Humanitarian Intervention: A Forum (Page 8)

Zia Mian

In 1948 the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaiming: "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized." One need look no further than Palestine or Congo to see how states and the international community have failed in their charge.

In its many interventions in other societies during the cold war, the United States often claimed to be furthering human rights and freedoms. This legacy was embraced by President George Bush in his 2002 West Point speech: "Moral clarity was essential to our victory in the cold war." But let us recall that this "moral clarity" involved American-backed coups, repression and war across the Third World. Nor should we forget the thousands of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war that still cast a shadow over humanity. Until the political and economic interests and ideas responsible for these horrors change substantially, there can be no question of US humanitarian intervention or promotion of democracy, except inadvertently. Afghanistan and Iraq do not change this judgment.

If history advises that it cannot be left to the "moral clarity" of the United States (or any other state) to determine where, when or how to change regimes, whether it be to prevent or punish the most brutal crimes against humanity or spread democracy, then who decides and how?

The UN Security Council offers a collective process, but no reason for hope. Compassion and justice are no more to be found when those in power meet in conclave than when they are alone. Moreover, the Security Council is hostage to the veto, an inequitable arrangement the United States in particular insisted on when the UN was created. No power that has the veto is willing to cede it, even though, as Iraq showed, where the United States is concerned the veto of others is as good as none. So barring cases where the United States, for its own reasons, chooses to intervene or permits others to, there is little the UN has to offer except to bury the dead and provide succor for survivors--unless the General Assembly organizes and asserts itself to challenge the United States and the Security Council.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), which was set up to punish crimes against humanity and genocide, may offer a new forum for making decisions about the most extreme situations requiring humanitarian intervention. Unlike the state, international law, while in practice often partial and unjust, inherently must orient itself toward standards of universality and equity. It is possible to imagine that the Court shall choose not to watch and wait for crimes against humanity to be committed and not simply hope for intervention so that it can commence its proceedings. A precedent of sorts was set recently by Carla del Ponte, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, who warned of "genocide" in Congo, in effect demanding intervention under international law.

The prosecutor of the ICC is allowed to initiate investigations proprio motu, that is, without any application by the parties involved. But enforcement depends on the cooperation of the state signatories to the Rome statutes. Should the Court and the signatories take up the challenge, Washington's rejection of the Court may become an asset.

Whether it is the United States, the Security Council, the General Assembly or the International Criminal Court, there is no avoiding the state and the domestic interests that guide the decision to act. The shared challenge is to create an informed and mobilized public that can insist on collective state intervention to protect and further the entitlements to peace, justice and freedom, and obstruct state intervention when it is for any other reason. To do so will require a radical transformation of national political and economic institutions. Humanitarian intervention will become that only when democracy deepens as well as spreads.

Zia Mian, a physicist with the Program on Science and Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, is the editor, with Smitu Kothari, of Out of the Nuclear Shadow (Zed).

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