Humanitarian Intervention: Moral and Philosophical Issues

160 Pages·2003·0.968 MB·English

by  Aleksandar Jokic

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Humanitarian Intervention
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Humanitarian Intervention
Moral and Philosophical Issues
Edited by Aleksandar Jokic
Introduction by Burleigh Wilkins
broadview press
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© 2003 Aleksandar Jokic
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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
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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
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For Milica Djordjevic (1908-1999),
the perfect grandparent
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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.
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Humanitarian Intervention
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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.
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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
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Humanitarian Intervention Introduction
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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
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