Abstract
Relative to the abundance of literature devoted to the legal significance of UN authorisation, little has been written about whether the UN’s failure to sanction an intervention can ever make it immoral. This is the question that I take up here. I argue that UN authorisation (or lack thereof) can have some indirect bearing on the moral status of a humanitarian intervention. That is, it can affect whether an intervention satisfies other widely accepted justifying conditions, such as proportionality, “internal” legitimacy, and likelihood of success. The more interesting question, however, is whether the UN’s failure to provide a mandate can make a humanitarian operation unjust independently of these other familiar considerations. Is a proportional, internally legitimate humanitarian intervention, with a just cause and strong prospect of success, still morally unacceptable if it is not approved by the United Nations Security Council? This is the question that I turn to in the second half of the paper.
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Notes
Quoted in Wheeler 2000.
For a defence of this view, see Teson (2005a).
Although these conditions are taken from Just War Theory, one can appreciate their moral logic without being committed to the theory in its entirety.
It has also been argued that the “just cause” threshold for foreign intervention is higher than the threshold for rebellion, such that only the most severe forms of oppression justify the former, whereas the latter is justified, at least in principle, in a much wider range of cases. See for instance Walzer (1980). A fuller discussion of this would take me too far afield. I will limit my discussion to the internal and prudential constraints.
I should point out that Cook does not unequivocally endorse this account of the contract.
Stein, “Unauthorised Humanitarian Intervention”, p. 20
“What Goes on in Bosnia’s Camps?”, Chicago Tribune, August 6 1992, Section 1, p. 24.
Quoted in Pilger (2004).
I admit that there may be certain exceptions to this. For a fuller discussion, see Teson (2005b).
Quoted in Coates (Coates 2006b), p. 212.
The term “lavish” is used with reference to the right to the “highest possible standard” of health on p. 208.
The distinction between “infringement” and “violation” was introduced by Thomson (1977).
Interestingly enough, my position bears some resemblance to that taken by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). Its 2001 report, The Responsibility to Protect, states that “Security Council authorization must in all cases be sought prior to any military intervention action being carried out”. But it goes on to admit that, although the Security Council should be the first port of all, “the question remains whether it should be the last (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001)”.
“Again”, The New Republic, Monday May 15, 2006.
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Dobos, N. Is U.N. Security Council Authorisation for Armed Humanitarian Intervention Morally Necessary?. Philosophia 38, 499–515 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9233-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9233-1