The majority of people I have talked to, even those who are against the USA's invasion of Iraq, seem to agree that the fall of Saddam Hussein was a good thing. But they often go on to say, 'Yeah, but why go after Hussein and not go after all the other tirants in the world?' Yeah, exactly. Why? Or a better question might be, why not? I mean, forget WMD's, oil, whatever. I am happy with the demise of Hussein because he was the head of a sadist regime which had no right to exist. As long as there are pariah states who are the private fiefdom of thugs who live in luxury while they starve, torture and rape their people, can we as civilized human beings do nothing just because they call themselves the leaders of 'a sovereign nation'? Should the civilized countries of the world work to create a criteria under which a regime can be dismantled by outside force? Certainly the UN is not the answer. We saw it in Iraq, with countries like France and Russia playing politics. We also saw it in Kosovo, when Russia tried to protect its Serbian friends, and NATO had to act by itself outside of the UN. In both cases the results were good, in the sense that the masacres, tortures or ethnic cleansing was stopped. So, should we go after another tirant next? The problem is, there is no legal way to do it. What the US and its allies did for the people of Iraq by getting rid of Hussein is like if I kidnap my neighbor's kid because his parents are abusing him. I am doing a good thing for the kid, but it is illegal. Yet, if there where no credible law, or judges, or police force set up in my neighborhood to protect the kid, then I might just do it, justified or not. (And I don't want to get into any of the other good or bad reasons for the Iraq war, because I think this issue merits a separate discussion.) I am not talking about going after all totalitarian regimes, or those who have a different view of the world than we have. I mean only those states that are extremely sadistic towards its people and in which there is no hope for change. The places where any decent person would say, 'something has to be done'. The bar would have to be set very high, and it should be a last extreme, preceded by many warnings and lesser measures. I know it is difficult to set up something like this at an international level, but as a civilized world society, can we in good conscience let things stay the way they are for the victims of these despots who are drunk with power and treat the poor people of their country as their personal property, to be abused at will? So, should the USA and other civilized nations of the world work on something like this?
God i wish it was that simply. With discusions like these, the dreaded "slippery slope" rears its ugly head. Who would decided what is a good state and what is a really bad one that needs intervention. There would be no way that you could get the whole of the international community to all accept one set of critea to do this.
I know it is not simple, but how did normal countries come up with their systems of law? Did they get everybody in the country to agree? I understand the 'slippery slope' argument. But we have these so called countries which are led by criminals. Our current way to remove them seems to be for some countries to resort to 'vigilante justice', which is what I would call what happened in Iraq and also in Kosovo. A police raid without a legal warrant, if you will. Wouldn't it be better to have a common sense system set up with judges and due process and a legal force, rather than some states taking it on themselves to become the world's vigilantes? And I don't think it is better to have no justice at all, and just let these tirants do their thing. Even the sort of 'vigilante justice' that we've seen in some places is better than watching these attrocities and doing nothing, I think.
Well, there's this little concept called "judgment." I am coming around to the idea of "liberal interventionism." By that I mean, we should interpose ourselves in situations where the need to put a stop to an incredible set of injusticies and tyrannies is just SO obvious. For example, I think it is unconscionable that we did nothing to stop the slaughter in Rwanda. We could have airlifted two light brigades in there in 72 hours and probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives. And I don't think ANYONE would dispute we have ZERO security interest there. But it would have been the right thing to do. And then there's the Balkans. Intervention years earlier might have prevented thousands of deaths. But you're right -- you have to exercise some caution, and you can't go everywhere. Should we, for example, go into Kashmir? I don't think that would be a good idea. French West Africa? Well, the cheese-eaters have to do SOMETHING some time. Again, it boils down to judgment. I think it is a mistake to establish pre-determined legalistic criteria. Instead, make the argument, and do the work.
To answer this question one would have to go into why the Bush administration has used Iraq as a means of (with some success) castrating the UN. The world's lone superpower's refusal to enter into what most of the world regarded as collaborative discussion of and action toward Iraq is about as good a case study as you're going to get on this issue.
After all the trouble imperial nations have caused, this is the time they should get involved. In the case of South America, a mix of legalization of drugs and debt forgiveness would go a long way in solving their problems. In Africa we should forgive loans as well. Also, we should use military when possible and organized militias in more dangerous areas. When we establish new governments, one of the biggest obstacles they face is corruption at all levels. We could help them organize a police force and provide adequate funding for several years. We could appoint a group to oversee the process and make recommendations to fire corrupt police and officials in return for more aid. I would not support such efforts if the US had to go at it alone. It should be an effort of all first world nations.
If we want to analize the failure of the UN effort towards Iraq, I would say we can also blame the obstructionism of countries that either had their hands dirty in Iraq or knew their opposition to the US led effort would play well with their domestic constituency. At least the USA was trying to deal with the problem. But I agree that an international body would be a setup for a failure. Countries cannot be trusted to be judges because they have no conscience. On the other hand, DP is right when he says (to use his analogy) that we are left with a system in which a policeman sees an unjustice and makes an arrest without legal backup, just because it is in his best interest and because he is strong enough to do it. Then we have a case like Rwanda in which nobody does anything because it is in nobody's self interest to do anything. I don't know, it is a tough issue. I have to think about it. I am sure that even here at Big Soccer, where most of us are serious and thoughtful people and we don't have the baggage that the leaders of our nations have, we would have a hard time agreeing about which countries today are 'evil' enough to warrant an intervention.
Until the US actually is willing to stand behind a international organization like the UN it is a foregone conclusion that it will fail. If all we do is complain about French veto's and Cuba being named to human rights committes and do nothing to reform the Un itself and expect them to just give in to our demands. One thing that the war in Iraq showed was that Iraq was no IMMEDIATE threat to the US. WE could have waited a month, we could have used international pressure to remove Saddam or if not we could have used international troops to remove him. Now America refuse to allow international; weapons inspectors in, the administration refuse to put the UN in charge of health care. The one thing that we can all agree in is that the UN is the best in the business in regards to nation-building. This president who while he was running for the office pledged that the US would not be involved nation-building refuse to back down from his adversarial role against the UN. A question I would like to pose is what should we do in regards to Cuba? It is obvious that US embargos are hurting the Cuban people yet even after the cold war is over, we refuse to back down from our position on Cuba. We no longer have ideological nor political reason for continuing this embargo yet because of the sole fact that Fidel Castro is still president there, we refuse to trade with them more than a decade after the fall of the ussr. WE are hurt the welfare oif an entire country of people, because we dislike one man. IT seems to me atleast we intervine only when we have a face to put on our enemy. WE went to panama becasue of noriega, we when to iraq twice because of saddam,, the balkins because of milosivic. While we do this we ignore the silent holocausts which are happening as we speak in Africa.
The sanctions on Cuba still exist because of the Cuban-American lobby in Miami. Or as Castro refers to them, the "Miami Mafia". He recently blamed them for sponsoring the series of attempted hijackings that led him to crack down on perceived dissidents, a move that was condemned by the UN.
A fundamental lesson that western democratic nations must internalize is the concept that we are living in an anachronistic world. There is a underlying difficulty in the notion that we can simply impose a western, liberal democratic way of life on a society that shares none of our history and all of the developments over time that have led to the basic foundations of our political and economic systems. The first thing to understand is that the "powerful countries of the world" at one point or another have all had bad leaders and/or deeply polarized societies. Centuries ago, in Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Holland, et al feudal societies existed where the vast majority of the population was peasantry, and a small percentage was aristocrats and landowners. The developments that occurred since then did not arise from outside societies - they arose from gradual reforms within each society, particularly during the Enlightenment. Only after these reforms did human rights, democracy, capitalism, and other such revelations gradually arise. That has paved the way to these countries and the US - the offspring of Britain - to becoming liberal and just societies. So how do we fast forward societies like Iraq 2 or 3 centuries ahead of where they are? Or something like Cuba maybe 100 years forward? I think that enforcing this type of progress tends to lead to tyranny and oppression. Saddam has tried to secularize Iraq, at the expense of brutalizing and repressing the population. Castro has tried to modernize Cuba, again at the expense of preventing personal freedoms. I realize Saddam and Castro are "bad guys" to us, but they both happen to be highly educated and politically astute leaders. They have just been unsuccessful in applying their particular form of modernization. So what does the US have to offer instead? Our solutions thus far have been to impose pro-western leaders, provide them with military support in order to avoid insurrection, and leave them to govern nations where the vast majority are indifferent to national boundaries, and more cognizant of ethnic differences within and without those national boundaries. Furthermore, the vast wealth disparities between the economic classes creates a hatred towards the ruling class, which provokes a linked hatred to the US for supporting them. We need a different formula, indeed. And as long as we continue to apply this failed and failing formula, we need to rethink the approach we use to intervene to bring down the regimes of other countries.
I doubt that you can consider that the US solution would have been a horrible alternative to doing nothing, for example, in Rwanda. Yet, I agree with you that intervention by the US or another powerful nation is not the best option. But right now there is no other way. The UN is a joke. There has to be a system in which the countries of the world can react fast to genocide, ethnic cleansing, torture, mass starvation and so on, especially when they are caused by human policies. The victims must be rescued and the guilty have to be stopped and brought to justice. I realize that the big bullies will never be controlled. It is unrealistic. I don't think we can envision a system that can keep the powerful from doing what they want. For example, how China acts in Tibet, or Russia in Chechnia. But usually the worst attrocities are commited by despots of less powerful countries that can easily be stopped, as the USA showed with Hussein. So we could make this world a better place if there was a legitimate international system to address these unjusticies.
No we shouldn't. because in the end it will come down to this: do as we say. And if your people have other plans, we'll come in and decide your future. It's happened before and it will happen again. And it's wrong. 'The civilized world', 'normal countries'. That's the whole problem. We actually think we know what's best for everyone. We're normal, and the rest are crazy. You can't shape the world like you want to. It simply doesn't work that way. I for one wouldn't call the US a normal country btw.
Here is the major obstacle for powerful nations to act. Many selfish people in Europe and even in the US would rather stand idly by while torture and genocide take place. They don't want to pay for any of these missions. They would rather relax, sip whine and eat cheese while genocide and torture takes place. Their justification is that its "there" problem not ours. AFRC, you don't believe the US is a normal country? In Kosovo and many other instances, US has been the leader in stopping genocide and evil dictators from spreading. I guess you view your country as normal. As in the situation in Bosnia when Holland had peacekeeping troops. When the Serbian army attacked, Holland airlifted her troops to avoid danger. Thousands of Bosnians were killed. Talk about courage.
Maybe I should explain what I meant by normal countries. For the sake of this discussion it is a very broad definition. I mean countries in which people are allowed to live a normal life. We can have a grievance against a country like the USA or France, but by my definition they qualify as normal countries. So does today's Argentina, for all its problems. Because I know that in Argentina I won't starve or I won't be tortured by the government. Now consider North Korea. I have met North Koreans who escaped into northern China. I also have a business relation with a South Korean who has relatives in the North and has visited them. The situation is even worse than we are led to believe. People are starving, have no hope, and know very little about the outside world. The leader is a crazy man who makes himself into a cult figure and who buys loyalty by giving some top echelon leaders a life of luxury. They build mansions and palaces and spend all the country's resources on the military, to develop weapons, while letting the people starve. That is what I mean by a country that is not normal. The UN is not credible anymore as a place to discuss what to do which such countries. A system should be set up like what we have for war criminals, in which charges can be brought against such despots, and, if convicted, steps can be taken with intervention as a last resort. Also, a system for emergency intervention in a case like Rwanda in which time is of the essense. Of course it is difficult to agree on criteria. And I know we will never stop the big bullies with an international system. We have to be realistic. For example, China will do what it wants in Tibet, Russia will do what it wants in Chechnia. The US will always do what it wants. But the worst masacres and unjustices are commited by smaller states that could be controlled if we had a system to do it. The US led effort in Iraq proves this point. But the US will act unilaterally and only when it serves its interests. The challenge is to find a truly just system that will work, and then have the international community show the 'balls' (willingness) to carry it through when necesary.
By this standard, almost every country outside of North America and Western Europe is not normal. For example, although Latin American countries are democracies, the societies are vastly polarized, with small numbers of people living in moderate to extreme wealth, and the vast majority of the population living in standards that make U.S. trailer parks seem upscale. Nobody in the U.S. is applying political pressure to the extremely wealthy people in these countries to promote greater distribution of wealth, primarily because the status quo is favorable to U.S. interests. I also have to bring up the issue of why so many of us are indoctrinated by our government and media to regard any world leader that we disagree with as "insane" or "evil". These are dangerous words, because an insane or evil person is capable of anything, therefore justifying aggression that would not be justified against a "normal" person. I find it hard to believe that an insane person could run a nation. There are bad leaders in this world, but dismissing them as "crazy" is only an attempt to simplify an otherwise complicated situation. Situations such as Rwanda and other instances where mass murders are taking place obviously require some sort of intervention as soon as possible. However, every effort needs to made to ensure that the intervention is being made for solely humanitarian purposes by a wide representation of parties. This requires organizations like the UN in order to achieve this legitimacy. Well, if it is not credible now, it has to be made credible, because any international organization by its very nature gives the appearance of legitimacy and disinterest that any unilateral intervention can not ever have.
Manolo, I think there is a vast difference between a country like Brasil, which has a situation like you describe, and a state like North Korea, in which mass starvation is a direct result of a particular leader's policy. Another example is Zimbabwe. Certainly intervention will not change the fact that there will still be a lot of poverty. But remove the leader and it will remove countless gross unjusticies and attrocities, and will give the country a chance to attempt to become a better place. The same is not true of a country like Brasil. Yes, there is poverty and inequality, but nobody could argue that removing Lula would serve any purpose.
That is a good point. Perhaps the effort should not be necesarily just to intervene in the removal of evil regimes, but it should be part of a larger effort to also to increase the level of help in humanitarian ways in places that have humanitarian crisis. The international community could tackle the AIDS crisis in Subsaharan Africa, for example. There are places in which the evils done by the ruler have to be addressed, and intervention may be the only solution, but Manolo's point is valid. Maybe it is better for the international community to begin by concentrating on helping in places in which the solution is less drastic.
I see your point. But at the same time, I believe that we who are living in powerful nations tend to blame dictators for the state of their countries' development. Dictators are easy to blame for the problems of a country. However, when a democratically elected president fails, the excuses become more difficult, we tend to blame them for their incompetency and/or systemic failures such as a global recession or inflation. They are never regarded as "insane" or "evil". I would like to metion the Castro "regime" as an example. For all the rhetoric about Castro being "evil" and "insane", Cuba is a country that is no better or worse than any others in Latin America with "democracies". And Cuba is the only one that has been under U.S. sanctions for several decades, without which they would be better off than they are now. This fact tells me we can't solve the problem of development and poverty simply by removing dictators that our government does not like. The problem is much more complex. My point is not to defend dictatorships, because certainly republican democracies are a better form of government. However, before we embark upon a mission of taking down all authoritarian regimes (which is the subject of this thread), we should first have a serious debate on the true and underlying problems of social and economic development.
I dislike Castro and I think he betrayed the ideals that he was supposed to represent. But I agree with Manolo in that I would not put Cuba in my list of pariah states that have to be considered. Castro may have a totalitarian regime that commited some human right violations, but I don't think it reaches the level at which we can see intervention as a potentially morally correct course of action. The problem between Cuba and the USA is mostly ideological, and will probably have to run its course. I agree that it is not an example of what we should look for when discussing pariah states. For the sake of argument, and without being an expert, I would consider perhaps Zimbabwee to be in that category, (as was brought up by ASF), in addition to North Korea. Maybe also I would keep an eye in the situation in Ivory Coast and the civil wars of West Africa. Somebody else might be able to think of another such situation. But as I said at the beginning, the bar would have to be raised extremely high, or the medicine would be more dangerous than the disease.