Abstract
The principle of absolute sovereignty may have been consigned to history, but a strong presumption against foreign intervention seems to have been left in its stead. On the dominant view, only massacre and ethnic cleansing justify armed intervention, these harms must be already occurring or imminent, and the prudential constraints on war must be satisfied. Each of these conditions has recently come under pressure. Those looking to defend the dominant view have typically done so by invoking international peace and stability, or the value of communal self-determination. But the internal aspect of legitimacy has been overlooked in all of this. If a government insists on defending the human rights of foreigners, it must also be sure not to violate the rights of its own citizens in the process. I argue that the current presumption against humanitarian intervention cannot be substantially relaxed for internal reasons, or given the obligations that states owe to their own constituents.
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Notes
The humanitarian justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was rejected by Human Rights Watch on the grounds that it failed to live up to this criterion (Roth 2004). Saddam Hussein’s most heinous crimes—those which coalition leaders invoked to justify their actions, such as the gassing of the Kurds—occurred in the 1980’s. The purpose of humanitarian intervention, however, must be to rescue the victims of massacre, not to avenge them.
These are referred to in the ICISS report as “precautionary principles”, but I will use the term “prudential conditions” in keeping with the terminology that I have used elsewhere.
For more on the consensus around this threshold, see Dobos (2007).
The fact that a state has signed an international agreement committing itself to engage in humanitarian intervention under certain circumstances has no bearing on this. If it is morally impermissible for a state to engage in humanitarian intervention, it cannot validly commit itself to doing so. As Spinoza says “… no sovereign can keep promises to the detriment of his state without committing a sin; for if he sees any promise he has made to be turning out to the disadvantage of his state, he can only keep it by breaking his pledge to his subjects, although the latter is a pledge which binds him most strictly…” (Spinoza 1958: 141).
Miller does seem to want to allow for some exceptions: “[patriotic] priority does not totally exclude support for foreign aid in the presence of relevant domestic burdens”. But he fails to elaborate. (1998: 210).
As Mickey Kaus puts it, “is it fair to ask someone who volunteered to die for America to die for Father Aristide?” (Kaus 1994: 61). Kaus does not endorse this view of the soldier-state contract. Here he is simply describing the position taken by fellow columnist Michael Kinsley.
Jovana Davidovic (2008) introduces the concept of minimal decency to the humanitarian intervention debate.
To be sure, “riskless” methods of warfare can sometimes be prohibited on independent grounds. Many have argued that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia fell short of the principles of jus in bello, which require that civilian casualties be minimised even if this means endangering the lives of troops. But it is important to note that this is a contingent rather than an essential feature of riskless war; one which is slowly but surely being addressed by advances in military technology.
So far, more than 2000 active-duty U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen have signed an online Appeal for Redress calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq (http://www.appealforredress.org/). Interviews with several of the signatories suggest that Cook’s account of the soldier-state contract resonates with at least some members of the armed forces. “Lisa” of the U.S Air Force, having “joined up two weeks after [turning] 17 because [she] wanted to save American lives”, now feels that “our troops have no reason for being there”. “Sergent Gary” signed up while still in junior high school on the pretence that Saddam “was a threat to America”. The evidence to the contrary led Gary to sign the Appeal. See Cooper 2006.
To be sure, some of these do not technically count as humanitarian interventions on the prevailing definition, according to which an intervention necessarily takes place without the consent of the target state. (Australian forces have been invited by the governments of Timor-Leste and the Solomons).
I would like to thank Igor Primoratz and Andrew Alexandra for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.
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Dobos, N. On Altruistic War and National Responsibility: Justifying Humanitarian Intervention to Soldiers and Taxpayers. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 13, 19–31 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9167-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9167-5