Title : Discuss the view that a "humanitarian intervention" reflects the interests of great powers rather than legal or moral principles. By : Helen Vieth Date : 10 Sep 2010 URL : http://www.upublica.com/article_c/article_detail/60/discuss_the_view_that_a_humanitarian_intervention_reflects_the_interests_of_great_powers_rather_than_legal_or_moral_principles Outline : This essay was written for the course Foundations and Key Issues in Human Rights as part of a master's degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science. By sharing this work I hope to generate discussion on the issues raised.
Humanitarian intervention: p1 How does the world react when “bad things happen in unimportant places”? [1] Do Chomsky's 'enlightened states' of the world have an interest, a responsibility, or even a right to intervene when gross human rights violations are occurring abroad? At what point does such a responsibility take shape? At the point when the “bad things” occur, or at the point when their effects pose a threat to international security through, for example, a consequent mass movement of refugees? At first sight the phrase 'humanitarian intervention' may conjure up an image of an international Saint Christopher rushing in figuratively to carry a weakened nation across the gushing river of a humanitarian crisis that has swelled to such proportions that the global community can no longer turn a blind eye in the name of state sovereignty. However, it is obvious why one may also be persuaded that such interventions may be more political than Samaritan in nature. There has been a veritable proliferation of humanitarian interventions since the end of the Cold War and yet certain situations, such as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, have not been deemed incumbent for international action. Does this lack of continuity in decision-making reflect an absence of a coherent international framework for intervention, or is it representative of a more cynical lack of political interest and will? This essay aims to establish that, whilst the great powers will never act out of pure altruism, they do not necessarily break with legal and moral principles in their selective intervention to defend international peace and security. Firstly, I will establish the meaning of the terms 'great powers' and 'humanitarian intervention', illustrating that their very definition goes some way to illuminating the title's thesis. Then I will examine the international legal principles and institutional framework behind humanitarian intervention, before analysing the moral principles governing intervention, devoting particular weight to recent developments. Finally, I will draw on case studies from the last two decades in order to shed light upon the question as to whether the great powers have been acting in their own self-interest or whether they have, as they assert, been performing a role of global benefactor, ultimately concluding that there is a mixture of motives in any political decision-making. Notes [1] (Chomsky 1999: 5)
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A great power is a state with considerable economic, political and military strength, which therefore enjoys considerable influence over global affairs. Based on their permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), USA, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France qualify, and based on gross domestic product Germany, Japan and India should arguably also be included. All of the above rank in the world's top ten countries for military expenditure, with USA accounting for 48 percent of global military expenditure in 2005 [1]. Holzgrefe soundly defines humanitarian intervention as “the threat or use of force across state borders by a state (or group of states) aimed at preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of the fundamental human rights of individuals other than its own citizens, without the permission of the state within whose territory force is applied” [2]. Because military capacity is a prerequisite for intervention, this means that, based on military expenditure alone, intervention is not possible without the backing of the great powers in general and USA in particular. From a legal point of view the question of humanitarian intervention is, superficially, quite simple [3]: the UN Charter prohibits the use of force unless it is in self-defence or it is authorised, due to exceptional circumstances, by the UNSC. The drafters of the Charter included in the norms the requirement to refrain from threat or use of force against “the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (Article 2.4), an essential safeguarding of domestic sovereignty (Article 2.7) and the option for the UNSC to authorise the use of military force to restore international peace and security (Chapter VII, particularly Article 42). In practice, however, the system of acquiring UNSC authorisation for intervention is bureaucratic and fraught with political tension due to the composition of the five ideologically opposed permanent members, any of whose veto can stop action being taken, as has been the case with the American veto of intervention in Rwanda and the Chinese veto of intervention in Darfur. This imperfect system has led to unauthorised unilateral action being taken, as with the 1999 NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia, on the grounds that unauthorised action is better than inaction. However, it can be argued that acting without authorisation is a fundamental threat to law and order (Donnelly 2003: 248). Consequently there is increasing debate around the perceived legitimacy, despite illegality, of such action.

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Some corners argue that a right of unilateral intervention supersedes the Charter on account of consistent state practice of intervention over the centuries, which has created customary international law that precedes the UN Charter (Chesterman 2003: 45). Tesón, further, proffers that UNSC authorised actions themselves are “evidence of a customary international law norm sanctioning unilateral action” [1].

These arguments would suggest that there is a legal right to intervention even if such action does not meet with UNSC approval. If this is so, can one argue that unilateral humanitarian intervention by the great powers is driven by self-interest because states have at times chosen to bypass conventional legal routes in order to assert their own political will?

Would it not be equally valid to posit that the great powers are actually spearheading a new age of humanitarianism, circumventing the UNSC and the UN Charter only because these institutional safeguards have proved inadequate in the face of modern ethnic cleansing and similar human rights atrocities?

The 1990s saw a “fundamental change in the norms governing the behaviour of states” [2]. Until then, Cold War and anti-colonial international relations had ensured that the principle of non-intervention embodied in UN Charter Article 2(4) and dating back to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia was dominant in international affairs. During the 1990s an increasing number of interventions, from the creation of a safe haven in northern Iraq in 1991 to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, showed that military intervention in support of humanitarian goals had become widely accepted, perhaps due to an emerging global civil society [3].

Hand in hand with the increase in the number of humanitarian interventions, post-Cold War international politics witnessed a marked increase in focus on universal moral norms, arguably creating what Ignatieff refers to as a “moral imperium” [4].

“What do you do, what are you entitled to do, and what ought you to do if you repeatedly hear your neighbours beating their children?” [5] This question could usefully be transposed onto the issue of moral legitimacy of humanitarian intervention when asking when it is appropriate for states to intervene using force to protect the citizens of another state.

In some ways Gewirth's Principle of Intervening Action previously applied, albeit translated from the individual level to the state level: one state could not be held directly responsible for a violation if another state was the direct cause of that violation, thus absolving the first state of moral responsibility. However, where sovereignty has traditionally been held up as inviolable, states have begun to feel they can no longer turn a blind eye to their neighbour's actions, particularly in the wake of 9/11.

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If we are to believe world leaders, this moral concern is genuine. Tony Blair enunciated with regard to Kosovo in his 1999 Chicago speech: “This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values. We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand. We must not rest until it is reversed” [1].

This would seem to engender the very values set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a refusal to accept human suffering no matter where it occurs. Indeed, over the last few years, the language of intervention has been recast. “[W]orld leaders have agreed that they share a responsibility to protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity” [2].

Instead of talking of the right to intervene, the great powers now talk of the responsibility to protect, as articluated in the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which states: “Where a population is suffering serious harm...and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect” [3].

This implies that the interests of a suffering population take precedence over the interests of the great powers, but this principle is applied inconsistently at best. That is not to say that intervention should be “rejected in one [place] because it was weak or nonexistent in the other” or because there is a more needy case elsewhere [4].

Equally, it is interesting to ask if states should intervene at all, if they are unable (geographically) or unwilling (politically) to intervene in certain situations. One of the fundamental tenets of human rights is that they are universal, that all human beings should be treated equally.

A human rights framework demands that rights be protected by the international community, by force if necessary (subject to the norms embodied in the UN Charter and international humanitarian law). Therefore governments cannot, according to human rights law nor indeed in good conscience, ignore the violation of some rights merely because an equal or greater violation is occurring elsewhere, or because a violation has been ignored in the past.

In practice, it would appear that intervention has at times been implemented by the great powers precisely to compensate for previous embarrassingly ignored violations.

Kaldor illustrates this well, summing up the major humanitarian interventions of the 1990s in this way [5]: “The safe haven in Iraq was...not sustained...The intervention in Somalia was supposed to compensate for the weaknesses of the mandate in Bosnia...The Somali debacle resulted in the non-intervention in Rwanda...The need to restore credibility...led to the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia.”

Though this progression does demonstrate the existence of moral concern amongst the great powers by its illustration of their recognition of past mistakes and desire to ameliorate their humanitarian record, it is hardly an advertisement for selfless international protection of human rights.

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At the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was raging untamed. Indeed, the conflict in DRC has been deemed the most violent since World War II, with an estimated four million dead since 1998 [1].

Yet, there was no intervention to end that suffering. According to the Genocide Convention, signatories have a legal obligation to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide” [2]. Despite the death toll, great powers have been reluctant to use such language in regard to DRC.

Mamdani suggests the reason for this is that Congolese militia are trained in neighbouring USA allies Rwanda and Uganda [3]. A stronger argument might be that the great powers simply had their hands full with the more strategically important wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving no resources for a situation that posed no obvious threat to Western national security.

Likewise, the international community was unwilling to label the killing in Rwanda a genocide, rendering action technically unnecessary. This was politically fortunate since “no government was prepared to risk its soldiers” there [4].

Humanitarianism is worthy, but political justifiability is paramount and it would be hard to achieve public acceptance for deployment with no national interests at stake, as was the case in Rwanda [5]. “[T]he lives of foreigners don't weigh that heavily in the scales of domestic decision-making” [6].

In their UNSC vetoing of action in Rwanda, USA leant on Clinton's 1994 Presidential Decision Directive, a directive drawn up in response to the debacle in Somalia, which essentially limits US involvement in UN peacekeeping operations. It was only France's strategic alignment with Rwanda, enhanced through their 1975 Military Cooperation Agreement that was still active, that led to action eventually being taken through Operation Turquoise.

In addition to a lack of national interest, intervention that poses too big a risk is difficult to justify politically. This was also the case with the genocide in Iraq in 1988. “Iraqi soldiers rounded up and killed as many as 100,000 Kurds” but received only “verbal condemnation” from the international community rather than punitive or humanitarian action [7]: any Western intervention during the Cold War would have incurred Soviet retaliation, too high a price to pay for humanitarianism.

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Politics and pragmatism were arguably the mix behind intervention in Somalia, which proved an important precedent in its use of Chapter VII to deliver humanitarian aid. The Somali operation was perceived as “relatively risk-free and short-term” [1].

Media coverage of the 1,000 Somalis dying daily ensured legitimacy for President Bush, who was keen not only to “deflect attention from...the inaction over Bosnia” and prove that the new world order was more than rhetoric but also to end his presidency “on a glittering note” [2].

Legally the last port of call after all other avenues have been exhausted (as articulated in Article 42 of the UN Charter), intervention was in hindsight unnecessary, as international diplomatic conflict resolution had proved to be “bearing fruit” [3].

The decision to intervene in Kosovo caused great controversy and was a “landmark in international relations”, conveniently ushering in an age of “New Humanism” together with the new millenium [4].

Compared to ongoing global conflicts at the time, 20,000 dead in Kosovo was not a high figure. Colombia was witnessing similar levels of dead but was largely ignored. Ironically, many of the deaths in Kosovo were caused by the high-altitude NATO bombing that was favoured over ground troops in order to minimise military casualties and maintain political support back home.

Clinton announced that the US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was “necessary to stop ethnic cleansing and bring stability to Eastern Europe”, justifiying the international community's lack of response elsewhere: “We cannot respond to such tragedies everywhere, but...where we can make a difference, we must try, and that is clearly the case in Kosovo” [5].

Ignatieff argues that interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo took place primarily because USA wished to “reassert American leadership over NATO”, as well as to prevent the conflict from “splitting the alliances” that maintained European security [6].

However, “fearing a deluge of arriving refugees”, it was the Europeans who led the Balkans peace process [7]. This last point is an important one: refugees pose a threat to the stability of neighbouring countries, something that has not proved strategically important to the great powers in, for example, the Great Lakes region, but significant enough to have warranted intervention in northern Iraq in 1991 when Turkish stability was at risk.

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Intervention is “centrally motivated by a concern for...the destabilizing consequences of continued disorder”, as was the case in Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor and Afghanistan [1].

This has become particularly pertinent since 9/11, as prolonged disorder, even in countries that were previously of little strategic importance, may now be perceived to pose a pressing threat to international security.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq happened without UNSC approval at a time when the government's killing was not “of the exceptional and dire magnitude that would justify humanitarian intervention” [2]. There is no doubt that long-term human rights violations had been committed by the Iraqi regime and were continuing in 2003, but human rights violations were not the dominant factor behind the invasion.

Although Saddam Hussein's cruelty was mentioned, the principal justification for the invasion was the government's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and its purported Al Qaeda connections and consequent threat to national security, particularly in USA. The recasting of the invasion as humanitarianism in the aftermath of the war became a political necessity for the great powers involved as public support for the action declined.

The Global Policy Forum is very clear on its opinion as to whether great powers act in self-interest with regard to humanitarian intervention: “When nations send their military forces into other nations' territory, it is rarely (if ever) for 'humanitarian' purposes. They are typically pursuing their narrow national interest...Leaders hope to win public support by describing such actions in terms of high moral purposes – bringing peace, justice, democracy and civilization to the affected area”. [3]

Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton's infamous statement only adds fuel to this hypothesis: “There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world – that's the United States – when it suits our interests” [4].

It is difficult not to be swayed to cynicism by such views. However, whilst it is not in the nature of governments to act out of purely selfless motives – nor, indeed, is that what they are elected to do – it seems that the increasingly moral focus of today's politics, encouraged by the voice of a growing global civil society, is forcing a realistic mix of altruism and self-interest when it comes to decisions on intervention, as governments sign up to the responsibility to protect.

Bad things happening in unimportant places can no longer be ignored by the great powers: the stakes are too high both in terms of electoral politics and international (let alone national) peace and security. Walzer has found only “mixed cases where the humanitarian motive is one among several” [5]. However, the inclusion of strategic motives does not invalidate humanitarian interests nor necessarily render intervention unjustified. This is the balance between great power interests and legal and moral principles.

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International treaties:

United Nations Charter (1948)

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)