An article by Mark Mazower for World Affairs may seem, at first, to strike an odd note. It characterizes the concept of humanitarian intervention as 'dying if not dead' and links this judgement with the hypothesis of a 'new era of pragmatism... in the making' that sounds as though it might have the author's approval. For me there is a jarring element in that coupling. Humanitarian intervention is an option that is available when the assumed protections of state sovereignty have failed those supposed to be protected by it, when the authority of the state itself - of some particular state - is turned against them as an instrument of violation, criminality, mass murder or, at the limit, genocide. How could it be a matter for applause that the doctrine of humanitarian intervention should be now dying or dead? Perhaps the opening note struck by Mazower is not really as it sounded to me.
Sad to say, however, it is. Though he grants that the ideal of 'human solidarity in international affairs' is a noble if complicated one, by the end of the piece, Mazower's approval of the demise of humanitarian interventionism has been made explicit. There's a 'new realism', he says, that is welcome; again, the 'new maturity in international relations' is to be viewed positively. His reasons for thinking so are, in short, that 'the way leaders treat their people is not the only problem that counts in international affairs'.
One is bound to accept the truth of this, of course - it isn't the only problem that counts in international affairs. Still, the fact that assaults by a state on its own citizens are one of the more terrible fates that can befall people, a fate that usually leaves them with nowhere to turn, and the related fact that in certain circumstances humanitarian intervention is the only recourse, the only means of rescue - these two facts leave me puzzled over why Mazower should see fit so to talk down the importance of the problem in question: of 'the way leaders treat their people'; more particularly, of how to deal with situations in which governments commit crimes against humanity on a mass scale. 'Maturity' isn't the word I would choose to describe the attitude Mazower for his part is welcoming.
He can do it the more easily, however, because when you examine what other considerations he thinks should be acknowledged as counting in international affairs, you find that he introduces as being extraneous to the doctrine of humanitarian intervention considerations that have in fact been an integral part of it in pretty well all standard versions. Thus, first of all, sovereignty. Humanitarian intervention has never been considered legitimate as a merely lightminded setting aside of the principle of sovereignty. Because that principle is recognized as itself a fundamental protection of the interests of the citizens of a state, it is only in circumstances of egregious rights violations, violations on a mass scale, that humanitarian intervention has generally been considered justified; only, in other words, beyond a certain threshold. Read any standard account of this concept in the international law literature, and you will see that that is so. But Mazower writes as if sovereignty is an issue lying outside the expiring concept of humanitarian intervention, one which the new maturity of outlook has now to include.
Likewise, with the sequel to intervention. Since it is an elementary truth that an intervention that fails or makes things worse will not effect a rescue of those in need of one, accounts of the principle of humanitarian intervention invariably emphasize that unless there is a good prospect of success, intervention cannot be justified. But Mazower writes as if part of the new and welcome 'pragmatism', 'realism', 'maturity', is the wisdom 'that without willing the means, intervention leads to political and moral failure'. He tells us that interventionism may itself threaten peace and stability, as if the restrictions built in to the doctrine of humanitarian intervention weren't there from the beginning precisely on account of that recognition.
Apart from this tendency of his to want to supplement a putatively deficient concept with components that have long been part of it, Mazower also invokes the shadow of imperial ambition to cast doubt on the validity of the universal principles in light of which humanitarian intervention is justified (when it is). Yet these principles are not - or not just - the principles of the West. They are embodied in international conventions and legal instruments designed to protect all peoples from their own governments, as well as from the depredations of external enemies and invaders. At the end of World War II, after the horrors of Nazism, establishing these principles in international law was held to be a task of some priority and urgency. That it should now be thought immature to uphold a doctrine in which they are taken seriously is a remarkable testimony to the way in which a wide cohort of today's liberal intelligentsia has been knocked sideways by current political animosities it is unable to control.
