In defense of liberal intervention

It is worth keeping in mind that many liberals opposed the 2003 Iraq War just as they oppose a military escalation in Syria today. Yet, what no liberal will tolerate is ‘another Rwanda’ – a situation where the international community fails to take the decisive action to limit and contain a genocide because a failure of political will. Steering clear of the twin problems of indifference and recklessness is the challenge liberal internationalists have to respond to in their quest to end mass atrocities without recourse to imperialist policies and politics.
 
Throughout history, the controversy and critique surrounding liberal intervention have revolved around the notion of going to war ‘for an idea’ – when we ‘have not been ourselves attacked’, as J. S. Mill described the dilemma in 1859. It is the ‘wars of choice’ that are and always have been problematic. Over time, liberals have advanced various arguments for warfare including civilization, trade/property and democracy. Today, the use of force is called for, as a last resort, to protect civilians from genocide and other crimes against humanity. This defense of intervention rests on one basic argument that all liberals agree on, namely, that sovereign states possess not just rights but also duties. The state is not a moral island that can somehow remain separate from what goes on beyond its borders. Here we arrive at a key difference between Walt’s realism and our liberalism. While realists can supply ‘vital interest’ reasons for intervention, they cannot coherently advance a principled argument (beyond their own personal moral integrity).
 
The realist approach, driven as it is by prudential calculations, has merit, but begs many questions about how vital interests are defined and how, precisely, we can figure out the returns on intervention in advance. The biggest flaw in the realist argument is, however, that it does not accept that other people have the same basic right to security from arbitrary violence. To liberals it is self-evident that being serious about human rights means accepting a duty to protect – even – if the specific policy options for ‘doing something’ are limited by a well-founded fear not to make a bad situation worse. To liberals the difference is that a decision not to intervene, arrived at on prudential grounds, can only be a policy choice of last resort – it cannot be the opening premise.
 
In his blog, Stephen Walt conflates liberal intervention with imperialism. We hold that the affinity is with internationalism. Contemporary debates inside the UN about intervention and the responsibility to protect (R2P) draw from the tradition of liberal internationalism, rather than imperialism. It sees sovereignty as conditional, rather than absolute, and argues that state sovereignty comes with the responsibility to protect its people. If a state fails to exercise this responsibility, then this obligation is transmitted to the international community that must either assist the government in lifting its responsibility, or intervene if the government itself is the cause of atrocities.
 
If and when we take the distribution of responsibilities for ending genocide and mass atrocities seriously, we cannot—as Walt suggests – simply ‘sit this one out’ in either a moral or a diplomatic sense. In realpolitik, sitting it out has been the regular international response to genocide and mass atrocities – not the exception. This may be changing. The past decade’s intense diplomacy has established greater clarity about how responsibilities for ‘doing something’ to prevent and halt atrocities are distributed in the international community. The normative focus on atrocity prevention/response has allowed the UN Security Council to modify its mission to maintain international peace and security in a way that incorporates protecting populations at risk. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for world leaders to ‘pass by on the other side of the road’ when an atrocity crime is occurring.
 
What is crucial to understand about contemporary liberal intervention is that it does not claim that coercive measures are a panacea to all the ills of the world. In contrast to Walt’s inference, liberals do not wage war lightly. Even when an R2P situation meets the ad bellum criteria (just cause, last resort, right intent, legitimate authority), force should only be used if its application is likely to bring about the desired outcome. This prudential element is referred to by Gareth Evans as ‘the balance of consequences’. In other words, even liberal intervenors must coolly weigh up operational aspects of military strategy in determining whether and how to intervene. It is precisely for this reason that virtually no reputable advocate of R2P has been mobilizing for armed intervention in Syria on these grounds – even if they regret the failure of the Security Council to maintain unity in the face of Assad’s brutal assault.
 
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As we all now, in an imperfect world, moral justifications for the use of force are often muddled. The 2011 war to protect civilians at risk from Libyan armed forces is a case in point. Within a few short weeks after NATO’s operation began, Sarkozy/Cameron/Obama co-signed an editorial that presented an outcome short of regime change as a ‘betrayal’ of the Libya people. Instead of confusing the normative justification for war, they should have stuck to the script of Security Council Resolution 1973. This blurring of the mandate caused considerable difficulties for the legitimacy of the action, as R2P came to be represented by some intellectuals (and by President Putin) as being an imperialist doctrine rather than a model example of the Security Council taking timely and decisive action.
 
While we do believe that liberal ordering does not have to be imperial in its form, there is a sense in which the contemporary forms of internationalism bring back memories of imperialism. The agenda of producing freedom, building democracies, and protecting rights all entail policies that seek to control peoples, set conditions, and justify the application of coercive instruments. Being mindful of how internationalism and imperialism can become blurred in practice is therefore a necessary corrective to the hubris that accompanies internationalism.
 
In his blog, Walt reminds liberal imperialists of the warning Stanley Hoffmann (one of the most eminent liberal thinkers in the history of IR) once offered to would-be interveners: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This remains a salutary warning. However, the road to hell is also paved with the tombstones of countless victims who were slaughtered because genocidal murderers were shielded by a presumption against intervention. Fashioning a politics of protection against the worst crimes against humanity is a challenge that demands intellectual and institutional courage. Liberals also have to acknowledge – and here is where prudence plays an important role - that consideration is given to the limits of force as a protector of the last resort.