Debating Humanitarian Intervention: Should We Try to Save Strangers? PDF
Preview Debating Humanitarian Intervention: Should We Try to Save Strangers?
i DEBATING HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ii DEBATING ETHICS General Editor Christopher Heath Wellman Washington University of St. Louis Debating Ethics is a series of volumes in which leading scholars defend opposing views on timely ethical questions and core theoretical issues in contemporary moral, political, and legal philosophy. Debating the Ethics of Immigration Is There a Right to Exclude? Christopher Heath Wellman and Philip Cole Debating Brain Drain May Governments Restrict Emigration? Gillian Brock and Michael Blake Debating Procreation Is It Wrong to Reproduce? David Benatar and David Wasserman Debating Climate Ethics Stephen Gardiner and David Weisbach Debating Gun Control How Much Regulation Do We Need? David DeGrazia and Lester H. Hunt Debating Humanitarian Intervention Should We Try to Save Strangers? Fernando R. Tesón and Bas van der Vossen iii DEBATING HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION Should We Try to Save Strangers? FERNANDO R. TESÓN AND BAS VAN DER VOSSEN 1 iv 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Teson, Fernando R., 1950– author. | Van der Vossen, Bas, 1979– author Title: Debating humanitarian intervention : should we try to save strangers? / Fernando R. Teson, Bas van der Vossen. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017. | Series: Debating ethics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017004866 (print) | LCCN 2017026190 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190202934 (online course) | ISBN 9780190202927 (pdf) | ISBN 9780190202910 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190202903 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Humanitarian intervention—Philosophy. | Humanitarian intervention—Moral and ethical aspects. | BISAC: PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy. | PHILOSOPHY / Political. | PHILOSOPHY / Social. Classification: LCC JZ6369 (ebook) | LCC JZ6369 .T43 2017 (print) | DDC 341.5/84—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004866 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America v CONTENTS Introduction 1 By Fernando R. Tesón and Bas van der Vossen PART I A DEFENSE OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION By Fernando R. Tesón 1. Humanitarian Intervention as Defense of Persons 23 2. Just Cause in Humanitarian Intervention 39 3. Intervention and Revolution: The Equivalence Thesis 77 4. Proportionality in Humanitarian Intervention 98 5. Further Issues in Humanitarian Intervention 129 Appendix: The Iraq War 145 vi vi | CONTENTS PART II HUMANITARIAN NONINTERVENTION By Bas van der Vossen 6. A Presumption Against Intervention 153 7. Between Internal and External Threats 158 8. Why Sovereignty (Still) Matters 172 9. The Success Condition 192 10. Justice Ex Post or Ex Ante? 211 11. Three Structural Problems 232 12. Looking for Exceptions 251 13. Humanitarian Nonintervention 262 Index 271 vii DEBATING HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION viii 1 Introduction FERNANDO R. TESÓN AND BAS VAN DER VOSSEN THIS VOLUME EXAMINES THE ETHICS of humanitarian intervention. We use the tools of modern analytical philosophy— in particular, modern just- war theory. Our arguments are necessarily abstract, but they bear on a moral issue of the greatest practical importance— namely, whether and under what conditions governments can start wars for the ostensi- bly benign purpose of saving human lives. Fernando R. Tesón argues that some humanitarian interventions are morally per- missible. Bas van der Vossen argues that humanitarian inter- ventions are almost always morally prohibited. We define humanitarian intervention as the international use of military force to defend persons from attacks, in their own territory, by their own rulers or other groups.1 Writers some- times use the concept of humanitarian intervention loosely to denote any war to save persons from atrocities, including those committed by armies in the course of war. An intervention to 1. We use the term “attack” as shorthand for “severe rights viola- tions.” We will not address intervention to save people from natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis, although our dis- cussion will apply mutatis mutandis to these humanitarian crises.
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