[Peace-discuss] Refutation of "humanitarian intervention"

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A devastating reply to the apologists for liberal interventionism at places 
like the awful "Carr Center for Human Rights Policy" at Harvard -- and the Obama 
administration. --CGE]


"Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer informed a NATO meeting in June 2007 
that 'NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is 
directed for the West,' and more generally have to protect sea routes used by 
tankers and other 'crucial infrastructure' of the energy system."

	"Come Over and Help Us": A History of R2P
	by Noam Chomsky
	Address to the United Nations General Assembly
	Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect,
	the United Nations, New York,  23 July 2009

The discussions about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), or its cousin 
"humanitarian intervention," are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a 
skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment.

Throughout history, there have been a few principles of international affairs 
that apply quite generally.  One is the maxim of Thucydides that the strong do 
as they wish, while the weak suffer as they must.  A corollary is what Ian 
Brownlie calls "the hegemonial approach to law-making": the voice of the 
powerful sets precedents.

Another principle derives from Adam Smith's account of policy-making in England: 
the "principal architects" of policy -- in his day the "merchants and 
manufacturers" -- make sure that their own interests are "most peculiarly 
attended to" however "grievous" the effect on others, including the people of 
England -- but far more so, those who were subjected to "the savage injustice of 
the Europeans," particularly in conquered India, Smith's own prime concern.

A third principle is that virtually every use of force in international affairs 
has been justified in terms of R2P, including the worst monsters.  Just to 
illustrate, in his scholarly study of "humanitarian intervention," Sean Murphy 
cites only three examples between the Kellogg-Briand pact and the UN Charter: 
Japan's attack on Manchuria, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler's 
occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia, all accompanied by lofty rhetoric about 
the solemn responsibility to protect the suffering populations, and factual 
justifications.  The basic pattern continues to the present.  The historical 
record is worth recalling when we hear R2P or its cousin described as an 
"emerging norm" in international affairs.  They have been considered a norm as 
far back as we want to go.  The Original Seal of MassachusettsThe founding of 
this country is an example.  In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted 
its Charter by the King, stating that rescuing the natives from their bitter 
pagan fate is "the principal end of this plantation."  The Great Seal of the 
Colony depicts an Indian saying "Come Over and Help Us."  The English colonists 
were thus fulfilling their responsibility to protect as they proceeded to 
"extirpate" and "exterminate" the natives, in their words -- and for their own 
good, their honored successors explained.  In 1630, John Winthrop delivered his 
famous sermon depicting the new nation "ordained by God" as "a city on a hill," 
inspirational rhetoric that is regularly invoked to this day to justify any 
crime as at worst a "deviation" from the noble mission of responsibility to protect.

There is no difficulty adding similar examples from other great powers in their 
day in the sun.  It is understandable that the powerful should prefer to declare 
that we should forget history and look forward.  For the weak, it is not a wise 
choice.

The skeleton in the closet made an appearance in the first case considered by 
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) 60 years ago, the Corfu Channel case. 
The Court determined that it "can only regard the alleged right of intervention 
as the manifestation of a policy of force, such as has, in the past, given rise 
to most serious abuses and such as cannot, whatever be the defects in 
international organization, find a place in international law. . .; from the 
nature of things, [intervention] would be reserved for the most powerful states, 
and might easily lead to perverting the administration of justice itself."

The same perspective informed the first-ever meeting of the South Summit of 133 
states, convened in April 2000.  Its declaration, surely with the bombing of 
Serbia in mind, rejected "the so-called 'right' of humanitarian intervention, 
which has no legal basis in the United Nations Charter or in the general 
principles of international law."  The wording reaffirms the important UN 
Declaration on Friendly Relations (UNGA Res. 2625, 1970). It has been repeated 
since, among others by the Ministerial Meeting of the Non-aligned Movement in 
Malaysia in 2006, again representing the traditional victims in Asia, Africa, 
Latin America, and the Arab world.

The same conclusion was drawn in 2004 by the high-level UN Panel on Threats, 
Challenges and Change.  The Panel adopted the view of the ICJ and the 
Non-aligned Movement, concluding that "Article 51 needs neither extension nor 
restriction of its long-understood scope."  The Panel added that "For those 
impatient with such a response, the answer must be that, in a world full of 
perceived potential threats, the risk to the global order and the norm of 
nonintervention on which it continues to be based is simply too great for the 
legality of unilateral preventive action, as distinct from collectively endorsed 
action, to be accepted.  Allowing one to so act is to allow all" -- which is, of 
course, unthinkable.

The same basic position was adopted by the UN World Summit in 2005.  While 
reaffirming stands that had already been accepted, the Summit also asserted the 
willingness "to take collective action . . . through the Security Council, in 
accordance with the Charter . . . should peaceful means be inadequate and 
national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations" from 
serious crimes.  At most, the phrase sharpens the wording of Article 42 on 
authorization for the Security Council to resort to force.  And it keeps the 
skeleton in the closet -- if, and it is a large if, we can regard the Security 
Council as a neutral arbiter, not subject to the maxims of Thucydides and Adam 
Smith, a matter to which I will return.

There have been efforts to draw a sharp distinction between R2P and its cousin. 
  They may have some merit, but they go far beyond the evidence.  There is a 
good reason why "the right of humanitarian intervention" has been hotly 
contested, in substantial part along North-South lines, while R2P was affirmed 
-- more accurately reaffirmed -- by consensus at the Summit.  The reason is that 
the Summit acceptance of R2P rhetoric adds nothing substantially new.

The rights articulated in the crucial paragraphs 138 and 139 of the Summit 
declaration had not been seriously contested, and in fact had been affirmed and 
implemented, for example, with regard to apartheid South Africa.  Furthermore, 
the Security Council had already determined that it can even use force under 
Chapter VII to end massive human rights abuses, civil war, and violation of 
civil liberties: Resolutions 925, 929, 940, June-July 1994.  And as J. L. 
Holzgrefe observes, "most states are signatories to conventions that legally 
oblige them to respect the human rights of their citizens."  The few successes 
of R2P that have been widely hailed, as in Kenya, had no need for the Summit 
resolution, though the terminology of R2P was invoked.

In substance, R2P as formulated at the South Summit is a subcase of the "right 
of humanitarian intervention," omitting the part that has been contested: the 
right to use force without Security Council authorization.  That does not imply 
that there is no significance to the more explicit focus on rights that had 
already been widely accepted.  The significance of the rhetorical shift will be 
determined by how it is implemented.  On that matter, there are few grounds for 
celebration.

There have been departures from the Corfu Channel restriction and its 
descendants.  The Constitutive Act of the African Union asserts "The right of 
the Union to intervene in a Member State . . . in respect of grave 
circumstances."  That differs crucially from the Charter of the Organization of 
American States, which bars intervention "for any reason whatever, in the 
internal or external affairs of any other state."  The reasons for the 
difference are clear.  The OAS Charter seeks to deter intervention by the 
"colossus of the North" -- and has of course failed to do so.  But after the 
collapse of the apartheid states, the African Union faced no comparable problem.

If the African Union doctrine were to extend to the OAS or NATO, then they would 
be entitled to intervene within their own alliances.  That idea yields 
interesting and revealing conclusions about the OAS and NATO, which should not 
need elaboration.  But the conclusions would be inoperative, as in the recent 
past, thanks to the maxim of Thucydides.

I know of only one high-level proposal to extend R2P beyond the Summit consensus 
and the African Union extension, namely, in the Report of the International 
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty on Responsibility to Protect 
(2001).  The Commission considers the situation in which "the Security Council 
rejects a proposal or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time."  In that 
case, the Report authorizes "action within area of jurisdiction by regional or 
sub-regional organizations under Chapter VIII of the Charter, subject to their 
seeking subsequent authorization from the Security Council" ((3) E, II).

At this point, the skeleton in the closet rattles quite loudly.  One reason is 
that the powerful unilaterally determine their own "area of jurisdiction."  The 
OAS and AU cannot do so, but NATO can, and does.  NATO unilaterally determined 
that its "area of jurisdiction" includes the Balkans -- but not NATO itself, 
where shocking crimes were committed against Kurds in southeastern Turkey 
through the 1990s, off the agenda because of the decisive military and 
diplomatic support for them by the Clinton administration, with the aid of other 
NATO powers.

NATO has also determined that its "area of jurisdiction" extends to Afghanistan, 
and beyond.  Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer informed a NATO meeting in 
June 2007 that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas 
that is directed for the West," and more generally have to protect sea routes 
used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system.  The 
expansive rights accorded by the International Commission are in practice 
restricted to NATO alone, radically violating the principles of Corfu Channel 
and its descendants, and opening the door for resort to R2P as a weapon of 
imperial intervention at will.

The Corfu Channel principle provides considerable insight into both the timing 
of the rhetorical invocation of R2P and its cousin, and the selectivity of their 
application in this new incarnation.  The "normative revolution" declared by 
Western commentators took place in the 1990s, immediately after the collapse of 
the Soviet Union, which had, in earlier years, provided an automatic pretext for 
intervention.

The Bush senior administration reacted to the fall of the Berlin Wall with an 
official exposition of Washington's new course: in brief, everything will stay 
much the same, but with new pretexts.  We still need a huge military system, but 
for a new reason: the "technological sophistication" of third world powers.  We 
have to maintain the "defense industrial base" -- a euphemism for 
state-supported high-tech industry.  We must maintain intervention forces 
directed at the Middle East energy-rich regions -- where the threats to our 
interests that required military intervention "could not be laid at the 
Kremlin's door," contrary to decades of pretense.  New pretexts for intervention 
were needed, and the "normative revolution" entered the stage -- once again.

The natural interpretation of the timing gains support from the selectivity of 
application of R2P.  There was of course no thought of applying the principle to 
the Iraq sanctions administered by the Security Council, condemned as 
"genocidal" by the two directors of the oil-for-food program, Denis Halliday and 
Hans von Sponeck, both of whom resigned in protest.  Von Sponeck's detailed 
study of the horrendous impact of the sanctions has been under a virtual ban in 
the US and UK, the primary agents of the programs.

Similarly, there is no thought today of protection of the people of Gaza, also a 
UN responsibility, along with the rest of the "protected population" (under the 
Geneva Conventions), denied fundamental human rights.  Nothing serious is 
contemplated about the worst catastrophe in Africa, if not the world: Eastern 
Congo, where only a few days ago, BBC reported, multinationals are once again 
being accused of violating a UN resolution against illicit trade of valuable 
minerals and thus funding the murderous conflict.

In another domain, there is no thought of invoking even the most innocuous 
prescriptions of R2P to respond to massive starvation in the poor countries. 
The UN recently estimated that the number of those facing hunger has passed a 
billion, while the World Food Program of the UN has just announced major 
cutbacks of aid because the rich countries are reducing their meager 
contributions, giving priority to bailing out banks.

Several years ago UNICEF reported that 16,000 children die every day from lack 
of food, many more from easily preventable disease.  The figures are higher now. 
  In southern Africa alone, it is Rwanda-level killing, not for 100 days, but 
every day.  There is surely ample warning, but no thought of action under R2P, 
though it would be easy enough if the will were there.

In these and numerous other cases the selectivity conforms with painful 
precision to the maxim of Thucydides, and the expectations of the ICJ 60 years ago.

Perhaps the most striking illustration of the consistent radical selectivity was 
in 1999, when NATO bombed Serbia, an attack featured in Western discourse as the 
jewel in the crown of the "emerging norm" of humanitarian intervention, when the 
US was at the "height of its glory" in leading the "enlightened states," and the 
"idealistic New World bent on ending inhumanity" opened a new era in history by 
acting on "principles and values," to cite just a few of the accolades by 
Western intellectuals.

There are a few difficulties confronting this flattering self-image.  One 
problem is that the traditional victims of Western intervention vigorously 
objected.  I have already quoted the stand of the Non-aligned movement; Nelson 
Mandela was particularly harsh in his condemnation.  That was unproblematic: the 
views of the unworthy are easily ignored.

Furthermore, the bombing plainly violated the UN Charter.  That problem too was 
easily put to rest.  Some resorted to legalistic maneuvering, but as the 
Goldstone Commission more forthrightly determined, the bombing was "illegal but 
legitimate," a conclusion reached by reversing the chronology of bombing and 
atrocities.

That leads to a third problem: the facts, which happen to be richly documented 
from impeccable Western sources.  What they reveal is unequivocal.  The NATO 
bombing did not end the atrocities but rather precipitated by far the worst of 
them, as had been anticipated by the NATO command and the White House.  The 
conclusions that are so richly documented by the Western records are reinforced 
by the indictment of Milošević, issued by the International Tribunal at the 
height of the bombing.

With a single exception, the crimes charged follow the bombing.  And we can be 
confident that the one pre-bombing charge -- the Racak massacre -- was of little 
principled concern to the US and Britain, if only because at the very same time 
they were not merely condoning but actively supporting much more serious crimes 
in East Timor, where the background of atrocities was incomparably more 
grotesque than anything that had happened in the Balkans.  And that is only one 
of many examples right at that time.  This problem too was overcome quite 
simply: by virtual suppression of the ample record.

The case of East Timor is particularly instructive.  On a personal note, I 
testified about it at the Fourth Committee in 1978, when atrocities reached the 
level of "extermination as a crime against humanity committed against the East 
Timorese population," in the words of the later UN-sponsored Truth Commission, 
and Britain and France joined the US in supporting them, along with Australia 
and others, continuing to do so right through 1999 as atrocities sharply mounted 
again.  After the final paroxysm of state terror in September 1999, which 
destroyed most of what remained of the country, National Security Adviser Sandy 
Berger said that the US would continue its support for the aggressors, 
explaining that "I don't think anybody ever articulated a doctrine which said 
that we ought to intervene wherever there's a humanitarian problem."   R2P 
vanished in the familiar way.

To end the atrocities in this case would not have required bombing, or 
sanctions, or indeed any act beyond withdrawal of participation.  That was 
demonstrated shortly after Berger's reaffirmation of Western policy, when, under 
strong domestic and international pressure, Clinton formally ended US 
participation.  The invaders immediately withdrew, and a UN peacekeeping force 
was able to enter facing no army.  That could have been done any time in the 
preceding quarter-century.  Astonishingly, this horrendous story was soon 
reinterpreted as vindication of R2P, a reaction so shameful that words fail.

I mentioned that the consensus of the World Summit adheres to the Corfu 
principle and its descendants only if we assume that the Security Council is a 
neutral arbiter.  It plainly is not.  The Council is controlled by its five 
permanent members, and they are not equal in operative authority.  One 
indication is the record of vetoes -- the most extreme form of violation of a 
Security Council Resolution.  The relevant period is from the mid-1960s, when 
decolonization and recovery from wartime destruction gave the UN at least some 
standing as representative of world opinion.  Since then, the US is far in the 
lead in vetoes, Britain second, no one else even close.  In the past 
quarter-century, China and France vetoed 3 resolutions, Russia four, the UK ten, 
and the US 43, including even resolutions calling on states to observe 
international law.  The skeleton in the closet nods in recognition as the maxim 
of Thucydides strikes again.

One way to mitigate this defect in the World Summit consensus would be to 
eliminate the veto -- incidentally, in accord with the will of most Americans, 
who believe that the US should follow the will of the majority and that the UN, 
not the US, should take the lead in international crises.  But here we run up 
against Adam Smith's maxim, which ensures that such heresies are unthinkable, as 
much so as applying R2P right now to those who desperately need protection but 
are not on the favored list of the powerful.

American public opinion brings up a further consideration.  The maxims that 
largely guide international affairs are not graven in stone, and, in fact, have 
become considerably less harsh over the years as a result of the civilizing 
effect of popular movements.  For that continuing and essential project, R2P can 
be a valuable tool, much as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been.

Even though states do not adhere to the UDHR, and some formally reject much of 
it (crucially including the world's most powerful state), nonetheless it serves 
as an ideal that activists can appeal to in educational and organizing efforts, 
often effectively.  My suspicion is that a major contribution of the discussion 
of R2P may turn out to be rather similar, and with sufficient commitment, 
unfortunately not yet detectable among the powerful, it could be significant indeed.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics Emeritus at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Among his recent books is Inside 
Lebanon: Journey to a Shattered Land with Noam and Carol Chomsky (Monthly Review 
Press, 2007).  Download Chomsky's speech in PDF: 
<un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/protect/noam.pdf>. URL: 
mrzine.monthlyreview.org/chomsky030809.html
MR
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