INTERVENTION
AND THE JUST WAR TRADITION
CPT David M. Barnes
Department of English
United States Military Academy
West Point, NY 10996
(914) 938-2155
DSN 688-2155
cd7476@usma.edu
One
cannot turn on the television or pick up a newspaper without being assaulted
by the tragic loss of life caused by conflict in different corners of the
world.In 1994, over 500,000 Tutsi
men, women, and children were massacred in Rwanda.[2]During
the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Office of the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that thirty to forty people died each day
from the fighting or from lack of medical supplies.[3]Pictures
from ITN and CNN showed the suffering of tens of thousands of refuges that
fled the fighting in both Bosnia and Rwanda.In
fact, as of 1995, there were over forty different states involved in internal
or international conflict.[4]However,
in that same time period, there have been only a limited number of humanitarian
interventions to stop this kind of mass suffering.In
spite of the media coverage and our deep sense of morality, the international
community is reluctant to get involved.Even
after the formation of the United Nations in 1947 whose raison d’être
is to prevent such conflict and suffering, it is hard to believe that there
have not been more interventions to stop or prevent these tragedies. The
problem is, of course, more complicated.International
intervention,[5]
by any workable definition, involves the intrusion of forces, supplies,
and/or observers into the territory of another state.Intervening
into the affairs of another state has often been condemned as a violation
of that state’s sovereignty. The
issue of sovereignty violation is not a modern development.Since
the seventeenth century, through the teachings of de Vittoria and Grotius,
states have recognized each other’s right to sovereignty.[6]Today,
the Charter of the United Nations protects this notion of sovereignty.Article
2(7) states that no nation can “intervene in matters which are essentially
within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”[7]Apart
from the international legal position of a state’s right of sovereignty,
Hegel and other philosophers have suggested that states also enjoy the
right of moral autonomy in addition to sovereignty.Elfstrom
proposed that, “nation-states themselves possess a moral autonomy analogous
to the moral autonomy possessed by individual human beings.The
moral autonomy of the nation-state is founded upon the collected moral
autonomy of each of its individual citizens.”[8]A
state’s right to sovereignty is well grounded in history, legal precedence,
and in political philosophy.Any
attempt to justify intervention must first consider the notion of sovereignty
and demonstrate why the international community should set aside a state’s
sovereignty. Despite the
protection of a state’s sovereignty, the horrors of human suffering demand
some action from us.On one extreme,
international humanitarian intervention in every conflict would be implausible
due to the monetary, material, and personnel commitment.However,
it seems reasonable to intervene in extreme cases, or in cases were vital
national interests are at stake.Thus,
in order to justify an intervention, some type of convention must be made.For
example, we might formulate a set of rules, conditions, or circumstances
that would have to be satisfied, in order to intervene.Regardless
of which convention we adopted, guidelines for intervention would need
to account for the issue of sovereignty.
However,
instead of inventing some new rules governing intervention, I suggest that
we use the tenets of the Just War Tradition to justify intervention.Using
the Just War Tradition has several advantages.It
is well documented, socially and theologically acceptable, and it has been
successfully used to address a number of justified sovereignty infractions.The
tenets of the Just War Tradition are not uncontroversial.However,
these tenets can provide a framework from which the international community
(specifically the United Nations) can determine when a state has forfeited
its right to sovereignty, when the UN can set aside Article 2(7), and when
they can conduct a humanitarian intervention.The
question is, “Can the bellum justum tenets accommodate the various
considerations of intervention?” I
think the answer is “yes.”I believe
that by justifying their actions through the Just War Tradition, the UN
can selectively intervene in other states.To
show that the bellum justum tenets can provide justification for
intervention, I will begin with a brief explanation of the Just War Tradition.My
explanation will include both the conditions for deciding to wage war (jus
ad bellum) and the conditions for the conduct of war (jus in bello).Next,
I will examine each tenet in turn to demonstrate how the Just War Tradition,
specifically the conditions for jus ad bellum, can be applied to
intervention.Furthermore, I will
show that the tenets that govern conduct in war (jus in bello) can
also apply to the intervening forces.Throughout,
I will also discuss the various objections that have been raised against
the Just War Tradition tenets, as well as some objections that opponents
of intervention might raise in opposition to the Just War Tradition as
a framework for intervention.Specifically,
I will address the objection to intervention based on the violation of
sovereignty, and then show how states can forfeit this right, thereby legally
and morally opening their borders to intervention.[9] Just
wars are usually defined as those which avenge injuries, when the nation
or city against which warlike action is to be directed has neglected either
to punish wrongs committed by its own citizens or to restore what has been
unjustly taken from it.[11] Although
Augustine is credited with founding the Just War Tradition, he never developed
his thoughts on bellum justum into tenets or rules that sovereign
states could follow.St. Thomas Aquinas
furthered the study of just warfare by interpreting Augustine’s writings
and summarizing them into a set of rules.First,
Aquinas wrote that only a legitimate authority could initiate a war.In
addition, he proposed that a ruler should only wage war if that war has
a just cause.Finally, he believed,
a ruler should only resort to war with the right intention.These
rules, written in the Summa Theologica, are still considered part
of the Just War tenets today. Sixteenth
century philosopher, de Vitoria, and later Francisco Suarez, further adapted
and modified the tenets for just warfare.In
addition to Aquinas’ conditions of legitimate authority, just cause, and
right intention, they added three additional conditions.These
included: “the evils of war, especially the loss of human life, should
be proportionate to the injustice to be prevented or remedied by war; peaceful
means to prevent or remedy injustice should be exhausted; [and] an otherwise
just war should have a reasonable hope of success.”[12]Today
these tenets are commonly referred to as the tenets of proportionality,
last resort, and reasonable chance of success, respectively. Other
Just War Tradition tenets suggest that the state must publicly declare
war, and that the state must use just conduct when fighting the war.With
minor adjustments, these tenets have remained relatively unchanged.Although
current just war theorists agree on a majority of the just war tenets,
some philosophers suggest that the tenets of just intent and just conduct
do not belong.While today the separation
of jus ad bellum and jus in bello is commonly recognized,
some philosophers disagree on the division between the tenets of each.Christopher
and Walzer suggest that the just intent tenet is extraneous and is incorporated
in the other tenets.They also believe
that the just conduct tenet is a jus in bello issue.O’Brien
disagrees.He maintains that a state
must satisfy the tenet of just conduct for the war to remain just. [13] However,
just conduct is not a tenet of jus in bello.Rather,
just conduct is a good description of what jus in bello means.There
are two commonly recognized tenets of just conduct in war that grew from
the concerns over who could be legally attacked, what means of attack could
be used, and the treatment of prisoners.[14]The
first tenet is proportion.The principle
of proportion states that, “the harm judged likely to result from a particular
military action should not be disproportionate to the good aimed at.”[15]The
second tenet, discrimination, concerns the problem of who can be justifiably
attacked and who are non-combatants.It
theorizes that “non-combatants should be immune from direct attack.”[16]From
these tenets, international treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions and
the Leiber Code, were adopted in the hope ofprotecting
innocents and prisoners during combat.In
addition, these treaties tried to limit some of the horror of combat by
restricting the types of weapons used.Although
intended for war, I think that these same jus in bello principles
also apply during intervention.However,
I will leave the discussion of their significance for a later time. Although
I have outlined a number of frequently suggested tenets for just intervention,
for continuity I will follow the popularly recognized tenets of the Just
War Tradition (as proposed by Christopher and Walzer) for my discussion
of just intervention.In accordance
with the Just War theory, Christopher and Walzer summarize the following
six historical conditions necessary for a nation to be justified in going
to war:(1) The war must have a
just cause; (2) The war’s potential gains must be proportional to the losses;
(3) The war must also have a reasonable chance of success; (4) The country
must publicly declare war; (5) Only a legitimate authority can declare
war; and (6) Countries can only go to war as a last resort.Armed
with these six conditions of bellum justum, I will modify them to
reflect intervention and use them to define a just intervention. Consider
the atrocities committed in Bosnia, Cambodia, northern Iraq, and Rwanda.Would
not the prevention of genocide and termination of “ethnic cleansing” satisfy
the condition of just cause?What
about the mass starvation in Somalia?It
would seem that the senseless suffering of innocents in those countries
would demand intervention.[19]Could
the criteria for satisfying the tenet of just cause be expanded to include
gross human rights violations?I
believe it should be. Consider
the threat to regional or global stability that ethnic conflicts and other
humanitarian disasters have wrought during the last twenty years.Inherent
in the Charter of the UN is the stabiulization of peace and security.One
could argue that threats to this peace and security constitute just cause
for action.Furthermore, if we hold
as Grotius believed that certain rights belong to every person by virtue
simply of being members of the same race, then just cause is satisfied
when, as Pope John Paul II wrote, “where the survival of populations and
entire ethnic groups is seriously compromised….”[20]Moreover,
allowing humanitarian justification for just cause is not a radical departure
from traditional interpretation of just cause.Rather
including humanitarian considerations is merely a more developed explication
of the criteria for just cause.As
early as 1598, Alberico Gentili established the “honorable reasons for
waging war.”[21]He
recognized the importance of humanitarian considerations in war and included
that “the subjects of others do not seem to me to be outside that kinship
of nature and society formed by the whole world.”[22]Thus,
beginning with the sixteenth century, jurists considered that humanitarian
considerations were included in justifying war. Therefore,
the suffering of the innocents is just cause for the international community
to intervene.Additionally, if an
operation was intended to keep warring factions apart (peacemaking) or
enforce a peace settlement (peacekeeping), the cause would also be just.[23]Thus,
for an intervention to have a just cause, the cause must meet one or more
of the following: prevent genocide, prevent ethnic cleansing, prevent other
serious human rights violations, or it must be undertaken for the purpose
of peacemaking, peacekeeping, and providing a rapid method for distributing
humanitarian aid.However, the list
is probably not complete.Additional
causes that may be defined as just, although they are controversial, include
capturing war criminals (e.g. from the former Yugoslavia) and conducting
nation building (e.g. in countries like Somalia).[24]Applying
the tenet of just cause will help ensure interventions are undertaken for
the right reasons. The
second condition of jus ad bellum is that the costs of the war must
be proportional to the prospective gains.Thus
when fighting a just war the potential gains must balance or outweigh the
potential losses.Likewise, the costs
must not outweigh the gains.One
of the major factors considered before deciding to intervene is the cost
of the intervention.Based on the
figures from the Defense Budget project, Michael O’Hanlon estimates the
cost for such a humanitarian intervention “might be expected in most cases
to range from $3 billion to $8 billion [per year] per 50,000 personnel
deployed.”[25]The
wide range of cost estimates reflects the difficulty in making accurate
estimates for any military operation.Terrain,
weather, political climate, and even the remoteness of the target state
all affect the costs of intervention.Additionally,
O’Hanlon’s cost analysis does not include the expected loss of life.While
accidents occur in any mission, casualty figures for an intervention can
vary widely depending on the type of mission, resistance faced, etc.Although
the costs in both material and lives may be high, these interventions are
intended to save lives.The problem
becomes one of “How much is too much?”What
price do we put on human life?Money
alone cannot be the deciding factor.An
$8 million intervention is small when compared to what some states pay
for defense.For example, the 1999
appropriation for U.S. Defense spending is $278.8 billion.[26]The
real issue in any intervention becomes the cost of human life.However,
the tenet of proportionality ensures that the international community intervenes
only when the gains in lives saved would outweigh the costs of material
and lives and ,alternatively, would not intervene when those costs and
loss of life were too high.[27] Wars
must also have a reasonable chance of success to be considered just, and
so must interventions.Those who
oppose intervention soon forget that there have been several successful
interventions in the last thirty years.Examples
include the Indian intervention into what was then East Pakistan (Bangladesh)
in 1971, the Tanzanian intervention to stop the depredations of Idi Amin
in Uganda in 1978-1979, the Vietnamese intervention in Kampuchea in 1978-1979,
Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq from 1991 on, Operation Restore Hope
in Somalia in 1992-1993 (prior to the policy change to pursue Aidid), and
Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in 1994.[28]Several
common factors contributed to the success of these interventions.Like
any successful business plan or operation, an intervention must be well
planned, well organized, and well executed.The
social and political environment at the location of the planned intervention
must be analyzed and understood before the decision to intervene.In
addition, contributing states must make available sufficient resources
(personnel, material, transportation, and security measures) at the time
of intervention.Lastly, “a success
objective” (humanitarian end) for the intervention must be defined, so
that all participants work toward the same objective. In
addition to satisfying the aforementioned conditions, a just war and a
just intervention must be publicly declared.Satisfying
the public declared tenet for intervention is a simple process.Publicly
declaring an intervention could merely be a matter of passing a Security
Council Resolution (SCR).Some past
examples include the passage of SCR 688 for Operation Provide Comfort in
northern Iraq, SCR 792 for intervention in Somalia, and SCR 867 in operations
in Haiti.Specifying that all justified
interventions must be publicly declared also eliminates questionable justification
for the “covert” interventions in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America
that were so prevalent during the Cold War. According
to the fifth condition for a just war, only a legitimate authority can
declare war.This condition exists
to prevent individuals or small groups that do not represent the state
from legally conducting war.However,
finding the legitimate authority for intervention in the international
arena can sometimes become complicated.No
state should have a blanket legitimate authority to intervene in another,
for the simple reason that there would be no system of checks and balances.Intervention
between states could lead to an unstable pattern of counter-intervention.Unchecked,
this could mitigate the humanitarian intents of the original intervention.It
is a collective international consensus that helps differentiate between
intervention and war. Fortunately,
there is a forum for international consensus.The
United Nations provides an example of legitimate authority.Each
recognized state is a member of the United Nations, and each member can
voice an opinion and vote on UN Resolutions.The
Organization of American States (OAS) and the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are also examples of legitimate authorities
which may conduct limited interventions in their areas of influence.(However,
I think that these regional authorities should defer to the UN for final
authority to intervene.Should the
UN decide to intervene, it has the option of assigning responsibility for
the intervention to one of these regional authorities.Thus,
for example, the OSCE monitors the Serbian troop withdrawal from Kosovo
and reports the progress to the UN.)As
the international legitimate authority, the UN can decide when to intervene.However,
some states do not recognize the authority of the UN.I
will discuss this problem later. The
last condition a state must satisfy to justify war is that the war be started
as a last resort.Similarly, an international
intervention should be a last resort.For
example, when the public called for the end of the fighting war in Yugoslavia,
Security Council Resolutions were ignored, and diplomatic talks stagnated.Interventions
such as the NATO air strikes in the former Yugoslavia were justified to
satisfy the tenet of last resort.However,
not every case of intervention involves a government that is derelict or
criminal.In Somalia, there was
no government.Sometimes, the amount
of human suffering alone satisfies the tenet of last resort for intervention.However,
there could be problems determining when the tenet of last resort is fulfilled,
especially when one bases the decision to intervene upon some threshold
of human suffering (e.g. numbers of murders or the degree of starvation.)When
should the international community intervene? Perhaps
even waiting until the last resort could reduce the effectiveness of the
intervention.Williamson suggests
that, “the best time to intervene militarily is early, not for example
after sanctions have been tried for considerable time and then adjudged
to have failed.”[29]However,
the last resort for intervention need not be das letzte Mittel
(in terms of time) but rather it should be the das aeusserste
Mittel (in terms of seriousness).[30]Thus,
we should intervene only when the last resort is “most serious.”However,
this version of serious-based decision making poses problems of its own.Consider
the genocide in Rwanda.Recall that
the best estimates of the murders committed in Rwanda were between 500,000
and 1 million.[31]Should
the intervention have occurred when the casualties numbered in the hundreds
of thousands?Common sense would
dictate it is time to intervene.How
about when the casualties only reach 10,000?Intervention
would seem a reasonable response.The
decision to intervene, however, becomes harder in cases where the numbers
of casualties, refugees, or cases of starvation are smaller.There
is no easy way to draw the line.One
possible way to mitigate this problem of determining when last resort is
satisfied is by concurrently looking at the tenet of proportionality.When
the expected gains are proportionate to the expected losses, it is time
to intervene.[32] If
we modify the existing tenets of the Just War Tradition, we are able to
derive the necessary conditions of just intervention.The
intervention must have a just cause; it must be proportional; the intervention
needs to have a reasonable chance of success; and the international community
must declare to the target state the intent to intervene.Further,
the United Nations can function as the legitimate authority for international
interventions.Whether considered
as time dependent or seriousness dependent, we can intervene only as a
last resort.The Just War Tradition
tenets provide a workable framework for determining the legitimacy and
justification for intervention. Who
determines just cause?In order to
legitimize the decision to intervene, the decision must be made by an acceptable
authority and “the best authority is international, multilateral – the
UN is the obvious example.”[34]The
United Nations is the closest international equivalent of a state’s legitimate
government.However, many states
have selectively ignored the authority of the UN and some have publicly
denied its authority.One of the
problems with the legitimacy of UN authority is that the decision to intervene,
aid, or initiate trade sanctions is held by the Security Council.The
Security Council’s power to intervene poses two problems.First,
there may not be a consensus for intervention, or worse, there may be opposing
votes as to whom the intervention willbenefit.For
example, in the Gulf Crisis, the Security Council demanded the return of
Kuwait to a pre-invasion state.[35]However,
under other but similar circumstances the Security Council might have acted
differently.O’Brien tries to explain
this potential problem.He writes: Even
though an enforcement action was carried out by the United States and other
members of the UN coalition against Iraq, the status of UN war-decision
law may not be fundamentally or permanently changed….One
can think of other possible conflicts, e.g., between India and Pakistan,
where Security Council members and other members might support different
belligerents.Their vetoes and other
votes might block Security Council action.[36] Could
the Security Council vote some other way under the same circumstances?If
so, then the determination of just cause, or whether the other conditions
of just war are met, does not seem to lie on firm moral ground.Rather,
such decisions might be swayed by other influences, such as balance of
power, economic conditions, and internal political concerns.Walzer
concurs with this potential problem.He
thinks that some coalitions of states, cooperating for the sake of their
own shared interests, could steer the voting of the Security Council away
from the original proposal.Furthermore,
the Council may not reach any agreement and further loss of life may occur
during this stalemate.[37] Regardless
of the potential problems, the UN is the best international authority currently
available to judge the validity of an intervention.Perhaps
the UN, and especially the Security Council, needs to reform their procedures,
especially those outdated ones established at the end of World War II.Unfortunately,
there are no major procedural changes anticipated in the near future.Still,
it seems wise to have an international entity such as the UN, with at least
partial representation from all the states, deciding on the issue of intervention.It
is far too simple for countries to justify their own actions from their
own point of view (e.g. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Germany’s occupation
of Austria and Czechoslovakia). Consider
the justification Iraq offered for their invasion of Kuwait.Iraq
presented several defenses for their invasion that could be viewed as just
cause.First, there is significant
historical evidence that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait seems to have begun
as a territorial dispute.For example,
Iraq had a long-standing territorial claim to Kuwait.Long
before the Gulf crisis, Kuwait was considered to be the 19th
province of Iraq.During the reign
of the Ottoman Empire, Kuwait was ruled as a part of Iraq.However,
Britain separated Kuwait from Iraq after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire
in World War I.Kuwait was then
a protectorate of Britain until 1961 when Kuwait became an independent
nation.In the Gulf, Britain also
gave the islands of Bubiyan and Warbah, traditionally considered part of
Iraq, to Kuwait.[38]This
separation of the Ottoman Empire into several countries effectively reduced
Iraq’s land size and number of oil fields, thereby leaving Iraq practically
land-locked.Citing these territorial
claims, Iraq has always considered that Kuwait is part of Iraq.Saddam
Hussein summarized how the invasion solved this issue during his September
24, 1990 speech on the Republic of Iraq Radio.He
said, “Kuwait is Iraqi…they are a people who have returned to the fold;
a land that has been restored to the people.”[39]The
Iraqis viewed the invasion of Kuwait as merely a re-establishment of the
traditional Iraqi border. Iraq
also claimed self-defense as justification for their invasion.They
perceived that Kuwait had launched what amounted to an economic
first strike against Iraq.In
violation of their OPEC treaty, Kuwait had cut oil prices and increased
oil production levels.[40]Kuwait
even pumped more than their negotiated share of oil from the Iraqi-Kuwaiti
jointly owned Rumalian oil fields.[41]Saddam
Hussein summarized that Iraq was undergoing an economic attack by Kuwait
when he stated: Frankly,
war is fought not only with soldiers….There
are other means of conducting wars, economic means.We
hope that our brethren who do not wish open war with Iraq will realize
that this economic kind of war will not be tolerated any longer.We
have come to a point beyond which we cannot go.[42] Additionally,
Iraq told the U. S. Ambassador that Kuwait was involved in territorial
encroachment on Iraqi soil.[43]Moreover,
it appears as though Kuwait was trying horizontal drilling under the border.[44]With
their historical territorial claim to Kuwait and evidence of Kuwait’s economic
warfare, Iraq felt that the invasion of Kuwait had just cause. The
international community, especially the thirty-three members of the coalition,
of course, disagreed.The international
community viewed the Iraqi aggression not only as a violation of the Laws
of Warfare, but as an “assault upon a people, their everyday life and their
physical survival.”[45]It
was the UN, exemplified by the passage of SRC 678, that determined that
Iraq’s actions were wrong, not the individual state of Kuwait, or even
the U.S. The
same consideration must be applied to the decision for any intervention.In
order to justify intervention, and to have that intervention considered
acceptable to the international community, each case should be brought
forward, discussed, decided upon, and then executed at the multinational
level.The UN is currently the best
international body to make a decision to intervene. Furthermore,
the problem of intervention and sovereignty has a long and contentious
history.Hobbes argued that sovereign
states have no authority over other states.Charles
Fox, a member of the House of Commons in 1794, also spoke of the common
notion of sovereignty.He said: If
a people, in the formation of their government, have been ill-advised,
if they have fallen into error, if they have acted iniquitously and unjustly
toward each other, God is the only judge; it is not the province of other
nations to chastise their folly, or punish their wickedness, by choosing
who should rule over them, or in what manner and form they should be governed.[52] Any
type of intervention necessarily violates the principle of sovereignty.However,
in the intervention I am proposing, I am not trying to suggest that the
principle of sovereignty is false, nor do I think that other states’ rights
should by swept aside for just any intervention.We
should intervene only in dire circumstances when the tenets of Just Intervention
are met. The
problem is one of justifying a limited violation of sovereignty to allow
for international intervention.One
proposed argument for allowing selective violations of sovereignty is based
upon the theory that a state’s right to existence, hence its right to sovereignty,
is founded upon the collective rights of its citizens.Grotius
thought that “certain rights belong to every person by virtue simply of
membership of the human race, and that there is a universal obligation
to ensure that these rights are respected.”[53]Membership
in the human race entails certain rights of self-determination.Teson
has applied this theory to propose that interventions can be right in certain
cases.He suggests that there are
two pillars of international law: one based on human rights and the other
based on state sovereignty.This
dichotomy of views is often at the root of confusion over whether intervention
is just or not.Thus, Teson suggests
that our notion of international law may need modifying to include a more
flexible account of sovereignty. The
creation of the state arises from the need to protect the individuals in
that state.Although we commonly
think that states exist as a defense against foreign aggression, the state
also exists to protect the individuals’ rights at home.[54]Furthermore,
a state that forgoes the protection of its citizens or violates their rights
loses its own right of existence or sovereignty.The
Declaration of Independence is based on similar ideas.Michael
Smith writes: [T]he
justification for state sovereignty cannot rest on its own prescriptive
legitimacy.Instead, it must be derived
from the individuals, whose rights are to be protected from foreign oppression
or intrusion and from their right to a safe, sovereign framework in which
they can enforce their autonomy and preserve their interests … that a state
that is oppressive and violates the autonomy and integrity of its subjects
forfeits its moral claim to full sovereignty.[55] When
a state violates the rights of its subjects, a rigid application of the
notion of sovereignty becomes shaky.Augustine
wrote in De Civitate Dei 4.4, “Take away justice, and what are governments
but brigandage on a grand scale.”Following
the Just Intervention tenets, a legitimate authority, such as the UN, can
interpret the criminal actions of the state against its subjects, or the
inaction of the target state to relieve their subjects’ suffering, as just
cause for intervention.As a matter
of fact, this notion of a more flexible attitude toward sovereignty in
emergencies can be found in the UN Charter.Chapter
VII of the Charter concerns action with respect to threats to the peace,
breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.[56]Under
Chapter VII, threats to peace and breaches of the peace could be considered
just cause for intervention. New
technology is another reason that the notion of sovereignty is becoming
less rigid.Communication makes
it easier to cross borders and mediate differing ideologies.Furthermore,
states today have become less autonomous.Separate,
self-interested states, where isolationism was the ideology (e.g. the U.S.
before World War I and between the Wars), have given way to a kind of“economic
interdependence.”The G7, OPEC, and
European Union are evolving from purely economic organizations into political
entities.Sovereignty is important
to prevent unfettered, illegal intervention, but it should not be an objection
in severe cases of human rights abuses. Besides
the opinion that intervention can, in certain situations, violate a state’s
sovereignty, there exists another, potentially worse, difficulty with intervention.If
conditions permit, there could be a problem of long-term intervention.Successful
intervention is “likely to require a much more substantial challenge to
conventional sovereignty: a long-term military presence, … and along the
way, making all this [humanitarian relief, nation building] possible, the
large scale and reiterated use of force.”[57]Long-term
intervention posses many difficult issues (not just involving sovereignty).Logistics,
military readiness, and political favor would all be stressed by a long-term
intervention.However, the impacts
of long-term intervention should be reviewed under the tenet of proportionality.The
UN should then determine if the intervention has a reasonable chance of
success.If the proposed intervention
is proportional and has a reasonable chance of success, long-term intervention
may not be an insurmountable problem.[58] Only
a legitimate international authority can intervene.Additionally,
I have proposed that the UN is the logical international authority.However,
problems with the UN as the legitimate authority still need to be resolved.Palestinians
and others in the Muslim world could argue as follows: Kuwait
was occupied and within six months the world assembled a massive military
force to expel Saddam Hussein.Palestinians
wait 25 years and more, but receive little help in ensuring that SCR 242
is implemented….For the UN to carry
conviction as the “legitimate authority” to authorize armed intervention
… it must be seen to be impartial and consistent in the application of
international law.[59] However,
the UN remains the best and, currently, only legitimate option. By
meeting the same tenets that are used to justify war, I have shown that
the just war tenets of jus ad bellum can be used as a framework
for intervention.I addressed several
potential pitfalls of applying the Just War Tradition to humanitarian intervention.Additionally,
I showed that the question of sovereignty can be “set aside” in certain
cases where human rights violations are severe.In
cases where a state is criminal or negligent, the target state has forfeited
their right to sovereignty. While
sovereignty remains a fundamental state right, the face of sovereignty
is changing with the evolving formation of an international community.Additionally,
a growing economic interdependence, as evidenced by how the G7, OPEC, and
European Union (EU) are evolving from purely economic organizations into
political entities.(Operation Allied
Force is an EU-sponsored, NATO force air intervention in Kosovo and Serbia).Sovereignty
is necessary to prevent illegal intervention, but it should not be an rigid
barrier allowing severe cases of human rights abuses. Starvation,
disease, mass deportations, and ethnic cleansing are all tragic examples
of human suffering and criminal activity that cast shadow over our world
today.In most cases, these atrocities
can be prevented.Furthermore, “…
all states have an interest in global stability and even in global humanity,
and in the case of wealthy and powerful states like ours, this interest
is seconded by obligation.”[60]If
the state in question cannot act, or refuses to act, then international
intervention may be required.To
determine when to intervene, the UN should apply the tenets of Just Intervention.
The
Just War Tradition
The Tenets of
Just Intervention
A Question of
Legitimacy and Just Cause
Intervention
vs. Sovereignty
Conclusion