If I believed Russia had both the ability and the intention to intervene in Sudan beneficially and disinterestedly, I would encourage them to go ahead.
But that is not what most people who use the term mean by it. Read the above Wikipedia excerpts.
Ah, so nations are free to intervene only if they don’t have any interests at stake. How very realistic. Who is empowered to adjudge when they are sufficiently didinterested and on what criteria? Economic ties not to exceed X million dollars? What if their whole purpose is to establish themselves as a trusted international arbiter … does that in itself make them interested?
Nations are “free to intervene” in any situation where no other nation, or combination of nations, is able and willing to stop them. That’s just how it is. You asked me my personal opinion about the possibility of Russian intervention in Sudan, and that’s my opinion. Not that I have any access to President Putin’s ear. Nor do I believe the Russians are in a position to intervene in Sudan and do any good, they’ve got too many problems at home. But the U.S., or France, or Britain – maybe. No, not the U.S., we’ve got all our troops tied down elsewhere. . . .
“Who is empowered to adjudge”? Nobody and everybody . . . that is, the court of international public opinion. (The World Court does not, I believe, concern itself with such matters.) If you ask me for my judgment on any particular situation of this kind, I’ll give it to you.
As for a country wanting to establish itself as a trusted international arbiter, and using beneficial intervention to build its legitimacy in that respect . . . I see nothing wrong with that. I daresay the NATO countries have a bit more moral prestige in Southeastern Europe now than we had before intervening to stop the atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo.
What I have a problem with is the hypocrisy of, for example, the USSR invading Czechoslovakia in 1968 and pretending that was for some higher purpose than maintaining Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe; or the US invading Iraq in 2003 and pretending that was for some higher purpose than bringing Iraq’s oil supply under the management and control of American oil companies.
I misapprehended what you were driving at. I guess my response is only that A) I find it hard to envision any nation intervening anywhere unless it’s in their interest, whether that interest be visible and tangible or not, and B) why should motivation be so important? Leaving out for now the political repercussions for the international order, if at the end of the day the residents of the place have or are moving toward self-determination and a better life (and assuming the havoc wreaked by the intervention itself isn’t horrific.)
ISTM the position you’re putting yourself in is pretty much “if the intervention works and the self-interest isn’t too glaring, I endorse it; if it fails I oppose it.” I’m not mocking the position: it’s more or less my own. But you do realize that it means your objection to (e.g.) Iraq is not based on any principle so much as it is on judgement and execution?
No . . . in the case of Iraq my objection is also based on principle because (1) the self-interest (not of the American people, but of the political interests and business interests of Bush and his circle of friends) is too glaring, to the point where it is inconceivable that the invasion would have happened or even have been considered if they had seen no way to make political and/or financial profit out of it; and (2) in terms of helping the Iraqi people there was no justification for the intervention in the first place, because, as I explained above, it was obvious from the start that any benefits to the Iraqi people would be very uncertain and that our intervening might actually make things worse for them. Which it has.
Well, MMV … but understood.