Military Intervention and Rights

By 'fundamental' moral rights, I mean rights that are especially important or weighty within a wider moral theory. I assume that any satisfactory moral theory is likely to generate such rights against murder, torture and enslavement. Without further specification, these three rights should suffice for the purposes of this discussion, since writers on intervention have found it difficult enough to explain how fundamental moral rights and political rights are related, let alone establish their exact content, scope and weights. In using the term 'fundamental' rights, I do not mean to suggest that a moral theory of military intervention must ultimately be rights-based in the sense of beginnirag with rights. Contractarian, consequentialist and duty-based moral theories will doubtless all recognise at least a handful of the same fundamental moral rights.

Michael Walzer , 'The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics, Philosophy and Public Affairs (Vol. 9, No. 3, Spring 1980 ), p. 219.

Ibid., p. 223.

Ibid., pp. 223-24.

David Luban , 'Just War and Human Rights', Philosophy and Public Affairs (Vol. 9, No. 2, Winter 1980), p. 175. Luban does add the puzzling qualification that 'how strictly this obligation is binding on neutrals remains in dispute'. This qualification is puzzling, because Luban does not seem to think there are any neutrals when it comes to fundamental moral rights and because he is discussing the permissibility of launching a military intervention in defence of rights, not the status of neutrals in the face of an on-going intervention.

John Locke , Second Treatise of Government, par. 9.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 2, p. 223.

A sceptic might say that the real question is whether there are any actual cases of intervention whose sole (or even primary) motive is to rescue another state's citizens from the crimes of its government. Although such cases are rare, they do seem to exist: witness France's recent offer to send troops if the Rumanian army had trouble overcoming Ceausescu's security forces. Even when states act primarily for 'national security' reasons, however, they often stress the protection of political or moral rights as additional reasons tipping the balance in favour of intervention. Such explanations are not always hypocritical. In any case, we can do the right thing for the wrong reason (and vice versa) and therefore need to be able to evaluate the morality of intervention itself apart from the reasons that motivate it. And of course, reform interventionists argue that states should begin to consider humanitarian intervention more seriously. For all of these reasons, it is important to consider the issue of humanitarian intervention.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 2, p. 212.

Ibid, p. 219.

Ibid,

Ibid. p. 229.

As, for example, when a state violates the rights of political or religious minorities. Of course, a state cannot be said to express the political culture of 'its' national community when it persecutes distinct national minorities within its borders, which is why Walzer thinks intervention in wars of secession and national liberation are justified.

Michael Walzer , Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 107.

Thanks to David Goldfischer for discussion of this point,

As Slater and Nardin argue, 'the grosser the violation, the weaker the claim to such protection'. Jerome Slater and Terry Nardin , 'Nonintervention and Human Rights', Journal of Politics (Vol. 48, February), p. 92.

For a good discussion of the varieties of utilitarianism and fundamental rights, see John Gray , 'Indirect Utility and Fundamental Rights', Liberalisms ( New York: Routtedge, 1989), pp. 120-40.

For an account of the American revolution that emphasises its 'political' rather than 'social' character, see Hannah Arendt , On Revolution (New York: The Viking Press, 1963).

Jefferson McMahan , 'The Ethics of International Intervention', in Kenneth Kipnis and Diana T. Meyers , (eds.), Political Realism and International Morality ( Boulder. CO: Westview Press, 1987 ), p. 90.

Neutral counter-intervention is often politically impossible, because the prior history of intervention is so tangled that it is meaningless to aim at restoring an 'original' or 'internal' balance of forces. Neutrality is also often impossible because of the domestic pressure to 'win'. In addition, governments and rebels both frequently violate fundamental moral rights. In such cases, foreign states are usually obligated to stay out. While employing the rhetoric of neutral counter-intervention, American statecraft has rarely paid much attention to these qualifications.

One example where a political community seems to have been significantly divided and neutrality morally required (but not observed) was during the December 1989 attempted coup in the Philippines. In response to US air support for Aquino, one Filipino observed: 'Win or lose, it's our fight and the Americans have no business being here. This should be decided by Filipinos.' Quoted in Time, 11 December 1989, p. 58. Contrast this example with the recent invasion of Panama, where over 90 per cent of the Panamanian people appear to have endorsed intervention (if one is to believe the polls). In this case, it is arguable (following McMahan) that it would have been paternalistic for the US not to recognise a widespread communal desire for assistance. However, it must also be recognised that this indication of consent was secured after the fact and that the intervention cut off any internal process of self-determination. In general, it is difficult to say how much consent there must be before a military intervention constitutes an aid to (rather than abridgment of) self-determination. Nevertheless, I do not think the difficulties of measuring consent should lead us to abandon the idea. Clearly, consent is relevant to assessing the morality of interventions that are supposedly aimed at securing political self-determination. Just as clearly, we cannot intervene to secure self-determination in cases where a significant proportion of the population wants neither the intervention nor the government it supports.

At least not immediately or necessarily. Once governments lose consent, however, they often begin violating fundamental moral rights in order to stay in power.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 2, p. 212.

Ibid., p. 213.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 14, p. 138.

Ibid, pp. 39-40.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 2, p. 217.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 14, p. 51.

Robert Nozick , Anarchy, Srate, and Utopia ( New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 100.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 14, p. 40.

James M. Dubik , 'Human Rights, Command Responsibility, and Walzer's Just War Theory', Philosophy and Public Affairs (Vol. 11, No. 4. Fall 1982), p. 362.

Ibid, p. 364.

Most government officials are willing to slaughter foreign soldiers ('innocent' or not), but are extremely reluctant to risk even a few of their own soldiers' lives. I have therefore focused on the rights of foreign soldiers, since those rights are ordinarily valued less. Even if this reluctance to sacrifice one's own soldiers is motivated entirely by self-interest, however, it may have a moral justification. Public officials may have no moral right to risk their own citizens' lives to save a greater number of individuals in another nation. In other words, the rights of domestic soldiers may also limit the use of conscription and the legitimate aims of foreign policy. If so, these rights also make most kinds of military intervention impermissible. The 1991 war in the Persian Gulf raises this issue, since the US government may have no moral right to risk the lives of even an all-volunteer army to defend the third-party rights of the Kuwaitis.

For this view of rights to life, as well as a discussion of various objections to such rights, see the essays by Judith Jarvis Thompson, in William Parent , (ed.), Rights, Restitution, and Risk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), particularly 'A Defense of Abortion and Self-Defense and Rights'.

For discussion of an unlimited right of self-preservation, see Greogry Kavka , Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 315-37.

For further discussion of this example, see Nancy Davis , 'Abortion and Self-Defense', Philosophy and Public Affairs (Vol. 13, No. 4, Summer 1984 ), pp. 190-96.

For some objections to the doctrine of double effect, see Jonathan Bennett , 'Intended as a Means', Morality and Consequences, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values III (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. 1981), pp. 95-116; and Nancy Davis , 'The Doctrine of Double Effect: Problems of Interpretation', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (Vol. 65, 1984), pp. 107-23. Warren Quinn has recently attempted to respond to these objections in 'Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect', Philosophy and Public Affairs (Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 1989), pp. 334-51.

Walzer , op. cit, in note 14, pp. 111-16.

Again, the basic issue is what third parties may do on behalf of victims of 'innocent' threats, i.e., what UN coalition forces may do against Iraqi soldiers who may be coerced moral subjects but who also clearly threaten the lives of others. For Walzer's discussion of the war in the Gulf, see Michael Walzer , 'Perplexed', The New Republic, 28 January, 1991, pp. 13-15.

Like Thomas Nagel, Charles Larmore and other recent 'pluralists' in moral theory, I doubt whether we can give a full explanation of how we should resolve such 'tragic' cases. For a discussion of tragic dilemmas in international ethics, see David R. Mapel , 'Prudence and the Plurality of Value in International Ethics', The Journal of Politics (Vol, 52, No.2, May 1990), pp. 433-56. Also see Thomas Nagel , 'War and Massacre', in Charles R. Beitz, Marshall Cohen, Thomas Scanlon and A. John Simmons, (eds.), International Ethics ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). pp. 53-74.

For a critical discussion of the notion of 'infringing' rights to life, see Ann Davis , 'Rights, and Moral Theory: A Critical Review of Judith Thompson's Rights, Restitution, and Risk', Ethics (Vol. 98, No. 4, July 1988), pp. 806-26.