The case for Iraq: "Just and Unjust Wars"

reefedjib · Dec 1, 2009

I have just finished reading the relevant parts of [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Just-Unjust-Wars-Historical-Illustrations/dp/0465037070/ref=tmm_pap_title_0]"Just and Unjust Wars"[/ame] by Michael Walzer.

This read was suggested to me by kansaswhig, given our discussions about the legitimacy of the Iraq war. I will post several posts worth of excerpts from a Preface, Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 6. I placed the Preface, which discusses Iraq, after the chapters. Then some brief conclusions of my own. It's a very good book and I highly recommend it.

Please don't post a comment until you have seen my conclusions post, so we can keep all this together. Thank you.

reefedjib · Dec 1, 2009

Chapter 1: Against “Realism”

If I claim that I am fighting justly, I must also claim that I was attacked, or threatened with attack, or that I am coming to the aid of a victim of someone else’s attack.

Chapter 2: The Crime of War

War is hell whenever men are forced to fight, whenever the limit of consent is breached.
When soldiers believe themselves to be fighting against aggression, war is no longer a condition to be endured. It is a crime they can resist – though they must suffer its effects in order to resist it – and they can hope for a victory that is something more than an escape from the immediate brutality of battle. The experience of war as hell generates what might be called a higher ambition: one doesn’t aim to settle with the enemy but to defeat and punish him and, if not to abolish the tyranny of war, at least to reduce the probability of future oppression.

Chapter 4: Law and Order in International Society

All aggressive acts have one thing in common: they justify forceful resistance, and force cannot be used between nations, as it often can between persons, without putting life itself at risk. Whatever limits we place on the means and range of warfare, fighting a limited war is not like hitting somebody.
If states actually do possess rights more or less as individuals do, then it is possible to imagine a society among them more or less like the society of individuals. The comparison of international to civil order is crucial to the theory of aggression…Every reference to aggression as the international equivalent of armed robbery or murder, and every comparison of home and country or of personal liberty and political independence, relies upon what is called the domestic analogy.
Two presumptions follow. The first…is the presumption in favor of military resistance once aggression has begun. Resistance is important so that rights can be maintained and future aggressors deterred. The theory of aggression restates the old doctrine of the just war: it explains when fighting is a crime and when it is permissible, perhaps even morally desirable. The victim of aggression fights in self-defense, but he isn’t only defending himself, for aggression is a crime against society as a whole. He fights in its name and not only in his own. Other states can rightfully join the victim’s resistance; their war has the same character as his own, which is to say, they are entitled not only to repel the attack but also to punish it. All resistance is also law enforcement. Hence the second presumption: when fighting breaks out, there must always be some state against which the law can and should be enforced. Someone must be responsible, for someone decided to break the peace of the society of states. No war, as medieval theologians explained, can be just on both sides.
There are, however, wars that are just on neither side, because the idea of justice doesn’t pertain to them or because the antagonists are both aggressors, fighting for territory or power where they have no right. … The second case is illustrated by those wars that Marxists call “imperialist,” which are not fought between conquerors and victims but between conquerors and conquerors, each side seeking dominion over the other or the two of them competing to dominate some third party. … But it is important to stress that we can penetrate the deception only insofar as we can ourselves distinguish justice and injustice: the theory of imperialist was presupposes the theory of aggression. … Not all states are sea-slug states, gobbling up their neighbors. There are always groups of men and women who would live if they could in peaceful enjoyment of their rights and who have chosen political leaders who represent that desire. The deepest purpose of the state is not ingestion but defense, and the least that can be said is that many actual states serve that purpose. When their territory is attacked or their sovereignty challenged, it makes sense to look for an aggressor and not merely a natural predator. Hence we need a theory of aggression.
The theory of aggression first takes shape under the aegis of the domestic analogy. I am going to call that primary form of the theory the legalist paradigm, since it consistently reflects the conventions of law and order. It does not necessarily reflect the arguments of the lawyers, though legal as well as moral debate has its starting point here. Later on, I will suggest that our judgments about the justice and injustice of particular wars are not entirely determined by the paradigm. The complex realities of international society drive us toward a revisionist perspective, and the revisions will be significant ones. But the paradigm must first be viewed in its unrevised form; it is our baseline, our model, the fundamental structure for the moral comprehension of war. We begin with the familiar world of individuals and rights, of crimes and punishments. The theory of aggression can be summed up in six propositions.
1. There exists an international society of independent states. States are the members of this society, not private men and women.
2. This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members – above all the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty. Once again, these two rest ultimately on the right of men and women to build a common life and to risk their individual lives only when they freely choose to do so.
3. Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act. As with domestic crime, the argument here focuses narrowly on actual or imminent boundary crossings: invasions and physical assaults. Otherwise, it is feared, the notion of resistance to aggression would have no determinate meaning. A state cannot be said to be forced to fight unless the necessity is both obvious and urgent.
4. Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defense by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and any other member of international society. Anyone can come to the aid of a victim, use necessary force against an aggressor, and even make whatever is the international equivalent of a “citizen’s arrest.”
5. Nothing but aggression can justify war. The central purpose of the theory is to limit the occasions for war. “There is a single and only just cause for commencing a war,” wrote Vitoria, “namely, a wrong received.” There must actually have been a wrong, and it must actually have been received (or its receipt must be, as it were, only minutes away). Nothing else warrants the use of force in international society – above all, not any difference of religion or politics. Domestic heresy and injustice are never actionable in the world of states: hence, again, the principle of non-intervention.
6. Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished. The conception of just war as an act of punishment is very old, though neither the procedures nor the forms of punishment have ever been firmly established in customary or positive international law.

Chapter 5: Anticipations

It isn’t really prudent to assume the malign intent of one’s neighbors; it is merely cynical, an example of the worldly wisdom which no one lives by or could live by. We need to make judgments about our neighbor’s intentions, and if such judgments are to be possible we must stipulate certain acts or sets of acts that will count as evidence of malignity. These stipulations are not arbitrary; they are generated, I think, when we reflect upon what it means to be threatened. Not merely to be afraid, though rational men and women may well respond fearfully to a genuine threat, and there subjective experience is not an unimportant part of the argument for anticipation. But we also need an objective standard, as Bacon’s phrase “just fear” suggests. That standard must refer to the threatening acts of some neighboring state, for … I can only be threatened by someone who is threatening me, where “threaten” means what the dictionary says it means: “to hold out or offer (some injury) by way of a threat, to declare one’s intention of inflicting injury.” It is with some such notion as this that we must judge the wars fought for the sake of the balance of power.
But there is a great difference, nonetheless, between killing and being killed by soldiers who can plausibly be described as the present instruments of an aggressive intention, and killing and being killed by soldiers who may or may not represent a distant danger to our country. In the first case, we confront an army recognizably hostile, ready for war, fixed in a posture of attack. In the second, the hostility is prospective and imaginary, and it will always be a charge against us that we have made war upon soldiers who themselves engaged in entirely legitimate (non-threatening) activities. Hence the moral necessity of rejecting any attack that is merely preventative in character, that does not wait upon and respond to the willful acts of an adversary. [ed. The Iraqi war was justified on the threat of WMD weapons being transferred from Iraq, for which there was some intelligence that they possessed and could produce WMDs, to terrorists that could attack without warning. It was an argument for preventative war, not pre-emptive. I disagree with this justification. I think it was rightly an intervention, made grave due to the threat of WMD programs.]
The line between legitimate and illegitimate first strikes is not going to be drawn at the point of imminent attack but at the point of sufficient threat. That phrase is necessarily vague. I mean it to cover three things: a manifest intent to injure, a degree of active preparation that makes that intent a positive danger, and a general situation in which waiting, or doing anything other than fighting, greatly magnifies the risk.
The general formula must go something like this: states may use military force in the face of threats of war, whenever the failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence. Under such circumstances it can fairly be said that they have been forced to fight and that they are the victims of aggression.

reefedjib · Dec 1, 2009

Chapter 6: Interventions

The principle that states should never intervene in the domestic affairs of other states follows readily from the legalist paradigm and, less readily and more ambiguously, from those conceptions of life and liberty that underlie the paradigm and make it plausible. But these same conceptions seem also to require that we sometimes disregard the principle; and what might be called the rules of disregard, rather than the principle itself, have been the focus of moral interest and argument. No state can admit to fighting an aggressive war and then defend its actions. But intervention is differently understood. The word is not defined as a criminal activity, and though the practice of intervening often threatens the territorial integrity and political independence of invaded states, it can sometimes be justified. It is more important to stress at the outset, however, that it always has to be justified. The burden of proof falls on any political leader who tries to shape the domestic arrangements or alter the conditions of life in a foreign country. And when the attempt is made with armed force, the burden is especially heavy – not only because of the coercions and ravages that military intervention inevitably brings, but also because it is thought that the citizens of a sovereign state have a right, insofar as they are to be coerced and ravaged at all, to suffer only at one another’s hands.
These citizens are the members, it is presumed, of a single political community, entitled collectively to determine their own affairs. The precise nature of this right is nicely worked out by John Stuart Mill in a short article published in the same year as the treatise “On Liberty” (1859) and especially useful to us because the individual/community analogy was very much in Mill’s mind as he wrote (“A Few Words on Non-Intervention”). We are to treat states as self-determining communities, he argues, whether or not their internal political arrangements are free, whether or not the citizens choose their government and openly debate the policies carried out in their name. For self-determination and political freedom are not equivalent terms. The first is a more inclusive idea; it describes not only a particular institutional arrangement but also the process by which a community arrives at that arrangement – or does not. A state is self-determining even if its citizens struggle and fail to establish free institutions, but it has been deprived of self-determination if such institutions are established by an intrusive neighbor. The members of a political community must seek their own freedom, just as the individual must cultivate his own virtue. They cannot be set free, as he cannot be made virtuous, by any external force.
The (internal) freedom of a political community can be won only by the members of that community. [ed. I am not convinced that an external force cannot help in this transition from oppression to liberation. This worked in Germany of 1945]
Self-determination, then, is the right of a people “to become free by their own efforts” if they can, and nonintervention is the principle guaranteeing that their success will not be impeded or their failure prevented by the intrusions of an alien power.
The case may be different when what is at issue is not intervention at all but conquest. Military defeat and governmental collapse may so shock a social system as to open the way for a radical renovation of its political arrangements. This seems to be what happened in Germany and Japan after World War II, and these examples are so important that I will have to consider later on how it is that rights of conquest and renovation might arise. But they clearly don’t arise in every case of domestic tyranny. It is not true, then, that intervention is justified whenever revolution is; for revolutionary activity is an exercise in self-determination, while foreign interference denies to a people those political capacities that only such exercise can bring. [ed. And so Germany is brought up with a reference to the shock of governmental collapse. This also occurred in Iraq]
These are the truths expressed by the legal doctrine of sovereignty, which defines liberty of states as their independence from foreign control and coercion. In fact, of course, not every independent state is free, but the recognition of sovereignty is the only way we have of establishing an arena within which freedom can be fought for and (sometimes) won. It is this arena and the activities that go on within it that we want to protect, and we protect them, much as we protect individual integrity, by marking out boundaries that cannot be crossed, rights that cannot be violated. As with individuals, so with sovereign states: there are things that we cannot do to them, even for their own ostensible good. [ed. In Iraq, we invaded and caused governmental collapse. Then with the establishment of a democracy, we defined an arena within which the various factions in Iraq could compete and strive for their political self-determination.]
Hence, the ban on boundary crossings is subject to unilateral suspension, specifically with reference to three sorts of cases where it does not seem to serve the purposes for which it was established:
- When a particular set of boundaries clearly contains two or more political communities, one of which is already engaged in a large-scale military struggle for independence; that is, when what is at issue is secession or “national liberation;”
- When the boundaries have already been crossed by the armies of a foreign power, even if the crossing has been called for by one of the parties in a civil war, that is, when what is at issue is counter-intervention; and
- When the violation of human rights within a set of boundaries is so terrible that it makes talk of community or self-determination or “arduous struggle” seem cynical and irrelevant, that is, in cases of enslavement or massacre.
The arguments that are made on behalf of intervention in each of these cases constitute the second, third, and fourth revisions of the legalist paradigm. They open the way for just wars that are not fought in self-defense or against aggression in the strict sense. [ed. Iraq represents a case where the people were subjugated by the autocratic power of Saddam’s security apparatus. Massacres were a common occurrence.]
Interventions are so often undertaken for “reasons of state” that have nothing to do with self-determination that we have become skeptical of every claim to defend the autonomy of alien communities. Humanitarian Intervention
A legitimate government is one that can fight its own internal wars. And external assistance in those wars is rightly called counter-intervention only when it balances, and does no more than balance, the prior intervention of another power, making it possible once again for the local forces to win or lose on their own. [ed. What the hell is this? The author is incredibly idealistic when he makes statements such as these. Is it only moral if the counter-insurgency force only balances the forces in the conflict and not decisively changes the balance in our favor? War involves the domination of one side by another. Whether this precludes the local forces being able to determine the course of the conflict or not and dominant force is moral.]
There is another sort of case, however, where we don’t look for outcomes of that sort, where we don’t want the local balance to prevail. If the dominant forces within a state are engaged in massive violations of human rights, the appeal to self-determination in the Millian sense of self-help is not very attractive. That appeal has to do with the freedom of the community taken as a whole; it has no force when what is at stake is the bare survival or the minimal liberty of (some substantial number of) its members. Against the enslavement or massacre of political opponents, national minorities, and religious sects, there may well be no help unless help comes from outside. And when a government turns savagely upon its own people, we must doubt the very existence of a political community to which the idea of self-determination might apply.
Clear examples of what is called “humanitarian intervention” are very rare. Indeed, I have not found any, but only mixed cases where the humanitarian motive is one of several. States don’t send their soldiers into other states, it seems, only in order to save lives.
Governments and armies engaged in massacres are readily identified as criminal governments and armies (they are guilty, under the Nuremberg code of “crimes against humanity”). Hence humanitarian intervention comes much closer than any other kind of intervention to what we commonly regard, in domestic society, as law enforcement and police work. At the same time, however, it requires the crossing of an international frontier, and such crossings are ruled out by the legalist paradigm – unless they are authorized, I suppose, by the society of nations.
In the cases I have considered, the law is unilaterally enforced; the police are self-appointed. Now, unilateralism has always prevailed in the international arena, but we worry about it more when what is involved is a response to domestic violence rather than to foreign aggression. We worry that, under the cover of humanitarianism, states will come to coerce and dominate their neighbors; once again, it is not hard to find examples. Hence many lawyers prefer to stick to the [legalist] paradigm. That doesn’t require them, on their view, to deny the (occasional) need for intervention. They merely deny legal recognition to that need.
Humanitarian intervention “belongs in the realm not of law but of moral choice, which nations, like individuals must sometimes make …” But that is only a plausible formulation if one doesn’t stop with it, as lawyers are likely to do. For moral choices are not simply made; they are also judged, and so there must be criteria for judgment. If these are not provided by the law, or if legal provision runs out at some point, they are nevertheless contained in our common morality, which doesn’t run out, and which still needs to be explicated after the lawyers have finished.
Humanitarian intervention is justified when it is a response (with reasonable expectations of success) to acts “that shock the moral conscience of mankind.” The old-fashioned language seems to me exactly right. It is not the conscience of political leaders that one refers to in such cases. They have other things to worry about and may well be required to repress their normal feelings of indignation and outrage. The reference is to the moral convictions of ordinary men and women, acquired in the course of their everyday activities. And given that one can make a persuasive argument in terms of those convictions, I don’t think that there is any moral reason to adopt that posture of passivity that might be called waiting for the UN (waiting for the universal state, waiting for the messiah …).
Any state capable of stopping the slaughter has a right, at least, to try to do so. The legalist paradigm indeed rules out such efforts, but that only suggests that the paradigm, unrevised, cannot account for the moral realities of military intervention.
The second, third, and fourth revisions of the paradigm have this form: states can be invaded and wars justly begun to assist secessionist movements (once they have demonstrated the representative character), to balance the prior interventions of other powers, and to rescue peoples threatened with massacre. In each of these cases we permit or, after the fact, we praise or don’t condemn these violations of the formal rules of sovereignty, because they uphold the values of individual life and communal liberty of which sovereignty itself is merely an expression.

reefedjib · Dec 1, 2009

Preface to the 4th Edition
Regime Change and Just War

I Germany and other examples

Germany was a restoration-by-force of democracy, not creation ex nihilo
Regime change was the consequence, not the cause, of the war with Germany
Resistance to aggression stops with the military defeat of the aggressor
Aggression is regarded as the criminal policy of a government, not as the policy of a criminal government – let alone a criminal system of government
It isn’t only aggressiveness, then, but also murderousness that makes a political regime a legitimate candidate for forcible transformation
An authoritarian regime that is capable of mass murder but not engaged in mass murder is not liable to military attack and political reconstruction
Once the intervening forces are engaged in the work of political reconstruction, there are good reasons why they should aim at democracy or, at least, open the way for the practice of democracy. The reasons have to do with the legitimacy of democratically based regimes, which are established through a literal (and on-going) self-determination, and also with their relative benevolence. Genuine democracies have not engaged in the mass murder of their own citizens (even if their record abroad is less satisfactory).
The intervening forces have a mandate for political, but not for cultural, transformation.
Forcible and justifiable democratization will sometimes require an attack upon traditional hierarchies and customary practices: The exclusion of women from the political sphere is an obvious example.

II Iraq

It was the character of its regime that made Iraq dangerous: The US government claimed that Saddam’s regime was inherently aggressive and inherently murderous. Just as it had committed aggression in the past, so it had massacred its own people in the past, and American leaders insisted that, in this case, the past was prologue. What had happened before would happen again unless the regime was replaced.
The war was not a response to aggression or a humanitarian intervention. Its cause was not an actual Iraqi attack on a neighboring state or even an imminent threat of attack; nor was the cause an actual, ongoing massacre. The cause was regime change, directly. [ed. And here is where I disagree. There was an ongoing subjugation of the Iraqi people by the Iraqi government]
This means that the US government was arguing for a significant expansion of the doctrine of jus ad bellum [ed. a set of criteria that are consulted before engaging in war, in order to determine whether entering into war is justifiable]. The existence of an aggressive and murderous regime, it claimed, was a legitimate occasion for war, even if the regime was not actually engaged in aggression or mass murder. In more familiar terms, this was an argument for preventative war.
I do not believe that regime change, by itself, can be a just cause of war. When we act in the world , and especially when we act militarily, we must respond to “the evil that men do,” which is best read as “the evil that they are doing,” and not to the evil that they are capable of doing or have done in the past. Aggression and massacre are legitimate causes of war, and we must learn, what we have not yet learned, to respond to each of these in a timely and forceful way. But the existence of regimes capable of aggression and massacre requires a different response.
So, the Iraqi case invites us to think about the use of force-short-of-war [ed. force-short-of-war is an act of war with limited means]; the containment regime of 1991-2003 that the UN endorsed and the United States enforced is only one possible example of its use. Despite the French argument at the UN in 2002 and 2003 that force must always come as a last resort, force-short-of-war obviously comes before war itself. The argument about jus ad bellum needs to be extended, therefore, to jus ad vim [ed. the just use of force]. We urgently need a theory of just and unjust uses of force.
Regime change short-of-war leaves plenty of room for local valuations and local risk-taking…It may happen that containment anticipates rather than responds to local demands for self-determination. But this isn’t an unjust anticipation, since the states organizing the containment don’t themselves overthrow the old regime, and they don’t establish the new one, if there is a new one. They are operating at the edge of the non-intervention principle but not in violation of it. If preventing aggression and mass murder is justified, then so is this indirect version of regime change.

reefedjib · Dec 1, 2009

Rob’s Conclusions

The theory of aggression: Legalist paradigm
- There exists an international society of independent states.
- This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members – above all the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty.
- Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act.
- Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defense by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and any other member of international society.
- Nothing but aggression can justify war.
- Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished.
First revision of the legalist paradigm: I missed capturing this.
Second revision of the legalist paradigm: secession
Third revision of the legalist paradigm: counter-intervention
Fourth revision of the legalist paradigm: enslavement or massacre [ed. I would add subjugation]
The Bush administration chose the wrong justification for invading Iraq.
The justification of the development of nuclear weapons, while representing a terrible threat, was still a claim for preventative war.
The correct justification was intervention based on humanitarian grounds. Michael Walzer lists enslavement or massacre as cases justifying humanitarian intervention. I would add another, close to enslavement, that can be called subjugation of one or more political communities by another. Sunnis subjugated Kurds and Shia.
This justification is a mixed case as there were other considerations regarding the quality of the Saddam regime.
- Saddam was a bad state actor to its neighbors (Iran and Kuwait), it had used WMDs, and had programs that could be reconstituted. These can be viewed as additional traits of the government that made it a continued threat to not only its own people but its neighbors as well. This should be included in the calculation.
- Saddam had massacred in the past. The fact that the use of force-short-of-war, with the no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq, were losing support meant that they would not be continued indefinitely. The ending of this protection for the Kurds and the Shia would resume the broad subjugation by Saddam. While subjugation of the Shia had continued during the use of the no-fly zones, there was an end to massacres. The risk of this resuming was high.

Please post away.

reefedjib · Dec 1, 2009

I had said that Bush used the wrong justification to go to war, and I was certainly thinking about all the discussion about WMDs.

However, Bush did include language regarding Saddam's subjugation of his own people in many speeches. This was shared with the speeches where he highlighted the objective of regime change, as I posted in this post: http://www.debatepolitics.com/war-iraq/58118-were-objectives-iraq-war-met-9.html#post1058364285

donsutherland1 · Dec 2, 2009

While my position might be a spoiler of sorts, I have very serious reservations about wars launched in the name of humanitarian principles. With the exception of genocide (strictly as defined under the Convention on Genocide), I believe non-military means are the preferable tools for addressing humanitarian issues.

In general, my view of a just war is one that is launched when:

1. A state or its allies (e.g., if it is part of an alliance) have been subjected to aggression/attack on itself and/or its critical interests/allies.

2. A state or its allies are confronted with a credible and imminent threat of aggression/threat to itself and/or its critical interests/allies or a profound development that would dramatically alter the balance of power so as to imperil itself, its allies, and/or its critical interests.

3. Genocide or credible and imminent threat of genocide.

FWIW, both the first and second components are established in international law. The third is not.

Under such a framework, military intervention to reverse Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was acceptable (with its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq posed a threat to vital U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf). The military interventions in Somalia and Haiti were not (none of the above three criteria were satisfied). The war in Afghanistan was justified (Al Qaeda was given license by the Taliban government to operate in that country and Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.). The most recent war in Iraq was not (as it turned out, the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate from which portions were released subsequent to the start of the war suggested that while Iraq likely resumed WMD efforts--an incorrect estimate--Iraq did not pose an imminent threat to critical U.S. interests in the region). International use of force in Rwanda would have been justified. Egypt's 1967 blockade of Israel in the Strait of Tiran was an act of aggression and Israel had just cause to break the blockade and, prospectively, were Iran to pursue a nuclear weapons program, Israel (whose vital interests would be imperiled) would be justified in launching military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities if non-military efforts failed/sufficient deterrence was not practical.

Of course, even if a war is just, it is not always the optimal choice. Where viable non-military alternatives exist, those means would be preferable.

I do not believe massacres or poor human rights records justify military intervention. Non-military tools (diplomacy, economic sanctions, etc.) should be deployed in such cases. Were social or humanitarian issues to become rationalizations for war, the world would become much more unstable and violent.

In most cases, civil wars don't justify military intervention except if an outcome were to pose a threat consistent with #2 in my above framework.

Any way, those are my quick thoughts.

RDS · Dec 2, 2009

LMAO, its a waste of time reading that book. Its all succinctly put here.
Britain's Iraq Panel: At Last, a Public Accounting | Newsweek Voices - Christopher Dickey | Newsweek.com

reefedjib · Dec 2, 2009

donsutherland1 said:
While my position might be a spoiler of sorts, I have very serious reservations about wars launched in the name of humanitarian principles. With the exception of genocide (strictly as defined under the Convention on Genocide), I believe non-military means are the preferable tools for addressing humanitarian issues.

I appreciate your post and it is in no way a spoiler. It represents another data point in a discussion around what makes for legitimate justification on humanitarian principles.

donsutherland1 said:
In general, my view of a just war is one that is launched when:

1. A state or its allies (e.g., if it is part of an alliance) have been subjected to aggression/attack on itself and/or its critical interests/allies.

2. A state or its allies are confronted with a credible and imminent threat of aggression/threat to itself and/or its critical interests/allies or a profound development that would dramatically alter the balance of power so as to imperil itself, its allies, and/or its critical interests.

3. Genocide or credible and imminent threat of genocide.

FWIW, both the first and second components are established in international law. The third is not.

Let's compare to Walzer's Theory of aggression:

walzer said:
The theory of aggression: Legalist paradigm

There exists an international society of independent states.

This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members – above all the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty.

Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act.

Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defense by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and any other member of international society.

Nothing but aggression can justify war.

Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished.

First revision of the legalist paradigm: preemption.

Second revision of the legalist paradigm: secession

Third revision of the legalist paradigm: counter-intervention

Fourth revision of the legalist paradigm: enslavement or massacre [ed. or subjugation]

You reminded me that the first revision is preemption. An excerpt:

The Israeli first strike [ed. 6 Day War, 1967] is, I think, a clear case of legitimate anticipation. To say that, however, is to suggest a major revision of the legalist paradigm. For it means that aggression can be made out not only in the absence of a military attack or invasion but in the (probably) absence of any immediate intention to launch such an attack or invasion. The general formula must go something like this: states may use military force in the face of threats of war, whenever the failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence. Under such circumstances it can fairly be said that they have been forced to fight and that they are the victims of aggression.

Your first reason is reflected in item 3 of the basic legalist paradigm. Your second reason is the first revision of the basic legalist paradigm. The second revision could be represented by France joining the Americans in seceding from England. No examples of the third revision come to mind.

And so we have your third point, genocide, and the fourth revision of the legalist paradigm.

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary we have

genocide : "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group"
massacre : "the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty"
enslavement : "to reduce to or as if to slavery : subjugate" [ed. note that subjugate is a synonym]
subjugate : "1 : to bring under control and governance as a subject 2 : to make submissive"

From the Convention on Genocide we have:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

So, a massacre may be genocide or it may not. It must be a massacre of a particular national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

Enslavement and subjugation are not genocide. Let us talk about this

donsutherland1 said:
I do not believe massacres or poor human rights records justify military intervention. Non-military tools (diplomacy, economic sanctions, etc.) should be deployed in such cases.

Iraq has massacred an ethnic group in the past (Kurds) and a religious group in the past (Shia). These were cases of genocide. It had ongoing subjugation of those groups.

You say that you think non-military tools should be deployed in this case and I say that they had. 12 years of economic sanctions and no-fly zones did not stop the subjugation. They rarely do. The US was the last man standing supporting the no-fly zones. The UN was contemplating removing the sanctions. Saddam would have gone back to committing genocide of his people, of that there can be no doubt.

In this situation, I think that military intervention is appropriate and justified.

donsutherland1 said:
Were social or humanitarian issues to become rationalizations for war, the world would become much more unstable and violent.

I agree, but this would be a good thing.

If our objective is to have peace in the world, while respecting national sovereignty as you specified, we would have 190 (or whatever) countries at peace with each other, but half of them would be cruel to their own people. This cruelty would range from a case like Egypt, where a political group is persecuted, to more blatant control like in China or Saudi Arabia, and finally to subjugation like in Iraq with cases of genocide. Then the outright cases of genocide, like Rwanda and Sudan.

By setting forth the principle of attacking countries that subjugate their people, after non-military means have been exhausted, you serve notice to the worst of those regimes.

The principle is well founded in the argument made by Walzer. He states [paraphrasing] that any limitation of self-determination affects his point 2 of the basic legalist paradigm: it removes the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty from the government of that country.

donsutherland1 said:
Any way, those are my quick thoughts.

Thank you very much.

donsutherland1 · Dec 2, 2009

reefedjib said:
Let's compare to Walzer's Theory of aggression:

Your first reason is reflected in item 3 of the basic legalist paradigm. Your second reason is the first revision of the basic legalist paradigm. The second revision could be represented by France joining the Americans in seceding from England. No examples of the third revision come to mind.

As I haven't read Walzer's book, I'm not completely sure of this. But from the excerpts, it appears that there is a significant distinction between Walzer's thinking and mine. I'm focused much more on major interests of states. He isn't. Rather, goes to some lengths to build a case of humanitarian interventions.

So, a massacre may be genocide or it may not. It must be a massacre of a particular national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

Enslavement and subjugation are not genocide.

That's correct. The definition of genocide is limited. It is the gravest crime against humanity.

Iraq has massacred an ethnic group in the past (Kurds) and a religious group in the past (Shia). These were cases of genocide. It had ongoing subjugation of those groups.

You say that you think non-military tools should be deployed in this case and I say that they had. 12 years of economic sanctions and no-fly zones did not stop the subjugation. They rarely do. The US was the last man standing supporting the no-fly zones. The UN was contemplating removing the sanctions. Saddam would have gone back to committing genocide of his people, of that there can be no doubt.

While the purges against the Kurds were repugnant and WMD were deployed in that effort, it is my understanding that the Hussein regime's actions were essentially the quashing of a nationalist movement, not an attempt to wipe out the Kurds. If that is right--and academic research on the topic is ongoing as far as I know--then it would not constitute a genocide. In any case, the no fly zones (which arose following the first Persian Gulf War--a just war in my framework) and economic sanctions had the intended effect of benefitting Iraq's Kurds.

Had Saddam launched an effort to destroy the Kurdish population subsequent to any removal of sanctions, I believe the genocide definition would have been achieved. Had he merely remained repressive, as was the nature of his regime, that would be a different matter.

If our objective is to have peace in the world, while respecting national sovereignty as you specified, we would have 190 (or whatever) countries at peace with each other, but half of them would be cruel to their own people. This cruelty would range from a case like Egypt, where a political group is persecuted, to more blatant control like in China or Saudi Arabia, and finally to subjugation like in Iraq with cases of genocide. Then the outright cases of genocide, like Rwanda and Sudan.

By setting forth the principle of attacking countries that subjugate their people, after non-military means have been exhausted, you serve notice to the worst of those regimes.

Aside from the fact that it would be difficult to garner significant domestic support for a humanitarian war in which no major national interests are involved, the U.S. does not have unlimited resources to pursue such a course. Furthermore, given that human nature is what it is, there is no assurance that the post-military environment in such a country would materially improve. Moreover, the costs in terms of lives lost during a conflict, damage to infrastructure, and economic/social dislocation that results might well exceed those associated with the humanitarian issue for which military intervention was launched.

Finally, if the U.S. or any other state had the military preeminence to act as an enforcer of humanitarian principles, such preeminence would probably lead to the formation of a coalition to balance its power. One saw an emergent whiff of such an evolution following the Iraq War. Moreover, decisions made to the territorial integrity of states can lead to other states using such decisions to rationalize their own reasoning for doing so e.g., witness Russia's reference to the breaking away of Serbia's Kosovo province in its post-conflict separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia. Neither development would have a stabilizing impact. Either development could actually raise the costs and likelihood of additional wars from the grievances that arise from imposed solutions.

reefedjib · Dec 2, 2009

donsutherland1 said:
As I haven't read Walzer's book, I'm not completely sure of this. But from the excerpts, it appears that there is a significant distinction between Walzer's thinking and mine. I'm focused much more on major interests of states. He isn't. Rather, goes to some lengths to build a case of humanitarian interventions.

I should point out that it was I who excerpted primarily from the Chapter on Intervention as I am trying to build a case for Iraq being an intervention.

I agree with this. While I am currently using Walzer's framework of a theory of aggression to determine whether the Iraqi War was just, I am personally cognizant of the major interests of states. My original justification of Iraq was that it was in our National interest to spread democracy. Of course, Iraq represents significant oil interests as well. It is a case of significant interest. This is reflected in Walzer's statement that a war for humanitarian intervention is one that typically holds a mixed case or reasons.

donsutherland1 said:
While the purges against the Kurds were repugnant and WMD were deployed in that effort, it is my understanding that the Hussein regime's actions were essentially the quashing of a nationalist movement, not an attempt to wipe out the Kurds. If that is right--and academic research on the topic is ongoing as far as I know--then it would not constitute a genocide.

I think it would. From the Convention on Genocide:

Convention on Genocide said:
genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

It states in whole or in part, and the quashing of a nationalist movement, entailing the annihilation of innocent men, women and children, certainly applies. The same is true of the massacre of the Shia. The systematic imprisonment and murder of the Shia may also meet this standard of genocide.

donsutherland1 said:
In any case, the no fly zones (which arose following the first Persian Gulf War--a just war in my framework) and economic sanctions had the intended effect of benefitting Iraq's Kurds.

For a time. It did not result in the political regime being overthrown and another taking it's place.

donsutherland1 said:
Had Saddam launched an effort to destroy the Kurdish population subsequent to any removal of sanctions, I believe the genocide definition would have been achieved. Had he merely remained repressive, as was the nature of his regime, that would be a different matter.

As I pointed out, this repressive nature sometimes exhibited what could be termed genocide.

donsutherland1 said:
reefedjib said:

If our objective is to have peace in the world, while respecting national sovereignty as you specified, we would have 190 (or whatever) countries at peace with each other, but half of them would be cruel to their own people. This cruelty would range from a case like Egypt, where a political group is persecuted, to more blatant control like in China or Saudi Arabia, and finally to subjugation like in Iraq with cases of genocide. Then the outright cases of genocide, like Rwanda and Sudan.

By setting forth the principle of attacking countries that subjugate their people, after non-military means have been exhausted, you serve notice to the worst of those regimes.

Click to expand...

Aside from the fact that it would be difficult to garner significant domestic support for a humanitarian war in which no major national interests are involved, the U.S. does not have unlimited resources to pursue such a course. Furthermore, given that human nature is what it is, there is no assurance that the post-military environment in such a country would materially improve. Moreover, the costs in terms of lives lost during a conflict, damage to infrastructure, and economic/social dislocation that results might well exceed those associated with the humanitarian issue for which military intervention was launched.

I agree that 1) you need to demonstrate national interests, which Iraq held and 2) domestic support for a humanitarian war would be crucial. The US would not tackle every case of subjugation in the world, only where their was national interest. Additionally, this would not be done all at once, but as our capacity (forces, finances, will) allowed. The argument that the post-military environment may not improve is highlighted by Afghanistan, where the government is weak and its influence limited. My argument here is that the country requires the capacity for democratization. There most certainly will be costly backlash, especially if one ethnic group rules over another and we remove that ethnic groups power structures, as has happened in Iraq.

This reminds me of the other reasons I had for the invasion of Iraq, to which I need to add humanitarian intervention for subjugation:
Justification for invasion of a country and regime change.

Humanitarian intervention: Subjugation of its people
Bad country: threat to neighbors, dictatorship, cruel to people, genocide in past
Geopolitically important: important neighbors, located in important region <oil>
In the National Interest: spreading democracy
Capacity for democratization: educated, economic potantial

donsutherland1 said:
Finally, if the U.S. or any other state had the military preeminence to act as an enforcer of humanitarian principles, such preeminence would probably lead to the formation of a coalition to balance its power. One saw an emergent whiff of such an evolution following the Iraq War.

That's fine. Of course it would be better to form a broader coalition to tackle these states. This is why I am an advocate for a new Organization of Democratic States.

donsutherland1 said:
Moreover, decisions made to the territorial integrity of states can lead to other states using such decisions to rationalize their own reasoning for doing so e.g., witness Russia's reference to the breaking away of Serbia's Kosovo province in its post-conflict separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia. Neither development would have a stabilizing impact. Either development could actually raise the costs and likelihood of additional wars from the grievances that arise from imposed solutions.

I agree that the secession of Kosovo was a tricky affair that set a bad example. If this is not done to further the self-determination of the people of such states, then it is rightly not an intervention, it is not even a secession, it is an acquisition and an act of aggression.

donsutherland1 · Dec 2, 2009

reefedjib said:
While I am currently using Walzer's framework of a theory of aggression to determine whether the Iraqi War was just, I am personally cognizant of the major interests of states. My original justification of Iraq was that it was in our National interest to spread democracy. Of course, Iraq represents significant oil interests as well. It is a case of significant interest. This is reflected in Walzer's statement that a war for humanitarian intervention is one that typically holds a mixed case or reasons.

Democratic, or to be more specific, representative governance is sustainable only in the context of political, economic, legal institutions, not to mention the relationship of a state’s peoples. Unless that framework is established, democracy is not really feasible. Instead, it evolves into something illiberal. It is no accident that under the domestic framework of Iraq, with its ethnic rivalries, the country turned authoritarian. Otherwise, it might well have fragmented. Today, progress toward representative government has been made. Nonetheless, real issues persist including secessionist tendencies among the Kurds, a Shia-majority government that is governing frequently for the interests of the Shia at the expense of the Sunnis and Kurds, and a central government that appears to be accumulating power to the extent that liberty could be imperiled down the road. In other words, an evolution toward heavy-handedness, at a minimum, seems to be underway. In Afghanistan, the situation is quite different. The structure of that society is highly decentralized. Hence, the country has had ineffectual central governments from prior to the Soviet invasion to the present.

Given the broader framework that is necessary to support and sustain democratic governance, making democratization a military objective is not really feasible. That was a fatal blind spot in the neoconservative philosophy that assumed regime change could seamlessly bring about democratic governance. The world is not characterized by idealism. The realities in Iraq and Afghanistan have been, to say the least, more complex.

Therefore, in my opinion, wars should not be launched to bring about democracy. However, if wars are launched for just causes (and I’ve outlined my framework for reaching such an assessment), post-war planning could well consider governance changes, as had been done in Germany and Japan following World War II.

Also, speaking about post-war arrangements, I have real issues with the idea of “punishing” a defeated enemy. I favor a peace of moderation whereby the enemy is re-integrated into the international framework/community of nations. A peace of moderation was pursued with France following Napoleon’s defeat in the 19th Century, toward the South following the U.S. Civil War, and in Germany and Japan following World War II. In each of those cases, the moderate peace terms proved beneficial. In stark contrast, Germany was punished severely following World War I. I would suggest that the Treaty of Versailles’ terms contributed to nurturing an environment that made it easier for Hitler to rise to power.

It states in whole or in part, and the quashing of a nationalist movement, entailing the annihilation of innocent men, women and children, certainly applies. The same is true of the massacre of the Shia. The systematic imprisonment and murder of the Shia may also meet this standard of genocide.

The quashing of a nationalist movement is not genocide. The deliberate effort to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is genocide. There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein was brutal and his policies led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people (perhaps more).

If the Hussein regime truly did engage in genocide, I would suggest military intervention to bring an end to the genocide would be appropriate. If so, such intervention would have been proper during the late 1980s when Iraq was engaging in such conduct.

Needless to say, that goes beyond what is currently permissible under international law. In any case, the post-Gulf War arrangements essentially curbed Iraq’s oppression against the Kurds. Up to the start of the war that began in 2003, there was no ongoing genocide nor was there imminent threat of genocide. So, I don’t believe the war that began in 2003 could be based on genocide.

Of course it would be better to form a broader coalition to tackle these states. This is why I am an advocate for a new Organization of Democratic States.

In principle, any new organization of countries committed to improving human rights would be better than the current UN Human Rights Council, which has demonstrated partiality in putting political causes ahead of genuine human rights matters, unwillingness to repudiate terrible human rights practices, and allows chronic human rights abusers to serve on the Council. However, I would reserve final judgment until I knew the organization’s specific mandate, its authority, and how it would go about promoting improved human rights performances. I still would not favor military means for bringing about improved human rights practices. Doing so could well lead to a slippery slope whereby other social or humanitarian justifications become rationalizations for the use of force. If so, the frequency and magnitude of wars could increase markedly.

reefedjib · Dec 2, 2009

donsutherland1 said:
Democratic, or to be more specific, representative governance is sustainable only in the context of political, economic, legal institutions, not to mention the relationship of a state’s peoples. Unless that framework is established, democracy is not really feasible. Instead, it evolves into something illiberal.

Agreed, democracy is much more than simply voting.

donsutherland1 said:
It is no accident that under the domestic framework of Iraq, with its ethnic rivalries, the country turned authoritarian. Otherwise, it might well have fragmented.

100% Agreed.

donsutherland1 said:
Today, progress toward representative government has been made. Nonetheless, real issues persist including secessionist tendencies among the Kurds, a Shia-majority government that is governing frequently for the interests of the Shia at the expense of the Sunnis and Kurds, and a central government that appears to be accumulating power to the extent that liberty could be imperiled down the road. In other words, an evolution toward heavy-handedness, at a minimum, seems to be underway.

Sadly, yes, but no real surprise. This is where I fooled myself the most, thinking democratization were possible. Read The Gamble and had the rude awakening that it probably won't happen the way I would like.

donsutherland1 said:
In Afghanistan, the situation is quite different. The structure of that society is highly decentralized. Hence, the country has had ineffectual central governments from prior to the Soviet invasion to the present.

I agree, yet the Taliban held one for some years. They certainly can't build institutions that have an effect in the provinces. We need effective provincial governments.

donsutherland1 said:
Given the broader framework that is necessary to support and sustain democratic governance, making democratization a military objective is not really feasible. That was a fatal blind spot in the neoconservative philosophy that assumed regime change could seamlessly bring about democratic governance. The world is not characterized by idealism. The realities in Iraq and Afghanistan have been, to say the least, more complex.

I don't think democratization was ever characterized as something the military would do, at least not in it's current form. Transitioning to a Combat Force and a SysAdmin Force as it is put in [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-New-Map-Twenty-first-Century/dp/B000BPG24M/ref=tmm_pap_title_0]The Pentagon's New Map[/ame] by Thomas Barnett, where the Combat Force would invade and the SysAdmin Force would do COIN and develop.

donsutherland1 said:
Therefore, in my opinion, wars should not be launched to bring about democracy. However, if wars are launched for just causes (and I’ve outlined my framework for reaching such an assessment), post-war planning could well consider governance changes, as had been done in Germany and Japan following World War II.

I still want to see Subjugation as a just reason for humanitarian intervention.

donsutherland1 said:
Also, speaking about post-war arrangements, I have real issues with the idea of “punishing” a defeated enemy. I favor a peace of moderation whereby the enemy is re-integrated into the international framework/community of nations. A peace of moderation was pursued with France following Napoleon’s defeat in the 19th Century, toward the South following the U.S. Civil War, and in Germany and Japan following World War II. In each of those cases, the moderate peace terms proved beneficial. In stark contrast, Germany was punished severely following World War I. I would suggest that the Treaty of Versailles’ terms contributed to nurturing an environment that made it easier for Hitler to rise to power.

I totally agree.

donsutherland1 said:
The quashing of a nationalist movement is not genocide. The deliberate effort to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is genocide. There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein was brutal and his policies led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people (perhaps more).

If the Hussein regime truly did engage in genocide, I would suggest military intervention to bring an end to the genocide would be appropriate. If so, such intervention would have been proper during the late 1980s when Iraq was engaging in such conduct.

Ok, I see this. So I am back to supporting Subjugation as a just reason for humanitarian intervention. I know we disagree on this.

donsutherland1 said:
Needless to say, that goes beyond what is currently permissible under international law. In any case, the post-Gulf War arrangements essentially curbed Iraq’s oppression against the Kurds. Up to the start of the war that began in 2003, there was no ongoing genocide nor was there imminent threat of genocide. So, I don’t believe the war that began in 2003 could be based on genocide.

Now about that international law thing... First of all, what is the law governing raw aggression as exemplified in your first two options? Is it the Geneva Convention? I am totally inadequate in this area.

Secondly, I recall your saying that genocide was not covered under international law as a legitimate reason to go to war. Did I get that right? I know Walzer observed that some of his reasons were illegal but moral.

I don't feel a war needs to be legal, based on international law, which isn't binding or shouldn't be, to be moral. It is just left to define what moral is.

donsutherland1 said:
In principle, any new organization of countries committed to improving human rights would be better than the current UN Human Rights Council, which has demonstrated partiality in putting political causes ahead of genuine human rights matters, unwillingness to repudiate terrible human rights practices, and allows chronic human rights abusers to serve on the Council. However, I would reserve final judgment until I knew the organization’s specific mandate, its authority, and how it would go about promoting improved human rights performances. I still would not favor military means for bringing about improved human rights practices. Doing so could well lead to a slippery slope whereby other social or humanitarian justifications become rationalizations for the use of force. If so, the frequency and magnitude of wars could increase markedly.

For starters, just to get the disagreement behind us, I am in favor of military action, AFTER other options are exhausted. I am curious what slippery slope you could imagine. What other social or humanitarian justifications could result in war?

I am not sure what the exact mandate would be. Promotion of Democracy would be a key element. I prefer positive inducements to negative inducements, so I am against sanctions. They never work, or at least I am not aware of a successful example. I prefer giving money for good behavior and development. This Organization of Democratic States would promote business organizations and civic organizations in host countries. It is to build the infrastructure that you referenced in the beginning of your post about the institutions needed for representative government.

Ultimately, the measure of success is whether the people increase their self-determination.

And yes to go to war for those countries who don't make positive steps and are strategically important - like Iraq.

donsutherland1 · Dec 2, 2009

reefedjib said:
I don't think democratization was ever characterized as something the military would do, at least not in it's current form.

In the Project for a New American Century's (a neoconservative think tank) "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century," one of the "main military mission(s)" cited was to "secure and expand zones of democratic peace." Security has always been a military mission. But the report added the expansion of democratic zones to the military's mission. Hence, it envisioned the military's playing a role to expand the democratic world.

Now about that international law thing... First of all, what is the law governing raw aggression as exemplified in your first two options? Is it the Geneva Convention? I am totally inadequate in this area.

There are numerous conventions that define state sovereignty, aggression, etc. Concepts can be found in such instruments as the Treaty of Westphalia, Hague Conventions, Geneva Conventions, United Nations Charter, among others, not to mention historical precedents e.g., the Caroline incident.

Secondly, I recall your saying that genocide was not covered under international law as a legitimate reason to go to war. Did I get that right?

That's correct, even as genocide is considered among the gravest crimes against humanity. Even the UN Security Council's ability to authorize force is restricted to "the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression."

I don't feel a war needs to be legal, based on international law, which isn't binding or shouldn't be, to be moral. It is just left to define what moral is.

IMO, it would be constructive for international law to reflect what are legitimate reasons for war so that there is no license for would-be aggressors to exploit ambiguity for their own hostile purposes. My guess is that international law could be framed to provide sufficient flexibility to cover the vast majority of "just" wars and with sufficient concreteness to deprive would-be aggressors of most of their opportunities to find legal justification for their aggression.

My guess is that there is sufficient international consensus on the horrors of genocide, as defined in the international Convention, to allow create a provision in international law that makes it permissible for states to use force, if necessary, to curb genocide. Straying beyond the definition would be dangerous, as it would open avenues for military intervention in a large number of cases where it has become politically convient for interested parties to label acts "genocide."

I am curious what slippery slope you could imagine. What other social or humanitarian justifications could result in war?

My worry is that different states would offer their own interpretations over what constitutes a humanitarian violation and what threshold justifies the use of force. Genocide is an extremely grave matter and such gravity is recognized in international law. Other humanitarian reasons do not rise to the level of genocide. Yet, the wider occurrence of lesser humanitarian issues could provide pretexts for would-be aggressors to rationalize the use of force. As such, it could create opportunities for would-be aggressors to assert that they are acting in a "just" fashion.

I prefer positive inducements to negative inducements, so I am against sanctions. They never work, or at least I am not aware of a successful example.

Sanctions have not had a good record. Arguably, the embargo against Iraq worked with respect to deterring Iraq from restarting its WMD program.

I strongly agree with the idea of offering positive inducements (improved political relations, improved trade terms, financial/economic/technical assistance, etc.) to encourage progress on humanitarian matters.

reefedjib · Dec 2, 2009

donsutherland1 said:
IMO, it would be constructive for international law to reflect what are legitimate reasons for war so that there is no license for would-be aggressors to exploit ambiguity for their own hostile purposes. My guess is that international law could be framed to provide sufficient flexibility to cover the vast majority of "just" wars and with sufficient concreteness to deprive would-be aggressors of most of their opportunities to find legal justification for their aggression.

The thing is that that also limits our options and I am totally against that. We should not subvert our laws to international law. This of course offers an opening for other countries to define a just intervention, like Russia did with N. Ossetia and the other place in Georgia. That had more to do with Kosovoen secession than anything I think. Nonetheless, another country could use that flexibility themselves.

donsutherland1 said:
My guess is that there is sufficient international consensus on the horrors of genocide, as defined in the international Convention, to allow create a provision in international law that makes it permissible for states to use force, if necessary, to curb genocide. Straying beyond the definition would be dangerous, as it would open avenues for military intervention in a large number of cases where it has become politically convient for interested parties to label acts "genocide."

My worry is that different states would offer their own interpretations over what constitutes a humanitarian violation and what threshold justifies the use of force. Genocide is an extremely grave matter and such gravity is recognized in international law. Other humanitarian reasons do not rise to the level of genocide. Yet, the wider occurrence of lesser humanitarian issues could provide pretexts for would-be aggressors to rationalize the use of force. As such, it could create opportunities for would-be aggressors to assert that they are acting in a "just" fashion.

This is why I want the ambiguity in international law, so we can justify intervention based on subjugation, but do it from the auspices of the proposed Organization of Democratic States to provide legitimacy and resources. The "SysAdmin" force would be attached to this ODS and populated by armed experts from around the world.

Who would be members of the ODS? China would not. Western Europe would, perhaps some countries from Eastern Europe like Poland. Brazil could be a member, as well as other countries from Latin America. Venezuela would not. The big one is Russia. I don't think they are much of a democracy and so probably shouldn't be a member.

reefedjib · Dec 3, 2009

donsutherland1 said:
The quashing of a nationalist movement is not genocide. The deliberate effort to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is genocide. There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein was brutal and his policies led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people (perhaps more).

If the Hussein regime truly did engage in genocide, I would suggest military intervention to bring an end to the genocide would be appropriate. If so, such intervention would have been proper during the late 1980s when Iraq was engaging in such conduct.

Needless to say, that goes beyond what is currently permissible under international law. In any case, the post-Gulf War arrangements essentially curbed Iraq’s oppression against the Kurds. Up to the start of the war that began in 2003, there was no ongoing genocide nor was there imminent threat of genocide. So, I don’t believe the war that began in 2003 could be based on genocide.

I thought about this last night and this morning and arrived at a few questions. In your model of just war, is military intervention for humanitarian reasons only allowed to stop active genocides? Does the intervention include the objective of regime change if the regime is responsible for the genocide? Given that Saddam's actions against the Kurds constitute genocide, and I understand that that is actually not a given, but in this case a supposition, what is the statute of limitations for the consequences of that genocide.

If there is no statute of limitations and regime change is implicitly a part of intervention, and Saddam committed genocide, then this war could be justified under that framework. That is a framework that could be used by the proposed Organization of Democratic States. What are your thoughts on this?

I still think subjugation is deserving of regime change. I still think it is reasonable cause for intervention.

reefedjib · Dec 3, 2009

Sigh. I must apologize. I reread my last post and asked questions that were answered right in the post I quoted. You only think active genocides deserve intervention. So, a statute of limitations that lasts as long as the genocide does. I am not sure whether you think regime change is an appropriate result of this humanitarian intervention - you may have answered this elsewhere.

Here is where I think we are. War is justified in response to explicit aggression and imminent aggression. We diverge on what we think is justified when it comes to humanitarian intervention.

You think it is genocide and that the statute of limitations ends when the genocide ends. Is this correct? I don't want to mis-characterize your position.

I think it includes genocide, massacre, enslavement and subjugation. I think the enslavement and subjugation should be ongoing in all cases, so the statute of limitations ends when those crimes against humanity end. I think that there is no statute of limitations for genocide and massacre (unless there is no subjugation).

One question I have is when do you feel a massacre becomes a genocide?

I'll try to keep up!

donsutherland1 · Dec 3, 2009

reefedjib said:
You only think active genocides deserve intervention. So, a statute of limitations that lasts as long as the genocide does. I am not sure whether you think regime change is an appropriate result of this humanitarian intervention - you may have answered this elsewhere.

Here is where I think we are. War is justified in response to explicit aggression and imminent aggression. We diverge on what we think is justified when it comes to humanitarian intervention.

You think it is genocide and that the statute of limitations ends when the genocide ends. Is this correct? I don't want to mis-characterize your position.

I think it includes genocide, massacre, enslavement and subjugation. I think the enslavement and subjugation should be ongoing in all cases, so the statute of limitations ends when those crimes against humanity end. I think that there is no statute of limitations for genocide and massacre (unless there is no subjugation).

It should be noted that the framework I laid out to define my thinking pertains to when a sovereign state's going to war is justified. It does not pertain to the UN Security Council's Chapter VII powers.

IMO, war is a response to what amounts to emergency circumstances in the context of issues confronting sovereign states. The single humanitarian issue for which I believe it would be justified for a state to go to war concerns the ongoing act of genocide or credible and imminent threat of genocide, using the narrow definition provided in the Convention on Genocide.

Genocide has no statute of limitations. However, once the act of genocide has ended or when it is in the past, I don't believe the justification for a state's going to war to stop/prevent genocide exists any longer. A single state's going to war after the fact would not save any lives, as the humanitarian emergency would have passed and the tragedy would already be complete. Its going to war an extended period after the genocide has ended could well be viewed more as an act of revenge than anything else. Wars motivated by revenge properly constitute aggression.

That does not mean that those responsible for a genocide should go unpunished. I only suggest that once a genocide has ended, justification for unilateral military intervention by another state ceases to exist. Instead, in those circumstances, the proper international entities have responsibility to deal with the matter (UN Security Council, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, etc.).

Therefore, at least as far as Saddam Hussein was concerned, if the atrocities carried out against the Kurds and Shia did, in fact, meet the criteria of a genocide, the time when military action would have been appropriate under my framework would have been during the time those acts were being carried out, not some 15 years later.

As for regime change, I don't believe regime change should ever be the preeminent reason a state goes to war. Regime change could be a necessary component of a war e.g., if the war is launched to defeat a revolutionary power and post-war stability would require new leadership. Actual aggression, credible and imminent threat of aggression, and ongoing or credible and imminent threat of genocide are as far as I go. Such principles do not preclude regime change, but launching a war mainly to change another nation's leadership greatly impairs state sovereignty and, by that definition, actually constitutes aggression.

One question I have is when do you feel a massacre becomes a genocide?

A massacre is one mechanism by which a genocide can be carried out. The "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" would need to be present among those responsible.

If magnitude alone were used, my guess is that the magnitude would need to be very substantial. To achieve such a threshold, there would almost certainly need to be sustained acts leading to widescale massacres. A single incident would not rise to the required threshold.

Although the bar is very high under the Genocide Convention, such a high threshold would make it difficult for would-be aggressors cite genocide as a means for using military force mainly to advance their own interests and/or political agendas. A low threshold would pose the real risk of giving would-be aggressors a potent legal principle under which they could redefine their aggression as a "just" war.

Given all the tradeoffs involved, my feeling is that the Convention's definition is a reasonable one. If a state were to intervene militarily in circumstances that meet that definition, it would be clear that the state is acting to prevent genocide.

mbig · Dec 3, 2009

donsutherland1 said:
....

Therefore, at least as far as Saddam Hussein was concerned, if the atrocities carried out against the Kurds and Shia did, in fact, meet the criteria of a genocide, the time when military action would have been appropriate under my framework would have been during the time those acts were being carried out, not some 15 years later.

As for regime change, I don't believe regime change should ever be the preeminent reason a state goes to war. ....

I like when a discussion gets to specifics.. as in this case, Iraq.
No way to test theory without detail.

I disagree that Genocide or threat thereof was ended "15 years" in the past.

It was Only our 2 No-fly zones preventing Further .. genocide. Those zones would have had to have been maintained indefinitely under Saddam and probably either son as successor.

Quickly bringing up said 'regime change'. Which in the case of Genocides like Iraq (or Pol Pot) necessarily, since it's the leadership which initiates and carries out these genocides, involves replacing them. Perhaps less among Tribal conflict (ie, Hutu/Tutsi) in Africa.

One can certainly argue Bush's motives (or the War's cost or execution), but I think the Iraq invasion for regime change was justified on Humanitarian grounds alone. Even when 'benign', it was an oppressive/perfected police state and Saddam had [also] initiated Two wars resulting in no less than 1 Million dead.
Not including the internal persecution/genocide.

donsutherland1 · Dec 3, 2009

mbig said:
I disagree that Genocide or threat thereof was ended "15 years" in the past.

It was Only our 2 No-fly zones preventing Further .. genocide. Those zones would have had to have been maintained indefinitely under Saddam and probably either son as successor.

Before I comment on the specifics of your point, it should be noted that I am strictly offering my opinions in a rather theoretical discussion. International law makes war permissible in the name of self-defense. That criteria is met when aggression has been carried out against a state or there is a credible and imminent threat of aggression.

My view is that military intervention to stop genocide or address a credible and imminent threat of genocide would be appropriate. That's a personal opinion. Currently, such sanction is not provided for under international law, but as I've noted in other threads in the past, sovereign states (not the UN or international community) are the best guarantors of their own security. Furthermore, they have a basic responsibility to provide for their own security so that their citizens can live without threat of harm from aggression. Hence, even as the UN General Assembly has railed against Israel's security fence and obtained an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, I believe Israel's construction of the fence is legitimate and appropriate. The security fence saves lives (Israeli lives by making it more difficult for suicide bombers to attack Israeli civilians; Palestinian lives by reducing the need for military operations; those benefits in lives saved far outweigh the costs of inconvenience).

I also recognize that others have different views and respect those differences.

In terms of the point you raised, there certainly was a theoretical, even plausible, threat of genocide. However, the threat of genocide was not imminent. If, however, when the no fly zones were ended such a credible and imminent threat of genocide emerged, then, by my framework, military intervention would be acceptable to address that issue.

My point is that one would need to wait until the threat is credible and imminent (consistent with the threshold for preemptive military action to thwart looming aggression) before declaring war to prevent/stop genocide.

Quickly bringing up said 'regime change'. Which in the case of Genocides like Iraq (or Pol Pot) necessarily, since it's the leadership which is the cause of these genocides involves replacing leadership, if only a little less among Tribal conflict (ie, Hutu/Tutsi) in Africa.

My thinking does not prevent regime change. I'm only suggesting that launching a war in which regime change is its major objective is not appropriate. In the cases of genocide, stopping/preventing genocide would be the primary objective. Almost certainly, one would also need to change the genocidal regime and doing so would be appropriate.

In other words, regime change can well be one of the objectives of a military campaign, just not the principal reason for going to war. Otherwise, states could freely justify war simply to change other states' leaders to whom they object for whatever reasons. That would be a more unstable world.

One can certainly argue Bush's motives (or the War's cost or execution)...

I'm not going to question President Bush's motives. Whether or not one agrees with his policy choices does not mean that he did not seek to do what he felt in good faith was in the best interests of the United States.

...but I think the Iraq invasion for regime change was justified on Humanitarian grounds alone. Even when 'benign', it was an oppressive/perfected police state and Saddam had [also] initiated Two wars on the world resulting in no less than 1 Million dead.
Not including the internal persecution/genocide.

We have no disagreements about the nature of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime (and his sons). I'm just hesitant to view humanitarian reasons alone--with the exception of stopping genocide or a credible and imminent threat of genocide, given the gravity of genocide--as sufficient justification to go to war. I do believe non-military policy measures can and should be in the mix when dealing with humanitarian matters that fall short of genocide/credible and imminent threat of genocide.

reefedjib · Dec 3, 2009

donsutherland1 said:
It should be noted that the framework I laid out to define my thinking pertains to when a sovereign state's going to war is justified. It does not pertain to the UN Security Council's Chapter VII powers.

IMO, war is a response to what amounts to emergency circumstances in the context of issues confronting sovereign states. The single humanitarian issue for which I believe it would be justified for a state to go to war concerns the ongoing act of genocide or credible and imminent threat of genocide, using the narrow definition provided in the Convention on Genocide.

Genocide has no statute of limitations. However, once the act of genocide has ended or when it is in the past, I don't believe the justification for a state's going to war to stop/prevent genocide exists any longer. A single state's going to war after the fact would not save any lives, as the humanitarian emergency would have passed and the tragedy would already be complete. Its going to war an extended period after the genocide has ended could well be viewed more as an act of revenge than anything else. Wars motivated by revenge properly constitute aggression.

That does not mean that those responsible for a genocide should go unpunished. I only suggest that once a genocide has ended, justification for unilateral military intervention by another state ceases to exist. Instead, in those circumstances, the proper international entities have responsibility to deal with the matter (UN Security Council, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, etc.).

Therefore, at least as far as Saddam Hussein was concerned, if the atrocities carried out against the Kurds and Shia did, in fact, meet the criteria of a genocide, the time when military action would have been appropriate under my framework would have been during the time those acts were being carried out, not some 15 years later.

As for regime change, I don't believe regime change should ever be the preeminent reason a state goes to war. Regime change could be a necessary component of a war e.g., if the war is launched to defeat a revolutionary power and post-war stability would require new leadership. Actual aggression, credible and imminent threat of aggression, and ongoing or credible and imminent threat of genocide are as far as I go. Such principles do not preclude regime change, but launching a war mainly to change another nation's leadership greatly impairs state sovereignty and, by that definition, actually constitutes aggression.

I am not concerned with the international legality of going to war. International laws restrict our freedom to act as a sovereign nation. This does allow other states to act in the same manner.

My concern is that if it is unjustified to invade another country that is not engaged in genocide, that gives that country license to oppress its people. When this oppression includes torture, massacres, death squads and the like, the people's self-determination is stolen from them in a brutal fashion.

Since the sovereignty of a state derives from the self-determination of its people, and the people's self-determination is suppressed through brutal subjugation, the state no longer holds sacrosanct sovereignty. Therefore, it is justified to invade this country, overthrown its government, hold those responsible to trial, and rebuild a new government that respects the self-determination of its people.

reefedjib · Dec 3, 2009

I started a poll to see what people think. You can find it here: http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/61345-humanitarian-intervention-whos-framework.html

kansaswhig · Dec 3, 2009

I am very happy you read the book...although some of the interpretations are subjective, your analysis is sound and rooted in very rational thought.

Good Work.

I'll debate the finer points tomorrow...

kansaswhig · Dec 4, 2009

Great Thread.

Realize that Walzer's work is rooted in historical Just War Theory, particularly Cicero, St. Thomas Aquinas, etc. To summarize, Jus ad bellum requires these conditions are met prior to war:

Just cause
The reason for going to war needs to be just and cannot therefore be solely for recapturing things taken or punishing people who have done wrong; innocent life must be in imminent danger and intervention must be to protect life.

Comparative justice
While there may be rights and wrongs on all sides of a conflict, to override the presumption against the use of force, the injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other. Some theorists such as Brian Orend omit this term, seeing it as fertile ground for exploitation by bellicose regimes.

Legitimate authority
Only duly constituted public authorities may wage war.

Right intention
Force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose—correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain or maintaining economies is not.

Probability of success
Arms may not be used in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success;

Last resort
Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted or are clearly not practical. It may be clear that the other side is using negotiations as a delaying tactic and will not make meaningful concessions.

Proportionality
The anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms. This principle is also known as the principle of macro-proportionality, so as to distinguish it from the jus in bello principle of proportionality.

All conditions must be met...so, for OIF, consider the following:

Just Cause: I'll grant that our intentions for Iraq were in part to thwart the possiblity of life lost, however the WMD justification wasn't succinct because of the lack of contemporary proof. Additionally, the invasion and regime removal could be viewed as "punishment", which is prohibited by the Just Cause definition. Obviously, the "recapturing things taken" doesn't apply.

Comp. Justice: If you dissect "injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other", this is purely subjective based on interpretation. It could be construed as legitimate. I can even grant this portion as viable.

Authority: Check. Although other theorists would deny based on NATO and the U.N. disapproving. There was a Coaltion of viable governments on board. But I'm not a fan of NATO, and especially not the U.N.

Intention: "Force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose"...if the just cause is for WMD, does that mean quelling suffering of the Iraqi people is not? However, if the just cause IS the Iraqi people, then this would seem legit. The "no blood for oil" crowd would cite: "while material gain or maintaining economies is not" portion as reason against. Obviously, that is not the case since Iraq's oil is sold on the international market and not solely to the U.S.

Success: Hard to define here because of the necessary occupation after the toppling of the regime. I've noted in detail on previous posts how we failed in this planning process egregiously. We should have been more honest with ourselves about the reality of "success" of this operation post-regime fall. I say that this one is a no-go.

Last Resort: Big Fail here. There could have been more done prior to the use of force. Everyone knows it.

Proportionality: Was the benefit proportionate to the threat? Well, it's not over yet, so we'll see...

All conditions were not met. The war is not Just.

reefedjib · Dec 4, 2009

Let's revisit Walzer's theory of aggression one last time.

The theory of aggression: Legalist paradigm

There exists an international society of independent states.
This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members – above all the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty.
Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act.
Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defense by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and any other member of international society.
Nothing but aggression can justify war.
Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished.

First revision of the legalist paradigm: preemption
Second revision of the legalist paradigm: secession
Third revision of the legalist paradigm: counter-intervention
Fourth revision of the legalist paradigm: enslavement or massacre

and so let's revisit the full definition of enslavement:

Main Entry: en·slave
Pronunciation: \in-ˈslāv, en-\
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1628
: to reduce to or as if to slavery : subjugate
— en·slave·ment \-mənt\ noun
— en·slav·er noun

As we can see, subjugation and enslavement are related and there is no need to extend Walzer's definition.

The case for Iraq: "Just and Unjust Wars"

onomatopoeic