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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Aug 24 2011 - 16:19:50 EDT
The Crisis of Humanitarian Intervention
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_crisis_of_humanitarian_intervention
By Walden Bello <http://www.fpif.org/about/columnists#Walden+Bello>, August
9, 2011
Events in Libya and Syria have again brought to the forefront the question
of armed humanitarian intervention or the “responsibility to protect.”
Our hearts all go out to the unarmed demonstrators seeking to bring down
corrupt dictatorships that are a plague on their people. In Tunisia and
Egypt, the people rose and deposed dictators on their own. Armed supporters
of the Mubarak regime did attack and even fire on people in Tahrir Square,
but a massive crackdown was avoided when the military decided not to take
the side of the dictator.
Things have not been so simple since then. Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi
came down hard on civilian protesters, providing the opportunity for the
United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to intervene
militarily by waging an air war and arming the rebels. Today, the Assad
dictatorship's massive repression in cities and towns in Syria that have
risen in revolt has also sparked agitation for intervention in the West.
Is it ever legitimate to supersede the principle of national sovereignty
with a military intervention aimed at protecting citizens from their
government? And if the answer is yes, what circumstances would justify this
course of action and how should it be carried out?
Circumscribing National Sovereignty
Ever since the Peace of Westphalia ended Europe’s wars of religion in 1648,
the principle of the inviolability of the sovereignty of the nation-state
has evolved to become the bedrock principle of international relations.
Under the so-called Westphalian system, the nation-state emerged as the
basic unit of international relations, sovereign unto itself and expected to
respect the sovereignty of other states, be they ruled by people or princes.
The supremacy of national sovereignty as a principle, however, clashed with
the reality of conflicts among states. Thus systems of collective security
like the United Nations emerged both to protect and to circumscribe the
exercise of the principle of national sovereignty.
In recent years, the principle of national sovereignty has been limited from
another quarter, from the expansion of the doctrineof human rights. Ever
since the tragic events in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the early
1990s, there have been efforts to further circumscribe the principle of
sovereignty to justify foreign state intervention when genocidal events or
massive violations of human rights take place within a country. This
enterprise has produced the doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” or
“humanitarian intervention.”
While the countries of the North have acclaimed the new doctrine, it has
provoked controversy in the South, where states have only relatively
recently acquired independence from colonial occupation by waving the banner
of national sovereignty. Indeed, some nations, like the Palestinians, are
still in the process of throwing off the yoke of foreign occupiers.
Recent interventions, such as in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya
illustrate, in the view of many in the South, the perils of a course of
action that may begin with good intentions on the part of those calling for
it, but end up with detrimental consequences for the sovereignty of nations,
the integrity of national territory, and the maintenance of regional and
global peace and security.
Contrary to a common perception in the North, few in the South would argue
that respect for a country’s national sovereignty is absolute. Intervention,
however, in the view of many, including this author, can only be sanctioned
if there is substantial proof of genocide and if measures are taken to
ensure that great-power logic does not displace the original humanitarian
intent.
Kosovo and Great-Power Logic
The NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, undertaken to protect ethnic Albanians
in Kosovo, has been calleda classic case of humanitarian intervention. But
the world can ill afford emulating the Kosovo military intervention.
First of all, the intervention contributed mightily to eroding the
credibility of the UN, when the United States, knowing it would not get
approval for intervention from the Security Council, used the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) as the legal cover for the war. NATO, in turn,
was a fig-leaf for a war 95 percent of which was carried out by U.S. forces.
Although the humanitarian rationale was undoubtedly the purpose of some of
its advocates, the operation mainly advanced Washington's geopolitical
designs. The lasting result of the Kosovo air war was not a stable and
secure network of Balkan states but NATO expansion. That is not surprising,
since ultimately that was what the air war was about. Slobodan Milosevic's
moves in both the earlier Bosnian crisis and in Kosovo, according to Andrew
Bacevich<http://books.google.com/books?id=5TND4SpnuxIC&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=%22called+into+question+the+relevance+of+NATO+and,+by+extension%22&source=bl&ots=3vzVNJalbV&sig=7F9OyFeUlXRuOFinijE4oF1ngJk&hl=en&ei=RoFATpG5FZSugQfTj82fBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&re>,
"called into question the relevance of NATO and, by extension, US claims to
leadership in Europe."
If it did not successfully manage Slobodan Milosevic, the United States
could not have maintained its drive for NATO expansion. For the Clinton
administration, such expansion would fill the security vacuum in Eastern
Europe and institutionalize U.S. leadership in post-Soviet Europe. In
Washington's view, according to one
analyst<http://books.google.com/books?id=z_w3DkdSdhsC&pg=PA134&dq=%22NATO+enlargement+would+provide+an+institutional+framework+to+lock+in+domestic+transitions%22&hl=en&ei=w4FATqbMB8jagQfcvemgBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=f>
,
NATO enlargement would provide an institutional framework to lock in
domestic transitions under way in Eastern and Central Europe. The prospect
of alliance membership would itself be an 'incentive' for these countries to
pursue domestic reforms. Subsequent integration into the alliance was
predicted to lock in those institutional reforms. Membership would entail a
wide array of organizational adaptations, such as standardization of
military procedures, steps toward interoperability with NATO forces, and
joint planning and training. By enmeshing new members in the wider alliance
institutions and participation in its operations, NATO would reduce their
ability to revert to the old ways and reinforce the liberalization of
transitional governments. As one NATO official remarked: ‘We're enmeshing
them in the NATO culture, both politically and militarily, so they begin to
think like us-and over time-act like us.’
A major aspect of the politics of NATO expansion was securing the continuing
military dependence of Western European states on the United States.
Washington could then quickly take advantagevia the NATO air war against
Serbia of the European governments' failure to follow through on an
independent European initiative in the Balkans to prove that European
security was not possible without the American guarantee.
In addition, the air war soon triggered what it was ostensibly meant to end:
an increase in human rights violations and violations of international
treaties. The bombing provoked the Serbs in Kosovo to accelerate their
murder and displacement of Albanian Kosovars, while doing "considerable
indirect damage" to the people of Serbia through the targeting of electrical
grids, bridges, and water facilities--acts that violated Article 14 of the
1977 Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Convention, which prohibits attacks on
"objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population."
Finally, Kosovo provided a strong precedent for future violations of the
principle of national sovereignty. The cavalier way in which the liberal
Clinton administration justified setting aside national sovereignty by
reference to allegedly "overriding" humanitarian concerns became part of the
moral and legal armament that would be deployed by people of a different
party, the Republicans, in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the right-wing thinker
Philip Bobbitt saw
it<http://www.gavinsblog.com/2004/03/15/better-than-empire-philip-bobbit/>,
the Clinton administration's actions in Kosovo served as "precedents" that
limited the rights of sovereignty of non-democratic regimes, "including the
inherent right to seek whatever weapons a regime may choose."
Afghanistan: Creating a Worse Situation
When the invasion of Afghanistan took place in 2001, the North put up little
resistance to the U.S. move to oust the Taliban government. Washington took
advantage of sympathy for the United States generated by 9/11 and the image
of the Taliban government sheltering al-Qaeda to eliminate negotiations with
the Taliban as an option. Using Article 51 of the United Nations Charter,
which sanctioned retaliation in self defense, the United States invaded
Afghanistan with little protest from European countries. But to strengthen
its position, the Bush administration not only used the rationale of
crushing the threat of al-Qaeda to the United States. It also painted its
move into Afghanistan as a necessary act of humanitarian intervention to
depose the repressive Taliban government--one that was justified by the
precedent of Kosovo. Invoking the humanitarian rationale, NATO member states
like Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands also eventually sent armed
contingents.
Like the Kosovo air campaign, the Afghanistan War soon showed the pitfalls
of humanitarian intervention. As in Kosovo, great-power logic soon took
over. Hunting for bin Laden yielded to the imperative of establishing and
consolidating a U.S. military presence in Southwest Asia that would allow
strategic control of both the oil-rich Middle East and energy-rich Central
Asia. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seized on Afghanistan as what
one analyst described<http://books.google.com/books?id=QNctBV34wGIC&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=%22a+laboratory+to+prove+his+theory+about+the+ability+%22&source=bl&ots=5iQiVw6plX&sig=MrDldNvgjRGMpyIx6dFP1pWVuAk&hl=en&ei=LoNATqneEJKRgQeXoMSiBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ve>as
"a laboratory to prove his theory about the ability of small numbers
of
ground troops, coupled with air power, to win decisive battles." The
Afghanistan invasion's main function, it turned out, was to prove obsolete
the Powell Doctrine dictum about the need for a massive commitment of troops
in an intervention, which the administration used later to persuade skeptics
to support its strategic objective of invading Iraq.
The campaign in Afghanistan soon ended up doing what it was supposed to
eliminate: terrorizing civilians. U.S. bombing could not, in many cases,
distinguish military from civilian targets, which was not surprising since
the Taliban enjoyed significant popular support in many parts of the
country. The result was a high level of civilian casualties. One estimate,
by Marc Herrold, placed the figure of civilian
deaths<http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-civilian-casualties-statistics>
at between 3,125 and 3,620, from October 7, 2001 to July 31, 2002.
According to the UN mission in Afghanistan, 9,579 civilians were killed in
the conflict between 2006 and 2010.
The campaign also ended up creating a political and humanitarian situation
that was, in many respects, worse than that under the Taliban. One of the
fundamental functions of a government is to provide a minimum of order and
security. The Taliban, for all their retrograde practices in other areas,
were able to give Afghanistan its first secure political regime in over 30
years. In contrast, the regime of foreign occupation that succeeded them
failed this test miserably. According to a report of the Center for
Strategic and International
Studies<http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/330EF6A6655AABE3C1256E9F004931E1-csis-afg-01apr.pdf>,
"security has actually deteriorated since the beginning of the
reconstruction in December 2001, particularly over the summer and fall of
2003." So bad is basic physical security for ordinary people that one-third
of the country has been declared off limits to UN staff and most NGOs have
pulled their people from most parts of the country. The Washington-installed
government of Hamid Karzai does not exercise much authority outside Kabul
and one or two other cities, which prompted then-UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan to state that "without functional state institutions to serve the
basic needs of the population throughout the country, the authority and
legitimacy of the new government will be short-lived."
Worse, Afghanistan has become a narco-state. The Taliban were able to
significantly reduce poppy production. Since their ouster in 2001, poppy
production has gone up
40-fold<http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/01/28/afghanistan-cultivates-drugs-on-record-vast-area-under-us-invasion.html#ixzz1UJ6DAfe2>and
20 times as much additional land has been brought under poppy
cultivation. Many of Afghanistan’s top officials and legislators have been
involved in the heroin trade, the most prominent of these being the brother
of President Karzai<http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/10/05/reports-link-karzaiand-8217-s-brother-to-heroin-trade.html>,
Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was head of Kandahar’s Provincial Council until his
assassination a month ago.
Many Afghans would say that this life is no improvement over Taliban rule
for at least the Taliban could provide one thing: basic physical security.
This argument may not cut any ice with upper and middle class people in the
North that live in safe suburbs or gated communities. But talk to poor
people anywhere, and they put great value on ridding their shantytown
communities of criminals, drug dealers, and corrupt policemen.
Iraq: Humanitarian Intervention Perverted
Although the main rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was Saddam’s
alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), an important
supporting rationale was regime change for humanitarian reasons. When no
WMDs materialized, the Bush administration retroactively justified its
intervention on humanitarian grounds: getting rid of a repressive
dictatorship and imposing democratic rule.
The rest is history. Iraq today is a base for U.S. geopolitical control of
the oil-rich Middle East. It is a state propped up by U.S. military power,
its oil resources and its wealth geared primarily to serve the West. A
drastically weakened polity, the country is threatened by the centrifugal
forces of ethnic and sectarian conflict. Secular values and the status of
women have been eroded by fundamentalism. Rampant crime and terrorism have
generated a high level of physical insecurity. As for economic
conditions<http://www.mercycorps.org/markchadwick/blog/24274>,
per-capita output and living standards are well below their pre-invasion
levels, and the population lives in a state of chronic insecurity, with 55
percent of Iraqis lacking access to safe water, one million people lacking
food security,6.4 million dependent on food rations from the public
distribution system, and 18 percent of the work force unemployed..
Humanitarian intervention has reduced what used to be one of the most
advanced countries of the Middle East to this deplorable state.
Preemptive Humanitarian Intervention
The Libyan case will perhaps go down as one of the worst abuses of the
doctrine of humanitarian intervention. At first, the events there unfolded
pretty much like those in Egypt, with the popular uprising seemingly on the
way to deposing a corrupt dictatorship. But the dictator, his military
forces, and his social base held on, fighting back with military power,
inflicting civilian casualties, and undoubtedly committing human rights
violations in the process. At that point, the situation degenerated into a
civil war. Outside Libya, defectors from the Gaddafi regime managed to get
the UN Security Council to pass a resolution to impose a no-fly zone over
much of Libya, which the United States, England, and France leaped to impose
to the consternation of Germany, China, Russia, and other countries that
abstained from the Security Council resolution.
The Libyan intervention was not based on actual genocide, indeed not even on
potential genocide but on a rhetorical threat of revenge that went viral in
the media. In his March 11 speech, Gaddafi urged his supporters to "show no
mercy" and go "house to house" in Benghazi, which President Barack Obama
seized on to warn that genocide was about to take place. In fact, as many
commentators have noted, Gaddafi’s words were directed at rebel fighters,
not civilians, and in the very same speech, he promised amnesty to those
“who throw their weapons away.”
Indeed, after NATO went to war, human rights investigators from Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch found no
evidence<http://www.frumforum.com/have-qaddafis-abuses-been-exaggerated>of
genocide or the deliberate targeting of civilians or aircraft being
used
on protestors and crowds or mass rape. This is not to say that there were no
instances of brutal actions by Gaddafi’s troops. But there was no evidence
for the genocide and massive and systematic violations of human rights that
formed the pretext for intervention.
During the Libyan intervention, the objective of regime-change quickly
supplanted the rationale of establishing a no-fly zone , with NATO aircraft
carrying out offensive operations against the government’s tanks and
infantry and targeting Gaddafi’s suspected hiding places in Tripoli,
killing, among others, one of his sons. The struggle between Gaddafi and the
NATO-supported rebels has now devolved into a war of attrition, bringing
about a worse situation for civilians than that which prevailed before the
intervention in terms of civilian casualties, infrastructure destroyed, and
economic suffering.
A Sorry History
Contemporary humanitarian intervention suffers from three primary defects.
Great-power logic soon overwhelms the humanitarian rationale for
intervention. Such interventions often exacerbate bad situations. And
humanitarian intervention sets a very dangerous precedent that can be used
to justify future violations of the principle of national sovereignty.
NATO’s intervention in the Kosovo conflict helped provide the justification
for the invasion of Afghanistan, and the justifications for both
interventions in turn were employed to legitimize the invasion of Iraq and
the NATO war in Libya.
Governments should of course pressure a regime to end the repression of its
citizens. Moves to cut off military exports that allow a regime to repress
its people are entirely legitimate, as are economic sanctions and diplomatic
efforts to denounce and politically isolate a repressive regime. But these
actions are very different from invading a sovereign country or bombing its
government, military forces, and government supporters to achieve regime
change.
In the exceptional case of genocide being carried out by a government,
military intervention must be carried out with extreme care. In the view of
many policymakers and analysts in the South, the following steps must be
followed.
First, the evidence for genocide must be substantial. Second, the
intervention must be a last resort, after all efforts at stopping the
genocide by diplomacy, military export bans, and economic sanctions have
failed. Third, the UN General Assembly, not the Western-dominated Security
Council, must legitimize the intervention. Fourth, military units belonging
to hegemonic powers — in particular, the United States and NATO -- must not
be allowed to participate in the intervention. Fifth, the expeditionary
force must aim only at stopping the genocide, must withdraw once the
situation has stabilized, and must refrain from sponsoring and propping up
an alternative government and engaging in “nation-building.”
With these guidelines, very few humanitarian interventions would have
qualified as valid and carried out legitimately in the last 40 years. There
are perhaps only two: the Vietnamese invasion to remove the blood-thirsty
Khmer Rouge from power in 1978 (though this lacked UN sanction) and the
UN-led multinational force INTERFET that ended the genocidal killingsand
deportations of Timorese by Indonesian-backed militias in 1999.
Perhaps there is no better way to sum up the tragic odyssey of the doctrine
of humanitarian intervention than by invoking the old saying that the road
to hell is paved with good intentions.
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