Humanitarian Intervention: A Forum (Page 9)

Ronald Steel

Humanitarian intervention is a noble principle easily subject to distortion and abuse. Like other noble principles such as democracy (which often means elections without free choice) or self-determination (which can mean the breakup of an existing multicultural state to favor domination by a single ethnic or religious group), it can be a cover for intolerance and aggression.

Extending the doctrine beyond the prevention of genocide poses a host of problems that well-intentioned people are loath to confront. To adopt Kofi Annan's dictum that "massive and systematic violations of human rights wherever they take place should never be allowed to stand" is merely to begin the question. Who decides what is massive and systematic? The UN, the G8, a "coalition of the willing," the diktat of a dominant state? What if the abuser state is too strong to intimidate? And what if the abuses have the support of the majority of its people--as in Nazi Germany? Or for that matter in the United States, when citizens of Japanese descent were herded into detention camps during World War II?

If humanitarian intervention is to be more than a pious wish for a better world, realistic mechanisms of decision-making and enforcement have to be devised. This means establishing not only an international court with binding authority but an international parliament and constabulary. This involves both a diminishment of sovereignty for individual states and the creation of sovereignty for a global entity that so far is little more than a cliché (the "international community").

While this immense task is being addressed (assuming that powerful states are even willing to address it), we accept some distressing realities:

First, states that intervene for purely humanitarian reasons quickly lose interest and go home (cf. Haiti, Somalia); those that stay almost always have dubious motives.

Second, most egregious offenders of human rights (Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Soviet Russia) will rarely be deterred by economic sanctions, which are always easy to circumvent. But small fry will, like the murderous thugs of central Africa, who are nourished by international oil and diamond interests.

Third, if you cannot depose the offenders, help the victims. Many, perhaps most, of the Jews of Europe could have been saved in the 1930s had any state been willing to offer them asylum.

Fourth, nation-building is harder and more important than nation-smashing. Just as a marriage is more than a wedding night, humanitarian intervention will work only if there is a long-term commitment to building something better.

Fifth, unintended consequences usually prevail. Humanitarian wars are still wars, even though we clean up their image by calling them "interventions." These invariably create new problems. Among the most common of these are ethnic separatism and communal violence. The Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires were arguably more tolerant, just and cosmopolitan than what replaced them.

Sixth, be wary of "democratic" solutions. Democracy is a plant that requires long nourishment and does not take root everywhere. What is important is not that a state be democratic (Athens wasn't) but that it provide justice, equality and dignity for its citizens. Democracy, after all, is not a solution, only a method. To justify military intervention with the purpose of imposing democracy is either a cynical cover for imperialism or an act of irresponsible naïveté. The leaders of great powers are rarely naïve, though their citizens often are. A case in point is that US officials have declared that they will not allow Islamic fundamentalists to take power in Iraq even by free elections.

Enthusiasts of humanitarian intervention would do well to observe the first lesson taught to aspiring doctors: Above all, avoid doing harm.

Ronald Steel is professor of international relations at the University of Southern California and author of Temptations of a Superpower (Harvard).

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