If you as an individual see someone in need and are able to help them, obviously it would not be wrong or immoral for you to do so. But, what if the person didn’t WANT your help?
Expand this to an international scale.
Assume, for now, that America truly does have the power to remove dictators and end government oppression in the entire world. (A hypothetical situation, obviously) Would America then be evil if they chose NOT to liberate the oppressed societies of he globe?
At what point is the suffering of a nation at an appropriate level to justify a stronger nation sending in their military to end the suffering?
Keep in mind how much care I have taken to avoid the obvious similarities between this hypothetical situation and what America is doing in Iraq. This debate should not be about what is happening there specifically, but about a larger code of international morality.
Upon expanding to international scale, who is the “someone” who needs but doesn’t want your help? Is it the nominal head of the country, e.g. Bush, or is it the people of the country? How do you determine what they do or do not want? Or what they do or do not need?
The problem is that intervention might cause more suffering than non-intervention. The “individual” analogy might be attacking and removing an adult you saw beating two children, whereupon one child kills the other (having only been prevented from doing so by the adult’s necessary but overly brutal discipline).
I do advocate outright invasion in some instances (such as Sudan right now, tomorrow, what are we waiting for??) but usually a more constructive approach is to use carrots as well as big sticks to get the adults to be better parents.
And wading in oneself, rather than calling the authorities (in this case the UN even though, granted, you are effectively the strongest policeman in the force) will only make the “ineffectiveness of the police force” a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This admittedly does become more tedious to see and answer when given an international scale, but the ideas of “need” and “want” are no more apparent and obvious when it comes to individuals. It is all relative to the standards and interpretations of the people involved. Adding more people confuses the issue, but doesn’t change the underlying question, which is “is a powerful nation ever justified sending its military to end dictatorships or stop suffering?”
The nominal head of a country should not be considered for this purpose. If a legitimate government exists, the nominal head of a country should not need or want anything different from foreign nations than the people he represents do. This is vague, I know, but again I’m trying not to draw many parallels to the real world.
How would you answer the final question in my original post? At what point is the suffering of a nation at an appropriate level to justify a stronger nation sending in their military to end the suffering?
Does that point even exist at all? Or should powerful nations keep their military only for defending against possible foreign attacks within their own borders or in international oceans, at all times?
I agree with this possibility. Should nations then consider what might go wrong if they intervene, and refrain from doing anything to prevent what is happening?
What specifically about the problems in Sudan justifies a powerful nation, or a coalition of nations, entering a soverign state and using military force? Is it the degree of suffering being experienced there?
What if the UN was not willing to enter Sudan, but America alone was? Would America then be justified going to Sudan alone to fill the role that you wanted the UN to fill?
They must take each case on its merits, assessing the risks and benefits of intervention as rigorously as possible.
Yes. The number of refugees is one million and rising due to the ethnic cleansing which threatens to become all-out genocide.
There is no “them and us” - the UN is its member states, including the US. In any case the UN is already in Sudan in a humantiarian capacity. If the US promised a few thousand troops to guard safe-havens and be placed under UN command then I don’t think anyone on the UNSC would use their veto to stop them, but even if they did I believe that humanitarian intervention during a time-sensitive crisis should not need explicit UNSC approval and so I would still support it.
Unless you know of a nation with one person, adding more people does change the issue. Helping one person, who theoretically knows their own desires and can say “I want help” is one thing. Helping an entire nation, which is not univocal is another.
X=current level of human suffering
Y=collateral damage directly occasioned by intervention
Z=probability that intervention will eventually will cause worse problem
N=Losses that intervening nation is likely to sustain in intervening
If X - (Y + Z) > N , intervene.
You’re ducking the question, SM. What if the UN balks at doing anything to actually prevent the situation, ala Srebinica and Rwanda? Say the US were to announce they intended to actually depose from power the Somalis perpetrating genocide and the UN opposes?
I would agree with most of your assessment, except that I would add a balance to your Z value.
A = probability of future suffering that would have been prevented through intervention.
(X+A) - (Y+Z) > N, although I also might take issue with the value of N. Is it moral for a powerful nation to consider the negative effect on themselves that helping another nation will have?
I repeat, I believe that humanitarian intervention during a time-sensitive crisis should not need explicit UNSC approval and so I might support an invasion not specifically sanctioned by the UN, if its objectives and feasibility were presented convincingly enough. (See Political Compass #6.)
If the invasion is not humanitarian by nature, immediately required due to a time-sensitive crisis, or ill-conceived and poorly planned with regards to contingency, the UNSC must still be the final arbiter.
Would the US have been justified to enter Iraq and depose Saddam, assuming of course that the intention was only to end the suffering and domination of the Iraqi people?
Keep in mind that I do not believe that was America’s only intention, and I want to remain on “hypothetical” ground here.
The fact that action is being taken by UN member states that has NOT been sanctioned by the UN seems to be proof against your argument, here, although I agree that the US should send troops to help the humanitarian effort in Sudan.
Ultimately, no, not by my criteria. Or, at least, there were far more deserving cases elsewhere to be dealt with first.
Those 300,000 deaths occured largely in order to crush the rebellion after Gulf War I. Horrific as this was, a civil war would arguably have done the same and Saddam would defend himself by saying he was preventing one. For the decade after this, up to 2002, there was no evidence of a time-sensitive crisis, eg. of thousands being exterminated daily, as some hysterical reports suggested. Sanctions killed many by starvation and disease, but not appreciably more than in other Third World countries.
So, on May 4, 1970 when the National Guard killed four and wounded nine Americans, would another country have been justified in invading the U.S. and deposing then-president Nixon?
The problem with your criteria of time sensitivity is that it is not always evident or obvious when something is time sensitive. The Sudanese are being forced out of their homes, while ethnic (and religious) groups in Iraq were being murdered. There is a strong case there that could be made for the urgency of intervention in Iraq. Whether you or I agree with that urgency is not the point. It is, in fact, further proof that time sensitivity or urgency is not always obvious.
Even so, should we criticize an intervention that might have been just and appropriate, simply because a completely separate opportunity for intervention had been missed or overlooked, or even purposely ignored? Was the suffering of the Iraqi minorities somehow made unworthy of intervention, because the Sudanese were (debatably) suffering more?
Well, now that we have some basis for considering when intervention might be justified (ie. when it when it will feasibly address the worst existent suffering) we can get into the nitty gritty. I believe that the independent evidence coming out of Sudan now is worse than that coming out of Iraq in 2001 but, granted, nowhere near what was coming out of Iraq in 1992. I do not believe ethnic groups were being murdered in Iraq in 2001 - the persecution of the Kurds, Shias and Marsh Arabs occured well before this.
Ultimately, perhaps you are right that intervention may have lessened suffering overall in both situations. If the evidence and the arguments were solid and sound I would advocate such, but at least we now seem to agree on some reasonable criterion to apply.