Ethics of Humanitarian Interventions

385 Pages·2014·1.002 MB·English

by  Georg Meggle (editor)

Georg Meggle (Ed.)

Ethics of Humanitarian Interventions

ont os

verlag
.
Frankfurt Lancaster
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2004

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P P
RACTICAL HILOSOPHY

Edited by
Heinrich Ganthaler • Neil Roughley
Herlinde Pauer-Studer • Peter Schaber

The aim of the series is to publish high-quality work that deals
with questions in practical philosophy from a broadly analytic
perspective. These include questions in meta-ethics, normative
ethics and "applied" ethics, as well as in political philosophy,
philosophy of law and the philosophy of action. Through the
publication of work in both German and English the series aims
to facilitate discussion between English- and German-speaking
practical philosophers.

For
MIMA ANDJELKOVIC,
JOVAN BABIC,
MIROSLAV PROKOPIJEVIC,
and IVAN VUKOVIC
(Belgrade)

who first kindled the flame

CONTENTS

Preface 7

Abstracts 9

I Basic Issues

MICHAEL WALZER The Argument about Humanitarian
Intervention 21

SEUMAS MILLER Collective Responsibility and Humanitarian
Armed Intervention 37

OLAF L. MÜLLER Reconstructing Pacifism.
Different Ways of Looking at Reality 57

UWE CZANIERA How Far Shall We Go in Humanitarian
Interventions? 81

MARTIN FRANK The Dilemmatic Structure of
Humanitarian Interventions 97

WALTER PFANNKUCHE Humanitarian Interventions and Other Duties to
Humanitarian Aid 115

RALF STOECKER Help, Intervention and Involvement 129

ALEKSANDAR PAVKOVIĆ Saving Lives in Nationalist Conflicts:
A Few Moral Hazards 161

MIROSLAV PROKOPIJEVIC Humanitarian Intervention 189
II International Ethics and Law

RÜDIGER BITTNER Humanitarian Interventions are Wrong 207

THOMAS MERTENS Humanitarian Intervention:
Legal and Moral Arguments 215

RUDOLF SCHÜSSLER Principles of non-UN Humanitarian Intervention 233

REINER STEINWEG Early non-Military External Interventions. A Plea for
a United Nations Intervention Council (UNIC) 251

VERONIQUE ZANETTI Humanitarian Intervention:
An Individual Right or a State Right? 263

III Kosova/Kosovo. The Moral Combat

ULRICH STEINVORTH On the Legitimacy of NATO’s Kosovo Intervention 279

GEORG MEGGLE NATO-morality and the Kosovo-War. 293
An Ethical Commentary – ex post
HAJO SCHMIDT „Humanitarian Intervention“:
Media, Ethics and Law in the Kosovo War 319

JOHAN GALTUNG Bombing Yugoslavia: Several Readings 335

DIETER S. LUTZ The Example of Kosovo:
Didactics against Humanitarian Interventionism 359

Contributors 381
Preface

Humanitarian Interventions – that sounds nice; much nicer than wars, bat-
tles and use of military force. Foremost, the phrase makes you think of the
delivery of sanitary goods, medication, of soup-kitchens. Here we are not
supposed to think of interventions of this kind; we have to have humani-
tarian interventions in mind which are humanitarian intervention-wars.

(I) At exactly what point is the use of military force a humanitarian
intervention? What is the humanitarian aspect of those interven-
tions? Their occasion? Their motive? Their alleged as well as
their actual consequences?

(II) At exactly what point are humanitarian intervention-wars morally
justifiable? Are they justifiable even if they are wars of aggression
breaching international law?

And finally:

(III) Was the war which was presented to us as the paradigmatic ex-
ample of a humanitarian-intervention-war, that is: the war in Kos-
ovo in the spring of 1999 (with over 37,000 bombing missions),
really justifiable as a humanitarian intervention? Many of us
wanted to believe so at the time. Does our ex ante judgement hold
today in an ex post reflection? And which lessons for the future
should we learn from the success or failure of this humanitarian
war?

These are the questions proposed in this book; therefore, it is concerned
with problems of semantics (part I), problems of moral assessment (part II)
and with the moral, legal and political conclusions we draw from our ex-
periences with the war in Kosovo, our primary example of a humanitarian
intervention (part III).

International experts in the areas of philosophy, international law, sociol-
ogy and peace studies debated these questions vigorously for several days.
This is the resulting volume.
8
*

Will the arguments published here play a decisive role for the next humani-
tarian intervention-wars? According to all previous knowledge about hu-
man history, most likely not. Arguments, it seems, are not the definitive
word on matters of war and peace.
But maybe something is gained with a volume like this if it contributes to a
clearer distinction between comprehensible judgement and pure propa-
ganda - for the next time/war, or the time/war after that. It helps clarify
these distinctions before the next decisions are made; at least for those of
us to whom this minimal, yet war-decisive difference still matters.

*

The discussions were held at the CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY
RESEARCH (Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung, ZiF) at the University
of Bielefeld in January 2002; the conference was partially funded by the
DFG (DEUTSCHE FORSCHUNGSGEMEINSCHAFT). Many thanks to these in-
stitutions for their ongoing support. Thanks also to Tobias Prüwer and to
Andrea Busch and Katinka Schulte-Ostermann who alertly helped me in
completing this volume.

Leipzig, Summer of 2004 Georg Meggle