This derives from the Iraqi business, but is not intended to be yet another Iraq thread. It particularly derives from my frustration at a continuing argument that the US should not attack Iraq because Iraq does not pose a present threat to the U.S.
So what? Evil should be tolerated because it doesn’t affect us directly?
I believe that we have an affirmative obligation to confront and defeat evil. You may look on the word “evil” from any context you choose, religious, moral, etc., but under any definition, people such as Pol Pot, Mugabe, Milosevic, etc., are evil.
My plan: a mechanism, either inside the UN or without, under which the worst violators of human rights are identified each year - say the top three. To avoid ambiguity and value judgments, I would give lesser concern to violations of political rights, and instead look to more objective criteria as extra-judicial executions, instances of torture, etc. Probably it would be better to focus on the objective criteria as a percentage of the affected population, not in absolute numbers - we don’t want the genocidal leader of Tinystan to be immune just because he doesn’t have a large population to kill and oppress. (Saddam may or may not qualify under this criteria, so again let’s not focus on him). Each year, the armed forces of the contracting states set forth to overthrow one of the top three violators.
Immediate objection: you’d have to have individualized analysis, not that top 3 offenders notion. In many instances, the human cost of a war would be far greater than the human cost of permitting the human rights violations to continue without military intervention. Not to mention that nation-building isn’t exactly our specialty, so the results of the intervention are quite likely to be worse than the existing regime. (Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you, and your buddies, Mr. President.)
Besides, nobody likes cops. In many instances where our national interests are not directly involved, we’ll do far more harm than good by asserting our military power.
All stick and no carrot does not make for a sensible foreign policy.
You can’t make that statement. Possibly the human cost of a war would be greater than those the regime has killed/tortured/etc., already, but only the future knows what the regime will later do. In any event, it’s a pretty stupid criterion. I mean, do you say, “OK, Evilabe has killed 100,000 of his subjects. We figure 200,000 soldiers and civilians will die in an attack to remove him. Let’s look at this again in six months. Maybe by then, he’ll have killed 220,000 of his subjects, so we can then justify attacking.”?
Um, if you are talking about the United States, well, actually, nation-building is the specialty of the U.S. The U.S. is the only nation ever to re-build nations into thriving, democratic states. Quite frankly, the U.S. has always succeeded when it attempted nation-building. The problem is that most times it didn’t try.
Re-read the OP. I frame this as international intervention.
But looking at the U.S. alone - why isn’t the confronting and defeat of evil our top national interest?
Why not, when we are confronting evil? I’m not trying to invoke Godwin’s law here, but the carrot of Munich was not only bad foreign policy in that it was unsuccessful, it was bad foreign policy because it was the wrong thing to do.
…trying to join another intellectual discussion…
A tough question. A guy has been terrorizing his neighborhood, getting into fights with his neighbors, even breaking and entering into one house. The police (you) do nothing except to throw him out of the house and tell him, “Don’t do that again, we’ll be watching you!” His reaction is to start stocking up on AK-47’s, bazookas and firebombs, all the time calling YOU evil and a blight on the city.
At what point do you say, “Geez, we’d better take care of this nut before he does something stupid?” Also knowing that maybe (juuuuuuuuust maybe), if you do nothing, eventually he’ll just go away.
To answer the OP, one problem I see is: how are the 3 top violators identified? If it’s by popular vote, I see some tough times ahead for the US…
Sua, it’s entirely possible to look at a human rights abuser and make a cold-blooded calculation of the human cost it would be worth to get rid of the bad guy. Look at the rate and trend of the abuses and extrapolate to the foreseeable future. If (say) China is killing or torturing 5,000 dissidents a year, and it will take (say) 200,000 good guy lives and another half million Chinese lives to get rid of the bad guys in China, it makes no sense under any circumstances to declare a human rights jihad.
Of course, when a country like Yugoslavia or Rwanda decides to go on a sudden killing spree, the calculation is much different. I am firmly of the opinion that the refusal of the US and its European allies to kick Serbo-Croatian ass in the early 90’s was a tragic misjudgment.
Tell ya what. Go find the best data you can on the worst human rights violators. (Iraq may be a good place to start, but take your pick.) Let’s figure out what the human cost is in “human rights abuses” (however you define it), then compare it to the human cost in ending those abuses.
And labeling human rights abusers as “evil” tells us nothing about the wisdom of your proposed military solution, by the way, and especially not as compared to any other course of action that could eliminate the problem.
I would hold that the mechanism already exists.
It is the UN. Wasn’t he UN created exactly for this reason?
Why start a new institution when we already have one?
Yes, at the moment it is flawed. It does not have sufficient authority.
Maybe we should focus on how we could get the UN to function better.
How about getting rid of this veto stuff?
What if the UN had its own army?
Well, I oh-so-subtly gave myself an out on China, by suggesting that the calculation take into account the proportion of the population affected by the human rights violations. When you consider what some vicious thugs do to their subjects, China would have to be killing and torturing its subjects in the high seven-figure - low eight-figure range to qualify (probably).
And, I submit, if China is bumping off 80-90 million of its people, the world has to intervene.
Minty, see above for your China objection. As for your cost-benefit analysis, it doesn’t take into account that underlying a host of ethical systems is the concept that freedoms and the defeat of evil is worth lies. I acknowledge that the deaths of millions is not worth the liberation of thousands, but I disagree that the deaths of 100,001 is not worthwhile to save 100,000.
I haven’t defined the criteria, but I think an objective one can be found. Hell, just use Amnesty International’s stats.
Well, first of all, the UN wasn’t created for this reason. It was created for collective security, not to act as an offensive force.
Furthermore, the UN was not created to act as an ethical force. An organization founded in ethics would not have given veto power to Stalin and Mao - both of whom would likely have been on the list for overthrow under my proposal.
Instead, it was set up to protect the self-interests of the victorious powers in WWII, while giving the rest of the world a voice - though not necessarily a say - in international events.
I will try to find some time to elaborate, however this is utterly unworkable. It runs into problems in re international law (sovereignty) and the ultimate abuse of the concept (see Russia presently exploiting Bush’s rhetoric to pursue its dirty war against the Chechens.)
No objective standard on HR will be agreed to, and the process will be exploited.
Then you have the problem of what to do if these naughty nations turn out to be allies of the World Cops. Turkey and Israel spring to mind immediately.
Furthermore, by your criteria, Iraq would be a long way down the list: Burma, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone spring to mind fairly swiftly, and would be accompanied by Nigeria, (parts of) Indonesia and even Singapore. So while we’re having our 3 wars a year, we’d also have to be fighting wars that are seen as defensive or strategic too. That’s a lot of wars.
Also, the criteria would have to be fairly well established. I personally think the death penalty is an abuse of human rights, and so does the UN and Amnesty - but I can’t imagine the US-led world cop force would be happy to attack Washington.
Why? Was Sen. McGovern wrong to advocate international invention in Cambodia to stop the Killing Fields?
Was Clinton wrong to apologize for not intervening in Rwanda? Was NATO wrong for bombing the crap out of Serbia in order to save hundreds of thousands of Kosovar lives?
Conversely, was it right for NATO to have sat on its hands for most of the Balkan wars?
(Trying to avoid Godwin’s Law) I mean, I think almost no one would argue that it would not be right and proper for the world to intervene if Turkey decided to start the Armenian Genocide II. The principle of humanitarian intervention is established. I’m just trying to make it less haphazard.
International law is what the international community decides it is. There is no International Constitution. If the international community decides that humanitarian intervention trumps sovereignity, it does.
I’ve never gotten this argument. First, in the specific, Russia was beating the crap out of the Chechens well before Bush started his rhetoric - hell, before he was in office. Second, in the general, abuse of a concept doesn’t mean that the concept is bad. The fact that stock markets are abused by insider trading doesn’t mean that the concept of a stock market is bad. Third, so what? So people try to twist a concept to their own ends. People don’t fall for it. Did you think the Soviet Union was a democracy because it had elections? The argument depends on the assumption that the world, and leaders of nations, are idiots.
Putin: Like Bush, Russia is fighting the War on Terror. We are doing so by killing Chechen children and raping Chechen women.
Rest of World: Puh-leaaze.
True, but fortunately there are a lot more evil regimes in the world. There will be years of Burmas, Central African Republics and the like to defeat before we get to Turkey and Israel. And by then, both would recognize that this thing is kinda serious and they should change their ways.
So? I’m not presenting this as an excuse to go after Iraq. Iraq was the inspiration for this thread, not the target.
In the OP, I posited one war a year, against one of the top three violators.
As for criteria. Absolutely, figuring out the precise criteria will be difficult. But difficult doesn’t mean impossible.
The thing is, Sua, any international commission you appoint wouldn’t single out the 3 worst regimes; it would single out the 3 regimes with the fewest friends. That’s because sovereign bodies are incapable, by their very nature, of acting objectively in matters of any importance.
OK, looks like MintyLandia won’t be committing troops to the venture. How about logistical support?
But one last effort. Putting forth as a criterion that the effort to free the country cannot cost more lives than the regime is killing/torturing/etc. puts the power into the hands of the violator. All he’s got to do is make the fight too expensive, by such things as (i) enslaving more of his people to build more fortifications to make invasion more costly, (ii) human shields on a massive scale, (iii) hell, if we’re talking PURE evil, wiring up the largest apartment blocks in each city and threatening to blow them if he is attacked.
Don’t think of it in terms of absolutes. That X might die if nothing is done and X+1 may die if there is a war doesn’t take into account any intangibles, such as the future discourgement of the behavior that made the war necessary, which could mean a great many more lives saved. It’d be almost impossible to quantify that though.
Actually, Demise, I was considering future discouragement and similar intangibles. Considering human history, however, I seriously doubt too many nations are going to be deterred from treating people badly.
And yes, Sua, that analysis you performed is precisely right. If the result of a proposed action is a net increase in human misery and death, the action should not be undertaken. You don’t destroy the village to save it.
I have been thinking about an international army for a longer time myself, as has been suggested in this thread later on. It is not a very popular issue of the far right, because Bush has not said anything about it. And there can hardly be a allegation to the dick of Mr. Clinton either, but I am glad You took this up.
To form an army can not be an issue either of that “the left, the commies, the trolls are undermining the law and order etc. I just wait to get some posts here why we should not have an international army?
SuaSponte wrote in the next post:
It is in the interest of the whole world!
minty green wrote:
A very good example of where this kind of force could have intervened at an early stage.
Latro wrote:
(Bolding mine)
I am not so sure the veto stuff is wholly bad. Maybe it should need 2 vetoes for a NO.
So let’s discuss!
Collounsbury wrote:
This is a really tricky one, because Chechenia belongs technically to Russia, but also former Yugoslavia “belonged to former Yugoslavia”. I really do not know how to make the differences between different situations. Suggestions?
jjimm wrote:
In the Palestine question it would help immediately if there would be an UN-army. And the Palestinians has asked for “that the international society” should do something.
They even ask, in the Net, average people to come to Palestine.
Iraq - I have before written that nobody should attack any other country alone, as a Sheriff of the World. But if the UN decides something, and it would have an army, we could assume that it is not the oil, it would not be internal politics and it would not be an election coming up, etc. Nor “He tried to kill my Daddy”…
So, if every country that has now international forces: e.g. USA, Europe and the English Commonwealth and Russia would “lend” 10% of their forces for such an army…
Well, I think that it would be enough.
I am not a pacifist and I believe that every country needs an army. But could not a part of that army really do something for the world?
Btw. I see in these discussions that many Americans sees everything as: US in Afghanistan, in former Yugoslavia etc.
Just for information: The biggest foreign national army in Afghanistan is from Germany, not USA.
I just want to add, that I, even if I am not a pacifist, has been 30 years for a nuclear disarmament/control. Often spitted at, called “commie” etc.
It is funny that people that always believes that “The Government” knows what it is doing and other opinions are just opinions of troublemakers, now are very much for a nuke-control (in Iraq, a former ally, not e.g. Pakistan, which is now an ally). Because Bush says so and I pay my taxes?
In this field I do not think a UN-army can be so handy, it needs political decisions, but if the nukes really are in wrong hands, everyone should do as much as possible to avoid this kind of threat. For me personally it is enough if USA, Russia and China has nukes, and even here is three too many, but total disarmament in this question is not realistic.
Summa Summarum:
The politicians should first discuss in which cases the UN-army could be used.
Definitions, vetoes, and that kind of stuff. If the discussion takes 20 years, so what? If it could have begun in the 80’ties, it would be better than this situation when many seems to scream: “War, War, because Our Leader says so!”
Could one solution be that if a country which is occupied by a foreign military, (take Your pick), could be occupied by the UN-troops instead, if the occupied wants it?
I am sure that if this globe will survive, we vill have some day a international army.
Just as many EU-countries have now unified the money (Euro) but still have a national economy, and is looking for ways to unify the economy as much as possible, where it is possible. Step by step.
Naturally there is always the argument: “Now they try to rule how we should act in this or that question”. “It will never work” (because Our leader has not told that it will).
But the science knows “exactly” how a human being is fried in a nuke-holocaust, so these people can freely imagine that they are free to fry differently.
If the disarmament/control over nukes takes 50 years more and/or millions of lifes, it is better than let this arm-race flourish freely. “Let all flowers bloom!” said Mao.
Could also had been: “Let all the countries boom.” Freely?
We need an international army. That would make the Saddam’s, Pol Pot’s, Idi Amin’s and so on, to think twice. Even Sharon would have less to protect and liberate.
And when the international army would be well established it would also affect the bigger countries = less Josef’s, Mao’s etc.
P.S. Writing one hour or a day, will not give an answer, so please discuss, as Sua said in the original post.
Maybe some day our politicians has brains enough to also begin to discuss.
Or less “national thinking”, less Enro’s, lobbying guys around, campaign payers, and yes, - You can have it -, less of a presidential dick to discuss.
Now, rep’s, You finally got Your candy, just suck it!
If someone thinks that USA is the only one with Enro’s, scandals, lobbying guys, etc. it is totally wrong. Every country has these.
But what really should be discussed, as I interprent that Sua wants, is the state of the world.
I am myself side-stepping here :smack: but these are the reasons why the politicians does only want to speak about, in history of man, quite unimportant issues. Is a presidental sexuality some kind of issue?
Or a murder-trial with an accused sportsman? For months? :eek:
How to prevent wars, even with an army, is the real issue.
Thank You once more, Sua.
Sua, while I like the idea behind the idea, I have several problems.
First, there are the practical issues, which I won’t spend much time on, since they’ve been pretty much addressed.
Second, I don’t think it’s the duty of, say, the US to play cop to the rest of the world, for a couple reasons:
We would be sacrificing US soldiers for purposes that have nothing to do with the protection of our nation, or its citizens. Doing nice things for the rest of the world is sweet and all, but not when it involves endangering our own men - that’s not what the military is for, and probably not what most soldiers had in mind when they enlisted.
We would need to vastly expand our military in order to do this. Currently, our philosophy of having the power to engage a two-front war is (I think) a good idea, but we would need to probably increase the size of our military by 50-100% to do what you propose. This would cost lots of money. Alternately, we could ask Europe to actually establish respectable militaries, but I don’t see that happening. We would bear the brunt of the responsibility, and probably the brunt of the cost.
In general, I like our current system of doing things. We address specific threats to ourselves or our allies, or things that directly affect our national interest (eg, Kuwait). Sometimes we take care of issues that pertain to larger, less tangible threats (preventing the spread of communism in places like Nicaragua or Vietnam - though that last one obviously didn’t go too well). But we try to avoid blatant humanitarian missions that have little benefit to us. I think it’s a nice compromise between libertarianism and pragmatism.
Jeff
'Course, you missed a key part of our current system: when a genocide/major human rights violation occurs, do nothing, then afterwards rend our garments, bemoan our failure to act, apologize to the victims, and swear “never again.”
When you consider what some vicious thugs do to their subjects, China would have to be killing and torturing its subjects in the high seven-figure - low eight-figure range to qualify (probably).