ebook img

Humanitarian Intervention: Moral and Philosophical Issues PDF

160 Pages·2003·0.968 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Humanitarian Intervention: Moral and Philosophical Issues

This electronic material is under copyright protection and is provided to a single recipient for review purposes only. Humanitarian Intervention Humanitarian_0113.idd 1 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Review Copy Humanitarian_0113.idd 2 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Review Copy Humanitarian Intervention Moral and Philosophical Issues Edited by Aleksandar Jokic Introduction by Burleigh Wilkins broadview press Humanitarian_0113.idd 3 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Review Copy © 2003 Aleksandar Jokic All rights reserved. The use of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher — or in the case of photocop- ying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency) One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario m5e 1e5 — is an infringement of the copyright law. national library of canada cataloguing in publication Humanitarian intervention : moral and philosophical issues / edited by Aleksandar Jokic ; introduction by Burleigh Wilkins. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 1-55111-489-5 1. Humanitarian intervention — Moral and ethical aspects. I. Jokic´, Aleksandar kz6369.h84 2003 341.5'84 c2002-905698-5 Broadview Press, Ltd. is an independent, international publishing house, incorporated in 1985. Broadview believes in shared ownership, both with its employees and with the general public; since the year 2000 Broadview shares have traded publicly on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the symbol bdp. We welcome any comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of our publications — please feel free to contact us at the addresses below, or at [email protected] North America United Kingdom Australia Post Office Box 1243, Thomas Lister, Ltd. UNIREPS Peterborough, Ontario, Unit 3 & 4a University of Canada k9j 7h5 Old Boundary Way, New South Wales Tel: (705) 743-8990 Burscough Rd. Sydney, NSW, 2052 Fax: (705) 743-8353 Ormskirk, Lancashire Tel: + 61 2 96640999 l39 2yw Fax: + 61 2 96645420 3576 California Road, Tel: (01695) 575112 [email protected] Orchard Park, New York Fax: (01695) 570120 usa 14127 [email protected] [email protected] www.broadviewpress.com Broadview Press Ltd. gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. Cover design and typeset by Zack Taylor, www.zacktaylor.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper containing 30% post-consumer fibre. Eco-Logo Certified. 30% Post. Printed in Canada 5 Humanitarian_0113.idd 4 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Review Copy Contents Preface, Aleksandar Jokic 7 Introduction, Burleigh Wilkins 9 1 War, Revolution, and Humanitarian Intervention, Anthony Ellis 17 2 Humanitarian Intervention: Some Doubts, Burleigh Wilkins 35 3 Foreign Armed Intervention: Between Justified Aid and Illegal Violence, Jovan Babic 45 4 Humanitarian Intervention and Moral Theory, Michael Philips 71 5 Preempting Humanitarian Interventions, Thomas Pogge 93 6 Humanitarian Intervention and International Law, Alfred P. Rubin 109 7 From Nuremberg to Kosovo: The Morality of Illegal International Legal Reform, Allen Buchanan 123 Contributors 159 5 Humanitarian_0113.idd 5 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Review Copy For Milica Djordjevic (1908-1999), the perfect grandparent 7 Humanitarian_0113.idd 6 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Review Copy Preface Aleksandar Jokic This book is one of two volumes that are the result of an ongoing project under the general name “International Law and Ethics Conference Series” (ILECS), which is concerned with exploring issues regarding the changing global order. Envisaged originally as a way of facilitating dialog between leading moral, le- gal, and political philosophers from the United States and Western Europe and their Eastern European counterparts, ILECS had adopted a two-part model consisting of a conference each June (since 1997) at Belgrade University and a follow-up conference in the US. Although undoubtedly operating against a background of the Anglo-American style of analytical philosophy, ILECS has sought always to reflect actively on the inter-disciplinary nature of its enter- prise and to recruit experts who are not primarily philosophers. The two volumes — one focusing on theoretical and philosophical issues, the other on the particular case of Kosovo — offer essays from 15 scholars with backgrounds in various disciplines — philosophy, international law, an- thropology, political science, international studies, and Slavic studies — from different countries — United States, Yugoslavia, Germany, and Australia. The chapters are based on presentations delivered at the pair of ILECS confer- ences held under the title “Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: Grounds for Internationalizing Internal Conflicts,” held on June 23-25, 2000 at Belgrade University and October 13-14, 2000 at Portland State University. The completion of the two volumes would not have been possible with- out financial contributions from a number of sources. The Belgrade meetings were supported by generous grants from the Open Society Foundation for Yugoslavia and Goethe Institute in Belgrade. The follow-up conference was funded by the Machette Foundation and the Conflict Resolution Graduate Program at Portland State University. The work on editing this volume was supported, in part, by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. 7 Humanitarian_0113.idd 7 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Humanitarian Intervention Review Copy In terms of intellectual input, it is not possible to list all those whom I wish to thank for providing valuable comments at the conferences and through other forms of communication that influenced the final shape of this volume. Special thanks are due to Dr. Robert Gould, Director of the Conflict Resolution Program at PSU, who has worked to provide a welcome venue for ILECS. Jovan Babic, my ILECS Co-Director, was involved with this project at every critical juncture. Burleigh Wilkins took on the task of writing a criti- cal Introduction to each volume, a pleasure to read in its own right, intended to be useful to students as well as professionals by singling out a set of is- sues from each article for further examination. Finally, my colleagues Joseph White and Jim Chesher at the Center for Philosophical Education (CPE) at Santa Barbara City College, the official home of ILECS as the place where it originated, deserve my deep appreciation for their enduring encouragement and support. I have certainly profited immensely from putting together this volume and engaging with its themes. I hope that it will prove to be a rich source of intellectual stimulation to advance conceptual understanding of intervention and related ideas in philosophy as well as in the other disciplines represented here. 8 9 Humanitarian_0113.idd 8 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Humanitarian Intervention Review Copy Introduction Burleigh Wilkins If the “plain letter of the law” has any applicability to international law, it is this: states shall not intervene militarily or otherwise in the affairs of other states. This is stated explicitly in the Charter of the United Nations (UN). Since the UN was founded in the aftermath of World War II, the desire of member states to prevent any further interventions is understandable. An exception was provided: when a conflict within a state poses a threat to inter- national peace, security military intervention by the UN is warranted. Indeed, the UN Charter provides for an international police force, though nothing ever came of this provision. The Charter and other UN documents also assert that human rights are to be protected, but the responsibility for the protection of human rights seems to rest on the governments of the states where the vio- lation of these rights occurs. The prohibition of aggressive wars — i.e., wars not fought in self-defense — seems firmly established as a principle of interna- tional law, but the question of what protection if any the UN should provide to individuals when their human rights are violated by the government, or with the complicity of the government, of the country in which they live remains a contentious issue. There is the temptation to treat any human rights violations involving armed conflicts within a state as threats to international peace and security, and at times the UN Security Council has yielded to this temptation. Perhaps a more promising tact would be to regard international law as a legal system similar in many respects to municipal legal systems. Since all legal systems contain principles which under some circumstances may oppose one another, it is arguable that respect for state sovereignty and respect for human rights are two such principles. Historically the respect for state sovereignty has been allowed to trump respect for human rights, but now it has become argu- able that when states fail to respect the human rights of their citizens (or others who reside within their boundaries), they may be held accountable by the UN. Intervention in a variety of forms — including, ultimately, military force — has 8 9 Humanitarian_0113.idd 9 1/13/03, 8:31 PM Humanitarian Intervention Introduction Review Copy come to be regarded by some as justifiable. The question which this collection of essays addresses is this: is military humanitarian intervention justifiable and, if so, under what circumstances? This is one of two paired volumes. The first, Humanitarian Intervention: Moral and Philosophical Issues, consists primarily of reflections by philoso- phers on the more abstract aspects of humanitarian intervention. The second, Lessons of Kosovo: The Dangers of Humanitarian Intervention, contains essays dealing more concretely with issues concerning the legal and moral dimen- sions of intervention by NATO or by the UN — all of them arguing from various points of view that the NATO intervention in Kosovo lacked clear justification, and that this raises important doubts as to the wisdom of “hu- manitarian” intervention in other situations. Humanitarian Intervention as a Moral and Philosophical Issue In “War, Revolution, and Intervention,” Anthony Ellis defines humanitarian intervention broadly to include any coercive interference by a state, a group, or an individual to prevent the violation of the rights of the citizens of the state. While he justifies humanitarian intervention in the abstract, he argues that in the real world military humanitarian intervention is rarely justified. However, he also believes that wars between states are rarely justified. I have difficulty with Ellis’s attempt to show that the motive behind humanitarian intervention is not important and that only the intention to perform a morally good act matters. He gives the example of someone who beats up a bully to protect an innocent person, but his motive is really to impress his girlfriend. This example has some appeal on a micro level, but what if all, or virtually all, acts of humanitarian intervention were done from selfish motives? If we were to think of humanitarian intervention as a rule-governed practice, then surely the practice would be diminished, morally speaking, if it turns out that virtu- ally all acts of humanitarian intervention are motivated by a concern for the economic or geopolitical interests of the intervening state(s). What is brilliant in Ellis’s essay is his attempted refutation of Michael Walzer’s efforts to limit the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. While acknowledging that there is a presumption against external intervention in the domestic affairs of a state, Ellis maintains that this presumption is not strong enough to protect a state engaged in the violation of the rights of its citizens. The importance Walzer attaches to the self-determination of the state and to the autonomy of its domestic political processes is simply not warranted, ac- cording to Ellis, if that self-determination and that political process result in the violation of the rights of its citizens. The question of how a culture has 10 11 Humanitarian_0113.idd 10 1/13/03, 8:31 PM

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.