Seemingly overnight, a viral video starring Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has sparked heated public debate. Kony, who was indicted by the Hague in 2005 for crimes against humanity, has thus far been successful in evading capture. The Stop Kony 2012 campaign is adamant to change this at any costs. Immediate widespread support for U.S. tactical assistance in Uganda indicates the public’s proclivity toward activist intervention in humanitarian cases. Nonetheless, non-interventionists are passionate in voicing their opposition. At the heart of this public discourse lies broad questions regarding the nature of intervention, how it derives legitimacy, and where it falters.
Classical political realists adhere to a theory of “Westphalian” sovereignty, which outlines the sovereign right of political self-determination and establishes the principle that no state has a right to intervene in the internal affairs of another state. Simply put, Westphalian sovereignty holds that every nation has a fundamental right to be left alone, irrespective of any other nation’s desire to meddle. In contemporary international relations, where interventionism is rampant, Westphalian political theory has been viewed as increasingly contentious.
Evolving out of the myriad of humanitarian crises of the 1980s and 1990s, a critique of the Westphalian philosophy known as “sovereignty as responsibility” has become prevalent. Sovereignty as responsibility seeks to re-characterize the simplistic Westphalian view of sovereignty into a more complex alternative: sovereignty is a system of rights that can be conditionally earned by achieving basic responsibilities. Namely, nations have a “responsibility to prevent” (i.e., a nation must prevent its own citizens from posing a security threat to other nations) and a “responsibility to protect” (i.e. a nation must protect its own citizens from genocide, mass murder, etc.) According to this theory, when a nation fails to live up to these responsibilities, the international community will be acting justly when they attempt to deliver security and human rights to those who are vulnerable.
Unfortunately, proponents of sovereignty as responsibility indiscriminately crown a host of interventionist policies with a glowing halo of “moral crusade”—despite how deleterious the outcome may prove to be under final analysis. The shameless rhetoric that surrounds many instances of interventionism certainly draws on the premise that interventionists are enlightened, superior, or, at minimum, better at maintaining their responsibilities of statehood, giving them the moral impetus to fix all that is broken. Non-interventionists are naturally skeptical of the sovereignty-as-responsibility framework. As establishing interventionist nations as saviors fulfilling their ethical duty, citizens assume that these policies are automatically justifiable due to their good intentions. Historically, a whole host of interventionist policies have been widely regarded as failures in terms of fulfilling their original objective. Oftentimes, the principle of unintended consequences leaves victims of intervention wishing these so-called “savior” nations would have done a bit more research before initiating their “moral” crusade.
But ironically, given the rhetoric being used to support interventionist policies, nations do not exhibit consistent standards of morality when they intervene—indicating ulterior motives. Historically, any pure moral impetus the U.S. government possesses has not been pervasive enough to incentivize significant military action in humanitarian cases where domestic interest is lacking. Nations chose to intervene in strategic cases in which domestic stakes are high and dependent on the foreign outcome. This is the reason, for instance, that the international community sat back and passively accepted the atrocious genocide of the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda in 1994. Why not play savior in this obviously deserving case of failed state responsibilities? Humanitarian assistance, after all, ought not be tainted by political objectives; its main objective is to maximize pre-political human rights. But as one ignored atrocity, after another, after hundreds more—unfold themselves, the government’s general apathy toward championing human rights is easily uncovered.
This begs for a cynical but practical realization: governments act under a heroic humanitarian façade while really trying to purely protect domestic interest. This is incredibly dangerous and to be avoided under all circumstances, because humanitarian interventions undoubtedly may be used as a deceptive pre-text for otherwise unacceptable political objectives.
Nonetheless, this discourse poses deeper philosophical questions. Hawks and doves alike can look at history and agree with cynicism that the government has not acted with pure intentions or with consistent moral standards. Interventionists really only differ from non-interventionists in how they see the future. Interventionists have an astoundingly idealistic perspective that history will not repeat itself. If an interventionist policy fails in one nation, will an analogous policy not fail in another? If unintended consequences are recurrent, and make the subjects of policies abhor their perpetrators, how can one not eventually begin to anticipate the “unanticipated”, concluding that no twisted morality can justify unwanted policies? If governments are inherently political and thereby clouded by their political objectives, by what precedent or reasoning can the government be forced to go against its nature, and act under an apolitical, humanitarian lens? One would have to be highly optimistic, or simply deluded, to believe that all of these objections could be sidestepped.
In some cases, such as in Kony 2012, the “rights” of sovereignty do not even come into question. The Ugandan government has voluntarily given up their “right” to non-intervention, desiring for outside assistance. But this complicates the story even more: now two sets of dubious government intentions must be evaluated. Perhaps the Ugandan government has pure intentions to prevent human rights violations; however, this might not be the case. The principle of unintended consequences would predict that, due to uncertain relations between actual and stated objectives, delivering weapons or a general tactical strategy is a risky move.
In truth, realism is dangerous as well when it treks too far in the opposite direction. A valid critique of realism would contest that accepting the status quo—that history always repeats itself—is so inherently defeatist and pessimistic that it prevents desirable outcomes like stopping massive genocides. How bad does history have to be before we begin to take some massive action to stop repeating it? Hopefully, at some point, the very worst of humanity’s mistakes will be rooted out. As is the case in all sorts of policy analysis, and in life in general—striking a balance can be the most theoretically legitimate stance. While preserving personal humanitarian goals, one should approach seemingly altruistic endeavors with healthy skepticism.
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