerced manner. But in nations where women 'accept' laws that keep them from doing learning or doing business (or any number of other fundamental human endeavors), it's not as if these women have been given the opportunity to study different cultural options in an impartial environment and pick the one that suits them. We may hear women in these circumstances express confidence in their arrangement thanks to fundamentalist religious dogma, but they've hardly had a fair opportunity to accept or reject that dogma on intelligent grounds.
Page 15 of 158
This is the great irony of cultural relativism. It rejects supposed Western 'imperialism' only so that it can enshrine more domesticated forms of oppression. By the relativist's logic alone, one wonders why the homegrown variety is any more legitimate than the increasingly universal one. If imperialism is wrong, then it's wrong because it constrains certain kinds of freedoms... but this is precisely the West's problem with various cultural practices that they constrain far more fundamental freedoms. It's hard to understand why groups of people clinging to age-old traditions should be free to oppress. Yet, at its most basic level, this is what the relativist would have you believe. It is a line of thinking that is as dangerous as it is incoherent. And from a debate's standpoint, that may indeed be the most salient consideration: whatever the academic merits of cultural relativism, is it really something we can consistently stand by in practice? Is it a sound standard operating procedure when it comes to policy making? Or, will it engender a kind of international permissiveness that opens the door to ever more atrocity. Already, our hands are tied as generations of political dissidents are systematically imprisoned and exterminated in North Korea. Would the relativist have us believe that North Korea 'just has a different concept of human rights'? That the freedom for the state to believe and do whatever it wants is ultimately more important than an individual's freedom to disagree? Pure, unadulterated nonsense.
Overstretch
I think the best negative position is that an interventionist norm governed by human rights abuses just isn't sustainable from a policy perspective. There are too many abuses around the globe, and there's just no way a nation saddled with debt can police them all. This position is empirically supported, and it hinges upon a set of values that most of us accept to at least some degree. Even those who believe in altruistic policy typically accept the need for limits. After all, if the United States economy collapses due to strained international commitments, it would be in an especially poor position going forward to do anything about any rights abuses. Even if the AC maintains that it isn't defending action in the face of every single human rights violation, the question becomes how we can possibly draw credible bright-lines without adopting an altogether different trigger for intervention. If we really mean to justify intervention on grounds like "preventing genocide" or "stopping mass atrocities," then we should be clear about that. If that's
Page 16 of 158
the case, then no, we aren't justified in intervening on behalf of human rights violations... we're only justified when those violations reach a qualitative threshold of some sort. Our language/rhetoric and policy should explicitly reflect that threshold, just as our laws should be carefully phrased to say what they actually mean. To run this position well, thorough research is an absolute must. In this case, it's worthwhile though. This is the kind of position that could pretty easily link-turn the majority of affirmative arguments. It speaks to the U.S.'s ongoing capability to address serious problems, and that's ultimately what interests most affirmative positions one way or the other.
Page 17 of 158
Topic Analysis by Mollie Cowger

The scope of this resolution lends itself to many interesting approaches. Moral, political, and legal frameworks all contribute to our understanding of the way in which action in the international sphere is justified. Moreover, the prominence of the US as an international actor lends debaters many avenues from which to discuss the resolution by examining specific instances of US intervention in conjunction with a more abstract, perhaps philosophical evaluation of the topic. Prior to engaging in the substance of the resolution, I will look at possible definitions and interpretations of some of the terms in the resolution as a means of proposing different ways to address the topic. I think there are four important issues within the resolution that demand clarification to allow the topic to be debated in a substantive way: first, what makes an action justified; second, what types of actions are to be considered US interventions in the internal political processes of other countries; third, what we ought to consider to be human rights abuses; and fourth, the implication of the word attempt on the scope of the resolution. Following this, I will enter into a more general discussion of the issues the resolution presents and potential methods for going about debating them. First, as for the question of justification, I think that there is a nuance in definitions of the term that can change the burdens for each side in the round. The first definition indicates some benefit or moral good attributed to the action. Collins English Dictionary offers a definition of justify as to prove or see to be just or valid; vindicate. In contrast, a second definition from Collins seems to define the term in a less morally rigorous manner to show to be reasonable; warrant or substantiate.1 While the concern of the first definition is with moral rightness, the second definition only asks if there was sufficient reason to take the action. The Oxford English Dictionary treats both interpretations as falling within the same defin ition of the word: it defines justified as [m]ade just or right; made or accounted righteous; warranted; supported by evidence .2 While the OEDs combination of the two interpretations can be a fine way to approach the topic, I think the strategic use of one interpretation can bolster an affirmative or negative advocacy. An affirmative can minimize her burden by advocating for an interpretation of justified as reasonable, thereby limiting the negative to argumentation that shows that intervention is unreasonable rather than argumentation that shows it is not actively righteous or just. Conversely, the negative can use this
1
justify, Dictionary.com, Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition, HarperCollins Publishers, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/justify.
2
"justified, adj., OED Online, December 2012, Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/102228.
Page 18 of 158
dichotomy to her advantage by binding the affirmative to show that intervention is a morally good thing rather than that it is simply an acceptable option. A second question posed by the resolution is the nature of United States intervention into other nations political processes, and what actions fall under that label. The manners in which the US may intervene in other countries are varied, and most are intended to affect the political process of the nation subject to intervention in some way. Military campaigns, for example, are usually undertaken with some political goal in mind, and almost always have political implications. Whether the presence of political implications is sufficient to classify a situation as affirmative ground is an issue Ill discuss when I look at the term attempt, but for now let us assume a fairly broad scope of actions with political consequences make up the class of actions considered US intervention. In addition to military intervention, the US can exert influence over other countries political spheres by means of economic intervention. Economic sanctions, for example, can exert pressure on countries to adjust political processes or replace political leaders. Additionally, the United States can grant economic support to political groups it favors in hopes of increasing their political power in the target nation. Although economic and military intervention engage directly rather than indirectly in the nations political process, they seem to be the type of intervention most used by the United States. If resolution is debated empirically, then, these examples are the most likely sources of affirmative and negative offense. It may be a matter of debate whether economic and military intervention qualifies as intervention in another nations political processes, but I think it is an acceptable conclusion to draw that these types of intervention are within the scope of the resolution. While it is common for the United States to use such channels as means of intervention for example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan attempted to achieve American political ends, and economic sanctions in the Middle East attempt to change the political process and actions in the area it is far less common to see direct political intervention like the explicit replacement of a candidate. When the United States does use direct channels to achieve its political ends abroad, it is often in a way that has been accompanied by military or economic engagement that has leveraged the direct political involvement. I think the implication of the inclusion of these measures, if one accepts this interpretation of the resolutions scope, can have interesting philosophical and practical implications for the manner in which the topic plays out. Depending on the arguments made by the affirmative and the negative, the inclusion of military engagement and economic sanctions and support can provide impacts to both sides of the resolution: the negative, for example, could draw utilitarian harms from the use of violence, or claim that violence subverts the human rights the intervention attempts to achieve
Page 19 of 158
(and the same could be said of economic sanctions). Alternately, the affirmative could contend positive historical impacts of the use of military or economic intervention as means of effecting change. The notion of effecting change by means of such intervention leads me to my third point about the interpretation of the resolution: the nature of the human rights abuses the topic addresses. Debaters will almost certainly have to address this issue within their cases, since absent knowing what problems we seek to remedy, we can do very little in the way of evaluating whether those remedies are good ones. Two of the primary means of defining human rights are first, in an abstract philosophical way, and second, in a context specific way. If one takes the first approach, one may take many perspectivesthe Lockean perspective, for example, would consider human rights abuses to be those actions that infringe on life, liberty, or property. An abstract philosophical approach should also question the nature of such infringements are human rights negative, demanding merely not to be actively infringed upon, or positive, requiring action to be taken to actively uphold their protection? The former interpretation seems to be beneficial to the affirmative, in that human rights abuses would constitute active violations of rights rather than a failure to take action to uphold them. Conversely, the negative might suggest that human rights abuses may merely be an issue of a government that is ineffective, rather than evil, which would yield a higher threshold to justify involvement. If one chooses to define rights in a way that is context-specific, one could look either to the international sphere, in which the resolution is placed, or the law of the United States, which constrains the resolutional actor. Although the international sphere has many quasi-governmental bodies which provide some level of oversightthe United Nations and International Criminal Court are good examplesthere is no concrete set of legal norms which is universally agreed to bind the actors in the international sphere. However, I dont think this should deter debaters from approaching the resolution in this light. The UNs Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the more widely accepted documents to set out standards for basic human rights. Debaters seeking to look at the resolution through this lens may find this document helpful in determining what, on balance, the international sphere takes to be human rights. If one looks to the law of the United States, the standards for human rights would most likely be dictated by the bill of rights though court decisions and consequent legislation have affected some of the rights we may look to. This approach could be helpful in providing a more concrete set of rights, and could be defended on the basis of its specificity to the United States, which takes the action of intervention in the resolution. However, this interpretation could invite pitfalls if one supposes to take action on the basis of protecting others, but protects them on the basis of
Page 20 of 158
norms that govern a community other than their own, the action of protection may not be protecting them at all. This interpretation could also lend itself to attacks against American exceptionalismthat is, the imposition by the United States of norms on other nations that it fails to abide by itself. Finally, the resolution qualifies the intervention taking place by specifying that it attempt[s] to sto p human rights abuses. I think that this can make debates more muddled or more interesting, depending on how debaters interpret it. Some debaters, for example, might argue that it can never be shown that an action is intended to, or attempts to, rectify some human rights violation as opposed to achieving some other political or military goal. The use of this response, however, does little to clarify the outcome of the round as it simply negates any offense debaters may use on either side. However, I think that a more interesting way to use the term attempts is to use it to qualify the ground given by the resolution. If the affirmative can clearly express what types of actions attempt to rectify human rights abuses and what type of actions simply rectify human rights abuses as a byproduct of some other goal they seek to achieve, the affirmative can limit her ground in a way that may be strategicspecifically, she can prevent the negative from using as examples situations in which the larger goal was a problematic political or military one and where aid for human rights was merely a secondary benefit. The question of the resolution is one of the acceptable scope of United States power outside of its national borders. As such, the resolution concerns itself with theories of international relations. I think that international relations theory can be a convincing way to approach the topic. The school of international relations thought that seems to lend itself to an affirmation of the resolution is cosmopolitanism, an ideal that emphasizes the inclusion of all persons as members of one global community. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a strong introduction to the ideas of cosmopolitanism, as it does to many philosophical topics. Using a cosmopolitan framework, the human rights abuses occurring in the resolution are not qualitatively different from domestic rights abuses due to their occurrence in other countries than the United States. If one accepts the premise that it is acceptable for the US to prevent rights abuses within its own borders, then accepting that there is no qualitative difference created by borders implies that the US is justified in intervening outside its borders as well. This approach, however, assumes the validity of the government as an agent to prevent such abuses. A strong case of this type will substantiate that assumption and warrant the appropriateness of the government agent. On the other side of the international relations spectrum, the school of realism has a less immediately obvious implication for the resolution. Realism, as advocated by Kenneth Waltz,
Page 21 of 158
Hans Morgenthau, and John Mearsheimer, among others, emphasizes the anarchic nature of the international sphere and the competition that mandates from its participants. Each nations primary interest is in its maintenance of sovereignty, and as such any exertion of political power toward that end is justified. It seems that realism could be used as an argument to both affirm and negate the resolution. An affirmative argument from realism might focus on what it means for an action to be justified. Per a realist framework, any exertion of political power by a nation is justified if the nation chooses to take that action. As such, the exertion of political power by the United States in the manner specified by the resolution is a legitimate exercise of national sovereignty and is therefore justified. Alternatively, realism could be used to support a negation of the resolution. The negative could argue that the action by the US in the resolution is not a legitimate exercise of sovereignty since it is not geared toward protecting the political interests of the United States. Because the action attempts to stop human rights abuses abroad, it necessarily devotes resources to other nations that could be used to advance citizens interests, and as such harms the sovereignty of the US. Another dimension of the actor in the resolution being the United States is the potential exclusion of multilateral action. If the United States acts as a part of the United Nations, for example, would that action count as intervention by the United States? I think this issue is one of the many up for debate, and has persuasive arguments on both sides. Especially because of the economic and political hegemony of the US, multilateral action is likely to largely be a product of US involvement. Even absent the argument of hegemony, the US is still involved in the intervention, which could independently lead to the conclusion that the intervention is within the scope of the resolution. However, one may also compare this situation to a domestic one: if a person acts to enforce the law outside of a governmental structure, she is a vigilante, while if she does so within a governmental structure, she is a law-abiding government agent. This situation is similar to that of the United States acting multilaterally: the context seems to determine something about the quality of the action, and multilateral engagement may be qualitatively different from unilateral US intervention. The resolution presents many interesting questions regarding the international sphere and the nature of intervention, and I hope that such a robust topic yields many great rounds over the next two months.
Page 22 of 158
Topic Analysis by Adam Torson

Whether humanitarian intervention is justified is a pressing question both for the long term structure of the international system and for immediate U.S. Foreign Policy interests. The length and wording of this topic creates a number of interpretive ins and outs. Ill start with a discussion of those issues and then describe some major affirmative and negative positions.
Interpretation
A. The United States The actor in the resolution is the United States. The major interpretive question that this phrase will generate is whether the Affirmative may defend U.S. participation in multilateral intervention (intervention by a coalition of states) or whether the resolution is only about unilateral intervention (when the United States acts alone). Multilateral interventions are generally considered a more legitimate form of intervention, and most U.S. interventions in recent years have had some multilateral component. On the other hand, one of the important test cases for the resolution is the Iraq War, which was largely unilateral. B. Is Justified The ordinary meaning of labeling an action justified would be that it is consistent with the relevant moral requirements for the situation. That is a pretty ordinary question in LD is the action the resolution proposes consistent with a well-justified standard? Two related interpretive questions are raised by this phrase. First, may the Aff argue that humanitarian intervention is merely permissible, no obligatory? That distinction may allow the Aff to either draw on non-moral norms that excuse certain types of conduct (e.g. the right to selfdefense), or to deploy skeptical philosophical or political positions that conclude that no state action is prohibited in the international arena. Second, may the neg argue that intervention to stop human rights abuses is obligatory, and argue that this is a stronger claim than the Aff can defend? We would generally conclude that actions that are obligatory are also permissible (or justified), but there is some literature to support the opposite conclusion.
C. Intervening
Page 23 of 158
Intervention is a term of art in international law. It has several components. First, an intervention constitutes an infringement on the normal scope of state sovereignty. Self-defensive wars, for example, do not constitute interventions. Second, interventions are discrete events ra ther than continuing interactions. Ongoing diplomatic talks, for example, dont constitute interventions. Lastly, it is aimed at the authority structure of the state. A military action that is authorized by the government of the target state, for example, is not intervention under international law. D. Internal Political Processes This is the most problematic component of the topic. It doesnt seem to be a term of art in the topic literature, so its interpretation is pretty wide open. It is plausible that any of the following could constitute intervention in an internal political process: interfering in foreign elections, criminal prosecution of foreign leaders, assassinating rulers, military regime change, classic humanitarian interventions like peacekeeping operations, and economic sanctions. Im sure this will make for many a topicality debate. E. Other Countries Both the phrase other countries and the technical meaning of intervention suggest that the resolution is about actions targeted at the state itself. Actions aimed at non-state actors like terrorist groups are likely outside the scope of the resolution. It might be that an advantage of a humanitarian intervention is combatting terrorism, but simply advocating direct acts against terrorists like drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan is likely not topical. F. To Attempt to Stop There are two important implications of this phrase. First, emphasizing that this is an attempt to stop human rights abuses ensures that the Affirmative will not just get to assume that her advocacy generates her impacts or solves; she has to prove it. This is not unusual, but back in the olden days an argument floated around that claimed that the affirmative simply got to assume that resolutions which included a purpose clause (e.g. to stop human rights abuses) would succeed in achieving that objective. Second, Aff will have to block a type of topicality argument that frequently flows from a misunderstanding of the way burdens work. Because the resolution has a purpose clause, it can plausibly be interpreted to mean that the resolution is about intervention with a very particular motivation or goal in mind. When the Aff argues that humanitarian intervention could have some
Page 24 of 158
kind of non-human-rights-based advantage, some negs will claim that they are not being topical. This is a bad argument. Advocacies are topical or not, but advantages can be any impact that links to the value. Moreover, just because a debater argues that affirming or negating would be good for some non-humanitarian purpose doesnt mean that she advocates that this should be the motivation held by the actors that carry out the plan. Advantages are not a plank of a case they need not be topical. G. Human Rights Abuses There are two different major sources for conceptions of human rights. The most obvious source for human rights canons are the major treaties to which many nations have agreed. These include most notably the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Note, however, that the United States is only a signatory to the first two. The norms listed in these documents are widely accepted as human rights norms in international law. The second way to define human rights is to use the theoretical topic literature to define human rights. Different normative theories about how the international system works will articulate different conceptions of human rights some rather sparse, some more extensive. Both approaches to defining human rights are probably legitimate.
Affirmative Positions
A. Plans Galore There is a variety of plans that Affs are likely to advocate. You will certainly see advocacies that the U.S. intervene in Syrias civil war. Some may advocate that the U.S. intervene in a more or less heavy-handed way in Egyptian politics, or in the Israel/Palestine dispute. Other popular case positions will be interventions in North Korea or Iran, both of whom are known to violate the human rights of their citizens and also to pose a significant threat to U.S. and global interests. Finally, you are likely to see plans about intervention in any of the several nations which are currently undergoing genocide (or in imminent danger of doing so), including Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are several NGOs that attempt to track these practices, so it would be a good idea to use those organizations as a resource for learning more about these particular conflicts.
Page 25 of 158
These plans are likely to have utilitarian or otherwise consequentialist standards. Also dont be surprised to see advantages that are slightly out of the norm, such as counter-terrorism, maintaining U.S. hegemony, and upholding anti-proliferation norms. B. Cosmopolitanism Another set of positions will draw on the philosophical school of Cosmopolitanism. Broadly speaking, cosmopolitan scholars argue for the idea that all humans share universal ties of solidarity and moral responsibility that extend across borders. Colloquially if someone is cosmopolitan we think of them as being worldly and understanding diverse perspectives. There are two notable approaches to these positions. First, there is a long philosophical lineage to cosmopolitanism which many debaters will no doubt draw upon. Most scholars trace cosmopolitan trends back to ancient Greek political thought, notably with Stoic philosophers, and it has been particularly trendy to look back on Greek political ideas to inform contemporary understanding of international relations and models of state sovereignty. These thinkers partly informed the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who argued that the natural outgrowth of the enlightenment belief in universal reason was a universal law that bound all people together through a common moral reasoning. This is based on a sense of common human identity, which should encourage the development of humanitarian sentiments as much as moral convictions. This line of thought informs modern theorists, many of whom evaluate contemporary phenomena like increasingly robust global cultural and political norms, regional integration, and globalization to explain a growing sense of cosmopolitan identity. Second, scholars in both international law and moral philosophy describe the development of a global human rights culture in the aftermath of World War II and the subsequent atrocities of the 20 Century. The slogan Never Again expressed a deeply felt conviction that the horrors of places like Auschwitz should serve as an impetus for the development of a sense of common humanity. Certain state policies shock the conscience of all humanity, an d so there should be moral constraints on the rights of particular governments to legitimately exercise sovereignty. Examples of this line of thought include Jonathan Glovers call for a more empirical approach to moral theory, the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and subsequent thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, and legal professionals who advocate for the expansion of conventional humanitarian norms in international law. Sometimes this is expressed as a focus on human security rather than national security. C. International Law
th
Page 26 of 158
You are very likely to see affirmative positions premised in international law. As a general principle, international legal norms are highly deferential to state sovereignty. Intervention is by definition considered an exceptional state of affairs. However, evolving norms have made it easier and easier to intervene in a states internal affairs under certain circumstances. There are several relevant norms to consider. First, the most basic sources of international legal norms are agreements between states, or treaties. You need to be careful because some international agreements use a great deal of aspirational language without creating particular mandates for state behavior (e.g. the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights), but they might nonetheless ground reasonable claims that a state is not living up to its obligations in the international system. The UDHR, the ICCPR, ICESC, the Genocide Convention, and the Geneva Conventions all speak to human rights and humanitarian norms that express a fairly strong international consensus. Second, certain legal norms may be established by customary practice in international relations. To legitimize a legal norm in this way it must be shown that states have consistently practiced adherence to the rule and regarded it as a legal norm. It is conceivable that many human rights norms could be established in this way, although the states against which intervention is directed will often have a poor human rights record and thus not meet the consistent practice criterion. Third, there is a category of international legal norms known as jus cogens, which establishes that there are certain practices that are so fundamentally and self-evidently wrong that no state is legally authorized to carry them out. Examples would be slavery, piracy, and genocide. This category of law is more controversial because it is not directly premised on sovereign consent, but it reflects a growing skepticism on the absolute right of nation-states to rule.
Negative Positions
A. National Sovereignty A nation is said to be sovereign when it has the exclusive right to legitimately govern a particular geographic territory and conduct foreign affairs on behalf of the population who lives there. There are many normative bases for the idea that nations should be sovereign, but the sovereign nation-state has been the basic unit of the international system since the Treaty of Westphalia in the 17 century.
th
Page 27 of 158
There are several good reasons to believe that states should have a strong claim to sovereignty. From a political perspective, defenders of national sovereignty argue that self-determination is a fundamental value. People should have a voice in determining the laws to which they will be subject, and so it is improper for foreign peoples to dictate policy on the internal affairs of a given state. While we tend to be skeptical of national sovereignty in the modern world, consider that our skepticism may be a product of our privileged position in the international system. Many nations were once colonies of (primarily European) nations from far away. The political disempowerment associated with this system of rule still haunts many post-colonial nations. It is understandable that those who are still potentially subject to more powerful states would guard their right to selfdetermination closely. An alternative perspective takes the point of view of international law. There is no world government to centrally regulate the conduct of states. Because the international system is essentially anarchic, states can only be bound by those rules to which they expressly agree, e.g. through treaty obligations. Anything that could trump national sovereignty is just a rouse for one state seeking to control another. A final jumping off point for justifying national sovereignty is the idea of moral relativism. Over time culture values and norms evolve, suggesting that there may be no objective moral rules accessible to all people. If this is true, national sovereignty would seem to be a way of protecting the particular practices of certain groups from arbitrary domination by other groups. The idea that moral norms could trump a states right to self-determination looks like nothing more than imposing one idiosyncratic value system by force. B. Humanitarianism as a Guise for Western Dominance Regardless of the appropriate scope of a nations sovereignty, many worry that humanitarian intervention is simply a vehicle for the imposition of Western values on unwilling target populations. There are again several ways to come at this argument. First, many argue that western conceptions of human rights are culturally hegemonic. For example, the traditional canons of human rights tend to privilege individualistic freedoms characteristic of Western rationalism over social and cultural values present in many non-western societies. They argue that from different perspectives powerful states like the U.S. might just as well be subject to criticism, e.g. for the economic disempowerment experienced by many Americans. Why arent humanitarian interventions a two-way street?
Page 28 of 158
Second, some argue that humanitarian intervention is a cover for baser motives. These positions will point to cases like the Iraq war and argue that nominally humanitarian motivations might plausibly serve as a cover for using force in the name of economic or national security interests. Certainly there are historical examples of hegemonic nations using their imperial might to advance parochial political and economic interests, and doing so in the name of benevolence or the need to civilize. This suggests a third approach, which is to argue that intervention policies tend to be guilty of Orientalism. Pioneered by Edward Said, this theory suggests that a particularly pernicious form of bias toward non-Western peoples informs a great deal of Western policy-making. For instance, it is often assumed that Western European states have rational leaders who can be trusted to understand the logic of deterrence, where non-Western leaders are crazy or unpredictable. In this way genuinely benevolent motives can essentially replicate the white mans burden logic of British imperialism. The cruelty and domination that can result is apparent. The devaluation of non-Western lives can lead to stunning atrocities in the name of civilization. C. War, What Is It Good For? A final major line of attack will argue simply that humanitarian intervention is a terribly blunt instrument that usually causes more harm than good. Several factors will be relevant. First, war is by its nature very difficult to predict. Invading states often suffer from a failure to understand the underlying political, economic, and cultural norms of the society they aim to reconstruct, and so fail drastically to prevent major crises. Again the Iraq War serves as a primary example, where everything from the formation of an insurgency to post-invasion looting caught U.S. officials offguard. Similar problems can arise because of failure to be culturally sensitive. The inability to anticipate the cultural dynamics of Somalia led to the high profile deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers in that nation during its long civil war. Finally, war can take an incredible toll on human life. Estimates for the number of innocent civilians killed in the Iraq War are staggering, let alone the effects on mortality and other social markers of health. It is extremely rare that the benefits can outweigh these costs, and even then we can never be prospectively certain that they will.
Conclusion
Good luck to everyone!
Page 29 of 158
Topic Analysis by Nate Zerbib-Berda

This years March/April LD topic represents a fundamental conflict in political science and international affairs. Whether countries are justified or obligated to intervene in the political processes of other nations has been an important issue, specifically in the twenty-first century through the lens of the United States. Many political scientists and philosophers have discussed the legitimacy and morality of political intervention, the topic literature is strong on this topic. The ground is particularly broad, as the circumstances and issues behind the debate will change drastically depending on the human rights situation. Additionally this topic can be approached more broadly, discussing the role and obligations of nation states when dealing with other nations, political instability, and human rights. Part 1: Key Terms of the Resolution A. United States
The United States is the actor in the resolution, but the resolution is not specific to who is acting within the United States. United States could mean the government of the United States, or it could mean Non-Governmental Organizations like non-profits. The vast majority of interpretations will define the United States as the United States government, but debaters should always be on their toes and look out for Affirmative advocacies such as the Peace Corps or the Red Cross is justified in intervention. The use of the word is in The United States is justified is most likely the best argument that the actor is the government as the United States is the proper noun in the sentence. B. Justified
Justified is a fitting word choice for this resolution, as the real-world actions of nation states are often discussed in terms of justice or pragmatism rather than through a moral or ethical perspective. This will almost certainly lead to value debates concerning justice rather than the often chosen morality, so it will be important for debaters to be able to understand and argue the difference between morality and justice. Traditionally justice is defined in debate as to each their due, and as such arguments pertaining to fairness and equality will hold more weight when impacting the round. Additionally the term justified may require less of a threshold in proving the legitimacy of a government action, there is a reason why the writers of the resolution chose justified over a term like ought or obligated. The affirmative need not argue that the United States is obligated to intervene in nations with human rights abuses, or even that the U.S. should
Page 30 of 158
intervene in these situations, but rather that is it is justified for them to do so. This could mean there is a legitimate reason or framework that allows intervention, but does not require it. Thus arguments pertaining to permissibility would most likely favor the affirmative. C. Intervening
Political intervention is an extremely broad topic that covers many areas in which a nation state may interact with another. However in context of this resolution, it would appear on face that the intervention required is some attempt to stop or curtail human rights abuses occurring within a government or nation state. What that intervention requires will be up to the debater and their advocacy. Intervention can mean military intervention and war, it can be economic sanctions and tariffs in attempt to weaken the nation economically, intervention can even be as simple as sitting down with that governments leaders and attempting to negotiate or work out a solution to their human rights abuses. Intervention can mean a lot of things, and whether or not that intervention is justified will depend on a number of circumstances related to the situation. However, the action of intervening in a nation state should at least have the intent to stop or curtain human rights abuses in that particular country. D. Internal Political Processes
Internal Political Processes is another term choice that can be interpreted in many ways. This term is most likely intentionally ambiguous to allow for additional affirmative ground, but the phrase can also restrict ground depending on the interpretation. Internal political processes could mean any action that a government takes, both in relation to foreign policy and domestic. A political process could mean anything in relationship to the government, but internal might restrict the topic to domestic affairs. This interpretation could most likely be exploited by negative positions to determine that the United States could not intervene when two nations at war or a nation engaged in human rights abuses in another nation. If the negative argues that internal political processes limits the resolution to domestic affairs, the affirmative should argue that even external actions of a government are decided upon internally and executed through internal political processes. E. Attempt to Stop
Attempt to stop relates to the action necessary in the resolution for the Affirmative advocacy to take. This phrasing is almost certainly more beneficial for the affirmative in the debate, because the phrase requires little action. Attempt requires only minimal action to alleviate the human rights
Page 31 of 158
abuses occurring. Attempt to stop could include military action, economic sanctions, United Nations resolutions, even the most basic of diplomatic outreach. If a politician writes a letter to another government demanding they cease abusing human rights, is this an attempt to stop? If the U.N. releases a declaration condemning rights abuses in a nation, is this an attempt to stop? If the U.S. places an embargo on another nation, is this an attempt to stop? These questions will be decided in the round, but what is clear is that there is a very small threshold for affirmative action. The action may not even be executed or implemented, so long as there was an attempt to do so. F. Human Rights Abuses
In order to define what a human rights abuse is, human rights must first be defined. Again this is an extremely broad term and will vary greatly from round to round. Traditionally human rights are defined as the freedoms and protects that individuals are entitled to stemming from their inherent worth as human beings. What rights are included as human rights again varies differently from state to state, there is no universal acceptance of what rights humans are entitled to do nor which rights are more important than others. Past examples of United States intervention (and nonintervention) for human rights include; World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Afghanistan to name a few.
Part 2: Affirmative Strategies
A. Capability
The best argument for the affirmative is that the United States is capable of ending human rights abuses in other nations and is the best actor for the job. The reasons why the United States might be the best actor in enforcing international law and promoting human rights are numerous and represent the bulk of the literature surrounding humanitarian intervention. The United States has the most powerful and far reaching military presence in the world. They can react to global events much faster than other nations, limiting the abuse and potential for abuse. The United States has a significant technology advantage over third-world nations where human rights abuses are most likely to occur. This advantage can also make a significant difference in preventing human rights abuses. The United States is a global leader in humanitarian intervention; we can work more effectively with other nations to reach compromise and foster peace. The U.S. also traditionally has had strong backing from the international community, adding to the U.S.s capability. The United States have intervened in many other nation states before and have presumably learned from these experiences so to be as more effective and efficient than another nations attempt at
Page 32 of 158
preventing rights abuses. The United States economic power is unparalleled and gives the U.S. an advantage at preventing rights abuses, but also means the U.S. could bare the cost and subsequent harms of intervention better than any other nation. It will be easy to find evidence that states the United States is a capable actor when it comes to humanitarian intervention, but you will want to make the argument that capability leads to obligation. Peter Singer describes the situation of a man coming across a drowning baby in a river. Singer states that the man has a moral obligation to save the baby because he is capable of doing so. In terms of the resolution, the United States is more than just a man coming across a drowning baby; they are the most capable actor. The United States is the lifeguard next to the river. It can be argued very effectively that obligation stems from capability, and because the United States is most able to help and will see the smallest downside of helping we have an obligation to do so. If you prove the United States is obligated to intervene in human rights abuses then you will certainly win the round, but remember you are only required to prove the United States is justified in intervening. If an actor is justified in action because they are capable of committing that action, then the United States would certainly be justified in humanitarian intervention.
B. Protecting Human Rights
Protecting human rights and preventing atrocities from occurring in other nations is a very strong reason to affirm the resolution, given solvency in the United States attempt to end abuse. Human rights violations are atrocities in numerous ways, they rob victims of dignity and personhood, exert pain and suffering, and often result in mass death. Without going into detail on the horrors of human rights abuses during the 20 century, I would encourage debaters to do research into specific conflicts and rights abuses that have occurred in the past to gain perspective on the topic. Human rights abuses are often targeted at a particular group or minority, usually a group without a strong political voice or influence in that nation. Many authors will write that human rights abuses represent the greatest atrocities and moral violations an actor can commit, and these impacts should be weighed accordingly. Similarly the affirmative must weigh the consequences of doing nothing in compared to an attempt to stop abuse, both in terms of the abuse and lives lost from the current situation, but also future rights abuses as well. United States intervention in rights abuses provides a strong deterrent against rogue nation states from committing those abuses. Preventing rights abuses now or even attempting to prevent rights abuses and failing could still prevent much more potential abuse in the future. If a dictator or despot knows that the United States will intervene when rights violations occur, the dictators foreign and domestic policies are likely to be very different from a world in which the U.S. does not intervene in conflicts.
th
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com C. International Relations

st
Page 33 of 158
In the 21 century, the United States is often seen as the sole hegemonic power in the world. The United States has a unique role in global leadership and international relations in that other nations often look to the U.S. for guidance and precedent. This unique role certainly makes us the most capable and predictable actor in a global conflict, but it is also important to frame this debate in what intervention or non-intervention means to our relationship with the rest of the world. The affirmative will want to argue that U.S. humanitarian intervention strengthens our relationship with other nations, and portray the United States in a positive light. Human rights abuses are a global responsibility, borders are arbitrary and every human has the right to basic needs and freedoms. When the United States intervenes to protect these rights it sends a strong message to the rest of the world that the U.S. will protect and fight for human rights. This strengthens our relationships with other nations that protect rights, while also encouraging other nation states to do the same. Not only will this prevent future rights abuse, but also lead to a more productive and efficient global economy when there is cooperation among states. Global problems like global warming, trafficking, and terrorism can all be solved more effectively when nations work together and have strong relationships.
D. Realism and Democratic Peace Theory
Two different theories of international affairs and politics can both be used effectively in order to justify humanitarian intervention. The first of these political philosophies is the concept of Realism. Realism states that a nation is only obligated to its own citizens and that the rest of the world will always be unpredictable. Even if we can predict with some certainty what a nation state will do, we will never be certain of that action. Thus a nation state cannot predict what other nations will do and must always act in its own self-interest to protect its people. While Realists would argue there is absolutely no obligation to intervene in human rights abuses, Realists would also argue that a state is justified in doing whatever it wants. Because realists would argue that any action by a nation state is permissible, then certainly the United States is at least justified in humanitarian intervention, especially if that intervention protects or benefits the United States. The other popular theory of international affairs that the affirmative could use is what is known as Democratic Peace Theory. Democratic Peace Theory is a simple concept to grasp, that democratic states do not go to war with another. This claim is empirically verified, as no two true democracies have ever gone to war. What constitutes a true democracy is a subject for another debate, but what is true is that there is a significant higher probability for peace if the United States implements a stable and legitimate democratic government in the nation where they are
Page 34 of 158
intervening. Thus not only does this promote peace within the nation state but also can extend peace to that region.
Part 3: Negative Strategies
A. Sovereignty
The most common and in all likelihood strongest argument for the negative side will be the argument that the United States is never justified in an action that would violate the autonomy of a nation state. This argument states that nation states like persons have the right to selfgovernance, and the United States violating the right to self-governance through intervention is inherently immoral or unjust. This will most likely constitute a framework argument, and argue a state cannot violate other states rights in order to accomplish a goal, even if that goal is beneficial in nature or will provide greater happiness. There is a strong argument that if rights abuses are the biggest impact in the round a government should not commit further abuses in order to prevent rights violations. Additionally by respecting sovereignty the United States can improve its relationship with the rest of the world and the country where the abuse is occurring. Furthermore if the United States works with the country to prevent rights abuses while respecting sovereignty, this is likely to have a much stronger result and lead to longer lasting change. Additionally intervention can also decrease the legitimacy of the state. It is better to cooperate and respect sovereignty in order to prevent rights abuses rather than forcibly attempt to stop rights abuses.
B. Backlash
In relation to the argument that intervention violates sovereignty, negative debaters will also argue that humanitarian intervention will cause a backlash and or terrorism to occur against the United States. If this is true the negative will argue the United States is not justified in any action that will either harm its own citizens or decrease national security. The United States has acted unilaterally in the past when intervening in global conflicts, and this has caused a backlash and anti-American sentiment in various places and among various persons throughout world. Not only would we face backlash from individuals whom could cause the United States harm, but we might say a backlash from the international arena, harming our credibility and legitimacy in international affairs. The Negative can argue that the U.S. and other nations have declared humanitarian intervention in the past to justify their own ends, and in some cases worsen the problems occurring. A popular example of humanitarian intervention that caused backlash would include the First Gulf War along with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq of the last 10 years.
Page 35 of 158
C. Economic Disincentives
Another strong argument that the United States is not justified in humanitarian intervention will stem from the economic disincentives of intervening in another nation and/or going to war over human rights abuses. There is a significant financial cost to having a United States presence within a nation state, and while this may not be the only option in a given situation, a military presence is often most effective for stopping rights abuses and/or overthrowing rogue governments. Military force can be incredibly expensive, and there is a strong argument that the United States should curtail military spending, especially while facing a recession. There will be topic literature surrounding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how these wars have harmed our economy today. These wars have also had a significant impact on the United States budget and deficit, and a time where we need resources most.
D. Non-Profits
Finally, there is a strong argument that the United States is not justified in humanitarian intervention if there is an agent who is more capable and/or more likely to be successful. Nonprofit organizations and other Non-governmental organizations have been historically successful in campaigns against human rights abuses and can often be a much more effective agent than a government. NGOs do not have to deal with the bureaucratic red tape, political pressures, and inefficiency of government. Thus the negative should argue that if a private non-profit or NGO can more elegantly and adequately solve the problem of rights abuses, then these organizations should be preferred and the United States is not justified in intervening when there is a more capable actor.
Page 36 of 158
FRAMEWORK EVIDENCE
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS ONLY LEGITIMATE WHEN IT MEETS THE TRANDITIONAL CRITERIA FOR JUST WAR Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 A relevant issue pertaining to the concepts of humanitarian intervention and the R2P is the legitimacy of proposed threshold and prudential criteria for action. The conditions that will trigger or justify humanitarian intervention have been enumerated in numerous scholarly works dealing with substantive or procedural issues considered as either absolute or preferential prerequisites.17 For R2P, if sovereignty is considered a principle that requires a state to exercise responsibility as an essential element for its governance to be considered legitimate, then it is imperative that criteria ought to be established and weighed in the event of an intervention for human protection purposes. To that end, military force is justified only in extreme cases, when peaceful measures prove insufficient, and in light of human rights violations which genuinely shock the conscience of mankind.18 Specifically, six threshold and precautionary or prudential criteria must be met as a guide to decision makers contemplating such action: just cause, right intention, last resort, proportional means, reasonable prospects, and right authority.19
Page 37 of 158
THE PRINCIPLE OF LAST RESORT REQUIRES STATES TO WEIGH THE COSTS OF INTERVENTION AGAINST THOSE OF OTHER POSSIBLE MEANS Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 The principle of last resort does point to justification for the use of military force as an option by outside powers in the reaction phase, if the responsibility to prevent through peaceful dispute settlement flounders on the intransigence of one or both parties to a conflict. There is a preference for ceasefires, deployment of international peacekeepers, and observers rather than coercive military action. The Report of the ICISS acknowledges that this does not necessarily mean that every such option must literally have been exhausted.25 Although the exhaustion of alternate remedies to protect victims is important, where the threat is massive and the situation is rapidly deteriorating, exhaustion of other options may not be required because delay is likely to exacerbate the situation. On balance, intervention should maximize the best outcome when weighed against other possible alternatives.
Page 38 of 158
THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY RESTRAINS THE MEANS OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 The threshold of proportional means is sometimes difficult to gauge. Generally, it means that the intervention should be proportional to the triggering event. It implies that the scale, duration, and the intensity of the planned military intervention should involve the minimum force necessary to secure the humanitarian objective in question. The intervener must plan and carry out such force as is necessary not to inflict more harm, death, or injury than is sought to be prevented. This entails ensuring a minimal impact on the target states political system and undertaking an intervention that accords with strict observance of the principles of international humanitarian law. The Report of the ICISS acknowledges that it may be open to argument in each case what the precise practical implications of these strictures are.26 In this regard, although the domestic political system of the target state cannot be altered, if the government of that state is responsible for the commission of large-scale human rights atrocities, it does so at the risk of being removed by an intervener. Such a removal, however, can only occur when necessary to halt the loss of life.27
Page 39 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS ONLY JUSTIFIED IF IT HAS A REASONABLE CHANCE OF SUCCESS Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 Also, there is the reasonable prospects criterion. Resort to military intervention can be legitimized only if it has a reasonable chance of stopping or preventing large-scale atrocities or suffering. The consequences of military action should not be worse than the consequences of inaction. Military action must not risk triggering a larger conflict.28 In effect, if the intervening force does not have the capabilities to prevail militarily and to protect the population at risk, then intervention must not be undertaken. A key issue that remains unresolved is how one evaluates the chances of success of intervention for human protection purposes or its potential to be counter-productive.29 In the absence of a clear sense of this, armed intervention, even for simple humanitarian purposes, will always be carried out selectively, because in some places it will stand no chance of success.30 Also, the implications of this precautionary principle would likely preclude any military action against any one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, even if other conditions for intervention have been met, for the simple reason that it would spark a major conflict. Similarly, it would preclude military action against any of the major powers that are not permanent members of the Security Council. This raises the specter of double standards, as interventions might not be possible in every case in which genuine grounds to do so exist. The Reports answer is that the reality that interventions may not be plausibly mounted in every justifiable case is no reason for them not to be mounted in any particular case, and that there are still other types of pressure, including sanctions, that can and should be applied in such situations, as was evident in the cases of Indonesia and East Timor.31
Page 40 of 158
TO BE LEGITIMATE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION MUST BE AUTHORIZED BY INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 Lastly, perhaps the most problematic and difficult principle to apply is that of right authority, which is key to the legitimacy of any intervention for human protection purposes.32 When authorization is needed, the first point of reference must be the U.N. Security Council as the agent of the international community with primary responsibility for issues relating to the maintenance of international peace and security under the U.N. Charter framework. But what if the Security Council fails to act on its own R2P in a conscience-shocking situation that calls for action? The Report of the ICISS suggests that developing a consensus on military intervention requires working through the collective mechanisms of the U.N., not around them. It points out that [t]he task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority, but to make it work better than it has.33 It should however be noted that the reality of Security Council politics is such that authorization would not be forthcoming in every single case that calls for forceful action. Two institutional solutions are proposed. One is to seek support for military action from the General Assembly. This larger body would consider the matter in an emergency special session under the procedure provided for by the Uniting for Peace resolution, used in the cases of Korea in 1950, Egypt in 1956, and the Congo in 1960. Although this procedure gives the General Assembly some responsibility in matters of international peace and security, it must be noted that the Assemblys decisions are not legally binding and have only the status of recommendations. The second solution would be for collective intervention to be undertaken by a regional or sub-regional organization acting within its defining boundaries under Chapter VIII of the U.N. Charter. Again, this alternative may be susceptible to being frustrated by political paralysis in the Security Council. The Report of the ICISS poses a real question regarding which of two evils is worse: the damage to international order if the Security Council is bypassed or the damage to that order if human beings are slaughtered while the Security Council stands by? It notes that if the Security Council fails to discharge its responsibility in the case of atrocious human rights violations, then concerned individual states or ad hoc coalitions (so-called coalitions of the willing) may not rule out other means to address the gravity and urgency of the situation. Where such entities fulfill and observe all the criteria, and the intervention succeeds and is seen by world public opinion to have succeeded, the outcome may have enduringly serious consequences for the credibility of the U.N. itself. As Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun point out, [t]he UN cannot afford to drop the ball too many times on that scale.34 The Report of the ICISS takes an ambiguous stand on the role of armed intervention by individual states or even ad hoc coalitions of states without the imprimatur of legitimacy furnished by the Security Council or General Assembly. However, it should be noted that although multilateralism in dealing with these issues is preferable, policymakers need to be cognizant of the possibility that unilateral action can be more timely and effective in the face of paralysis by the U.N., as happened during the Cold War situations that called for intervention. Thus, the revival of a unilateral jus ad bellum or forcible selfhelp measures by individual states or ad hoc coalitions to protect human rights may be legal or legitimate, insofar as such actions are not inconsistent with the purposes of the U.N.35
Page 41 of 158
THE ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR JUST WAR THEORY COMES FROM NATURAL LAW Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 The ethical legitimacy of these criteria for action relates directly to the question of whether the international community does have a moral duty to intervene to end egregious human rights violations that are conscience- shocking. These criteria are not new, for they are based on the principles of just war theory. The origins of the framework can be traced to the writings of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries in which humanitarian interventions were justified on the basis of Christian beliefs and the religious concept of the dignity of man.36 Essentially, just war theory argues that a war can be considered legitimate if it is both justified (jus ad bellum) and conducted in an ethical manner (jus in bello). Two of the essential conditions for the waging of such a war are that it must be for a just cause and fought with good intentions. Subsequently, the notion of just wars became secularized and found a basis in natural law. For Hugo Grotius and several of his contemporaries, it was important that every human society be limited by a widely recognized principle of humanity and the permissibility of the use of force against tyrants who mistreated their subjects. These authorities on international law considered humanitarian intervention to be in conformity with natural law. The doctrine of natural law is grounded on the premise that human beings have certain moral duties by virtue of their common humanity. Its basic tenets are discoverable through reason and therefore available to anyone capable of rational thought. Thus, for natural law theorists, human nature generates common moral duties, including, in some versions, a right of humanitarian intervention.37
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com JUST WAR THEORY IS NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT TO INTERPRET
Page 42 of 158
Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 The challenges associated with applying just war concepts are, as one scholar observes, not about conditions in general terms, but rather about how those conditions are concretely interpreted. In other words, it may be that in medieval Christian Europe the requirements of just war operated in a socio-culturally homogeneous context generating particular outcomes that were predictable and generally accepted. The contemporary international system does not appear so homogeneous and the same principles may practically lead to different outcomes.44 For example, these principles may be inconsistent with some of the political and technological realities of today.45 Thus, the heterogeneous cultures of the international system seem to fit with communitarianism, the particularist doctrine that norms are morally binding insofar as they fit the cultural beliefs and practices of specific communities.46 Individual and societal needs may vary from one community to another at any given period of time. It is probably best that the international community perceives and recognizes this. These principles might be subject to interpretation and manipulation in practice. However, concerns of humanity as a whole should outweigh any cultural preferences of different societies in applying them. As Teson suggests, the interest in ending or preventing humanitarian crises is a cosmopolitan humanitarian interest, an interest that springs, as it were, from universal moral concerns that affect, and reside in, humanity.47 Ultimately, their legitimacy may be grounded in the notion of human rights a s an entitlement. This entitlement is not a claim on God or nature, but a claim on one another.48 Greater respect for human rights will make the international community more likely to engage in actions to protect those rights when violated. The creation of the proposed threshold and prudential criteria for action in the ICISS report will go a long way toward legitimizing and helping policymakers balance any competing moral intuitions surrounding interventions for human protection purposes.
Page 43 of 158
THERE ARE FIVE CORE PROVISIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF JUST MILITARY INTERVENTION Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 The following injunctions form the core of the contemporary revisionist doctrine of JMI, or of the part of it that justifies violation of national sovereignty. On my reading of recent controversies, the injunctions are accepted by JMI proponents who endorsed the Iraq war as well as by those who did not. (1) Human rights must be championed everywhere and most vigorously where they are grossly violated by massacre, ethnic cleansing and other large-scale crimes. (2) Outside states or bodies can (if non-military options fail) legitimately intervene militarily against states responsible for gross human rights violations in order to rescue citizens of these later states. (3) The moral imperative of humanitarian rescue may be sufficiently urgent to trump strict considerations of international legality.4 (4) The humanitarian rescue imperative may be sufficiently urgent to justify intervention by any democratic, perhaps even any non-tyrannical, power capable of stopping gross abuses. (5) Armed interventions must be directed at a just outcome, be proportionate in their methods and stand a reasonable chance of realizing their aims.
Page 44 of 158
AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE
THE LIMITS OF SOVEREIGNTY SYSTEMATIC GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION AND ATROCITY BOTH UNDERMINES A STATES CLAIM TO SOVEREIGNTY AND JUSTIFIES INTERVENTION TO STOP PRACTICES THAT SHOCK THE CONSCIENCE Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 A contemporary version of the argument that humanitarian intervention and R2P are morally justified in appropriate cases is one that Fernando Teson makes. His forceful argument rests on a standard assumption of liberal political philosophy to the effect that a major purpose of states and governments is to protect and secure human rights, that is, rights that all persons have by virtue of personhood alone. Governments and others in power who seriously violate those rights undermine the one reason that justifies their political power, and thus should not be protected by international law. A corollary of this argument is that to the extent that state sovereignty is a value, it is an instrumental, not an intrinsic, value. Sovereignty serves valuable human ends, and those who grossly assault them should not be allowed to shield themselves behind the sovereignty principle. Tyranny and anarchy cause the moral collapse of sovereignty.38 The implication of this argument is that a government that engages in the massive and systematic violation of the human rights of its population not only forfeits its internal but also its external legitimacy. In its international relations, this means that, as the rationale behind these rules has disappeared, the government in question can no longer appeal to the norms of international law that are supposed to protect it against armed intervention. A government that poses a threat to its own citizens cannot protect those same citizens in its inter-state relations. Under these circumstances an intervention for human protection purposes would not violate the prohibition of the use of force.39 Furthermore, a scholar such as Michael Walzer argues that a duty of humanitarian intervention is just because it fits the inherited cultures of political communities everywhere.40 He asserts that humanitarian intervention is justified when it is a response . . . to acts that shock the moral conscience of mankind. He continues, The old -fashioned language seems to be exactly right. It is not the conscience of political leaders that one refers to in such cases. They have other things to worry about and may well be required to repress their feelings of indignation and outrage. The reference is to the moral convictions of ordinary men and women, acquired in the course of everyday activities. 41 For him, non -intervention is not an absolute moral rule. If what is going on locally becomes intolerable, humanitarian intervention becomes morally necessary whenever cruelty and suffering are extreme and local forces seem incapable of putting an end to them.42 The global culture of human solidarity thus demands that states intervene whenever one of their number massacres, enslaves, or forcibly expels large numbers of citizens or collapses into a frenzied, murderous anarchy.43
Page 45 of 158
IN THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES THERE HAS BEEN AN INCREASING EMPHASIS ON HUMAN SECURITY RATHER THAN NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 No less important is the realization and shift in thinking that has occurred in the last two decades with regard to the notion of security. The traditional view of security, prominent in Realist theory and reflected in the U.N. Charter, which is based on territoriality expressed in terms of defense of state borders against external aggression, has broadened considerably to include the concern for the welfare of citizens. In this context, the Commission on Global Governance acknowledged that global security extends beyond the protection of borders, ruling elites, and exclusive state interests to include the protection of people.49 The concept of human security has emerged, suggesting a growing recognition that concepts of security must include people as well as states.50 Specifically, it means the security of people*their physical safety, their economic and social well-being, respect for their dignity and worth as human beings, and the protection of their human rights and fundamental freedoms.51 Thus, security can be endangered not only by external aggression, but also by circumstances and forces within a state, including actions by its military and security forces. The Report of the ICISS further points out that [t]he traditional , narrow perception of security leaves out the most elementary and legitimate concerns of ordinary people regarding security in their daily lives and diverts enormous amounts of national wealth and human resources into armaments and armed forces, while countries fail to protect their citizens from chronic insecurities of hunger, disease, inadequate shelter, crime, unemployment, social conflict and environmental hazard.52 The emphasis on human security is placed not so much on what governments are permitted to do under the guise of sovereignty, as to what they are/are not permitted to do in fulfilling their legal responsibilities to their own people.53
Page 46 of 158
STATES FORFEIT THEIR RIGHTS TO SELF-GOVERNMENT WHEN THEY VIOLATE THE RIGHTS OF THEIR PEOPLE Paul Di Stefano [Prof. of Humanities at John Abbott College in Montreal, Quebec], Human Rights Violations and the Moral Permissibility of Military Intervention, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 23:537545 (2011) The increasing importance placed on the protection of human rights holds significant implications for state sovereignty. While the presumption against intervention is outlined in the UN Charter, the moral right to assistance is anchored in Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which asserts, Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized. AsWilkins suggests, when these rights and freedoms are grossly violated, military intervention may be morally authorized because protection against such violations may trump the obligation of states not to interfere in the domestic affairs of other states. Shue notes, it must be remembered that sovereignty is a right, and the concept of a right makes no sense in the absence of a corresponding duty. In a Lockean sense, the state is constrained in its behavior through the duty to preserve and protect the fundamental rights of its citizens. When the state fails in this imperative, however, its legitimacy is forfeited and the moral defensibility of non-intervention wanes. This delegitimization renders the state susceptible to outside interference, as foreign states find justification in providing protection that the home state no longer pr ovides. Mills assertion regarding the intrinsic value of self-help is inadequate, and of little direct consolation to those whose lives are immediately threatened by tyrannical regimes. Walzer avers, When a people are being massacred, we dont require th at they pass the test of self-help before coming to their aid. It is their very incapacity that brings us in.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com NO ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO SOVEREIGNTY
Page 47 of 158
Coady, C. A. J. [Australian Research Council senior research fellow]. The Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, Peaceworks No. 45, August 2002. United States Institute of Peace. <http://www.usip.org/publications/ethics-armed-humanitarian-intervention> The conditions of the JAB, especially that of just cause, are these days treated more restrictively than in past so that a just war has tended to be seen primarily as a defensive war. Military interventions in the affairs of other states without the warrant of selfdefense or defense of allies were largely ruled out, both morally and legally. The older tradition of allowing certain aggressive wars to be morally licit fell into disrepute during the latter half of the twentieth century, and the reasons for this are explored. The call for humanitarian war harks back to the older tradition and challenges the paradigm of outlawing all aggression of states against other states. This challenge raises issues of the value of sovereignty, since the sovereign right of states to manage their own affairs has been a mainstay of international relations theory and has a direct connection with the prohibition on aggressive war. There are undoubtedly good reasons for being suspicious of any absolute right for states to remain immune to outside criticism, pressure, or sanction by the international community or even by other states. Malevolent action of states against their own populations certainly constitutes one of those reasons.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT
Page 48 of 158
THE IDEA OF A RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT REFRAMES THE NATURE OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 However, a critical review of the responsibility to protect doctrine raises the question whether it is old wine in new bottles. Some scholars view it as the most comprehensive approach to humanitarian intervention ever proposed. According to the ICISS co-chair, Gareth Evans, the main contributions of the R2P framework to the international policy debate are that it recharacterizes the right to intervene debate not as an argument about any right at all but rather about a responsibility to protect people at grave risk.3 The commission avoided the terminology humanitarian intervention and instead, to move the debate forward, called it intervention for human protection purposes. This perspective thus prioritizes the rights of those suffering from atrocities such as genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes, and the duty incumbent primarily upon states and secondarily upon international organizations to respond.4 Instead of looking for a legal trigger that authorizes states to intervene, R2P stipulates that it is shameful to do nothing when such events that shock the conscience of the international community cry out for action.5 For Evans, the second and perhaps the most significant contribution is the new conceptualization of sovereignty not as control but as responsibility. 6 He notes the U.N. Charters underpinning of sovereignty in the traditional Westphalian sense, and he points out that, since the charters promulgation, actual state practice has evolved with a focus now on human rights and human security.7 This new focus emphasizes the limits of sovereignty. This approach within the R2P framework circumvents the sovereignty/intervention problematic, because state sovereignty is viewed as the main impediment to a more robust practice of humanitarian intervention. Sovereignty still matters, as the ICISS recognizes; however, it is argued that this is not a new approach because sovereign prerogatives have always been limited even with the inception of the Westphalian system. Sovereign prerogatives are thus consistent with humanitarian intervention.8 Whether framed in terms of humanitarian intervention or R2P, sovereignty will not bar intervention for human protection purposes.
Page 49 of 158
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT EXTENDS BEYOND THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE TO THE PROMOTION OF PEACE, SECURITY, AND SELF-GOVERNANCE Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 Sovereignty as responsibility gives rise to three types of tasks or duties and, according to Evans, the third contribution of the commission is the fact that R2P is much more than intervention, particularly military intervention. It involves a continuum of obligations to prevent, react, and rebuild.9 Framed in this context, the R2P is a broader concept than humanitarian intervention in that the latter is mainly reactive and involves the use of military force, although the employment of coercive measures can also be preventive in situations of an imminent large-scale loss of life. Understood in the classical sense, humanitarian intervention is a shortterm palliative measure that involves the use of military force, or its imminence, to remedy large-scale human rights violations and to make conditions conducive for the target states population to take charge of their own affairs. In the context of the Cold War, such interventions were directed against repressive regimes that violated the human rights of their populations. The U.N.-authorized humanitarian interventions of the 1990s, however, were directed against fragile and failed states in which civilians were victims of internal conflicts. These interventions were consistent with the articulation of a broader notion of humanitarian interventions, which consisted of military protection of relief supplies, the protection of NGO aid workers, and the creation of corridors of tranquility and safe havens or safe zones in which populations were protected.10 Thus conceived, these activities*ranging along a continuum from assistance to the use of military force*have been maintained by the doctrine of R2P. In a narrow sense, whereas humanitarian intervention strictly involves military force in terms of reaction, R2P focuses on other political, legal, and economic instruments related to preventive action before the application of military force. Military force functions, as a last resort, to protect populations in grave danger. The obligation to prevent thus carries a broader meaning than intervention.11 Furthermore, though rebuilding is not an integral part of humanitarian intervention narrowly conceived, it has been included as an essential element of R2P, a recognition that is stated in terms of the likelihood of the recurrence of human rights violations in the absence of post-conflict peacebuilding.12 This obligation to rebuild is much broader, though consistent with a wider notion of the practice of humanitarian intervention in the 1990s. Overall, it may be that more interventions are justified under Chapter VI of the U.N. Charter than under Chapter VII.13 The novelty of R2P thus lies in its melding of peace and security or conflict-prevention approaches with those of international human rights protection.14 However, such melding is not very useful, as the fundamental thesis of R2P is that any coercive intervention for human protection purposes is but one element in a continuum of intervention, which begins with preventive efforts and ends with the responsibility to rebuild.15 It is problematic from a legal point of view given that different legal rules apply to these forms of the R2P. It would have been better to restrict the R2P to the reaction phase addressing the question of the use of force for human protection purposes.16
Page 50 of 158
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT IS LESS ABOUT EXPANDING LEGAL RIGHTS AS IT IS REMOVING POLITICAL IMPEDIMENTS TO ACTION IN THE FACE OF ATROCITY LIBYA PROVES Chesterman, Simon [Dean and Prof. of Law at National University of Singapore], "Leading from Behind': The Responsibility to Protect, the Obama Doctrine, and Humanitarian Intervention After Libya" (2011). New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers. Paper 282. <http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_plltwp/282> As Anne Orford has argued, however, although RtoP does not create rights or impose legal obligations, it may nonetheless be understood as conferring public power and allocating jurisdiction.18 Seen through such a lens, the vague formulations embraced by the 2005 Summit do not invoke responsibility in the strict legal sense of an obligation to act in a specific way, but rather in the sense of an allocation of responsibility to respond to a situation. This may be compared to the function played by Article 99 of the UN Charter, which allows the UN secretarygeneral to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.19 It is no coincidence that much of the energy behind the adoption and, now, implementation of RtoP has come from the office of the secretary-general.20 Much like Article 99, the true significance of RtoP is not in creating new rights or obligations to do the right thing; rather, it is in making it harder to do the wrong thing or nothing at all.21 Such a dynamic appears to have had some success at the international level, facilitated by the unusual clarity of the situation in Libya. State leaders are usually more circumspect in the threats they make against their population than was Qaddafi; impending massacres are rarely so easy to foresee. Combined with the support of African states and the Arab League for intervention, this left most states on the Council unwilling to allow atrocities to occurand others unwilling to be seen as the impediment to action. Such clarity of intent influenced the Obama administration in particular. Within a twentyfour hour period the United States pivoted from skepticism about intervention in Libya to forceful advocacy. That change of policy was partly driven by external events in particular the imminent possibility of thousands being killed by Qaddafis troopsbut also by the internal advocacy of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, and National Security Council staffer Samantha Power.22 Rice in particular had used her first statement in the UN Security Council to endorse RtoP;23 Power, the author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, currently serves as the National Security Councils Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs and is a special adviser to the President.24
Page 51 of 158
INCONSISTENT APPLICATION OF HUMANITARIAN NORMS IS A POOR REASON NOT TO ACT WHEN WE CAN Roberta Cohen [Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Panel on the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights], The responsibility to protect: The Human rights and humanitarian dimensions, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Harvard Human Rights Panel Annual Symposium, R2P will undoubtedly run into some of the same problems that plague human rights policies. For example, one of the main criticisms of the Carter policy was that it was inconsistent in its application. R2P also risks being applied to a highly selective group of countries, especially less powerful ones with no international defenders. In his recent book on R2P, Gareth Evans responds to charges of inconsistency exactly the way the Carter Administration did that each case is different requiring different approaches and that inconsistency in application is not a good argument for not acting in cases where one can do something; and in the case of powerful nations, other steps will have to be found. Nonetheless, a credibility gap arises. The Carter Administration did not act against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or institute economic sanctions against South Africa because of its own political and economic interests. And R2P has not been applied to atrocities in Sudan, Somalia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo in part because of the political and economic interests of members of the P5 [permanent five]. Those five countries really have the deciding voice on strong actions under R2P, and if one of them casts a veto, it is unlikely R2P will be applied. So handling inconsistency is going to be a major issue. It plagued the Carter Administration for four full years.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY
Page 52 of 158
THE OBLIGATION TO ENGAGE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS BASED ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITY TO THE COMMUNITY OF NATIONS Roberta Cohen [Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Panel on the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights], The responsibility to protect: The Human rights and humanitarian dimensions, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Harvard Human Rights Panel Annual Symposium, Between the adoption of international human rights standards by the UN after the Second World War and the acceptance of a collective responsibility to protect in 2005 there is a long road. Concepts of human security, humanitarian intervention, sovereignty as responsibility are milestones on that road. But one contribution that is often downplayed is the role of the international human rights movement. Human rights advocates did not just affirm that states should observe human rights standards. They championed the view that the international community should collectively take actions to hold governments to account when they fail to meet their obligations. Beginning in the 1970s, non-governmental human rights organizations and UN human rights bodies became assertive in insisting on international accountability. There were reports, fact-finding missions, intercessions with governments and sanctions. Indeed, the human rights movement contributed to an evolution in thinking from a strictly state-centered system in which sovereignty was absolute to one in which the behavior of states toward their own citizens became a matter of international concern and scrutiny. Another unexplored contribution to R2P is that made by the Administration of Jimmy Carter. It was President Carter who told the United Nations General Assembly in 1977 that, "No member of the United Nations can claim that mistreatment of its citizens is solely its own business." The President challenged traditional notions of sovereignty with that speech. I was in the Administration and my own notes that I prepared for use by US representatives at the UN said: "no nation in the world today can hide politically-sanctioned abductions and murders, torture, or other gross violations of human rights behind assertions of sovereignty. Where basic human rights are concerned, all governments are accountable not only to their own citizens but to the entire community of nations."
Page 53 of 158
IN THE 1990S, MANY HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES SHATTERED THE HOPE FOR A NEW POST-COLD WAR PEACE Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Mag gio (2011) A succession of complex emergencies or new wars in the 1990s shattered any optimism that the end of the Cold War might lead to a more peaceful world order1. From so-called failed states such as Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sudan, to ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter in Iraq, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, the world seemed to witness the return to Hobbesian conditions of bellum omnium contra omnes. Life for many, if not all, individuals in these war zones had become nasty, brutish and short as states and societies collapsed under the pressure of chronic economic privation, incivility and widespread violence. Masterless men, to use Hobbess term, daily committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace, and as a result political and moral order disintegrated, making it ever more difficult for humanity to progress towards the humane and civilized international relations Immanuel Kant envisaged as perpetual peace.
Page 54 of 158
THE 1990S SAW A TURN TOWARD MORALLY-ORIENTED FOREIGN-POLICY NORMS Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensla nd], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) To combat human suffering in the face of such inhumane scenarios, international society mounted what became known as humanitarian interventions the coercive interference in the domestic jurisdiction of a sovereign state for the purpose of ending large-scale human rights abuses. In the 1990s, to end what Ken Booth2 calls large-scale human wrongs, the United Nations sanctioned a series of coercive interventions on humanitarian grounds, including Iraq in 1991, Somalia in 1992, Bosnia in 1992-93, and Rwanda in 1994, among many others. But, more than any of these cases, it was NATOs 1999 armed intervention in Kosovo without a UN mandate that highlighted the moral and political questions raised by this alleged new right (some say duty) of humanitarian intervention. Kosovo revealed, better than any other international event of the decade, the growing tendency of political leaders, diplomats and civilians to analyse, judge and act in international politics from a moral point of view.
Page 55 of 158
MORAL DISCOURSE HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY ACCEPTED IN GLOBAL POLITICS Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) For defenders of NATOs actions, the use of force was an urgent and legitimate, if not entirely lawful, response to the political violence being inflicted on Kosovar Albanians by Serbia; it was a war in defence of humanity and human rights. This willingness to legitimate military action with moral arguments was in itself not new to international relations. But it was notable for an arena of human activity where moral discourse often succumbs to the predations of power politics. So although moral discourse had never entirely vacated international relations, it had not acquired such standing since the interwar years. A moral impulse seemed to awaken with the advent of globalization and global mass media, as reports and images of human suffering were beamed into the living rooms of empathetic Western publics who urged their governments to do something in the face of political violence and human suffering. After the wretched failures of Bosnia and Rwanda, NATOs Kosovo intervention seemed emblematic of a growing moralization of international politics. I borrow this phrase from David Rieff, an insightful and intelligent analyst of the post-Cold War terrain of international conflict, who has explained humanitarianism as part of a broader postCold War moralization of international politics3. According to Rieff, NATOs Kosovo war was undertaken more in the name of human rights and moral obligation than out of any traditional conception of national interest. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton both sought to justify the intervention by appeal to humanitarian values. Rieff quotes from former UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar asserting in 1991 that, We are clearly witnessing what is probably an irresistible shift in public attitudes toward the belief that the defence of the oppressed in the name of morality should prevail over frontiers and legal documents4 (emphasis added). Rieff himself seems to agree that there has been a noticeable shift in public attitudes from a kind of indifferent realism to a more compassionate humanitarianism. Expressions of political realism, pre-eminently the appeal to national interests and reasons of state, now seem an esoteric language restricted by and large to international policymakers when they are out of public view, he said5. By contrast, he continued, the language of human rights and humanitarianism now stands as the exoteric language of public discourse. Western publi cs, grown used to global news feeds and increasingly empathetic to suffering strangers wherever they may be, have lost their appetite for Realpolitik and its perceived vices, and have developed instead a taste for humanitarianism and its presumed virtues.
Page 56 of 158
THE ORTHODOX CONCEPTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ASSUMES THAT THEY ARE UNIVERSAL RIGHTS DERIVED FROM MORAL REASONING John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 The orthodox conception of human rights, at least among philosophers, includes two tenets that receive widely divergent interpretations at the hands of their adherents. The first which concerns the essential nature of human rights holds that they are moral rights possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity.1 They do not, like legal or conventional rights, owe their existence to some institutional norm or social practice. Nor, like moral rights grounded in desert, promises or marriage, does their existence depend on an accomplishment of the rightholder or a transaction in which they have engaged or a relationship to which they belong. The second tenet relates to the grounds of human rights, the considerations that establish the claim of a given norm to be a human right. It holds that whether or not a candidate norm really is a human right is to be determined by ordinary (typically, truth-oriented) moral reasoning. Call these tenets, respectively, NT and GT.
Page 57 of 158
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE BY THEIR NATURE MORE FUNDAMENTAL THAN OTHER MORAL CLAIMS John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 In adjudicating between the orthodox and political conceptions of human rights, we should keep in mind three desiderata that plausibly bear on the adequacy of theories of human rights. First, a theory of human rights must capture the distinctive importance of this class of norms. Not every moral consideration is important; nor is every morally important consideration a matter of human rights. The distinctiveness of human rights within the class of important moral considerations is normally articulated by orthodox theorists in two stages. First, human rights fall within the broader category of moral rights. However else we understand rights, they belong to the individualistic part of morality, in that the violation of a right necessarily wrongs a specific other person, the right-holder, in a way that violations of other norms, e.g. imperfect duties of charity, which have no correlative right-holder, do not. Second, they are that subset of moral rights possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity. On the political conception, in contrast, reference must (also) be made to the distinctive political nature of such rights when picking them out within the class of all rights.
Page 58 of 158
HUMAN RIGHTS IS CLOSELY TIED TO AN INTERNATIONAL CULTURE OF RIGHTS THAT HAS DEVELOPED SINCE WORLD WAR II John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 Second, a credible account of human rights must exhibit an appropriate level of fidelity to the human rights culture that has flourished post-1945, especially as it is crystallized in the so-called International Bill of Human Rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (UDHR), the International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the last two of which came into force in 1976. This is a complex criterion, as the culture of human rights is multi-faceted and subject to rival self-understandings on the part of its adherents. Satisfying this desideratum had therefore better be compatible with adopting a critical perspective on the legal, political and other manifestations of the existing human rights culture. So, e.g., it is not the case that an adequate theory must rubber-stamp all the human rights that can be gleaned from the key human rights declarations and conventions. Perhaps there are compelling reasons for not recognizing some of them, including the oft-derided human rights to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (ICESCR, Art. 12(1)) and to periodic holidays with pay (Art. 24 UDHR).
Page 59 of 158
AFTER THE COLD WAR, THE POLITICAL REALITIES OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND THE ADVANCE OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY MADE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION A PRESSING POLITICAL PROBLEM John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Modern humanitarian intervention was first conceived in the years following the end of the Cold War. The triumph of liberal democracy over communism made Western leaders optimistic that they could solve the worlds problems as never before. Military force that had long been held in check by superpower rivalry could now be unleashed to protect poor countries from aggression, repression, and hunger. At the same time, the shifting global landscape created new problems that cried out for action. Nationalist and ethnic conflicts in former communist countries surged, and recurrent famines and instability hit much of Africa. A new and unsettled world order took shape, one seemingly distinguished by the frequency and brutality of wars and the deliberate targeting of civilians. The emotional impact of these crises was heightened by new communications technologies that transmitted graphic images of human suering across the world. For the first time in decades, terms such as genocide and ethnic cleansing appeared regularly in public discussions.
Page 60 of 158
THE DOCTRINE OF RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT HAS BEEN UNANIMOUSLY ENDORSED BY THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Recent effort to perfect humanitarian intervention have been fueled by deep changes in public norms about violence against civilians and advances in conflict management. Two decades of media exposure to mass atrocities, ethnic cleansing, and genocide have altered global not simply Westernattitudes about intervention. The previously sacrosanct concept of state sovereignty has been made conditional on a states responsible behavior, and in 2005, the un General Assembly unanimously endorsed the doctrine of the responsibility to protect at the unsWorld Summit. Natos intervention in Libya reflects how the world has become more committed to the protection of civilians. Both un Security Council resolutions on Libya this year passed with unprecedented speed and without a single dissenting vote.
Page 61 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS MORALLY PERMISSIBLE IN THE CONTEXT OF STRIVING FOR A MORE PEACEFUL WORLD Coady, C. A. J. [Australian Research Council senior research fellow]. The Et hics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, Peaceworks No. 45, August 2002. United States Institute of Peace. <http://www.usip.org/publications/ethics-armed-humanitarian-intervention> Suggestions are then made about the circumstances in which intervention might be morally licit. These concern legitimacy in the international order and the role of the United Nations; the need for holistic measures in the management of intervention; the significance of multilateral versus unilateral forms of intervention; the need for a specialist UN intervention force; and the problems posed by demonization. In conclusion, it is emphasized that humanitarian concerns must be located within a context of the striving for a peaceful world.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com LIBERAL HUMANITARIANISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM
Page 62 of 158
THE HUMANITARIAN NARRATIVE IS CLOSELY TIED TO LIBERAL IDEAS OF INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SOCIETY AND PROTECTION FROM STATE AGGRESSION Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) The humanitarian narrative sees the moralization of international politics as a positive development. Why? Because in upholding and pressing moral claims in international politics the prospect of realizing humanity as a political end is thought to advance. The moralization of international politics demonstrates international societys commitment to uphold human rights and to act decisively against violations of international humanitarian law (crimes of war, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace). There is of course a set of deeply Kantian and liberal themes at play in this narrative. The world appears to have entered up on Immanuel Kants cosmopolitan universal community where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere6. According to this way of thinking, the rights of sovereign states are not sacrosanct and should not be used to infringe or deny human rights or to obstruct universal justice. The claims of humanity trump sovereignty. This kind of liberal humanitarianism, inspired by John Locke as much as Kant, invokes humanity or civil society as a foil to the sovereign power of the state, to limit the states well-honed capacities to abuse power and harm its citizens. Protection from the state becomes the central theme of this humanitarian narrative.
Page 63 of 158
TRADITIONAL LIBERAL CONCEPTIONS OF HUMANITARIAN NORMS HAVE BEEN SUPPLEMENTED BY MODERN COSMOPOLITANISM Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) This humanitarian narrative has found strong support in contemporary social, political and international theory, not least among those who have been willing to consider humanitarian intervention as a possible sign of this moralization of international politics. Cosmopolitan critical theorists such as Jrgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, Mary Kaldor, Andrew Linklater, Marc Lynch, and Daniele Archibugi, English School theorists such as Alex Bellamy and Nicholas Wheeler, and liberals such as Michael Ignatieff and Fernando Tson, to name but a few, have argued for humanitarian intervention as a legitimate exception to the non-intervention norm. Needless to say there are wide variances among these thinkers in how they circumscribe the conditions under which humanitarian intervention can be deemed legitimate. My main concern at the moment, however, is simply to register their part in the emerging consensus around the moralization of international politics. In different degrees they all urge understanding, analysing and criticising international politics from a moral point of view. This leads them to see one of political and international theorys major tasks as protecting individuals and communities from state violence.
Page 64 of 158
IT IS POSSIBLE TO DEVELOP A SENSE OF HUMAN IDENTITY THAT MAKES ONE WILLING TO DIE FOR THE SAKE OF SOMEONE ELSE SIMPLY BECAUSE SHE IS HUMAN Mary Kaldor [Centre for the Study of Global Governance London School of Economics], Cosmopolitanism and Organised Violence, Paper prepared for Conference on Conceiving Cosmopolitanism', Warwick, 27-29 (April 2000) Can there be a global social contract, which would guarantee the implementation of fundamental human rights? Does this imply that the individual has to be prepared to pay global taxes or, more importantly, does the individual have to be prepared to die for humanity? I think the individual has to be prepared to risk life for humanity but not in an unlimited way (as was the case with statist wars) since he or she is part of humanity. Humanitarian intervention is less risky than war-fighting although more risky than the kind of risk-free war (at least from the point of view of the soldiers) that the US and Nato are promoting as a form of humanitarian intervention. Indeed, human rights activists and aid workers already risk their lives for humanity. It is sometimes said that this notion is ridiculously utopian dying for hearth and home is quite different from risking life for something as grand and abstract as humanity. But risking life for ones nation is in fact a relatively recent invention. The notion that there is some higher good beyond secular notions of nation and state long preceded this invention.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com COSMOPOLITANISM HAS ITS ORIGINS IN GREEK STOICISM
Page 65 of 158
Marth C. Nussbaum [Prof. of Law and Ethics, U. of Chicago], Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 5, Number 1, (1997), pp. 1-25 According to the Stoics, the basis for human community is the worth of reason in each and every human being.21 Reason, in the Stoic view, is a portion of the divine in each of us. And each and every human being, just in virtue of being rational and moral (for Stoics, reason is above all a faculty of moral choice), has boundless worth. Male or female, slave or free, king or peasant, all are alike of boundless moral value, and the dignity of reason is worthy of respect wherever it is found. This reason, the Stoics held, makes us fellow citizens. Zeno, it would appear, already spoke of rational humanity as grounding a common idea of law.22 Similarly, Cicero in the De Officiis holds that Nature ordains that every human being should promote the good of every other human being just because he is human: `Ànd if this is so, we are all subject to a single law of nature, and if this is so we are bound not to harm anyone'' (III.27-8).23 Marcus develops this idea further: `Ìf reason is common, so too is law; and if this is common, then we are fellow citizens. If this is so, we share in a kind of organized polity. And if that is so, the world is as it were a citystate'' (Marcus, IV.4).24 This being so, Stoic cosmopolitans hold, we should regard our deliberations as, first and foremost, deliberations about human problems of people in particular concrete situations, not problems growing out of a local or national identity that confines and limits our moral aspirations. The accident of where one is born is just that, an accident; any human being might have been born in any nation. As Marcus puts it, `Ìt makes no difference whether a person lives here or there, provided that, wherever he lives, he lives as a citizen of the world'' (X.15).25 Recognizing this, we should not allow differences of nationality or class or ethnic membership or even gender to erect barriers between us and our fellow human beings.26 We should recognize humanity wherever it occurs, and give its fundamental ingredients, reason and moral capacity, our first allegiance and respect.27
Page 66 of 158
CLASSICAL COSMOPOLITANS EMPHASIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF AVOIDING PAROCHIALISM IN SUCCESSFUL POLITICAL ORDERS Marth C. Nussbaum [Prof. of Law and Ethics, U. of Chicago], Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 5, Number 1, (1997), pp. 1-25 The attitude of the world-citizen is held to be strategically valuable in social life. We will be better able to solve our problems if we face them in this way, as fellow human beings respecting one another. No theme is deeper in Stoicism than the damage done by faction and intense local loyalties to our political lives. Marcus Aurelius writes about this topic with especial eloquence, noting that Roman political life tends to be dominated by divisions and parties of many sorts, from the divisions of class and rank and ethnic origin to the division of parties at public games and gladiatorial shows. Part of his own Stoic education, he writes, is ``not to be a Green or Blue partisan at the races, or a supporter of the lightly armed or heavily armed gladiators at the Circus'' (I.5). The Stoic claim is that a style of political life that recognizes the moral/rational community as fundamental promises a more reasonable style of political deliberation and problem solving, even when our institutions are still based on national divisions.
Page 67 of 158
COSMOPOLITANISM EMPHASIZES THE VALUE OF EACH INDIVIDUAL HUMAN Marth C. Nussbaum [Prof. of Law and Ethics, U. of Chicago], Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 5, Number 1, (1997), pp. 1-25 Furthermore, the political stance of the cosmopolitan is intrinsically valuable: for it recognizes in persons what is especially fundamental about them, most worthy of reverence and acknowledgment. This aspect may be less colorful than some of the more eye-catching morally irrelevant attributes of tradition, identity and group membership. It is, however, the Stoics argue, both deeper and ultimately more beautiful.28 Seneca is especially eloquent in his description of the beauty of the moral substance of humanity in each person, and the attitude of quasi-religious awe with which he is inspired by his contemplation of a human being's rational and moral purpose. In a passage that seems to have profoundly in uenced Kant, he writes: God is near you, is with you, is inside you . . . If you have ever come on a dense wood of ancient trees that have risen to an exceptional height, shutting out all sight of the sky with one thick screen of branches upon another, the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, your sense of wonder at nding so deep and unbroken a gloom out of doors, will persuade you of the presence of a deity . . . And if you come across a man who is not alarmed by dangers, not touched by passionate longing, happy in adversity, calm in the midst of storm . . . is it not likely that a feeling of awe for him will nd its way into your heart? . . . Praise in him what can neither be given nor snatched away, what is peculiarly human. You ask what that is? It is his soul, and reason perfected in the soul. For the human being is a rational animal. (Ep. Mor. 41)
Page 68 of 158
STOIC COSMOPOLITANS ALLOW FOR THE RICHNESS OF LOCAL AFFILIATIONS BUT INSIST ON IDENTIFICATION WITH A COMMON HUMANITY Marth C. Nussbaum [Prof. of Law and Ethics, U. of Chicago], Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 5, Number 1, (1997), pp. 1-25 The Stoics stress that to be a world citizen one does not need to give up local identifications and affiliations, which can frequently be a great source of richness in life. Hierocles, a Stoic of the first-second centuries AD (using an older metaphor found also in Cicero's De Officiis), argued that we should regard ourselves not as devoid of local affiliations, but as surrounded by a series of concentric circles. The first one is drawn around the self; the next takes in one's immediate family; then follows the extended family; then, in order, one's neighbors or local group, one's fellow city-dwellers, one's fellow countrymen. Outside all these circles is the largest one, that of humanity as a whole. Our task as citizens of the world will be to ``draw the circles somehow toward the center,'' making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so forth.29 In general, we should think of nobody as a stranger, outside our sphere of concern and obligation. Cicero here borrows Terence's famous line, Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto (I am a human being; I think nothing human alien to me).30 In other words, we may give what is near to us a special degree of attention and concern. But, first, we should always remember that these features of placement are incidental and that our most fundamental allegiance is to what is human. Second, we should consider that even the special measure of concern we give to our own is justified not by any intrinsic superiority in the local, but by the overall requirements of humanity. To see this, consider the rearing of children. Roman Stoics tend to disagree strongly with Plato and with their Greek Stoic forebears, who seem to have followed Plato in abolishing the nuclear family.31 The Roman Stoics held, it seems, that we will not get good rearing of children by leaving all children equally to the care of all parents. Each parent should care intensely for his or her own children, and not try to spread parental concern all round the world. On the other hand, this should be done not from a sense that my children are really more worthwhile than other people's children, but from a sense that it makes most sense for me to do my duties where I am placed, that the human community is best arranged in this way. That, to a Stoic, is what local and national identities should be like, and that is how they can be fortified and encouraged without being subversive of the primary claim of humanity.
Page 69 of 158
STOIC COSMOPOLITANS PUSH BACK AGAINST THINKNIG OF OTHERS IN THE WORLD AS ALIEN AND HOSTILE Marth C. Nussbaum [Prof. of Law and Ethics, U. of Chicago], Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 5, Number 1, (1997), pp. 1-25 Stoic cosmopolitans are aware that politics divide people and encourages them to think of other groups as alien and hostile. They therefore insist strongly on a process of empathetic understanding whereby we come to respect the humanity even of our political enemies, thinking of ourselves as born to work together and inspired by a common purpose. In the words of Marcus, who develops this idea especially fully, we should `ènter into the mind'' of the other, as far as is possible, and interpret the other's action with understanding (VI.53, VIII.51, XI.18). A favored exercise, in this process of world thinking, is to conceive of the entire world of human beings as a single body, its many people as so many limbs. Referring to the fact that it takes only the change of a single letter in Greek to convert the word ``limb'' (melos) to the word ``[detached] part'' (meros), Marcus concludes: `Ìf, changing the word, you call yourself merely a [detached] part rather than a limb, you do not yet love your fellow men from the heart, nor derive complete joy from doing good; you will do it merely as a duty, not as doing good to yourself'' (VII.13). Adoption of this organic model need not entail the disregard of the separateness of persons and the importance of political liberty: Stoics were intensely concerned about both of these things, in their own way, and never conceived of the satisfactions of different persons as fusable into a single system.32 But it does entail that we should think at all times of the way in which our good is intertwined with that of our fellows, and indeed conceive of ourselves as having common goals and projects with our fellows.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com KANTIANISM ENTAILS A UNIVERSAL COSMOPOLITAN LAW
Page 70 of 158
Marth C. Nussbaum [Prof. of Law and Ethics, U. of Chicago], Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 5, Number 1, (1997), pp. 1-25 As do Marcus and Cicero, Kant stresses that the community of all human beings in reason entails a common participation in law (ius), and, by our very rational existence, a common participation in a virtual polity, a cosmopolis that has an implicit structure of claims and obligations regardless of whether or not there is an actual political organization in place to promote and vindicate these. When he refers to ``the idea of a cosmopolitan law,'' and asserts that this law is `à necessary complement to the unwritten code of political and international law'' (PP 108), he is following very closely the lines of analysis traced by Cicero and Marcus. So too when he insists on the organic interconnectedness of all our actions: ``The peoples of the earth have thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of laws in one part of the world is felt everywhere'' (PP 107-8).
Page 71 of 158
FOR RAWLS, HUMAN RIGHTS ARE DISTINCT FROM OTHER LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS IN THAT THEY GENERATE A JUSTIFICATION FOR FOREIGN INTERVENTION John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 For Rawls, NT is at best a misleadingly incomplete characterization of the nature of human rights. To the extent that he acknowledges rights possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity, they are the rights upheld by societies that adhere to a liberal conception of justice.2 This follows from his thesis that the most reasonable political conception of justice is a liberal one. Even though he describes some non-liberal societies decent hierarchical peoples as wellordered, and hence as equal members in good standing of the Society of Peoples, their deviation from political liberalism renders the conceptions of justice upheld by these societies only not fully unreasonable (Rawls, 74). In speaking of the rights recognized under a liberal conception of justice, Rawls finds it unnecessary to introduce the locution human rights. Instead, we can refer with greater accuracy to liberal constitutional rights. Why, then, do we need to refer to human rights at all? The answer is that the idea of human rights picks out a proper subset of liberal constitutional rights (both a subset of those rights and, in some cases, of their normative content). It does so by reference to the political role that this category of rights performs in regulating certain relations among societies. Specifically, it belongs to that component of political morality that regulates forceful intervention among political communities. Although Rawls is not entirely clear about the matter, the following conception of a human right apparently emerges: a human right is a moral right (a) possessed by all human beings, and (b) capable of generating a defeasible or pro tanto justification for forceful intervention by well-ordered societies against the society responsible for severe and widespread violations of that right. We can refer to this as the Coercive Intervention Account of human rights, or CIA for short (the acronym is darkly evocative of a certain influential strand of thinking about human rights in US foreign policy). An exegetical problem arises as to what Rawls means by forceful intervention. Under the heading of the kinds of intervention that can be justified by human rights violations he includes not only military intervention but also, e.g., diplomatic and economic sanctions. Thus, a society that complies with human rights (and is non-aggressive) is immune from justified and forceful intervention, whether this takes the form of diplomatic or economic sanctions or, at the limit, military force (Rawls, 80). But on my interpretation, the CIA accords criterial status to only one kind of intervention, i.e. military intervention. In this view, what it is for a right to be a human right is that its violation can act as a defeasible trigger for military intervention against the society that perpetrates the violations. However, a societys compliance with the full schedule of human rig hts apparently has the effect of ruling out all forms of intervention against it, including the non-military variety (see Tasioulas (2002, 38090); the interpretation is endorsed by Griffin, 23, and Raz).3 To reiterate: my claim is not that Rawls holds that military (or coercive) intervention should be the exclusive, or even the standard, mechanism for implementing human rights; instead, the claim is that what distinguishes human rights from within the broader category of rights is that their severe violation is capable of generating a pro tanto case for military intervention. Moreover, this is compatible with the belief that the pro tanto case will often be defeated by competing considerations, such as an excessive risk of serious retaliation against the intervening state.
Page 72 of 158
FOR RAWLS HUMAN RIGHTS SET STANDARDS FOR THE ACTIONS OF NON-STATE ENTITIES AS WELL AS GOVERNMENTS IN MANY DIFFERENT CONTEXTS John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 The charge of infidelity can assume another form, however, relating not to content but to function. The complaint is that the CIA overlooks the many important functions, besides that of providing a justification for forceful intervention, that are performed by the discourse of human rights.7 To this, the reply will come that human rights do much more in Rawls theory than justify forceful intervention. They also, inter alia, play an important role in: (a) justifying intervention short of military intervention, e.g. economic sanctions, diplomatic criticism, etc.; (b) setting a bench-mark for the internal legitimacy of societies by defining minimally necessary conditions of social cooperation; and (c) fixing the target and cut-off point of the duty of assistance owed to burdened societies. Moreover, nowhere does Rawls explicitly say that the duties correlative to human rights or their normative implications more generally, bear exclusively on peoples or state-like political communities. Human rights also constrain and guide the activities of individuals, corporations, non-governmental organizations and regional and international organizations.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com HABERMAS ARGUES THAT THE TENSION BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND A COSMOPOLITIAN ETHOS IS OVERSTATED
Page 73 of 158
Robert Fine [Prof. of Sociology, University of Warwick] and Will Smith, Jrgen Habermass Theory of Cosmopolitanism, Constellations Volume 10, No 4, (2003) There is another kind of response to be found in Habermass writings one that is perhaps closer to the mainstream of contemporary cosmopolitanism. In this mode he argues that the tension between national and cosmopolitan right is overstated and that respect for constitutionally regulated processes of national politics can in fact be reconciled with respect for the authority of supra-national institutions. This outcome is possible if the rational content of a nationally constituted political community enjoys substantial overlap with the rational content of the cosmopolitan project; that is, if cosmopolitan institutions enforce the same principles of justice as those that regulate politics at a national level. Only if cosmopolitan institutions express radically different principles of justice from those that regulate politics at a national level, if for example a nation-state is based on ethnic principles and authorizes major human rights violations against a section of its own subjects, only then will the conditions for conflict be acute. Habermass strategy is thus to look for reconciliation between national and cosmopolitan institutions, supplemented by a justification of cosmopolitan violence where the possibility of reconciliation is absent.
Page 74 of 158
HABERMAS MAINTAINS THAT RATIONALITY AND THE CULMINATION OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT WILL PROPEL THE WORLD TOWARD MORE COSMOPOLITAN IDENTIFICATIONS Robert Fine [Prof. of Sociology, University of Warwick] and Will Smith, Jrgen Habermass Theory of Cosmopolitanism, Constellations Volume 10, No 4, (2003) Any political theorist who advocates a form of cosmopolitan politics knows that he or she will have to face daunting questions relating to both the desirability and feasibility of their proposals: how, it will be asked, can a normative perspective recommending a cosmopolitan form of solidarity, with institutions to match, be reconciled with the existence of national communities in such a way as to achieve stability and justice? In the work of Jrgen Habermas we find more ambivalence than is immediately apparent. One response he makes is to affirm a willingness to override national sovereignty in the name of cosmopolitan justice. Here appeal is made to the historical contingency of the nation as the organizing principle of political communities, the death of nationalism as a normative principle of social integration, and the necessity of cosmopolitan justice occasioned by new social and economic conditions. Against a seemingly intransigent faith in the nationstate, Habermas affirms the rationality of cosmopolitan solidarity as a fulfillment of the Enlightenment project. He declares his belief that, although the universalistic elements of right were once swamped by the particularistic self-assertion of one nation against another, they are nonetheless best suited to the identity of world citizens, not to that of citizen s of a particular state that has to maintain itself against other states. He presents cosmopolitanism as the logical culmination of the principles of right on which enlightenment was founded.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com JUST WAR THEORY
Page 75 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED ONLY WHEN THERE IS AN IMMINENT EMERGENCY Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 Military interventions should be undertaken only in circumstances of moral emergency. This means circumstances where large-scale gross human rights violations are ongoing or can be reasonably judged as imminent. The violations I have in mind include mass killing, the deliberate starvation of or denial of aid to stricken populations, mass rape and forced population displacement. Drawing on the lessons of Iraq, we can now be clearer about what the emergencies-only rule should rule out. These include war rationales based on punishment, deterrence, WMDinterdiction and democracy promotion. The Iraq experience underlines both the human costs that have to be weighed against the uncertain benefits of going to war for these latter objectives and the legitimacy (and therefore efficacy) damaging consequences of waging war in the name of them. The moral-emergency-only imperative should rule out explicitly military interventions to punish historical crimes (like Saddams between 1980 and 1991) and to preve nt crimes from being committed at indeterminate future points. It should also prohibit wars to prevent merely possible or even arguably probable (as opposed to imminent) future acts of external aggression. Past crimes and future threats need not be ignored by rights-respecting and peace-preserving powers. There are tools short of war for promoting human rights in other lands, including diplomatic pressure, graduated sanctions, material and moral support for human rights activists and international prosecutions. If these tools are less potent than war, the Iraq case suggests that the cost of war is sometimes such that it is better to leave standing a repressive regime not engaged in ongoing gross violations than to rip apart functioning societies through military interventions. Similar tools can be used to minimize the danger from states seeking WMD. To these we can add threats of massive military retaliation for WMD attacks and international policing to prevent WMD smuggling and (as inducements) guarantees of economic aid in exchange for disarmament and promises to secure the WMD disarmament of rival powers (such as Israel in the case of pre-war Iraq or Iran today). Again, there are no guarantees: but regimes of peaceful deterrence have worked against repressive and radical nuclear powers until now. Against the longer -run danger of nuclear, chemical or biological attack must be weighed the possibility that attacking a WMDarmed state will itself precipitate a defensive unleashing of mass destruction weapons, cause significant civilian casualties even if these weapons are not unleashed and anyway fail to eliminate the adversarys WMD arsenal. The last possibility is minimized if a WMD state is occupied, but the human cost of the intervention will then be commensurately larger; and there is no certainty that a besieged state will not, as defeat approaches, disperse WMD materials among non-state actors. Deterrence will not work with martyrdom-hungry terrorists; but it could stop states from handing weapons to them. Nor will attacking or occupying states affect the determination of non-state actors to acquire smuggled materials on black markets. There is no alternative here to police-style interdiction. Finally, the emergencies-only rule excludes wars for democratic change. Democracy is not the sort of good that justifies the large-scale sacrifice of human life witnessed in post-invasion Iraq; it cannot be compared with, say, basic rights to protection from torture or massacre. Again, this prohibition allows active efforts to promote democracy abroad, by employing measures identical to those earlier listed for promoting human rights. Whatever the political efficacy of diplomatic,
Page 76 of 158
financial and other forms of nonviolent pressure, policies of this more limited kind are less morally risky than democracy-promoting wars.
Page 77 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED ONLY WHEN IT AIMS ONLY TO STOP THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF THE CRISIS Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 If the preceding injunction deals with the grounds for war, it is also necessary to limit war aims. For some JMI supporters, a regimes perpetration of emergency-level crimes renders it liable to regime change. I propose that JMIs be confined to addressing the factors that constituted the grounds for war; that is, to protecting populations caught up in moral emergencies, separating them from their tormentors and securing their access to life-sustaining aid. This will normally involve two types of action: the armed protection of relief supplies and the establishment of protectorates or safe havens. In both cases, the JMI is a direct extension of humanitarianism: it throws a ring of steel around threatened populations and helps them get back on their feet. This kind of intervention was discredited by the failure of UN forces to protect safe havens in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but this only underlines the necessity to protect havens with lethal force as opposed to peacekeepers or observers. More positive recent examples include the establishment of the Kurdish safe haven in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War (1991), the NATO bombing to defend Muslim-held parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995), the establishment of a UN protectorate in Kosovo (1999), the British intervention to protect the population of Freetown in Sierra Leone (2000) and the Australian-led interventions in East Timor (1999 and 2006). In terms of interventions to protect relief supplies, the USUN intervention in Somalia might be considered paradigmatic, except that it went wrong when the intervening forces decided to choose sides in Mogadishus inter-clan wars. The element of separation here is important. Throwing a ring of steel around vulnerable populations carries three advantages over more expansive rescue or regime-change operations. First, it limits the scale of the intervention and hopefully, therefore, of loss of life and limb. Second, it establishes easily defensible lines. Third, enclave operations enclose largely supportive populations, minimizing the chances of popular resistance within occupation zone. Intervening powers reaped all three of these moral and strategic-political advantages with the 1991 creation of a Kurdish safe haven in Iraq; they forfeited all three with the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Page 78 of 158
VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS DO NOT ALWAYS WARRANT INTERVENTION, BUT EGRIOUSLY VIOLATIONS OF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS DO Paul Di Stefano [Prof. of Humanities at John Abbott College in Montreal, Quebec], Human Rights Violations and the Moral Permissibility of Military Intervention, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 23:537545 (2011) The violation of human rights, however, does not automatically effectuate intervention. A further difficulty lies in creating a viable typology of human rights and determining to what degree those rights must be violated in order for military intervention to be morally permissible. Caney correctly suggests that a general commitment to human rights insufficiently justifies military intervention, as few would agree, for example, that a violation of ones right to rest and leisure (Article 24, UDHR) demands such action. Other state crimes, such as genocide, whose nefarious nature is widely agreed-on, hold a prominent position in the list of atrocities that should precipitate intervention. As suggested by Donnelly, international society may be moving toward an anti-genocidal exception. Limiting the permissibility of intervention to cases of genocide is morally problematic for two reasons. First, the commitment to intervene when genocide is occurring is based on the legal responsibility of state signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention. The real problem, regarding permissibility, exists when state intervention is devoid of legal impetus and depends on morality alone. Second, there are many human rights violations that do not fall under the genocide banner that are severe and terrible enough to warrant military intervention. Surely, mass rape, murder, and displacement, not aimed at a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, merit some consideration. Since no agreed-on typology of human rights exists, it may be useful to maintain that the violation of socially basic human rights should precipitate the greatest degree of permissibility with regards to intervention, since these rights, as defined by Luban, are those whose satisfaction is necessary to the enjoyment of any other rights. Without the protection of socially basic rights, the foundation of the human rights edifice is unsound.
Page 79 of 158
INTERVENTION WOULD BE JUSTIFIED IF CONSISTENT WITH THE TENETS OF JUST WAR THEORY Jean Bethke Elshtain. Just War and Humanitarian Intervention, Ideas from the National Humanities Center, Volume 8, Number 2, 2001. IT IS NOW SO EASY TO DETERMINE just how to assay questions of global inequality in relation to decisions of whether to intervene in local or regional conflicts. When we think of equality or inequality, the nigh automatic reference point is a socioeconomic one: questions of distributive justice dominate the discussion. Yet one could make a case that questions of fairness or just treatment do bear on the ways we think about intervention and the means of intervention. There is a long tradition of reflecting on questions of war and violence in the language of justice: the just war tradition. Mistakenly thought of by many as a way to endorse any war a nation decides to embark upon by throwing the mantle of just or justice over the violence, the just war tradition is, in fact, a theory of comparative justice applied to considerations of war and intervention. In order to better grapple with its complexities and the characteristic form of moral reasoning that enters into the just war traditioncasuistry, which got unfairly labeled by Pascal and others as merely a way in which Catholics managed to mangle Holy Writ to serve narrow Church interestsit is important to get a grip on just what this centuries- old, ongoingly revised tradition consists of and the ways in which it meets the alternative traditions of realism, on one end of a continuum, and Christian pacifism, on the other.
Page 80 of 158
JUST WAR THEORY IS THE ONLY FRAMEWORK THAT ACKNOWLEDGES THE IMPORTANCE OF MORALITY IN DETERMINING WHETHER INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED Jean Bethke Elshtain. Just War and Humanitarian Intervention, Ideas from the National Humanities Center, Volume 8, Number 2, 2001. As a theory of war fighting and resort to war, just war thinking is best known as a cluster of injunctions: what it is permissible, and what is impermissible, to do. The ad bellum specifications provide the terms under which a war may be waged: for example, a war must be the last resort, it must be openly and legally declared, and it must be a response to a specific instance of unjust aggression. The in bello norms concern the actual conduct of war: the means deployed in fighting a war must be proportionate to ends, and a war must be waged in such a way as to distinguish combatants from noncombatants.Whether in evaluating a resort to arms or in determining the bases and nature of political order more generally, the just war thinker insists on the need for moral judgments, for determining who in fact in the situation at hand is behaving in a more or less just or unjust manner; who is more the victimizer and who the victim. As well, just war insists on the power of moral appeals and arguments. For the strategic realist, moral appeals are window dressing, icing on the cake of strategic considerations. For the just war thinker, moral appeals are the heart of the matternot the only matter but the place from which one starts. These moral appeals are not abstract deontological desiderata but, rather, a version of phronesis, or practical reason, in a neo-Aristotelian sense. (Although it would be a big mistake to assimilate the comparative justice reasoning of the just war tradition to Aristotelian virtue theory.) Just war thinkers, then, do not so much propound immutable rules so much as clarify the circumstances that justify a states going to war (jus ad bellum) and what is and is not allowable in fighting the warsor interventions to which a polity has committed itself (jus in bello). There are those who argue that our moral squeamishness must be laid to rest in times of war; the image of the violated woman, the starving child, the blown-topieces man, be put out of sight and out of mind. This is cruel, they say, but we live in a cruel and dangerous world. We must think in terms of the Big Picture, the system of sovereign states and balance of forces. For if we do not think in this way, if we are naive about the worlds ways, many more human beings will suffer over the long run as smaller nations or groups of people within nations are gobbled up by huge empires and tyrants run amok, are ethnically cleansed, are rounded up and murdered. Just war thinkers acknowledge this important insistence on the ways in which refusing to counter aggression may, in fact, make things worse, but go on to insist that we can hold within a single frame a concern for peoples in a collective sense and a commitment to the dignity of each and every human being: the ethical concerns are never simply irrelevant.
Page 81 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS JUSTIFIED UNDER JUST WAR THEORYSUBJECT TO CONSTRAINTS Jean Bethke Elshtain. Just War and Humanitarian Intervention, Ideas from the National Humanities Center, Volume 8, Number 2, 2001. But there are other justified occasions for war. Aggression need not be directed against ones own to trigger the jus ad bellum argument. The offense of aggression may be committed against a nation or a people incapable of defending themselves against a determined adversary. If one can intervene to assist the injured party, one is justified in doing so provided other considerations are met. From St. Augustine on, saving the innocent from certain harm has been recognized as a justifiable cause: the innocent being those who are in no position to defend themselves. The reference is not to any presumption of moral innocence on the part of victims: nobody is innocent in the classic just war framework in that sense. This is another way in which the just war tradition guards against moral triumphalism: by insisting that, even though the balance of justice may fall more on one side than the other in cases of conflict, there should be no presumption that the aggressor is wholly evil; the aggressed against wholly innocent. Presuppositions of total innocence can and have fueled horrible things. In our time, this saving of the innocent is usually referred to as humanitarian intervention. This does not mean, of course, that any one nation or even a group of nations can or should respond to every instance of violation of the innocent, including the most horrific of all violations ethnic cleansing. The just war tradition adds a cautionary note about overreach. Be certain before you intervene, even in a just cause, that you have a reasonable chance of success. Dont barge in and make a bad situation worse. Considerations such as these take us to the heart of the so-called in bello rules. They are restraints on the means to be deployed even in a just cause. Means must be proportionate to ends. The damage must not be greater than the offenses one aims to halt. Above all, noncombatant immunity must be protected. Noncombatants historically have been women, children, the aged and infirm, all unarmed persons going about their daily lives, as well as prisoners of war who have been disarmed by definition. Knowingly placing noncombatants in jeopardy, knowingly putting in place strategies that bring greatest suffering and harm to noncombatants rather than to combatants, is unacceptable on just war grounds. Better by far to risk the lives of ones own combatants than the lives of enemy noncombatants. Just war thinking also insists that war aims be made clear, that criteria for what is to count as success in achieving those aims be publicly articulated, and that negotiated settlement never be ruled out of court by fiat. The ultimate goal of just war is peace that achieves a greater measure of justice, the delightfulness of peace, in Augustines phrase, peace dear to the hearts of humankind. In conducting a just war, there should be evident traces of that peace borne along by the two major principles of discrimination, or targeting only legitimate war targets here noncombatant immunity, and proportionality, a way of restraining the scope and intensity of warfare in order to minimize its destructiveness, to remind human beings there is another possibility.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION WORKS
Page 82 of 158
NATIONS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY ADEPT AT USING INTERVENTION AS A TOOL TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS RATHER THAN VIOLATE THEM John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) To some extent, widespread skepticism is understandable: past failures have been more newsworthy than successes, and foreign interventions inevitably face steep challenges. Yet such skepticism is unwarranted. Despite the early setbacks in Libya, natos success in protecting civilians and helping rebel forces remove a corrupt leader there has become more the rule of humanitarian intervention than the exception. As Libya and the international community prepare for the post-Qaddafi transition, it is important to examine the big picture of humanitarian interventionand the big picture is decidedly positive. Over the last 20 years, the international community has grown increasingly adept at using military force to stop or prevent mass atrocities. Humanitarian intervention has also benefited from the evolution of international norms about violence, especially the emergence of the responsibility to protect, which holds that the international community has a special set of responsibilities to protect civilians by force, if necessaryfrom war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide when national governments fail to do so. The doctrine has become integrated into a growing tool kit of conflict management strategies that includes todays more robust peacekeeping operations and increasingly eective international criminal justice mechanisms. Collectively, these strategies have helped foster an era of declining armed conflict, with wars occurring less frequently and producing far fewer civilian casualties than in previous periods.
Page 83 of 158
CRITICISMS ABOUT THE EFFICACY OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ARE OUTDATED John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Despite the international communitys impressive record of recent humanitarian missions, many of the criticisms formulated in response to the botched campaigns of 1992 95 still guide the conversation about intervention today. The charges are outdated. Contrary to the claims that interventions prolong civil wars and lead to greater humanitarian suering and civilian casualties, the most violent and protracted cases in recent history Somalia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bosnia before Srebrenica, and Darfurhave been cases in which the international community was unwilling either to intervene or to sustain a commitment with credible force. Conversely, a comprehensive study conducted by the political scientist Taylor Seybolt has found that aggressive operations legitimized by firm un Security Council resolutions, as in Bosnia in 1995 and East Timor in 1999, were the most successful at ending conflicts.
Page 84 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS GENERALLY SUCCEED IN PREVENTING MASS ATROCITIES AGAINST CIVILIANS John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Even when civil wars do not stop right away, external interventions often mitigate violence against civilians. This is because, as the political scientist Matthew Krain and others have found, interventions aimed at preventing mass atrocities often force would-be killers to divert resources away from slaughtering civilians and toward defending themselves. This phenomenon, witnessed in the recent Libya campaign, means that even when interventions fail to end civil wars or resolve factional dierences immediately, they can still protect civilians.
Page 85 of 158
SINCE THE MODERN ERA OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION, VIOLENCE AGAINST CIVILIANS IS DOWN MARKEDLY John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Another critique of humanitarian interventions is that they create perverse incentives for rebel groups to deliberately provoke states to commit violence against civilians in order to generate an international response. By this logic, the prospect of military intervention would generate more rebel provocations and thus more mass atrocities. Yet the statistical record shows exactly the opposite. Since the modern era of humanitarian intervention began, both the frequency and the intensity of attacks on civilians have declined. During the Arab Spring protests this year, there was no evidence that opposition figures in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, or Yemen sought to trigger outside intervention. In fact, the protesters clearly stated that they would oppose such action. Even the Libyan rebels, who faced long odds against Qaddafis forces, refused what would have been the most eective outside help: foreign boots on the ground.
Page 86 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION HAS LED TO A SIGNIFICANT DECREASE IN VIOLENCE FROM CIVIL WAR John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Collectively, these new conflict management and civilian protection tools have contributed to a marked decline in violence resulting from civil war. According to the most recent Human Security Report, between 1992 and 2003 the number of conflicts worldwide declined by more than 40 percent, and between 1988 and 2008 the number of conflicts that produced 1,000 or more battle deaths per year fell by 78 percent. Most notably, the incidence of lethal attacks against civilians was found to be lower in 2008 than at any point since the collection of such data began in 1989.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com THE INTERVENTION IN COTE DIVOIRE DEMONSTRATES THE INCREASING EFFECTIVENESS OF MODERN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
Page 87 of 158
John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) In Cte dIvoire, a civil war that began in 2002 led to the partition of the country, with a large un force interposed between the two sides. After years of peacekeeping, the un oversaw longdelayed elections in 2010 and declared the opposition leader victorious. The incumbent, President Laurent Gbagbo, refused to leave, causing a months-long standoff during which Gbagbos forces killed nearly 3,000 people. As another civil war loomed, France sent in a powerful military force that, in tandem with the UN peacekeepers, deposed Gbagbo and put the legitimate winner in the presidential palace. Two decades ago, a similar situation in Angola led to disaster. After the UN sent a mere 500 military observers to monitor elections in 1992, the losing candidate resorted to war and the international community walked away. The crisis in Cte dIvoire ended much differently, partly because the mission was broadly seen as legitimate. Supporters of the action included not just the UN Security Council and Western governments but also the African Union, neighboring West African countries, and leading human rights groups. Moreover, the intervention in Cte dIvoire applied escalating military force over the course of several months that culminated in overwhelming firepower. The operations planners allowed for, but did not count on, diplomacy and negotiation to dislodge Gbagbo. When those paths proved fruitless, the international community hardened its resolve.
Page 88 of 158
THE MILITARY INTERVENTION IN LIBYA DEMONSTRATES THAT HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION CAN PROTECT VITAL MORAL NORMS John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Although the final chapter of the Libya mission has yet to be written and serious challenges remain, it has enjoyed several of the same advantages. The international response began in February when, as Qaddafis security forces intensified their eorts to crush the protests, the un Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1970, which condemned the violence, imposed sanctions on the regime, and referred the case to the International Criminal Court. Three weeks later, Qaddafis forces moved toward the rebel capital of Benghazi, a city of more than 700,000, and all signs pointed to an imminent slaughter. The Arab League demanded quick un action to halt the impending bloodshed, as did major human rights organizations, such as the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch. In response, the Security Council passed Resolution 1973, which demanded a suspension of hostilities and authorized nato to enforce a no-fly zone to protect civilians. Although five members of the Security Council Brazil, China, Germany, India, and Russiaexpressed reservations, none of them ultimately opposed the resolution. The subsequent intervention has been a genuinely multinational operation in which the United States at first played a central combat role and then stepped back, providing mostly support and logistics. The intervention has accomplished the primary objective of Resolution 1973. It saved civilian lives by halting an imminent slaughter in Benghazi, breaking the siege of Misratah, and forcing Qaddafis tank and artillery units to take cover rather than commit atrocities. And despite the initial military setbacks and some frustration over the length and cost of the operation, the intervention contributed to the end of the civil war between Qaddafi and the rebels, which otherwise might have been much longer and more violent.
Page 89 of 158
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY LEARNED IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM ITS EARLY FAILURES IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Ever since U.S. marines stormed the Somali coast in 1992, the international community has grappled with the recurring challenges of modern humanitarian intervention: establishing legitimacy, sharing burdens across nations, acting with proportionality and discrimination, avoiding mission creep, and developing exit strategies. These challenges have not changed, but the ways the international community responds to them have. Todays successful interventions share a number of elements absent in earlier, failed missions. First, the interventions that respond the most quickly to unfolding events protect the most lives. Ethnic cleansing and mass atrocities often occur in the early phases of conflicts, as in Rwanda and Bosnia. This highlights the necessity of early warning indicators and a capacity for immediate action. The un still lacks standby capabilities to dispatch peacekeepers instantly to a conflict area, but national or multinational military forces have responded promptly under un authority, and then after a number of months, they have handed o control to a un peacekeeping force that may include soldiers from the original mission. This model worked in East Timor, Chad, and the Central African Republic, and it guided the international communitys response to the impen ding massacre in Benghazi.
Page 90 of 158
INTERVENING GOVERNMENTS HAVE LEARNED THE LESSONS OF UNDERDEPLOYMENT IN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Second, the international community has learned from Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia that it needs access to enough military power and diplomatic muscle to back up a credible commitment to protecting civilians and to prevail even if things go wrong along the way. Lighter deployments may also succeed if members of the international community have additional forces close at hand that can be accessed if needed. When un peacekeepers ran into trouble in Sierra Leone in 2000, for example, the United Kingdom rushed in with 4,500 troops to save the government and the peacekeeping mission from collapse.
Page 91 of 158
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS LEARNED THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVELY ENGAGING LOCAL CONSTITUENCIES IN INTERVENTION John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Third, intervening governments must be sensitive to inevitable opposition from domestic constituencies and must design interventions that can withstand pressure for early exits. As Libya has demonstrated, protecting civilians from intransigent regimes often requires persistent and sustained action. In all likelihood, seemingly straightforward operations will turn out to be much less so. In past, failed missions, the international community was unwilling to accept coalition casualties and responded by withdrawing. Successful interventions, by contrast, have been designed to limit the threat to the intervening forces, thus allowing them to add resources and broaden the dimensions of the military operations in the face of difficulties.
Page 92 of 158
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS LEARNED THE IMPORTANCE OF COALITION BUILDING John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Fourth, legitimate humanitarian interventions must be supported by a broad coalition of international, regional, and local actors. Multi - lateral interventions convey consensus about the appropriateness of the operations, distribute costs, and establish stronger commitments for the post-intervention transitions. But multilateralism cannot come at the expense of synchronized leadership. War criminals usually look to exploit divisions between outside powers opposing them. Interventions need to avoid having multiple states and organizations dispatch their own representatives to the conflict, sending mixed signals to the target states.
Page 93 of 158
INTERVENING STATES HAVE LEARNED THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A MEANINGFUL EXIT STRATEGY John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Finally, perhaps the most daunting challenge of a humanitarian intervention is the exit. Because violence against civilians is often rooted in deeper crises of political order, critics note that once in, intervenors confront the dilemma of either staying indefinitely and assuming the burdens of governance, as in Bosnia, or withdrawing and allowing the country to fall back into chaos, as in Somalia. Some observers, then, have demanded that any intervention be carried out with a clearly defined exit strategy. Yet more important than an exit strategy is a comprehensive transition strategy, whereby foreign combat forces can exit as peacekeepers take over, and peacekeepers can exit when local governing institutions are in place and an indigenous security force stands ready to respond quickly if violence resumes. The earliest phases of an intervention must include planning for a transition strategy with clearly delineated political and economic benchmarks, so that international and local authorities can focus on the broader, long-term challenges of reconstruction, political reconciliation, and economic development.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION SAVES LIVES
Page 94 of 158
John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Humanitarian interventions involve an inherent contradiction: they use violence in order to control violence. Setbacks are almost inevitable, and so it is no surprise that the operations often attract criticism. Yet when carried out thoughtfully, legitimately, and as part of a broader set of mechanisms designed to protect civilians, the use of military force for humanitarian purposes saves lives. Mass atrocities, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are truly problems from hell, but their solutionshoned over the course of two decades of experience from Mogadishu to Tripoli are very much of this world.
Page 95 of 158
MULTIPLE VARIANTS ARE DETERMINANTS OF SUCCESS OF US INTERVENTION EMPIRICAL MODEL SHOWS Bedford, William T. Jr., "The Effect of U.S. Intervention on Political Rights and Civil Liberties" (2011). University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects. <http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1419> Table 1 includes eight data models which measure the impact of U.S. intervention on Political Rights and Civil Liberties. They are labeled according to the independent variable and estimation procedure that was used. The first four models test hypothesis number one dealing with political rights. The following four test hypothesis number two dealing with civil liberties. Positive coefficients imply an increase in political rights or civil liberties depending on the model, and negative coefficients imply a decrease in political rights or civil liberties. In line with research that had been done by Dobbins (2003) the analysis shows that prior democratization is positively correlated with political rights and civil liberties and is statistically significant. Furthermore the analysis confirms that economic development is associated with higher levels of political rights and civil liberties and is statistically significant as was established in a study by Przeworski and Limongi (1997). State failure and the length of an intervention do not appear conducive to political rights and civil liberties since neither are statistically significant. Length having a negative correlation is surprising, but may be the result of other factors. For instance, higher levels of conflict may result in longer interventions where security concerns are given higher priority than democratization. As such length may be serving as a proxy for conflict and higher levels of conflict during an intervention may reduce the level of political rights and civil liberties. Failed states are unable to guarantee political rights and civil liberties and an authority vacuum may mean that security concerns are once again much more important than increasing democratization. Table 1 also shows that ethnic fragmentation and the post cold war period are not statistically significant.
Page 96 of 158
MULTIPLE MODELS SHOW THAT US INTERVENTION HAS A POSITIVE EFFECT ON RIGHTS Bedford, William T. Jr., "The Effect of U.S. Intervention on Political Rights and Civil Liberties" (2011). University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects. <http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1419> The first four models measure whether any intervention involving the U.S. has a positive effect on political rights. Using the data compiled by Vllasi (2009) results in a positive but not 16 statistically significant relationship. Using the data compiled by Peceny (1999) results in a positive and statistically significant relationship for political rights. The next four models in Table 1 measure whether U.S. intervention in general has a positive effect on civil liberties. Using the data compiled by Vllasi (2009) shows that under one estimation procedure there is a positive and significant relationship, but under the other this is not the case. This shows that there is sensitivity to the way in which U.S. interventions are measured. In sum table 1 shows that U.S. intervention is positively correlated with increases in both political rights and civil liberties, but the significance depends on both the measure of U.S. intervention as well as the estimation procedure used. How U.S. intervention is measured is important in examining the relationship between interventions and its effect on democratization which will be discussed later.
Page 97 of 158
THE CREATION OF THE ICTY IN YUGOSLAVIA EFFECTIVELY DELEGITIMIZED LEADERS WHO HAD VIOLATED HUMANITARIAN NORMS John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) The problem from hell stopped immediately, and the ensuing decade of U.S. -led peacekeeping saw not a single U.S. combat-related casualty in Bosnia. Unlike previous interventions, the postDayton international peacekeeping presence was unified, vigorous, and sustained, and it has kept a lid on ethnic violence for more than 15 years. A related innovation was the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (icty), a court that has indicted 161 war criminals, including all the principal Serbian wartime leaders. Despite extensive criticism for ostensibly putting justice ahead of peace, the tribunal has produced dramatic results. Every suspected war criminal, once indicted, quickly lost political influence in postwar Bosnia, and not one of the 161 indictees remains at large today. Buoyed by these successes, nato responded to an imminent Serbian attack on Kosovo in 1999 by launching a major air war. Despite initial setbacks (the operation failed to stop a Serbian ground attack that created more than a million Kosovar Albanian refugees), the international community signaled that it would not back down. Under U.S. leadership, nato escalated the air campaign, and the icty indicted Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity. Within three months, the combined military and diplomatic pressure compelled Serbia to withdraw its forces from Kosovo. And even though many observers, including several senior Clinton administration ocials, feared that the ictys indictment of Milosevic in the middle of the military campaign would make it even less likely that he would capitulate in Kosovo or ever relinquish power, he was removed from oce 18 months later by nonviolent civil pro test and turned over to The Hague.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com SYRIA
Page 98 of 158
INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD IS PREMATURE NOW BUT COULD BE EFFECTIVE Weiss, Michael [Director of Communications and Acting Research Director at the Henry Jackson Society.] What it Will Take to Intervene in Syria: First Get the Opposition to Work Together. January 6, 2012. Foreign Affairs. <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137013/michael-weiss/what-it-will-take-to-intervene-insyria?page=show#> And Washington, though it has expressed reservations about intervention, is now considering how it might aid the opposition, by either sending medical assistance or helping to create a safe zone -- a martially cordoned-off area within the country to protect the civilian population close to the Syrian-Turkish border. In testimony before Congress last December, the State Department official Frederic Hof called Assad a dead man walking, implying that the United States is already envisioning a post-Assad Syria. Yet despite the humanitarian catastrophe, intervention at this moment would be premature, because Syrias various opposition groups have yet to coalesce into a unified political force worth backing. That said, calls for intervention are more than just wishful thinking. Should the various political and armed elements challenging Damascus align their interests, Turkey and the West could use force to create a safe area in Syria that would save lives and serve as an outpost to battle the Assad regime.
Page 99 of 158
THE U.S. SHOULD CONSIDER INTERVENTION IN SYRIA IF OPPOSITION FORCES UNITE Weiss, Michael [Director of Communications and Acting Research Director at the Henry Jackson Society.] What it Will Take to Intervene in Syria: First Get the Opposition to Work Together . January 6, 2012. Foreign Affairs. <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137013/michael-weiss/what-it-will-take-to-intervene-insyria?page=show#> Without question, this is the dense thicket Juppe, Pillay, and Washington will have to navigate if they choose to protect the Syrian people and hasten the end of the Assad regime. Nevertheless, there are signs of progress. Now that the SNC has endorsed foreign intervention, bringing it in line with what all factions of the Syrian insurgency have advocated for months, there is a greater likelihood that the various political and military arms of the opposition will unite, if only out of their shared desperation over the unabated carnage. If this happens, then there is a path to Western interdiction in Syria, albeit one that will require deft and creative diplomacy not only between Western powers but with hitherto ambivalent Arab governments.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com POSSIBLE PLAN FOR U.S. HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN SYRIA
Page 100 of 158
Weiss, Michael [Director of Communications and Acting Research Director at the Henry Jackson Society.] What it Will Take to Intervene in Syria: First Get the Opposition to Work Together . January 6, 2012. Foreign Affairs <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137013/michael-weiss/what-it-will-take-to-intervene-insyria?page=show#> Such an intervention would need to begin with the establishment a 4.25-square-mile safe area around the northwestern city of Jisr al-Shughour, where a regime-perpetrated massacre took place last June and anti-Assad sentiment runs high. Due to the proximity of the city to Turkey, the geopolitical sensitivities of a Western nation invading a Muslim-majority country, and the fact that Turkey has already been hosting and facilitating the FSA, Ankara would be the strategic choice to provide the ground cover to fortify the safe area. The most effective way of legally authorizing a safe area would be through a UN Security Council resolution. But Russia will not forfeit its alliance with Assad, making the Kremlins acquiescence at the Security Council unlikely. The other available route, then, is the UN General Assemblys Uniting for Peace resolution, which allows for collective measures and the use of armed force in foreign conflicts. Created in 1950 by the United States to circumvent repeated Soviet vetoes in the Security Council against a Western military response to the crisis in Korea, this seldom used resolution requires a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly. Amassing such overwhelming support for intervention would be difficult, but certainly not out of the question. Last November, the General Assembly did what the Security Council was unable to do and passed its own nonbinding resolution -- one co-sponsored by Arab and Muslim-majority nations -- condemning the Assad regime for violence. If the crisis in Syria continues or escalates, then there may indeed be a moral and political consensus to invoke Uniting for Peace in order to establish a safe area. A safe area in a central region of resistance would provide shelter for internal refugees, who are now reported to number in the hundreds of thousands. It could also serve as a base for the rebels, now largely operating out of Turkey, as well as a communications hub for Free Syrian broadcasting to the rest of the country. The FSA and independent brigades have already established de facto checkpoints and buffer zones deep inside Syria, which have served as the life line to the protests in Homs and elsewhere. Given a fortified logistical headquarters and a steady supply of equipment and arms, the rebels would have their Benghazi in Syria, their base from which to battle Damascus more effectively. Any intervention would need to establish a no-fly zone to protect Jisr al-Shughour. Syrian forces used helicopter gunships in their previous attack on the city, and the Assad regime has Sovietdesigned surface-to-air missiles stationed up and down the western corridor of the country that are capable of downing fighter jets. Nevertheless, a Western military force would achieve air supremacy with relative ease. The United States Sixth Fleet co uld also easily establish a naval blockade; ancillary air support could come from the United Kingdoms bases in Cyprus. The question is whether NATO would participate, especially given Secretary-General Anders Rasmussens near-categorical rejection of NATO involvement in Syria several months ago. If it does, it could enforce a Libya-style no-fly zone from its base in Incirlik, Turkey. Even if NATO refuses the mission, however, the United States, Britain, and France have the technology and air power to keep the Syrian skies clear for as long as necessary.
Page 101 of 158
EVEN IF US INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD BE INEFFECTIVE, ITS TRY OR DIE Weiss, Michael [Director of Communications and Acting Research Director at the Henry Jackson Society.] What it Will Take to Intervene in Syria: First Get the Opposition to Work Together. January 6, 2012. Foreign Affairs <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137013/michael-weiss/what-it-will-take-to-intervene-insyria?page=show#> The gravest challenge to intervening forces would come not from Assads conventional defenses but from groups allied to the regime, such as Hezbollah, the Kurdistan Workers Party, and Iraqi pro-Iranian forces and Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps, agents of which are already enlisted or embedded with Assads feared Fourth Armored Division. Following a foreign intervention, these groups could resort to terrorist attacks to make Syria a front line in a new proxy war. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia could also become al Qaeda in Syria if it senses an opportunity to destabilize another vulnerable Middle Eastern power, particularly following U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. There is also a possibility that Sunni or Shia militias would pour into Syria and turn the uprising into an all-out sectarian conflict. In addition, Assad could fight back beyond his own borders. In May, he sent Palestinian refugees into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights to distract from the unrest in his country, and he might launch rockets at Israel should he feel further besieged. These dangers would imperil outside forces attempting to protect Syrian civilians and facilitate the anti-Assad opposition. There is no doubt that, for these reasons and others, intervention in Syria should be a last resort. But Damascus has scandalized every Potemkin effort at reform or negotiation. The Arab League observer mission has proved useless. Thousands have been massacred; many thousands more have been tortured using methods as imaginative as they are sadistic. When a country of 23 million collapses into anarchy, how many people will have to be widowed, orphaned, or dispossessed before the definition of failed statehood has been met? The more time the world gives Assad, the more he makes a mockery of the responsibility to protect doctrine, and the more people begging for Western assistance are simply wished the best of luck and left to their grim fate.
Page 102 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN SYRIA IS A PREREQUISITE TO SUCCESSFUL DIPLOMATIC ACTION Cohen Roger [New York Times Columnist]. Intervene in Syria. February 4, 2013. The New York Times. <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/columns/rogercohen/index.html> But of course the international community that awful phrase is divided, with a Libyaburned Russia and an anti-intervention China deep in a blocking game. Brahimi wants a transitional government formed with full executive powers (this, he explained, is diplomatic speak for Assad having no role in the transition). The government would be the fruit of negotiations outside Syria between opposition representatives and a strong civilian-military government delegation. It would then oversee a democratic transition including elections and constitutional reform. This sounds good but will not fly. I agree with Brahimi that there is no military solution. Syria, with its mosaic of faiths and ethnicities, requires political compromise to survive. That is the endgame. But this does not mean there is no military action that can advance the desired political result by bolstering the armed capacity of the Syrian opposition, leveling the military playing field, and hastening the departure of Assad essential for the birth of a new Syria. Assad the Alawite will not go until the balance of power is decisively against him.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com BRINK IN SYRIA IS NOW CANNOT AFFORD INACTION
Page 103 of 158
Cohen Roger [New York Times Columnist]. Intervene in Syria. February 4, 2013. The New York Times. <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/columns/rogercohen/index.html> An inflection point has been reached. Inaction spurs the progressive radicalization of Syria, the further disintegration of the state, the intensification of Assads mass killings, and the chances of the conflict spilling out of Syria in sectarian mayhem. It squanders an opportunity to weaken Iran. This is not in the Wests interest. The agreement that Assad has to go is broad; a tacit understanding that it is inevitable exists in Moscow. The Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, spluttered in justified incredulity at the notion the opposition would sit down with a regime that has slaughtered its own. It is time to alter the Syrian balance of power enough to give political compromise a chance and Assad no option but departure. That means an aggressive program to train and arm the Free Syrian Army. It also means McCains call to use U.S. cruise missiles to destroy Assads aircraft on the runway is daily more persuasive.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com US SUPPORT FOR OPPOSITION GROUPS IN SYRIA IS KEY
Page 104 of 158
Mardini, Ramzy [New York Times Columnist]. After Assad, Chaos? February 3, 2013. The New York Times. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/opinion/after-assad-chaos.html?ref=global> The United States must make recognition of the opposition strictly conditional on the coalition being genuinely representative of the Syrian people, with clear punishment for noncompliance. And contact between the American government and opposition leaders must not be limited to the ambassador and his staffers; Americans often seem oblivious to the power that personal relationships can have across the Arab world. Finally, America must empower secular, moderate and independent political forces that promote compromise and moderation. The best hope for Syrias future is a political settlement, not armed victory. But without a truly representative opposition, that hope will remain elusive.
Page 105 of 158
US INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD BE SUCCESSFULSHOULD NOT BE PARALYZED BY WORST CASE SCENARIO THINKING Boot, Max [senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations] and Jeane J. Kirkpatric [Senior Fellow for National Secur ity Studies].The Pentagons Cold Feet on Syria. March 15, 2012. Washington Post. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the pentagons-cold-feet-on-syria-should-not-decide-the-matter/2012/03/14/gIQAVMl0ES_story.html> Today, in the case of Syria, any military action needs to be carefully thought through, but we should not refuse to act simply because of the worst-case scenarios being raised by the Pentagon. Start with Syria's supposedly formidable air defense. Given the ease with which Israel penetrated those defenses in 1982, during the Lebanon War, and in 2007, to take out the al-Kibar nuclear reactor, it is unlikely that the systems would pose that much of a challenge to the world's most sophisticated and powerful air force. The U.S. Air Force had no trouble taking out Saddam Hussein's air defenses on two occasions, and those, like Syria's, were constructed largely on the Russian model. And what about that 330,000-man army? Most of the soldiers are poorly trained and unmotivated Sunni conscripts unwilling to do much to defend a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Bashar al-Assad's regime can count on only about 30,000 Alawite soldiers, which is why the same units are used to attack one rebel stronghold after another. The potential for starting a "proxy war" with Iran or Russia should be even less worrisome. Iran has been waging war sometimes by proxy, sometimes directly against us since taking our embassy personnel hostage in 1979. If we were to help topple Tehran's allies in Damascus, it would be merely a belated counterattack for all of Iran's aggression against the United States. As for Russia, yes, Moscow has a naval station in Syria, but presumably U.S. aircraft would not target Russian facilities. Short of that, it's hard to see how anything we might do would start any kind of conflict with Russia. This isn't the Cuban missile crisis, and Russia would not go to war to defend the Assad regime. What about the fractured nature of the Syrian opposition? That's a real concern but one that could be alleviated by the provision of training and aid. U.S. personnel could play a critical role by using our largess to buttress the more moderate elements of the opposition while shutting out factions affiliated with extremist groups that receive support from Gulf Arabs. So far, however, news accounts suggest that we have not yet even provided communications equipment that the rebels could use to coordinate activities. Aiding the rebels would hardly risk plunging Syria into civil war. Syria is already in a civil war, and it is getting worse. The more pressure we bring to topple Assad, the faster we can end that war and the more influence we can exert with a successor regime. By contrast, if we stand on the sidelines, worst-case scenarios such as Syrian chemical weapons falling into the wrong hands or groups such as al-Qaeda developing havens are more likely to result because of the Assad regime's inability to control its own territory. The need for a coalition is real, but plenty of international opposition has been raised to the Assad regime. Notwithstanding the lack of a U.N. resolution blocked by Russia and China Washington could assemble a coalition of the willing as President Bill Clinton did for Kosovo. But that will happen only if the Obama administration decides that action is called for and does not allow itself to be paralyzed by the Pentagon's reluctance to intervene.
Page 106 of 158
NEGATIVE EVIDENCE
NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW THE PRINCIPLE OF NON-INTERVENTION DERIVES FROM THE VALUE OF SELFDETERMINATION Paul Di Stefano [Prof. of Humanities at John Abbott College in Montreal, Quebec], Human Rights Violations and the Moral Permissibility of Military Intervention, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 23:537545 (2011) The principle of non-intervention is firmly rooted in the moral value of self-determination, self-help, and international order. Philosopher J.S. Mill asserts that the respect for the right of selfdetermination is the highest moral duty. Without the freedom afforded by self-determination, security, opportunity, and a sense of community are imperiled. Self-determination, facilitated by non-intervention, maintains moral value because it is only within states that men and women can build a political community they can call their own. Alluding to its instrumental value, Mill writes, When a people has had the misfortune to be ruled by a government under which the feelings and the virtues needful for maintaining freedom could not develop themselves, it is during an arduous struggle to become free by their own efforts [authors emphasis] that these feelings and virtues have the best chance of springing up. Freedom gained through the paternalistic intervention of outsiders is an ephemeral imposition devoid of lasting intrinsic or instrumental value. An interventionist approach denies the possession of autonomous agency to those who are assisted. Therefore, the principle of self determination acts as a safeguard against foreign imperialism and hegemony. Foreigners cannot know what is best for a society; only a states own denizens possess such knowledge. Mill notes, the evil is, that if they have not sufficient love of liberty to be able to wrest it from merely domestic oppressors, the liberty, which is bestowed on them by other hands than their own, will have nothing real, nothing permanent. The fleeting imposition of an outside force bent on rectifying repulsive state actions is unlikely to have a lasting effect. Instead, there is an inherent and enduring value in self-help: one that is, ultimately, circumvented through the process of military intervention.
Page 107 of 158
THE PRESUMPTION OF NON-INTERFERENCE HELPS TO MAINTAIN INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND STABILITY Paul Di Stefano [Prof. of Humanities at John Abbott College in Montreal, Quebec], Human Rights Violations and the Moral Permissibility of Military Intervention, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 23:537545 (2011) Furthermore, the presumption against intervention ensures a degree of international stability and relatively peaceful coexistence between states. Inherent in the principles of non-intervention and state sovereignty is the notion of mutual toleration. Through the respect of juridical boundaries, states remain tolerant of each others existence and the diversity of behavior that transpires within them. This order, emanating from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and international customary law, is maintained through legal obligations outlined in the United Nations Charter. Article 2 (4) prohibits states from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. In addition, Article 2 (7) further mitigates interference in the sovereign affairs of states by declaring, Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. As Weiss suggests, these legal restrictions reflect prevailing moral standards, which must be adhered to, in order to ensure that sovereignty remains the key institutional safeguard of international order. It remains to be seen how such restraints are tested, however, once a state begins to seriously violate the rights of its citizens.
Page 108 of 158
REALISTS STATIST CRITIQUE OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ARGUES THAT SOVEREIGN STATES THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) According to the statist narrative, which has strong affinities with realism, the rights of sovereign states are sacrosanct and should not be violated in pursuit of abstract,Western notions of human rights. To do so is to subvert the rules of co-existence which sustain international order. Sovereignty trumps humanity because it is the only means of providing peace and order. Realist critics of humanitarianism, such as Danilo Zolo, David Chandler, Alessandro Colombo, Christopher Bickerton, Philip Cunliffe and Alexander Gourevitch, are highly suspicious of arguments from a moral point of view in international politics for two main reasons: first, because they think it undermines the fundamental building block of international order, the sovereign equality among states; second, because they think it devalues or denies the autonomy of the political.
Page 109 of 158
THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF STATISM COMMON TO THE ANTIHUMANITARIAN NARRATIVE Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) At the heart of the counter-humanitarian narrative, from Hobbes and Pufendorf to Schmitt and Zolo, is the rise of the state as the supreme, unchallengeable political authority. We can distinguish between two versions of statism in contemporary counterhumanitarianism: one founded on reason of state, the other on national self-determination. In the former, the state is conceptualized as a neutral civil sovereign, capable of rising above religious and ethnic disputes, refusing to The counter-humanitarian narrative sees the moralization of international politics as a negative development take sides, but insisting that its authority be recognised as supreme (from theorists of the absolutist state such as Jean Bodin and Samuel Pufendorf to Carl Schmitt and on to secular liberal statists such as Reinhart Koselleck and Ian Hunter). In the latter, the state is conceptualized as a representative, selfdetermining national state (by Christopher Bickerton, Philip Cunliffe and Alexander Gourevitch who trace the notion, quite problematically for their counter-humanitarianism, back to the philosophes and French revolutionaries). In both versions, the state is conceived as an autonomous political entity claiming the status of legal equality in a system of sovereign states. Moreover, it is thought to be fundamentally related to the rise of an international order predicated on rules of co-existence. However, if thinkers as different as Schmitt and Keene9 are correct, the international order secured among European states was sustained by maintaining the inequality of non-European peoples.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com STATE SOVEREIGNTY IS DESIGNED TO CHECK THE MORALIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
Page 110 of 158
Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) Keeping the Just War notion of justa causa out of international politics was the corollary of keeping religion (and morals) out of politics more generally. Doing so had the effect of limiting the authority of the Papacy and the Emperor, two institutions purporting to represent universal values and supra-state authority. As these Christian and feudal institutions crumbled, destroying the Churchs potestas spiritualis and its hopes of universal dominion, Europes rulers began to embrace the idea that they formed a society or commonwealth of states (these latter terms are not Schmitts but Grotius and Vattels). This, Schmitt believed, inaugurated a concrete new spatial order (nomos) built on the secular legal principles of territorial sovereignty16. Importantly, Schmitt argues that this order extended only to the edges of Europe. Beyond the line which separated Europe from the rest of the world, these principles had no purchase; only the law of the strongest applied17. There must always be a constitutive outside for any political order to function18.
Page 111 of 158
HUMANITARIANISM UNDERMINES THE SYSTEM OF SOVEREIGN STATES THAT LIMITS THE SCOPE OF WAR Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) According to Zolo27, the 1990s saw the rise not just of humanitarian intervention as a Western strategy of world order, but also the supplanting of traditional laws of war by international humanitarian law. These developments were the culmination of efforts begun at the behest of Woodrow Wilson after the First World War to inaugurate a universalistic, de -spatialized cosmopolitan order28. For Zolo, the consequences of this moral shift in international relations are considerable. The jus publicum Europaeum, embodied in the modern Westphalian system, had established procedural rules of coexistence and measures for containing war, but over the course of the twentieth century these had been dismantled by the growth of a cosmopolitan global order. Zolos29 concern, like Schmitts, is that the rise of liberal humanitarianism has permitted the resurrection of discriminatory war. The moralization of international politics, on Zolos30 exemplary account, thus engenders a global civil war which is sanguinary and destructive in the highest degree.
Page 112 of 158
THE SOVEREIGN NATION IS INSTRUMENTAL IN DESACRALIZING POLITICS AND THEREFORE CONTROLLING VIOLENCE Richard Devetak [Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Rotary Centre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland], The Moralization of International Politics: Humanitarian Intervention and its Critics, Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali n. 14 Maggio (2011) On Schmitts57 reading of history, the great accomplishment of the sovereign state was to end murderous assertions of right and accusations of guilt. It would confine its moral concerns to the orbit of this life58, with a view to shaping sociable and socially useful citizen-subjects. This contrasts with theology where the end is salvation in the life to come. On this account, absolutist natural law marked a vital step forward in decoupling politics and religion, and giving the temporal priority over the ghostly. The desacralised absolutist state envisaged by Hobbes and Pufendorf needed to eradicate ghostly authority from the political realm. Only by delegitimizing alternative sources of moral authority could the state take its rightful place above the fray of sectarian bickering as a neutral civil authority though it would take no position on the truth or otherwise of asserted religious doctrines, it would assert unchallengeable supreme authority on all matters affecting the public sphere. This is the point and purpose of sovereignty. It denotes a singular and exclusive authority unanswerable to any other authority. As Pufendorf59 puts it, its exercise is not dependent on a superior; it acts by its own will and judgment; its actions may not be nullified by anyone on the ground of superiority.
Page 113 of 158
INTERVENTION IS NOT JUSTIFIED SIMPLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF ESTABLISHING DEMOCRACY Francis Kofi Abiew [Prof. of Political Science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada] (2010): Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Redefining a Role for Kind-hearted Gunmen, Criminal Justice Ethics, 29:2, 93-109 These criteria are notable for what they purposefully exclude. The definition of just cause excludes, for example, intervention to restore democracy, or to end human rights violations that do not reach the threshold of large-scale killing and ethnic cleansing, or intervention by states to protect their nationals abroad.20 The overthrow of oppressive governments is not justified, although destroying their ability to cause harm to their own people is justified. As Amitav Acharya poignantly observes, this is an important distinction, because just cause, along with the stipulation of multilateralism as a key indicator of rightful intention, would make interventions for human protection purposes less ideological and hence less controversial.21 Thus, defined in terms of the right intention criterion, the unilateral U.S. military intervention in Iraq, for example, is unjustified, even if, as the Bush administration advanced, a moral purpose (couched in the language of axis of evil) was one of the reasons behind the intervention.22 In effect, under the R2P, governments act as trustees and defenders of the law of humanity when that law is violated by a state. Intervening states cannot use that law to advance their own self-interested or ideological goals under the guise of humanitarian concerns.23 Right intention is limited to alleviation of acute human Humanitarian Intervention and the R2P suffering rather than alteration of boundaries or even support for claims of self-determination. The problematic issue here is one of untangling political motives from humanitarian ones given the inevitable mix of interests and values in international relations and the difficulty of finding pure motives. The Report of the ICISS acknowledges the possibility of mixed motives but argues that this should not lead to a rejection of an intervention as long as there is an overriding humanitarian motive and the high probability of achieving a humanitarian outcome.24
Page 114 of 158
THE UN CHARTER PERMITS INTERVENTION ONLY IN SELF-DEFENSE OR WHEN THE SECURITY COUNSEL AUTHORIZES IT ON THE GROUNDS THAT A STATE IS A DANGER TO INTERNATIONAL PEACE Gregory Hafkin [J.D. Candidate 2010, Boston University School of Law], THE RUSSO GEORGIAN WAR OF 2008: DEVELOPING THE LAW OF UNAUTHORIZED HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AFTER KOSOVO, Boston University International Law Journal, Vol. 28:219 (2010) The primary goals of the United Nations, as stated in the UN Charters preamble, are to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war and to establish cond itions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.78 To that end, the Charter has a general prohibition on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.79 Two exceptions are allowed: using force with the express consent of the Security Council80 and the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member . . . , until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.81 While there was no apparent discussion of the legality of unauthorized humanitarian intervention 82 at the two Charter drafting conferences, the travaux preparatoires strongly suggest that the framers wanted Security Council authorization for any military actions that do not fall within the rubric of self-defense.83 In addition, the International Court of Justice has rejected the legality of unilateral humanitarian intervention. In a case involving U.S. activities in Nicaragua, the Court wrote, while the United States might form its own appraisal of the situation as to respect for human rights in Nicaragua, the use of force could not be the appropriate method to monitor or ensure such respect.84
Page 115 of 158
US INTERVENTION IN KOSOVO IS AN EMPIRICAL EXAMPLE OF VIOLATION OF JUST WAR THEORY. Jean Bethke Elshtain. Just War and Humanitarian Intervention, Ideas from the National Humanities Center, Volume 8, Number 2, 2001. The greatest problem in the Kosovo war from a just war perspective was the means deployed to halt and to punish ethnic cleansing. In the first instance, our means speeded up the process, as the opening sorties in the bombing campaign gave Milosevic the excuse he needed to declare martial law and move rapidly in order to complete what he had already begun, entrenching his forces in Kosovo before NATO might change its mind about introducing ground troops into the conflictsomething the United States, rather astonishingly, announced from the get-go it would not do. We blundered into a strategy, without much consideration of the likely reaction to our bombs, namely, a deepening of the terror and expulsions. Hence, there was no preparation for the influx of desperate humanity to neighboring countries and regions, their plight made doubly desperate by lack of food, water, medicine, and shelter at their points of terrified egress. This hardly seems a good way to run a humanitarian intervention, whether in the name of justice or any other good.
Page 116 of 158
NO INSTITUTION OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION CURRENTLY EXISTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW Clara Portela [researcher at the Berlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS)]. Humanitarian Intervention, NATO and International Law: Can the Institution of Humanitarian Intervention Justify Unauthorised Action?, Research Report 00.4, December 2000. Berlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS). NATO's unauthorized action in Kosovo prompted a number of observers to argue that either the notion of humanitarian intervention existed or it should be established in order to allow for enforcement operations in situations of extreme humanitarian necessity. This report analyses whether the institution of humanitarian intervention exists and whether the establishment of such an institution is legally feasible and politically convenient. Part I argues that the institution of humanitarian intervention does not exist: A legal analysis shows that, in principle, the notion of Humanitarian Intervention is incompatible with the ban on the use force enshrined in the UN Charter. An examination of recent developments shows that Humanit arian Intervention has not been established under customary law.
Page 117 of 158
IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO ACCOMMODATE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION DOCTRINE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW Clara Portela [researcher at the Berlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS)]. Humanitarian Intervention, NATO and International Law: Can the Institution of Humanitarian Intervention Justify Unauthorised Action?, Research Report 00.4, December 2000. Berlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS). Part II argues that it is extremely difficult to accommodate such an institution within the current system of international law due to the following difficulties: Since the ban on force has the status of peremptory law, it can only be substituted by a norm of the same character. This means, the formation of a norm that establishes the notion of Humanitarian Intervention requires the consent of the whole (or nearly the whole) community of states. There is currently no prospect of reaching such an agreement.
Page 118 of 158
THE US SHOULD NOT PROMOTE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THIS DOCTRINE IN ILAW Clara Portela [researcher at the Berlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS)]. Humanitarian Intervention, NATO and International Law: Can the Institution of Humanitarian Intervention Justify Unauthorised Action?, Research Report 00.4, December 2000. Be rlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS). Part III finally argues that the West should not promote the establishment of such an institution because: The promotion of unauthorized action implies the willingnes s to ignore the Russian veto in the UN Security Council, therefore seriously undermines co-operation with Russia. It could also negatively impact NATO's relations with the rest of the international community. The right to undertake humanitarian intervention leaves room for a wide range of abuse, thus undermining inhibitions about the use of force.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA WAS UNJUSTIFIEDTHREE WARRANTS
Page 119 of 158
Walzer, Michael [New Republic contributing editor and professor emeritus of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study]. The Case Against Our Attack on Libya, March 20, 2011. The New Republic. <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/world/85509/the-case-against-our-attack-libya#> There are so many things wrong with the Libyan intervention that it is hard to know where to begin. So, a few big things, in no particular order: First, it is radically unclear what the purpose of the intervention is there is no endgame, as a U.S. official told reporters. Is the goal to rescue a failed rebellion, turn things around, use Western armies to do what the rebels couldnt do themselves: overthrow Qaddafi? Or is it just to keep the fighting going for as long as possible, in the hope that the rebellion will catch fire, and Libyans will get rid of the Qaddafi regime by themselves? Or is it just to achieve a cease-fire, which would leave Qaddafi in control of most of the country and probably more than willing to bide his time? The size of the opening attack points toward the first of these, but success there would probably require soldiers on the ground, which no one in France, Britain, or the United States really wants. The second is the most likely goal, though it would extend, not stop, the bloodshed. Second, the attacks dont have what we should have insisted on from the very beginning significant Arab support. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have promised military forces, but they represent roughly 1 percent of the Arab people. There is no support coming from either Tunisia or Egypt, Libyas immediate neighbors. The Tunisia n army is small, but the Egyptian army isnt small, and they have an air force, too. The United States has spent billions of dollars on the Egyptian military, and it is astonishing that Egypt is not willing to make any contribution to the intervention. That is a very bad sign, for the attacks will undoubtedly kill civilians, and these will be innocent men, women, and children, Arab and Muslim, killed (again) by the French, the British, and the Americans. Russia and China, who opposed the intervention, abstained on the final Security Council vote, perhaps because they cant imagine an outcome that better suits their interests in the Middle East and Africa. Third, opposition in the Security Council didnt stop with Russia and China. India, Brazil, and Germany also opposed the intervention, and then abstained. The African Union refused to send a representative to the meeting called by President Sarkozy in Paris to consolidate support for military action. The Arab League called for the creation of a no-fly zone, but some of its leaders are already criticizing the attacks required to make it work. And, again, no major Arab state is participating. It is an old pattern that we thought was finished after the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisiawhere Arab states (and other states too) dont take responsibility for doing what they want done by someone else.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION DOESNT SOLVE
Page 120 of 158
WHEN NATIONS ENGAGE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION THEY OFTEN FAIL TO SECURE A PEACEFUL TRANSITION AFTER THE CONFLICT Roberta Cohen [Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Panel on the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights], The responsibility to protect: The Human rights and humanitarian dimensions, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Harvard Human Rights Panel Annual Symposium, First, how far does the application extend? In the case of Kenya, the first and only country to which R2P was applied, some 1,500 people died and some 600,000 were uprooted prior to international involvement. So R2P was not a preventive measure, but it did succeed in halting the violence and preventing further displacement. But should the story end there or should it extend to ensuring that displaced people are effectively protected in the aftermath of violence? Reports show a lack of security for ethnic groups in areas of return, an absence of planning for those who do not wish to return, inadequate compensation for destroyed homes and property. Moreover, thousands still live in camps and temporary settlements. Yet we don't hear any more about R2P in Kenya. Nor do we hear about the promotion of compliance with the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement with regard to rebuilding. Welcomed by the World Summit in 2005, the Guiding Principles set forth the rights of IDPs and give the international community a role in protecting and assisting them during displacement and during return and reintegration. The national human rights commission in Kenya considers its government to be violating these Principles in its treatment of IDPs after the violence. The Guiding Principles should be used by R2P advocates as a guide for governmental and international responsibilities toward IDPs, but there was no mention of them or other steps for the protection of IDPs in the January report of the Secretary-General.
Page 121 of 158
THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT CONCERN THAT RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT WILL POLITICIZE HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS Roberta Cohen [Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Panel on the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights], The responsibility to protect: The Human rights and humanitarian dimensions, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Harvard Human Rights Panel Annual Symposium, Third, will R2P politicize humanitarian operations? Some NGOs are wary of the use of force for humanitarian purposes and argue that the integration of humanitarian aid into broader political and security frameworks will identify aid workers with one side in a conflict and expose them to attacks. In the DRC, Medecins Sans Frontieres has tried to work on both sides of the conflict whereas UN peacekeepers have acted to support the government. Many humanitarian aid workers have difficulty with the concept of protection and argue that going beyond delivering food, medicine and shelter could lead to denial of access and to their own expulsion. It is political, they say, to advocate for the physical safety and human rights of IDPs, and will interfere with their relationships with governments on humanitarian and development issues. Other aid workers, however, consider protection essential to their work, and argue that when genocide and atrocity crimes are being committed, neutrality is not an option. To what extent will R2P encourage humanitarian organizations to engage more actively in protecting the physical safety and human rights of civilians caught up in humanitarian emergencies? To what extent will it encourage UN human rights offices to play a protection role in the field, which they have not done so far?
Page 122 of 158
THE WAR IN IRAQ SHOULD ALMOST CERTAINLY BE CONSIDERED A DISASTER Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 My premise that the Iraq war was disastrous is less self-evidently true in 2010 than it was in 2007, when I first formulated the arguments laid out in this paper. Dramatically fewer people are being killed daily than was the case then and the Iraqi government has asserted considerable authority over the militias both oppositional and government-aligned that ran wild between 2003 and late 2007. A second more or less free and fair general election has just been held (in 2010). The situation remains improved notwithstanding the uncertainties and spectacular acts of violence attending the withdrawal of American troops. Still, the case that Iraq has been a disaster is not difficult to make. It rests on the human price that has already been paid. Even if Iraq were to come to approximate a peaceable and rights-respecting democracy able to reabsorb up to four million internally and externally displaced nationals and supply its citizens with public services surpassing those offered under Saddams regime, these benefits would have to be weighed against the post-invasion surge in annual mortality compared with the immediately preceding years, with possibly hundreds of thousands of additional civilian lives having been lost.6 Other costs may have been met in a different currency for example, the trauma suffered by the tens of thousands (a good proportion presumably innocent of war crimes) who were detained without charge or trial by Iraqi and Coalition forces or abducted by militias, and many of whom were subject to torture.
Page 123 of 158
THE IRAQ WAR DEMONSTRATES THE DANGER OF INVADING A NATION WHERE INTELLIGENCE IS DIFFICULT TO GATHER Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 What, however, if the empirical premises of the case for preventive war in Iraq had turned out to be well founded? Can the failure to find WMD in Iraq offer any lessons about whether it would be justified to wage preventive war to head off a genuine WMD threat, or one sincerely believed to exist (as in Iran today)? Of course, the 2003 invasion cannot offer lessons about the consequences of invading a WMD-armed power, because, as it turned out, Iraq was not one. But even the invasion of a state that was not WMD-armed carries lessons for JAW doctrines prevention precept. The Iraq episode warns us that it is difficult to get good intelligence on a secretive adversary, and that intelligence is open to political manipulation. More dramatically, it reveals the human costs of war against which any decision to invade must be measured. In the absence of compelling evidence that the adversary poses a WMD or terrorist threat, knowledge of these costs ought to count heavily against a decision to initiate war.
Page 124 of 158
INSURGENCIES LIKE THOSE IN IRAQ ARE FORESEEABLE, SO ADVOCATES OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION SHOULD HAVE TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE RISK OF AN INSURGENCY IS OUTWEIGHED BY THE ADVANTAGES OF INTERVENTION Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 The insurgents certainly impeded Iraqs reconstruction and bear direct responsibility for the ruthless murder of countless civilians. The question for JAW, though, is whether there is anything to prevent insurgencies confounding future interventions as well. Blaming insurgents might work as moral exculpation, but it does not address the JWT requirement that military interventions should stand a reasonable chance of success. To satisfy that requirement, JAW advocates will need a theory of the conditions under which insurgencies are more or less likely to flourish. Treating the evil nature of the terrorists and their ideology as a freestanding cause of the insurgency as many JAW proponents do makes it more difficult to explore antecedent indirect causes10 of the insurgents appearance and success. Yet addressing those causes may be both desirable in principle (see later) and instrumentally necessary to defeating insurgents at an acceptable human cost.
Page 125 of 158
IRAQ DEMONSTRATES THAT THERE ARE LIMITS TO WHAT WE CAN PREDICT ABOUT WAR AND SO IN GENERAL WE SHOULD BE WEARY OF IT Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 On offer here is not, as such, an alternative theory of what went wrong in Iraq. To proceed thus would be to accept, as I do not, that the invasion came unstuck exclusively in the execution. There were things that went wrong in execution, and analysis of these may yield valuable lessons for future interventions (Danner 2006; Galbraith 2006a, 2006b). But much of what went wrong in execution was a product of contingent factors and unintended effects. The influence of these suggests the need to understand as deeply as possible the society one is intervening in. Neoconservative contempt for the advice of experienced Arabists and for uncongenial expert advice generally probably did not help in this regard (Diamond 2004, 1, 3; Danner 2006, 945; Galbraith 2006a, 27). But they also illuminate the limits to human epistemological mastery: it is impossible fully to understand, still less control, the forces unleashed by wars, more especially in culturally unfamiliar and highly heterogeneous societies. The lesson of this is easier to grasp: be wary of war.
Page 126 of 158
IRAQ DEMONSTRATES THAT LOCAL POPULATIONS DONT ALWAYS GREET INTERVENING FORCES AS LIBERATORS Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 But the deeper reason that things went wrong in Iraq post-2003 lies, I contend, in a factor that was visible and operative before the war began, and which rendered the invasion ill-conceived from the outset. This factor, already hinted at, was the weakness of US legitimacy in the Middle East. The US expected that its forces would be welcomed by grateful Iraqis.12 There were various likely sources for this delusion. American elites subscribe to their countrys selfimage as a bearer of democratic enlightenment. Many of its members were impressed by the popular proAmericanism of countries new Europe that had recently shaken off Communism, a reprise, of sorts, of the cheers and flowers that greeted Allies trundling through Belgium and France in 1944. Secular Iraqi exiles assured Americans of a warm reception. The evidence, however, is that many or most Arabs view the US with suspicion (Esposito 2006, 2007; Telhami 2008). Their negative attitude arises, I suggest, from the way the US took over in the 1960s from Britain and France as the principal Western (neo)colonial power in the Middle East and the way that, in particular, it supported Israel in successive wars and in its colonization of Palestinian land. The US is also the worlds largest petroleum-importer, with a longstanding interest in Western access to Middle Eastern oil. An American-led attack on a resolutely antiIsrael Arab state sitting on perhaps the worlds second biggest oil reserve was thus bound to arouse Arab suspicion. Americas Christian-secular character, and theocon influence on the Bush administration, would have done nothing to ease Arab distrust at a time of widespread Islamic revivalism. Many Arab Iraqis shared in these feelings of distrust and resentment, their negative feelings compounded by direct experience of the human impact of American British air raids and Western-led economic sanctions.13
Page 127 of 158
INTERVENOR STATES ARE UNLIKELY TO SUPPORT DEMOCRATIC FORMS OF GOVERNMENT Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 To achieve their strategic goals, the intervening states will favor a repressive regime with the monopoly of decisionmaking and coercive power over a democratized target state. This is because a democratized target state will be more responsive to the demands of its citizens and consequently will have different policy choices from those of the interveners domestic constituency. On the other hand, an authoritarian target state with a monopoly of coercive power and a weak opposition is more easily persuaded by the interveners to implement the policies that protect their interests (Bueno de Mesquita & Downs, 2006).4
Page 128 of 158
THE LIKELIHOOD THAT INTERVENOR STATES WILL SUPPORT UNDEMOCRATIC REGIMES MEANS THAT IT IS UNLIKELY THAT SUCCESSOR STATES WILL RESPECT WOMENS RIGHTS Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Achievement of greater respect for womens basic rights and female empowerment in economic and political life partially necessitates the elimination of systematic, state-sanctioned discrimination against women (Norris & Inglehart, 2001; Inglehart & Norris, 2003; Coleman, 2004; Beer, 2009). Yet, as intervener states continue to shelter or promote repressive regimes with patriarchal social structures as a safer strategy to secure their own national interests, the target governments are more likely to violate basic human rights, including womens internationally recognized rights. It includes such basic rights as gender equality in political participation (i.e. the right to hold elected or appointed government positions, the right to run for political office, and the right to join political parties), job security (maternity leave, unemployment benefits, no arbitrary firing, etc.), equality in hiring and promotion practices in the workplace, and the right to freely participate in social, cultural, and community activities. Repressive regimes are more likely to disregard rules and norms protecting womens rights along with other basic human rights because they are politically less accountable and not constrained through strong institutional mechanisms such as the rule of law and an efficient checks-and-balances system (Mitchell & McCormick, 1988; Poe, Wendel-Blunt & Ho, 1997; Beer, 2009).
Page 129 of 158
BECAUSE UNILATERAL INTERVENORS TEND TO SUPPORT REPRESSIVE REGIMES, SUCCESSOR STATES TEND TO BE LESS RESPONSIVE TO DOMESTIC LOBBYING AND INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE TO IMPROVE HUMAN RIGHTS Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Furthermore, the external military and political support by unilateral interveners for a repressive state will reduce the extent of the pressure the government faces from domestic opposition groups and international advocacy networks. Earlier research shows that the combination of both domestic and international pressure on the government is instrumental as a balancing act to keep the political leadership in check. Specifically, the government is forced to enforce or make changes in domestic law and institutions to harmonize them with international human rights norms (Sikkink, 1993; Moravcsik, 1995; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Joachim, 2003; Adams & Kang, 2007). They do so to avoid the diplomatic and political pressure from the international community and domestic opposition groups. Since the political regime in the target state is protected by selfinterested intervener states, they are less likely to be compelled by the pressure from the domestic opposition and transnational actors to strictly enforce womens rights. On the contrary, as they become more repressive and less considerate of the demands of pro-human rights groups, they will tolerate more discrimination against women in society. Consequently, in such repressive regimes, there will be no prospects for greater gender equality through reforms in domestic laws and institutions or through the spread of norms favoring female empowerment in the society.
Page 130 of 158
THE PURSUIT OF WOMENS RIGHTS IS HARMED BY THE INSTABILITY THAT ATTENDS ANY FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 The quantitative data analysis in the following section tests only the direct impact of unilateral interventions on womens rights. Yet, unilateral military operations might also have an indirect, negative impact on womens status, triggering more opposition to foreign interference. The unilateral use of force often fails to garner support among the key political groups and average citizens of the target society as well as within the international community because of the perception of such missions as illegitimate and self-interested acts (Gow & Dandeker, 1995; Farer, 2003; Doyle & Sambanis, 2000). Most target countries undergo various socio-economic and political instabilities (e.g. ethno-political clashes, civil wars, or humanitarian disasters) that initially invoke external military interference. The lack of support for unilateral interventions might subsequently worsen the already volatile circumstances of the target state, triggering more violent opposition and resistance to the foreign interference (Gurr, 1988). Consequently, womens rights, often under-enforced in the best of circumstances, will be reduced by the further militarization and instability of the society caused by external armed interventions.
Page 131 of 158
IN STATES TARGETED FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION WOMEN TEND TO BE SUBJECT TO MORE FORMS OF VIOLENCE Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], F oreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Earlier research points out that political disorder and the militarization of society caused by foreign military operations increase the incidences of gender-based violence and womens rights abuses (Cockburn & Zarkov, 2002; Bunch, 2002; Rehn & Sirleaf, 2002; Seymour, 2005; Al-Ali, 2007). Specifically, this line of research suggests that foreign intervention might escalate the problem of the suppression of women by making them frequent targets of sexual abuse, harassment, and physical violence. Women suffer severely from political violence and instabilities because of the persistence of structural inequality in access to economic and political resources, and gender-based cultural discrimination prevalent in hierarchical social settings (e.g. Meintjes, Pillay & Tursher, 2001; Moser & Clarke, 2001; Enloe, 2000; Tickner, 2001; Goldstein, 2001; Plumper & Neumayer, 2006). Therefore, as unilateral interventions become counterproductive and generate more political instabilities, there will be a resurgence of gender-based discrimination and violence.
Page 132 of 158
THE EVIDENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT THE IDEA THAT MILITARY INTERVENTIONS CAN IMPROVE WOMENS RIGHTS Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Table I displays the findings of a multivariate logit analysis. According to the results in Table I, unilateral US interventions are likely to inflict significant negative damage on womens political rights (Model 1). The variable for non-US unilateral interventions, however, is not statistically significant in predicting womens political status. Contrary to US interventions, IGO interventions appear to lead to a significant, positive impact on womens political status. The results for womens economic rights (Model 2) reveal that US interventions will likely worsen the level of respect for womens economic rights. The IGO or non-US unilateral attempts, on the other hand, do not show a statistically significant association with the economic status of women. Model 3 reports the results for the impact that military interventions have on womens social rights. I find that all of the intervention variables fail to reach statistically significant associations with the social rights variable. This suggests that military interventions may not cause a statistically significant positive or negative change in the overall respect for wom ens social status. Comparing with economic and political rights, the non-significance of the results for womens social status might be because of the difficulties with any immediate change in the overall social or cultural treatment of women in the society by external interference, even when it is in the form of military intervention. Any noticeable change in womens social rights might take longer than the short- or mid-term domestic reforms and socio-economic transformation caused by international influences. Overall, the findings suggest that unilateral military operations by the USA will likely cause a decline in the overall treatment of womens economic and political rights. Although the sign of the coefficients consistently shows a reverse relationship as expected, the non-US unilateral interventions have no statistically significant effect on womens well-being. As suggested above, the strength and dominance of US unilateral interventions appears to explain why they might be more detrimental to womens status than other unilateral attempts. The results also grant robust support for the hypothesis that IGO interventions are unlikely to inflict any major immediate damage on women. Indeed, such multilateral commitments are likely to have a positive impact on the level of respect for womens political rights.
Page 133 of 158
MILITARY INTERVENTION SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED THE LIKELIHOOD OF VIOLATIONS FOR WOMENS RIGHTS Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Table III shows the changes in the predicted probability of major violation of womens economic rights using the significant independent variables in Model 2. Moving from no intervention to US intervention increases the predicted probability of the violation of womens economic rights by 68%. The other three significant variables, Democracy, GDP per capita, and Economic Openness, contribute to the improvements of womens economic status by decreasing the predicted probability of the major violation of economic rights by 12%, 17%, and 14%, respectively. The dummy variables included for temporal dependence also show that higher respect for economic rights in the previous year (t1) for each category of womens rights significantly decreases the predicted value of the major violation of womens economic rights.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com MILITARY INTERVENTION IS GENERALLY FUTILE AND INEFFECTIVE
Page 134 of 158
Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> Regional conflicts have greatly increased since the end of the Cold War, a trend that promises to continue. As Washington gropes for a policy toward regional wars, military intervention frequently emerges as an option. Except in the rare cases in which regional conflicts threaten American national security, however, military intervention in regional conflicts is ill-advised. As tragic as many of the regional wars are, most cannot be resolved by American military intervention. In fact, military involvement often aggravates the situation. Furthermore, intervention can create a number of problems for the United States, including a rise in anti-American sentiment, diminished American credibility if the mission fails, domestic skepticism about future military operations even when legitimate U.S. interests might be involved, and threats to vital interests where none previously existed. Proponents of intervention cite a number of interests, both security related and humanitarian, as justifications for U.S. military involvement in regional wars. The most common, and fallacious, argument for intervention is that global instability is a threat to U.S. security. That argument relies heavily on the discredited domino theory and the notion of deterrence by example. Global instability does not, per se, threaten vital American interests and is the normal state of affairs. A policy that views disorder or instability as a security threat would force the United States to expend vast resources in pursuit of an unattainable objective. Rather than attempt to stifle regional conflicts through military intervention, the United States should encourage regional initiatives. Washington must, however, recognize that many regional conflicts are so deeply rooted that no outside party, from within or outside the region, will succeed in ending the fighting.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION HAS NO DETERRENT EFFECT
Page 135 of 158
Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> Related to the domino theory is the idea of deterrence by example. While the domino theory posits that an isolated regional conflict will eventually threaten American security by engulfing other states in the area and spreading uncontrollably, deterrence by example suggests that a strong American response to aggression or unrest in one situation will discourage aggression elsewhere in the world. Conversely, a weak American response will encourage it. Like the domino theory, deterrence by example is largely irrelevant in the context of actual events. The aborted U.S. intervention in Haiti, for example, is not going to lead to a rash of military dictatorships any more than strong American responses to Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein deterred Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic from pursuing his aims in Bosnia.(18) To formulate policy on such a premise would be a mistake.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com MILITARY INTERVENTION IS HISTORICALLY INEFFECTIVE
Page 136 of 158
Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> The United States should also avoid military intervention in regional conflicts because, in the vast majority of cases, it does not work. In fact, it usually aggravates the situation.(25) Even if a consensus were to develop that global stability or any other objective should be pursued by all viable means, military intervention would remain an unwise course in most cases. It rarely achieves its purpose and often has the perverse effect of obstructing, rather than advancing, what it seeks to achieve. (American peacekeepers in Lebanon in 1983, for example, were an aggravating rather than a stabilizing force.) Intervention usually harms American interests as well. The most compelling arguments against American intervention are its ineffectiveness and the harm it causes all parties involved. The ability of military action to achieve political objectives in the modern era is very limited. "Beware of the facile assumption that wars are fightable and winnable again. Beware of the illusion that there is a military solution to every geopolitical problem," warns journalist Theo Sommer.(26) Many deeply rooted political and economic problems are impervious to military solutions.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com A2 LIBERAL COSMOPOLITANISM
Page 137 of 158
PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICS OF LIBERALISM TEND TO OPPOSE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION Roberta Cohen [Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Panel on the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights], The responsibility to protect: The Human rights and humanitarian dimensions, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Harvard Human Rights Panel Annual Symposium, Like any narrative, humanitarianism has a rival. In this case, the rival narrative finds expression in a deep scepticism towards the possibility or desirability of enlisting the moral point of view in international politics. The counter-humanitarian narrative sees the moralization of international politics as a negative development. Why? Because insofar as it embodies liberal values, it harbours all liberalisms faults and failings; and insofar as it permeates internationa l society it reneges on the sovereign rights of states, imposes Western forms of justice and power, engenders a more intolerant and belligerent international society, and multiplies the prospects of war. The range of criticism made of humanitarianism is evidence of the diverse grounds on which the moralization of international politics is rejected: including anti-liberalism, anticosmopolitanism, realism, statism, historicism, various strains of Marxism, and pacifism.
Page 138 of 158
SOME THEORISTS CHALLENGE THE ORTHODOX VIEW THAT HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL AND REASON-BASED, ARGUING THAT THIS ACCOUNT PAYS TOO LITTLE ATTENTION TO THE POLITICAL COMPONENT OF RIGHTS John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 In recent years, this orthodoxy has been challenged by political conceptions of human rights which reject one or both of NT and GT. NT is rejected because it neglects the distinctively political role of human rights. On one view, the focus is on the bearers of the primary duties correlative to human rights, e.g. it has been argued that human rights essentially regulate the behaviour of the officials of a state or other such coercive institutional framework (Pogge, ch. 2). Alternatively, it may be the regulation of certain kinds of distinctively political status or activity that is treated as definitive of their nature. In this vein, some interpret human rights as benchmarks of political legitimacy, the moral duty to obey the law of any given political community being conditional on its compliance with them (Rawls; Cohen; Williams, ch. 6). For others, they govern justifiable intervention among independent political communities (Rawls, Raz discussed, respectively in Sections 2 and 3, which follow). In opposition to GT, some adherents of the political conception of human rights reject the unmediated appeal to ordinary moral reasoning as either necessary or sufficient to establish the existence of human rights. In their view, it must be possible to justify human rights by appeal to a form of public reason that embodies distinctively political standards of justification, not by invoking the purported deliverances of correct or objectively true morality simply as such (Rawls; Cohen).
Page 139 of 158
RAWLS ACCOUNT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS PREMISED ON THE VALIDITY OF WESTERN LIBERALISM John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 Leaving these difficulties to one side, consider how Rawls theory fares against our three desiderata for a theory of human rights (Section 1). As defeasible triggers of military intervention, human rights play an undeniably important role. Moreover, they are a proper subset of all rights a special class of urgent rights (Rawls, 79) and therefore occupy a distinctive place among the principles of justice. The comparative minimalism of Rawls schedule of human rights ministers to the non-parochialism requirement (Rawls, 65). By admitting only a handful of urgent rights as human rights, the prospects of their finding favour among non-liberal societies is presumably markedly enhanced. However, in the context of Rawls overall theory, the verdict on the non-parochialism count is not unequivocal. Against the gain achieved by its minimalist content, one must weigh three other factors. First, the doctrine of human rights is an extension of a broader liberal conception of justice according to which there are universal rights possessed by all humans liberal constitutional rights many of which are denied by non-liberal societies. Second, according to the liberal conception of justice from which the doctrine of human rights is elaborated, even those non-liberal societies that can affirm the minimalist list of human rights (decent hierarchical peoples) or at least reliably conform with them (benevolent despotisms) turn out to be, at best, only not fully unreasonable (Rawls, 74). Third, the category of states Rawls designates outlaw states, which are aggressive or engage in widespread violations of human rights against their own members, would not accept the Law of Peoples and its doctrine of human rights. Yet these are precisely the states that are most vulnerable to military intervention according to that doctrine. There is a serious question, then, whether the gain secured by its minimalist content is, so far as non-parochialism goes, outweighed by the parochialism of the liberal pathway Rawls follows in justifying his schedule of human rights. The question is exacerbated when we observe that, in line with his rejection of GT, he does not claim (or deny) that political liberalism is an objectively correct doctrine; instead, the conception of reasonableness Rawls deploys is derived from a liberal democratic public political culture that is the fixed horizon of his inquiry (Tasioulas 2002, 3905).
Page 140 of 158
RAWLS JUSTIFICATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS DOES NOT COHERE WITH THE INTERNATIONAL CULTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS John Tasioulas [University of Oxford], Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention? Philosophy Compass 4/6 (2009): 938950 Finally, on the score of fidelity, Rawls theory fails to track important dimensions of the human rights culture. Most obviously, many rights that figure in the International Bill of Rights do not appear on his list: the freedom of opinion, expression and the press, the freedom of assembly and association, rights to political participation, education, health care and social services, rights against sex-based discrimination, among others. Many of these excluded rights are characterized by him as liberal aspirations rather than human rights proper.6 This translates as the claim that they are genuinely universal rights possessed by all liberal constitutional rights but not strictly speaking human rights, because their violation by a political community, no matter how extensive or grave, is incapable of generating a defeasible case for military intervention. It might be countered that Rawls theory, in spite of initial appearances, exhibits a significant level of fidelity to the tradition. After all, the documents that comprise the International Bill of Human Rights have been accepted by many states only subject to deep-going reservations, e.g. reservations designed to render the rights nugatory to the extent that they conflict with established religious traditions. Moreover, the minimalism of his account addresses the widespread sentiment internal to the human rights culture that the proliferation of human rights claims needs to be reined in on some principled basis. Rawls theory, on this view, offers fidelity together with an urgently needed dose of criticism, but criticism that draws on the inner well-spring of the human rights culture in order to rectify some of its deepest flaws.
Page 141 of 158
THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS INCONSISTENT BECAUSE IT IS NOT APPLIED TO NATURAL DISASTERS Roberta Cohen [Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Panel on the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights], The responsibility to protect: The Human rights and humanitarian dimensions, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Harvard Human Rights Panel Annual Symposium, Second, when does R2P apply, and when does it not, in humanitarian emergencies? While atrocity crimes can be expected to produce emergency situations and displacement, they are not the only cause. There will be many humanitarian situations where R2P will not apply. Natural disasters and climate change, for example, can be expected to uproot tens of millions and create severe assistance and protection problems. R2P advocates have ruled out applying the concept to natural disasters, but this decision may be questionable in cases where crimes against humanity are committed in response to disasters and the victims are in need of international protection. The debate over Cyclone Nargis in Burma brought that problem to the fore.
Page 142 of 158
INTERVENTION FOR HUMANITARIAN REASONS MAKES A MOCKERY FOR THE VERY RIGHTS IT IS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> In the absence of a clear and defensible strategic rationale for intervention in regional conflicts, a smattering of idealistic justifications has emerged. In the past, idealism sometimes served as a fig leaf for more mundane motives. During the Gulf War, for instance, President Bush invoked such notions as the preservation of the new world order, protection of sovereignty, and a stance against "naked aggression" to obscure the harsher truth that he was deploying U.S. troops primarily to protect economic interests--American access to gulf oil.(22) The idealistic arguments were essential to gain the support of those who are uncomfortable with the notion of war for selfinterest yet accept war as a tragic but necessary sacrifice for the sake of altruistic objectives. For some people, humanitarian reasons or the advancement of various moral principles are in themselves adequate justification for U.S. military involvement in regional wars. Democracy, human rights, national self-determination, and humanitarian assistance are among the most common rationales for military intervention where no threat to national security exists. All are admirable ideals. Yet military interventions based on such ideals are even more problematic than those that are at least rhetorically rooted in national security, and intervention is usually an ineffective way to advance ideals. If anything, coercion tends to make a mockery of the very principle it was intended to defend. As Paul W. Schroeder of the United States Institute of Peace argued in the Washington Quarterly, "The more the lesson desired is inflicted by external armed force, the less the experience of defeat and failure is likely to be internalized in a useful way and lead to the kind of durable change desired."
Page 143 of 158
MILITARY INTERVENTION FOR HUMANITARIAN REASONS EMBRACES HYPOCRISY Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> Military intervention for reasons unrelated to American security also forces the United States to embrace inherently hypocritical policies. Because it is impossible for the United States to intervene in every instance in which Ameri can principles are offended, the necessary selection process inevitably gives priority to some conflicts while marginalizing others. As Robert Oakley, President Clinton's special envoy to Somalia, said, "The international community is not disposed to deploying 20, 40, 60,000 military forces each time there is an internal crisis in a failed state."(24) To take action in some cases and not others does not make for consistent policy. If the United States were to declare genocide in Bosnia sufficient grounds for American military intervention, for example, it would be blatantly hypocritical to ignore the (clearer and considerably more severe) genocide in Sudan. Similarly capricious was Washington's determination that the breakdown of the Somali government merited American intervention, while officials ignored the crisis in Rwanda after the apparent assassination of President Habyarimana on April 6, 1994 (100,000 were said to have been killed in the first two weeks of fighting alone) except to evacuate Americans from the area. Likewise, demands that U.S. troops protect democracy in Haiti are incongruous in light of Washington's quiet indifference toward the suspension of democracy in Algeria when Muslim extremists were poised to win elections in 1992. The inconsistency and hypocrisy of those policies are evidence of the weakness of intervention on the basis of nebulous principles.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com STATES ARE SELF-INTERESTED
Page 144 of 158
THE DOCTRINE OF JUST ANTI-TOTALITARIAN WAR (JAW) MAY BE UNDERMINED BY THE SELF-INTERESTED MOTIVES OF INVADING STATES Daryl Glaser [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304 On the issue of motives and pretexts for war, two separate questions can be asked about their implications for JAW doctrine. First, does it matter that US motives were questionable and pretexts have proved false? As earlier noted, many war supporters hold rightly, I think9 that what counts in Iraq is whether the invasion promotes human rights and democracy (or whether the intention, as opposed to motive, was to do so). But are wrong motives and false pretexts irrelevant, even on a consequentialist account? The case can be made that the self-interested motives of invading powers affect their capacity to realize JAW goals in effect, to realize intentions that they sincerely possess. If invaders do not instinctively and inwardly prioritize democracy and human rights, they are unlikely (whatever their intention) to put sufficient energy into promoting them in practice. Suspicion of wrong motives (which naturally grows where pretexts are implausible) may thus be a source of prudential reasons to withhold support from an action, especially a highly risky one whose successful execution demands sustained commitment. Perhaps more seriously, the perception that the invading powers are wrongly motivated may undermine their credibility with the local population and therefore their chances of success in operations that require local support (Glaser 2006, 266; Heinze 2007, 16 33). This is especially the case for operations launched among already suspicious populations, as Arabs are toward Americans (see below).
Page 145 of 158
THE DESIRE TO AVOID PUTTING TROOPS ON THE GROUND CAN DRIVE INTERVENING NATIONS TO TACTICS THAT ACTUALLY HARM HUMAN RIGHTS Gregory Hafkin [J.D. Candidate 2010, Boston University School of Law], THE RUSSO GEORGIAN WAR OF 2008: DEVELOPING THE LAW OF UNAUTHORIZED HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AFTER KOSOVO, Boston University International Law Journal, Vol. 28:219 (2010) One of the main objections to unilateral interventions is that without formal institutional determinations of whether the circumstances really warrant unilateral action, the action is likely to be taken, rhetoric aside, in the self-interest of the intervener.113 While it might be possible to claim that NATOs actions were purely altruistic, the actual intervention was severely limited in its ability to stop human-rights violations because NATO was unwilling to put its soldiers on the ground, in harms way,114 perhaps due to the results of the mission in Somalia.115 Instead, NATO stepped up its show of force by expanding its target list to includ e infrastructure within the FRY. These new targets included civilian-use facilities such as bridges, factories, electricity grids, and water treatment plants.116 In fact, in April 1999, while the bombing of the FRY was continuing, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued various reports that directly condemned the manner in which NATO was conducting its operations, drawing upon the principles of proportionality and legality.117 As one scholar notes, [i]f the intervention was predicated, as it was by NATO, upon overwhelming humanitarian necessity, one must wonder how an intervention constructed solely of dropping bombs could quickly improve the plight of the Kosovars.118
Page 146 of 158
UNILATERAL INTERVENTION IS LIKELY TO BE STRONGLY SELF-INTERESTED Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Unilateral interventions might become detrimental to womens status by enhancing or protecting repressive regimes in the target state. Individual states are expected to pursue self-interested ends in most instances and are unlikely to bear unilaterally the full cost of a major foreign military intervention for purely humanitarian purposes (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Chiozza & Goemans, 2003; Bueno de Mesquita & Downs, 2006). The use of force abroad is costly to leaders of intervener states because of the low toleration of the public for casualties and the high economic and political risks involved in military interventions (Mueller, 1973; Ostrom & Job, 1986; James & Oneal, 1991; Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson, 1995; Gartner & Segura, 1998; Gartner, Segura & Barratt, 2004). Hence, the self-motivated intervener countries tend to prioritize their strategic interests (e.g. enhancing national security, protecting trade routes, securing investment interests, and increasing access to energy resources) above all other idealistic or humanitarian concerns. Doing so helps political leaders satisfy the policy demands of the domestic constituency and secure their political future.
Page 147 of 158
STATES AND THE UN REMAIN UNWILLING TO ENGAGE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AGAINST ENTRENCHED GOVERNMENTS LIKE THAT OF SYRIA John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Still, although international norms now enshrine civilian protection and levels of violence are down, humanitarian interventions remain constrained by political and military realities. The international communitys inaction in the face of attacks on Syrian protesters, as of this writing, demonstrates that neither the un nor any major power is willing or prepared to intervene when abusive leaders firmly control the states territory and the states security forces and are backed by influential allies. Furthermore, the concept of civilian protection still competes with deeply held norms of sovereignty, especially in former colonies. Although humanitarian intervention can succeed in many cases, given these constraints, it is not always feasible.
Page 148 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCOMPLISH IMPARTIALLY Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> Indeed, U.S. involvement was not impartial. The presence of U.S. troops strengthened the position of the Christian-dominated regime of President Amin Geymayel at the expense of the other factions. The Lebanon debacle underscores a larger problem. It is exceedingly difficult for any outside party, acting alone or in concert with others, to remain impartial during an armed conflict, no matter how sincere the intention. That point was painfully proven once again in Mogadishu 10 years after Beirut. When President Bush sent U.S. troops to Somalia in 1992, he cited a humanitarian reason: to feed the starving Somali population. Civil order had broken down, and warring factions were using starvation as a weapon against innocent people. Despite the simple and narrow focus of the mission, the United States eventually found itself party to the civil war. Under the auspices of the United Nations, American troops were engaged for several months in a manhunt for "warlord" Mohammad Farah Aideed, culminating in a ferocious firefight on October 3, 1993, that cost the lives of 18 Army Rangers. The search for Aideed was futile and, in the end, abandoned. In an ironic twist of events, a U.S. military plane carried "political leader" Aideed to a peace conference in Ethiopia only weeks after U.S. troops gave up their search. Nothing substantial was accomplished. While it is true that Somalis were no longer starving, the worst of the famine was over before American troops arrived. According to many sources, some regions of Somalia were actually producing an agricultural surplus at the time the United States intervened.(30) "Mission creep" transformed the objective from easing starvation to "nation building," and no substantive progress was made toward that goal. Street fighting diminished for a time, but even before the American withdrawal in March 1994 it began to resume. Again, the costs have been tremendous: American, UN, and Somali lives; scarce economic resources ($1.3 billion for the United States alone); and American credibility were all squandered in the unsuccessful mission.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com MULTILATERIALISM AND REGIONALISM BETTER
Page 149 of 158
AFRICAS COLONIAL HISTORY MAKES MANY STATES SUSPICIOUS OF FOREIGN INTERVENTION; THEREFORE REGIONAL EFFORTS ARE CRUCIAL TO STOPPING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES Dan Kuwali [Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University], The end of humanitarian intervention: Evaluation of the African Unions right of intervention, African Journal of Conflict Resolution 9.1 (2010) In light of their colonial experiences, many African and Asian countries have been sceptical about Western justifications for intervention, and thus these states are less inclined to view intervention as legitimate, even if it is meant to stop grave human rights abuses. Together with Russia and China, the States from the Southern hemisphere have insisted on UN authorisation as a prerequisite for intervention. Given the importance attached to their sovereignty by the relatively young African States, most of which became independent in the process of decolonisation after World War II, their recent emphasis on the notion of sovereignty as responsibility (Deng 1993) and the concomitant policy of non-indifference (Kioko 2003:817) is a quantum leap towards the prevention of serious human rights violations. Given the experience with mass atrocity crimes on the continent, the posture of collective enforcement action with or without authorisation of the UN is easy to explain. This point is strengthened by the OAU Secretary-Generals report which recommended that given the failure of the UN to forestall conflicts in Africa and the robust intervention provisions in the AU Act, the mandate of the OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution should be enlarged to provide for deployment of peacekeeping forces and peace enforcement in circumstances provided in Article 4(h) and (j) of the AU Act (Levitt 2003:115).
Page 150 of 158
THE FAILURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO ADDRESS SHAMEFUL HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN AFRICA HAS PROMPTED REGIONAL ACTION Dan Kuwali [Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University], The end of humanitarian intervention: Evaluation of the African Unions right of intervention, African Journal of Conflict Resolution 9.1 (2010) The UN General Assembly too has endorsed this emerging norm in its 2005 World Summit Outcome document. As UN Members, AU States have also unanimously endorsed that in the face of mass atrocity crimes the international community has a responsibility to protect (R2P) the population, be it with a States consent or not. Given this experience, it is obvious that implementing the right to intervene and putting the concept of R2P into practice should be at the heart of African legal, political and decision-making machinery. A sense of shame at the passivity of the international response has been hugely important to the evolution of the AU right of intervention with the resultant political commitment of R2P (Williams 2007:23). The inaction of the Security Council in Rwanda in 1994, the codification of enforcement by consent in Article 4(h) is a milestone in the protection of human rights in Africa as the AU may be seen to surmount the potential impasse in the Security Council, towards an independent mechanism to respond to crises in Africa. Rather than a revolution, it is an evolution, because the AU has overturned the non-interference principle of its predecessor the OAU, and declared that Africans can no longer be indifferent to mass atrocity crimes on the continent. In this way, claims of sovereignty cannot be a shield against multilateral enforcement action under Article 4(h) of the AU Act.
Page 151 of 158
MULTILATERAL INTERVENTIONS ARE PREFERABLE TO UNILATERAL ONES BECAUSE THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO ADVANCE A SELF-INTERESTED AGENDA Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Compared with unilateral interventions, IGO interventions might be less detrimental to womens status. The collective nature of the military missions will likely mitigate the possibility of adventurism or any one state using the organizations mission to further its own particular interests (Doyle, Johnstone & Orr, 1997; Doyle & Sambanis, 2000, 2006; Bellamy & Williams, 2005). IGO interventions might therefore hinder any individual states attempt to establish an authoritarian, patriarchal political system that is isolated from the global community.
Page 152 of 158
IGO INTERVENTIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO IMPROVE WOMENS RIGHTS BY INCREASING INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF THE PROBLEM Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Furthermore, the involvement of multiple countries in IGO military interventions will also increase the international exposure of the extent of womens rights violations along with other human rights problems in the target state. It will subsequently decrease the target governments ability to use or tolerate repressive measures against its citizens. This is because the international awareness of poor human rights conditions, including the socio-economic and political treatment of women, increases the level of pressure that the government will face from transnational advocacy groups and international organizations (Sikkink, 1993; Moravcsik, 1995; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Joachim, 2003; Adams & Kang, 2007; Murdie & Davis, 2011). Therefore, to undermine the pressure and maintain military and diplomatic support from the international community, the government will likely be forced to improve human rights conditions and tolerate less gender-based discrimination.
Page 153 of 158
IGO INTERVENTIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO PRODUCE STABILITY AND DEMOCRACY Dursun Peksen [Dept. of Political Science, East Carolina University], Foreign Military Intervention and Womens Rights, Journal of Peace Research (2011) 48: 455 Although the data analysis in the following section only tests the direct impact of IGO interventions on womens status, IGO-led operations might also indirectly affect womens wellbeing by promoting stability and peace. First, multilateral missions under the aegis of international or regional organizations are more likely to be perceived as normatively legitimate, as they reflect the will of the international community on an impartial basis (Farer, 2003; Finnemore, 2003; Bellamy & Williams, 2005; Doyle & Sambanis, 2006). Furthermore, a multilateral commitment at the international or regional level to a military mission will enhance the operation capacity of the intervention through burdensharing among the contributor states. That is, interstate cooperation increases the possibility that adequate military and financial resources will be provided to bear the military and political costs of intervention (Regan, 2000: 106 107; Finnemore, 2003; Doyle & Sambanis, 2006; see also Ruggie, 1993; Abbot & Snidal, 1998). Existing research shows that IGO interventions are effective in promoting more durable peace (Doyle & Sambanis, 2000, 2006; Fortna, 2004; Bellamy & Williams, 2005) and attaining political stability (Stedman, Rothchild & Cousens, 2002; Dobbins et al., 2005; Call & Wyeth, 2008). Pickering & Peceny (2006), on the other hand, find that the UN-led multilateral military missions are more successful in promoting democratic freedoms in comparison to the liberal interventions by France, Great Britain, and the USA. Most IGO interventions are deployed in countries with a collapsed government and civil society as a result of violent humanitarian crises. If so, an attempt by an IGO to restore political order and establish a functioning government might create opportunities for the advancement of womens rights, i ncluding reforms in the laws and institutions that protect womens internationally recognized rights. In addition, the existence of a stable political system with respect for basic human rights and political freedoms in general allows women to be actively involved in socio-economic and political life to promote their rights (Norris & Inglehart, 2001; Inglehart & Norris, 2003; Beer, 2009). Hence, the contribution of IGO interventions to the targets political stability might partially decrease the extent of gender-based discrimination in access to economic and political resources.
Page 154 of 158
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY SUCCESSFUL AS MORE REGIONAL FORCES HAVE BEEN DEPLOYED AS PEACEKEEPERS John Western [Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College] and Joshua S. Goldstein [Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American University], Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 6 (2011) Outside the Balkans, the international community continued to adapt its approach to conflicts with similar success. In 1999, after a referendum on East Timors secession from Indonesia led to Indonesian atrocities against Timorese civilians, the un quickly authorized an 11,000-strong Australian-led military force to end the violence. The intervention eventually produced an independent East Timor at peace with Indonesia. Later missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cte dIvoire used a similar model of deploying a regional military force in coordination with the UN and, on occasion, European powers.
SYRIA INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WOULD LEAD TO PROLONGED CONFRONTATION AND BLOODSHED Murphy, Richard W. [U.S. ambassador to Mauritania (197174), Syria (197478), the Philippines (197881), and Saudi Arabia (198183); U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs from 1983-1989]. Why Washington Didn't Intervene In Syria Last Time: Comparing 1982 to 2012. Foreign Affairs. <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137341/richardw-murphy/why-washington-didnt-intervene-in-syria-last-time?page=2#> Washington hopes that whenever the Assad regime is replaced, it will be by leadership guaranteeing a multiparty political structure and a foreign policy free of Iranian influence. What Washington can do to advance those goals is, however, very much in question. Russia and China vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Syria that would have given a measure of hope to the opposition and pause to the regime. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have spoken out repeatedly against Syria's repression of its own citizens, but as yet there is no sign that their words, or those from any other quarter, are having an impact. Assad's reaction to the unrest has primarily been to apply more force. He benefits from the fact that the Syrian opposition remains highly fragmented, and that to train an effective military force to confront that of his regime would be time-consuming and difficult. Washington is helping shape a more coherent political opposition. But U.S. policymakers must keep clearly in mind that the regime has its supporters in all walks of life and across Syria's religious communities. Over the last 40 years, the Assad family built a reputation for safeguarding the country's minorities and for providing a predictable (if repressed) life for Syrians. Its policies have created both resistance to change and inertia. Washington was long irritated by Syrian criticisms of Egypt over its peace treaty with Israel, by Damascus' support for Iranian nurturing of Hezbollah and Hamas, and by Syria's own prolonged military presence in Lebanon. It took the Arab Spring and the United States' worry about Iran's nuclear program to bring all of these resentments into focus. There have been defections from the Syrian military. However, unless these increase massively or there is a coup from within the Syrian military ranks, the prospect of prolonged confrontation and bloodshed in Syria is likely.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com US INTERVENTION IN SYRIA WILL SOUR US-RUSSIA RELATIONS
Page 155 of 158
Trenin, Dmitri [Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center]. Russia's Line in the Sand on Syria: Why Moscow Wants To Halt the Arab Spring. February 5, 2012. Foreign Affairs. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137078/dmitri-trenin/russias-line-in-the-sand-onsyria?page=show Syria somewhat bucked this trend: Its continued relationship with post-Soviet Russia was largely due to the fact that Syria needed arms and Assad did not trust the United States. Today, Russias material interests in Syria are real, though limited. Damascus continues to purchase a wide range of Russian arms, from tanks to aircraft and air defenses, but Syria does not represent a big or particularly lucrative market for these exports. In order to sell its armaments, Russia has had to extend credit to Syria and forgive Damascus its multibillion-dollar debt to the Soviet Union. When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Damascus in 2010, he offered to build a nuclear reactor in Syria, but that work has not even started. And Moscow maintains a naval resupply facility at the Syrian port of Tartus, which it last used a few weeks ago, when the Russian navys only aircraft carrier was sailing from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. These bilateral interests are supported by the personal connections between Russian military officers, arms traders, and diplomats and senior members of the Assad regime. But these shared interests are not the only reasons why Russia has been unwilling to join the West in condemning Assad at the UN Security Council. Moscow has learned its lesson from how events unfolded in Libya last year. It abstained during the crucial UN vote on intervention in Libya, thus allowing the adoption of the resolution calling for a no-fly zone over Libya, which was meant to prevent an impending massacre in Benghazi. The Russian government wanted to help its partners in the United States and Europe, whom Russia needs for its plans for economic modernization. To be sure, Russia did have some material interests in Libya -- contracts for military arms and railroad contracts -- but it certainly did not want to be seen as Muammar alQaddafis defender. The NATO no-fly zone soon led to an offshore war against the Qaddafi regime. As Russian officials argued, vicious as the Qaddafi government may have been, the wars long agony resulted in a number of deaths among civilians, if not so much in Benghazi, as once feared, then in Tripoli and in Qaddafi strongholds such as Sirte. As Moscow sees it, the foreign militaries that intervened bear at least some responsibility for those deaths. And so far, the new Libyan regime has proved far less secular than the one it replaced, with some of its leaders suspected of having links to al Qaeda. It also has been unable to control Qaddafis abandoned arsenals, or even preserve unity in its own ranks. What was billed as a revolution seemed to many in Moscow to be a civil war that replaced a dictatorship with chaos. But Libya has always been peripheral to Middle Eastern geopolitics. Syria, however, is different. A civil war there, which has in effect already begun, could unsettle the entire region, above all in Lebanon but also in Jordan and Iraq. Israel, too, may be affected should Damascus encourage Palestinian militants or Hezbollah fighters to attack Israeli settlements or outposts. Iran, Syrias ally, is already being drawn into the fray, with the Assad regimes Alawite core coming under attack from mainly Sunni opposition. Syria is Bahrain in reverse -- a Sunni majority that feels oppressed by a relatively small sect that many believe is closer to the Shiites. Recent events in Syria and Bahrain have caused the regional divide between Sunnis and Shiites to become more pronounced, heralding a possible clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran. As strategists in Moscow see it, the conflict in Syria, the sectarian violence in Iraq, and the aborted revolution in Bahrain are the proxy battlefields where the struggle for regional primacy is being fought. As a result, where much of the Western world now sees a case for human rights and democracy, and where the Soviets in their day would have spotted national liberation movements or the rise of the masses, most observers in Moscow today see geopolitics. Russian government officials and commentators close to them explain Western behavior in rather cynical terms: Washington let go of a long-time ally, Mubarak, in order to retain influence in Egypt, waged a war in Libya to
Page 156 of 158
keep oil contracts, and ignored the Saudi intervention in Bahrain because the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based there. And now, the United States is trying to topple Assad to rob Iran of its sole ally in the Arab world. The Russians themselves have no dogs in these fights, but they do not want to bandwagon on a U.S. regional strategy that they believe is a losing and dangerous proposition.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com US STRATEGIC INTERESTS
Page 157 of 158
NO STRATEGIC INTEREST IN INTERVENTIONREGIONAL CONFLICT POSE NO SECURITY THREAT TO THE US Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> There is widespread acknowledgement that most regional conflicts do not represent an intrinsic threat to America's national security. Even the interventionist-minded Clinton administration does not claim that regional wars are a direct threat to American vital interests, and officials have been quick to point out that foreign policy failures in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia should not be viewed as jeopardizing the nation's security. As Secretary of State Warren Christopher has cautioned, regional conflicts should not "detract from our ability to concentrate on the strategic priorities."(5) Indeed, that thinking prevailed even during the Cold War, when Soviet expansionism was a factor and one faction in a conflict might be an ally or surrogate of the Soviet Union. Referring to Vietnam, America's most ambitious intervention since World War II, one of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's top aides conceded that "it takes some sophistication to see how Vietnam automatically involves [our vital interests]."(6) Since the end of the Cold War, with no viable and aggressive major expansionist power, even more "sophistication" is required to connect remote regional conflicts with American security.
12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com GLOBAL INSTABILITY IS NOT A THREAT TO THE US
Page 158 of 158
Conry, Barbara [foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute]. The Futility of U.S. Intervention in Regional Conflicts, Cato Policy Analysis No. 209. The Cato Institute. May 19, 1994. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-209.html> There is no compelling evidence that global instability per se is or ever has been a threat to American national security.(11) "Peace is not the normal state of affairs. Equilibrium in the international system is not a natural or automatically realized phenomenon," concedes former assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams.(12) Indeed, an international system of sovereign states is by its very nature unstable. That has always been true--even during the relatively quiescent, bipolar Cold War era. The Cold War was more stable than the periods that immediately preceded and followed it. However, regional conflicts could and did occur. In Jonathan Clarke's words, "The history books burgeon with the records of major conflagrations" that occurred during the Cold War.(13) The conflicts in Ethiopia, Angola, Chad, India-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua, and El Salvador were only a few of the regional wars that raged. Global instability is not unique to the post-Cold War era, although it has become more pronounced. Clearly, the most fundamental objective of foreign policy must be to protect U.S. vital interests and national security. But a policy that erroneously views global stability as essential to American security would force the United States to expend enormous resources in pursuit of an unattainable objective. Unless Washington chooses to intervene, thereby incurring risks, there is no regional upheaval that would seriously imperil American interests in the foreseeable future. The United States has always survived the disorder and instability that are endemic to the state system without serious economic or strategic repercussions. The militarized pursuit of global stability would exact costs that greatly outweighed any benefits it might confer.(14)

Humanitarian Intervention

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Humanitarian Intervention

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS | March/April 2013

12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com

AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE ........................................................................................... 44

12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY .................................................................................... 52

LIBERAL HUMANITARIANISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM ......................................................................... 62

JUST WAR THEORY .......................................................................................................................... 75

12NFL4- Humanitarian Intervention www.victorybriefs.com