Humanitarian hubris?

I don't have time for a long post this morning, but I just have to pen a few sentences responding to Pascal Zachary's "Good Guys' Guide To Overthrowing Governments," an argument for progressive humanitarian intervention.

Zachary seems to be unfamiliar with the fifty years of progressive thinking on this difficult question, and has come up with a framework for intervention over a chat in Zimbabwe.

The result is that, like 99 percent of those who call themselves "liberal interventionists," he's advocating what amounts to progressive cover for imperial hubris.

Again, I'm limited by time, so let me point out the two truly fatal flaws in his argument. First, he suggests that it is the United States that should lead the way in intervening. By not even mentioning multilateralism, the implication is we should do it alone if need be. Under international law only the United Nations Security Council can authorize such an action, and for a host of very good reasons, not least of which is the temptation for powerful states to use humanitarian excuses to topple ideological opponents.

Second, and just as bad, he suggests an ad hoc approach on when to intervene, and he gives us some subjective criteria to guide us. There are some terrible governments that we need to endure, he says, and others that clearly need to go. This invites a domestic debate about each and every potential intervention. When the left wins the debate, Sudan's government will go, when the right wins, it'll be Hugo Chavez. This is a recipe for disaster.Theoretically, I'm a liberal interventionist myself. That is, I agree with the principle that national sovereignty shouldn't give governments impunity to commit crimes against humanity. I agree, in principle, in using force to prevent that from happening.

Where I break with most interventionists is that I don't believe the institutions needed to apply those principles are mature enough to fulfill that mandate (and the current administration is doing everything in its power to weaken them). I'm talking about the ICC, of course, but I'm also talking about the UN. The UN is the only body that can confer broad multilateral legitimacy on a humanitarian intervention, but its hands are inevitably tied. Sudan has deals with China, Pakistan is our ally and Russia has a relationship with some of the worst regimes in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. We need to reform the Security Council so that the five Permanent Members can't veto intervention in a place like Sudan. We need to create institutions that don't yet exist, like a United Nations rapid response force.

The international community needs to devote more resources to post-conflict reconstruction. We need to do more towards conflict prevention so that we don't need to intervene in the first place. Saying let's topple this or that government is fine and dandy but it's morally unconscionable if peace-building and nation-building don't follow, and historically they have not (or at least have not done so adequately).

Until humanity gets its act together, humanitarian intervention will be done on a piecemeal basis, it'll be done badly, or it won't be done at all in places like Sudan where it's a no-brainer. And, until then, I'll be a liberal interventionist who looks quite like an isolationist on the surface.

Let me now leave you with a more credible Good Guys Guide to Overthrowing Governments: the executive summary of the UN Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty's landmark report, "The Responsibility to Protect" (PDF):

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT:

CORE PRINCIPLES

(1) Basic Principles

A. State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself. B. Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.