Sketching a Morality for International Intervention

Is the problem with an interventionist foreign policy really that “there is neither a duty nor a right to intervene in the affairs of other states?” I would think the problem is rather that, given the nature of the nation state, for one to intervene in the affairs of another almost inherently requires military action, and that general involves things like violence and shooting and killing and destruction of property. All activities for which, to say the least, there are compelling moral reasons to avoid. So the duty (and by, induction, the right) to intervene does exist, it just exists alongside other duties that can often run in the opposite direction. What I have always found stunning about interventionist rhetoric – be it liberal or neoconservative – is it’s implied assumption that if the imperative to intervene is present, as it often is, then how you intervene is rendered a non-issue. Calling any intervention “humanitarian” when you’re going in with tanks and guns makes little sense, regardless of your intent. It’s an unfortunate fact – which many seem unwilling to acknowledge – that the need to engage in violence can render unjustifiable an intervention than in all other terms would be justifiable. Violence, especially the organized, industrial kind inflicted by war, requires clearing a very high moral bar.

Thus, the second (and to a more limited degree, the first) war with Iraq was immoral precisely because of the destruction it heaped upon the Iraqi people, not because it violated Iraqi sovereignty or international law. “International law,” as valuable as it is, is also something of a misnomer. It’s more of a compact that only realistically functions between nation states of similar values, a category into which Iraq clearly did not fall. As for Iraqi sovereignty, that boiled down to the sovereignty of Saddam’s dictatorship, which wasn’t worth spit in moral terms.

Whether or not one nation should intervene in the affairs of another, it seems to me, will always be a case-by-case question weighing the relevant moral benefits vs. the moral costs. It’s just that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the costs will exceed the benefits. The failure of the interventionists is that their criterion for making that moral calculation is often lazy, skewed, and self-aggrandizing – a problem which becomes particularly acute when the people doing the calculating wield a stick as big as the United States military. Obviously, this is not as convenient a critique. Accusing people of violating a hard and fast dictum tends to be more compelling than accusing them of making a hash of a subjective cost/benefit analysis between competing principles. Still, it strikes me as the sanest position, morally speaking.

As for Burma, I’m against any kind of military intervention. But I would second Megan McArdle, and ask why we can’t simply violate their airspace and carpet bomb the place with aid packages?

~ by Jeff on May 15, 2008.