Utilitarian or consequentialist prescriptions are open-ended: they could support interventions either generally or in particular circumstances, depending on expected results. Other positions offer more principled cases for interventionism, for example on epistemological grounds, political realism or rights analyses.
Intervening can be justified on grounds of the government possessing better knowledge than individual agents, or from paternalistic reasons, which presume the target agents are incapable of making informed choices themselves. To that extent, governments may legislate a range of programs from ensuring that people take out adequate insurance or invest sufficiently into pensions to requiring health checks or continued education; or economic interventions could be justified on the grounds that economic agents investors, corporations, banks do not act in the long term interest of the nation, whereas civil servants who are deemed above the profit motive can take the longer view as held by John Maynard Keynes , for example.
Political realism is defined by the primacy of national interest in international affairs. This can be viewed as either a moral duty or as a description of the ruling state of affairs. Policy prescriptions involve pursuing interventions as they benefit the national interest.
The theory implies that states should be left alone to seek and to defend their own interests. In the realist tradition, of which there are many shades, such supporters include Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Political realism offers a broad interventionist doctrine that can justify intervening for reasons of economic profit as well as for balance of power considerations.
The history of the British Empire provides many examples of both justifications Cf. Realists often invoke consequentialist concerns regarding the developing international state of affairs—that should the foreign power to grow unchecked, a war would ensue, or economic resource bases would be lost, or an invasion could occur.
The Schlieffen Plan, prior to the First World War is another useful example of balance of power considerations. Political realism assumes that interests are to be maintained through the exercise of power, and that the world is characterized by competing power bases nation states [Hegel], for example, or classes [Marx].
Political realism is essence reduces to the ethical principle that might is right. Some claim that rights only pertain to individuals, and that nations and governments only acquire any rights or privileges by virtue of the civilians giving them power.
On this basis, interventions in support of rights are morally justifiable. For example, if a foreign government tyrannizes its civilians, an intervention to support their rights can be justified, for the moral status of rights does not end at political borders.
However, what needs to be considered is at what point do rights violations justify an intervention, or would an intervention do more harm than good? Finally, given that rights are being violated, is a government guilty of moral failure if it fails to intervene, and if so, is that moral failure a failure of its duty or of virtuous behavior?
Consequentialists may infer from evidence that interventionism is always counter-productive and should not be practiced. In contemporary ethical analysis, a rule utilitarian may claim that since interventions never work an empirical, testable hypothesis , ethical considerations aimed at maximizing the greatest good for the greatest number should employ non-interventionism on principle.
Sometimes, however, as in Kosovo, insisting on a precise itinerary of intervention and a concrete political end-state for the region before becoming involved would be counterproductive. We do not, and probably cannot, know in advance how long outside forces might be needed; setting arbitrary deadlines risks creating unrealistic expectations at home and undesirable doubts abroad as to our commitment.
Trying to determine now whether Kosovo will remain part of Yugoslavia, become independent, or be divided into two parts would do more to reignite the Serb-Albanian conflict than to resolve it. But at a minimum, the international community needs some sense of how it will apply military force before intervening. Should it simply do enough to feed starving people, should it create safe havens for individuals or groups at risk, should it impose a ceasefire line between warring parties—or might it even help one side to win a conflict?
It all depends. Where tens of thousands are at risk from war—related famine, disease, or exposure, simply setting up protected humanitarian zones may make sense. That is particularly the case when, as in Somalia in the early s, the conflict that has produced the problem seems severe and intractable. Imposing ceasefire lines, or even permanently partitioning countries into two or more parts, can work well in some ethnic conflicts.
We need not always create multiethnic, inclusive societies; sometimes saving lives is accomplishment enough. In Sudan, if the war-related famine again becomes severe, dividing the country into an Arab north and a Christian south may save the vast majority of threatened Sudanese lives at the lowest cost in dollars—and in the blood of intervening troops. Finally, we should even be willing to take sides when one party to a conflict is clearly the better choice for its own country and when taking sides is likely to end a conflict.
For example, the Bush administration was right to overthrow Manuel Noriega in Panama, clearing the way for a democratically elected successor; the Clinton administration was right to threaten to depose the Cedras regime in Haiti to allow the Aristide regime to take charge. What about the future? Intervention in the last three would pit outside forces against battle-toughened, dedicated, and rather large insurgencies fighting on terrain advantageous for guerrilla-like warfare.
Those are the situations U. But the other conflicts in Africa, particularly the brutal war in small Sierra Leone, may be easier to contain. Any intervention there should take the side of the government against Liberia-financed mercenary rebels. It has been no credit to the international community that it did not address this conflict seriously—instead hoping for the best while poorly armed peacekeepers interposed themselves in a civil war they were not able to contain. Things may be changing for the better, however, as of this writing.
The war in Angola involves larger indigenous fighting forces over a much wider area. The government—the lesser of two evils in this case—has recently been making inroads against the rebel forces of former U. Were outside countries to try to stop this extremely bloody, long, and pointless war, they would be wise to side with the government and help it win a decisive victory.
But it could take many thousands of international troops—and most likely dozens of fatalities to them—to do so. Finally, in the huge country of Congo, the global community should be willing to deploy a force at least 10 times larger than the 5,person UN monitoring operation now proposed if a true ceasefire ever is accepted. The larger force would deploy along a ceasefire line running north-south through the center of the country, forcibly keeping hostile armies apart and denying sanctuary to the Hutu extremists who fled to Congo from Rwanda several years ago.
The root causes of and support for militancy, insurgency, and terrorism lie at local levels of villages, towns, and cities where lack of education, economic opportunities, healthcare, law enforcement, and government agencies facilitate the spread of indoctrination, illicit livelihoods, misery, violence, and separatism.
So, in its foreign interventions, the U. Endeavors should not concentrate on eradicating only a few symptoms, such as terrorism and piracy, of the underlying problems so that American and European interests are protected for the short-term. Rebuilding nations requires patience too, as time is need to carefully create the political, social, and economic conditions under which a society can flourish again. Foreign nation rebuilding and building will continue to be an inescapable reality and a constant challenge to the U.
Those needs are not merely ideological experiments but necessary engagements for global wellbeing. As the U. American intervention in particular would benefit as well, during both planning and implementation, from more integrated partnerships with E.
Carol E. She is the author of two books on information science. Jamsheed K. He also is a member of the National Council on the Humanities at the U. National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of three books about the Middle East. The views expressed are their own.
James B. Pritchard, ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, , reprinted , pp. William M. Thackston, ed. Boone Bartholomees, U.
Carlisle, Pennsylvania: U. Army War College, , p. Senate Washington, DC: U. James M. One reason many Iranians hated the U. The shah created a secret terrorist police force, SAVAK, that tortured its own citizens and imprisoned political opponents. On domestic policy, the shah undertook a highly inflationary monetary policy that caused the value of the Iranian currency to plummet. Inflation, torture. For some reason, that upsets people. During his speech, Woolsey had stated that the war with militant Islam had begun in November when some Iranians took over the U.
Laughing, Woolsey replied that, as Winston Churchill had said, when it came to the Middle East, the Americans, after doing many wrong things, would always end up doing the right thing. In other words, Woolsey seemed to admit CIA complicity, but dismissed the idea that this mattered because the U. The consequences of the U. Or take the unintended consequences of U.
Although the U. Zbigniew Brzezinski was the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. One other person who helped fund these Muslims was named Osama bin Laden. Incidentally, after Sept. The link is hidden in plain sight: in the s, both were allies of the U. Unfortunately, the basic lesson about intervention has not been learned by the people who need to learn it most: the makers of U.
A large number of them still seem to believe that they can design the world any way they like and that even if there are unintended consequences, these will be less negative than the positive they hope to achieve. But the term applies just as much to the conceit of foreign policy makers.
The information is decentralized in bits and pieces in millions of minds.
0コメント