Constraints of Humanitarian Interventions

Human rights are generally considered to be the basic moral rights of all human beings and these rights self-profess in virtue of human dignity. While human rights have a long history in theory and practice, its formal entrance into the western intellectual discourse can be traced back to the political philosophies of Locke, Rousseau, and various other Enlightenment thinkers. The exercise of these philosophies did not appear in the broader political realm until the 18th century American and French revolutionaries sought to create a unified national entity grounded in a commonly shared vision of rights. Despite two prominent international revolutions that have partially secured its political foundations in the protection of human rights, the term “human rights” remained rarely used until the 1940s.

The second revolution to “human rights” did not arrive until the establishment of the UN in 1945 and the subsequent adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. This revolution was even more radical than the previous one for few ideologies, discourses, or ideas have triumphed more rapidly and universally than that of human rights in the 20th century. Fewer international actors and academics anticipated the human rights discourse to be so prevalent and even expand its presence 72 years after its inception. It was inconceivable at the time that there will be expansive international laws and thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across the globe to defend an idea that has only gained importance seven decades ago. Its ongoing prominence and sweeping influence in politics cannot be separated from the revolutionary ideas set forth by the UDHR, which are both intellectually and politically paramount. The lofty and noble ideals of the declaration are best found in its first article: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

In light of the commitment and obligation to this spirit of brotherhood, the international community sought to prevent the recurrence of the horrors of genocides and other mass atrocities through the adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948. As time progressed, more attention has been paid towards human rights than ever: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists are on the outlook for any infractions. Human rights rhetoric gained prevalence in international diplomacy and carries significant agenda in the foreign policy context. Domestic political issues were internationalized. International Criminal Court was established with the ratification of the Rome Statute in 1998. Dictators such as Pinochet was indicted, and Milosevic was brought to trial.

However, as we examine the world we live in today, the reality compels us to realize that the spirit of brotherhood we commonly envisioned has only faced mounting challenges if not outright degradation. The 1990s marked a particular oxymoron. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union symbolizes the fall of one of the most repressive regimes in human history and the emergence of U.S. hegemony. While we celebrate the collapse and muse about the “end of history”, our comfort was soon penetrated by events that are too concerning to be dismissed. The historical events that exemplify the oxymoron are more than numerous, “Rwanda, Kosovo, East Timor, Iraq, the West Bank — take your pick … What good did the expanded human rights agenda do for Afghani women under the Taliban, for the unemployed of Argentina, for the mentally ill now incarcerated in American jails, for the Kurds in Iraq or Turkey? Governments continued to be as duplicitous as always, ritually mouthing slogans they ignored when convenient” (Cmiel, 2004).

In the aftermath of these atrocities, one cannot help but doubt whether the existing human rights enforcement mechanisms are merely political theater or strategic ploy that meant to delude our progress towards justice. Martinez recounts a similar pessimistic sentiment when the initial results of the International Criminal Court (ICC) were discouraging:

“The prosecutions seemed to have a little deterrent effect. One of the worst massacres of the Bosnian war took place at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995, while judges in the Hague were already hearing evidence on other crimes … The Rwanda tribunal operated at a painstakingly slow pace, and skeptics wondered why the worst genocidaires were held in a relatively luxurious international prison, exempt from the death penalty” (Martinez, 2008).

This reflects a larger paradox that haunts and undermines the human rights movement since its inception and this paradox has only recently become more discernible. A series of enduring questions best characterizes the paradox: how could the human rights rhetoric be so forceful and compelling yet consistently fail to prevent blatant and gross violations? How could there be so many international efforts and resources devoted to human rights protection and yet its results are still dubious? How could it be possible that humanitarian disasters have only worsened since the fall of the USSR, and along with it, the rise of the U.S.’s unprecedented hegemony? Why do western governments set human rights as the holy grail of all values yet remain duplicitous when authoritarian regimes commit genocide? Failure to examine and reflect upon these questions would not only compromise the legitimacy of the human rights movement but also undermine the likelihood that the arc of history bends toward justice.

While there are many worthy concerns and critiques on the human rights movement from the theoretical perspective, this essay does not concern and review the defects of human rights but to analyze and identify factors that contribute to the international community’s failure towards the prevention of human rights crises through recent case studies. I mainly approach the subject matters from a U.S. perspective owing to the U.S.’s place of supremacy in the world. I also place a special emphasis on genocides due to the nature of its egregiousness and the self-evident moral imperative to intervene in such affairs.

State Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention

The principles of the state as the sole proprietor of national sovereignty and a general consensus towards non-interference of each states’ domestic affairs are privileged and foundational concepts of the post-war international order. However, this rule presents a considerable challenge to the “newfound proclivity on the part of major powers as well as international and regional organizations to intervene in the domestic affairs of juridically sovereign states for ostensibly humanitarian purposes” (Ayoob, 2002). This struggle between sovereignty and intervention date as far back as in 1947, where the United Nations Commission on Human Rights determined that it had “no power to take any action in regard to any complaints regarding human rights” and “numerous attempts in 1947 and 1959 to challenge the ‘no power’ rule relating to individual complaints” (Nier III, 1997) all experienced defeats. Seminal documents such as the Genocide Convention only vaguely calls upon the states to prevent and punish genocide but never detailed the methodology. Thus, international human rights enforcement has largely relied on blind faith towards the state’s voluntary compliance with these doctrines. If human rights abuses were to occur prior to the creation of ICC, the responsibility to prosecute the violators would fall squarely on the shoulders of domestic courts. It is conspicuous that this lack of enforcement mechanism, if anything, is designed for failure. Since there was no viable method to reinforce the human rights doctrines under international law while simultaneously respecting the interests of member states, some humanitarian interventions were conducted extra-judicially. Clinton Administration’s decisive airstrikes in Yugoslavia without UN authorization manifest as the classical example of the moral imperative to oppose Milosevic’s oppression overriding the concerns of national sovereignty.

Relevant discussions surrounding state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention was to only emerge with intensity after the atrocities happened in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, UN Secretary-General Annan insists a reform towards the understanding of sovereignty for the dilemma between sovereignty and human intervention is nothing short of preposterous: “no legal principle — not even sovereignty — can ever shield crimes against humanity … The fact that we cannot protect people everywhere is no reason for doing nothing when we can. Armed intervention must always remain the option of last resort, but in the face of mass murder it is an option that cannot be relinquished” (Annan, 2000). In response, the international community soon prompted to reinforce the existing framework and created new instruments such as international ad-hoc tribunals and Responsibility to Protect (R2P) under the common commitment to ethics. R2P strengthens its own validity by invoking the international community’s obligation to assist civilians and halting of all future mass violence. Nesiah highlights this normative turn in human rights discourse and appeals to the near omnipresence of liberal peace assumption in UN documents to substantiate that “mass violence operates as a free-floating signifier that cleanses international intervention of any political implications for the distribution of resources … Here intervention is merely the responsibility to act; it is the heeding of the ethical call” (Nesiah, 2004). Although this ethical command is not as binding and authoritative as formal treaties or legal doctrines that supersede international law, it can nonetheless act as a legitimate ground for all future military interventions with aim of obstructing mass violence. The common conception of R2P only exists as vague understanding between the states yet the legal scholars have nonetheless argued R2P to be one of the most dramatic normative development since World War II on account of “it no longer is necessary to finesse the tensions between sovereignty and human rights in the UN Charter; they can now be confronted because sovereignty no longer implies the license to kill” (Thakur & Weiss, 2008). There was a sense of cautious optimism regarding the future of R2P but the war in Darfur and Syria demonstrated that R2P is far from a cure-all solution.[1]

U.S. Foreign Policy, Domestic Constraints, and Human Rights

American Foreign Policy’s attitude towards human rights is best described as a part of American Exceptionalism, which broadly propels the view of the U.S. as the beacon of freedom to the world and thereby in extension has the obligation to improve the political freedom and rights of others in the world (Ignatieff, 2009). The neoconservative wing of the Republican Party which is best found in the policies of the George W. Bush administration sees the spread of human rights projects as an indivisible part of the Great American Experimentation. Avid human rights and democracy activism as a basic pillar of foreign policy is not restricted to the Republican Party, Clinton administration as well placed a special emphasis on the spread of liberal democracy and human rights. Clinton himself justified “US troops in Bosnia by saying Washington must lead, must hold the feet of the European allies to the fire, must make a difference for a liberal democratic peace with human rights in the Balkans” (Forsythe, 2017). He voiced vocal support for universal rights at the UN Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993 and sets human rights discussion as a part of his agenda during his state visit in China. Furthermore, he has led the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on the grounds of Yugoslavia’s clear disregard of human rights and its history of slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Albanians. U.S. intervention in Libya during 2011 echoes similar humanitarian themes as demonstrated in both academic analysis and Obama’s rhetoric. However, one must discern that there are many nuances that permitted these military interventions to stay unencumbered. As respect to the U.S.-led NATO bombing in Kosovo, it strikes a delicate balance between the use of military force abroad to protect human rights but without suffering more casualties than domestic opinion would tolerate (Forsythe, 2017). In order to minimize casualties and achieve the desired balance, the Clinton administration and NATO adopted the strategy of high-attitude airstrikes as the primary weapon for paralyzing Milosevic. Obama administration’s intervention in Libya presents a similar state of affairs: the desire to uphold human rights internationally as long as the domestic situation permits. Under the intimate and disastrous backdrop of war in Iraq, the Obama administration acts with even more prudence than the Clinton administration for it was conscientiously aware of the unwelcoming repercussions and uncertainties a military intervention can introduce. Its attempt to secure a UN mandate was to substantiate its legitimacy and to hedge for potential disapprovals. It is self-evident that to always operate military interventions under such precarious conditions is unrealistic and new paradigms are required to liberate the good-willed international actors from such extraneous specifications.

While it is fortunate that some greater evil can be prevented under presidents who have a sincere allegiance to human rights and American Exceptionalism, these noble ideals are not to be found in all leaders. Samantha Power in her book “A Problem from Hell” depicts the somber truth that throughout modern history, when the United States has faced “situations of genocide or near-genocide abroad, there has never been a powerful domestic push from public opinion or Congress forcing the president into a decisive involvement. Presidents have felt free to pursue mostly realist policies of narrow self-interest, rather than liberal policies of protecting the rights of others” (Forsythe, 2017). This structural critique underlines one of the weakest links in humanitarian intervention when we look at Trump Administration’s policy to put “America First”. It underscores a drastic departure of major narratives in American foreign policy since the Carter administration and distinguishes itself as to essentially capitulating the existing liberal international order (LIO). This remarkable discontinuity is found everywhere in his policies, “He explicitly campaigned on a platform of hostility to the central tenets of the postwar LIO, including globalization and free trade … he has already abandoned the Asian TPP … sought to renegotiate NAFTA … and pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords” (Stokes, 2018). In wake of China’s proclivity to challenge the expansion of human rights internationally and defining away its egregious human rights abuses, the Trump administration decides to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council and conceded the field to Beijing (Zakaria, 2020). His assault on globalized multilateralism presents as one of the gravest to human rights on a long-term basis considering that LIO has been the core stalwart of human rights in history. For the affairs of humanitarian interventions and international diplomacy to be this strongly subjugated by the will of the presidency is unacceptable and this existing arrangement would fail to uphold the human rights ideals.

This shortcoming is further exacerbated by Americans voters’ habit of paying little to no attention towards foreign policy and humanitarian disasters unless it directly concerns domestic issues (i.e. refugee crisis and terrorist attacks). By extension, since the members of Congress want re-elections, they largely ignore what is happening abroad and turn their attention to domestic issues instead. This interaction naturally transfers the responsibility of foreign issues to the executive branch, which as I affirmed earlier, is far more likely to pursue realist rather than liberal policies. This interplay evinces a larger structural problem of democracy: a democratic government does not need to hold responsibility for ethical imperatives as long as the constituency does not care. No voters ever said that they will not vote for Clinton because he failed to prevent the Rwandan genocide, nor did they ever say they will vote for Obama because he headed the intervention in Libya. As a consequence, the executive branch with its self-interest in mind has no strategic interests to pursue these policies other than a genuine commitment to the liberal ideal. If military intervention is the last resort, even provided that the executive branch has ethical imperatives in mind, it will at least be partially deterred by the possibility of fierce domestic criticism and a history of deep political uncertainty introduced subsequent to military interventions (i.e. Somalia, Iraq[2]).

Conclusion

The past decade, if anything, distinguishes itself as the triumph of authoritarian regimes with a crackdown on human rights. China’s remarkable economic growth has now empowered Xi to comfortably challenge the U.S. on many fronts and the latest amounting to Taiwan’s sovereignty crisis. Hungary and Turkey silently slip back to illiberal democracy without much dissents from the European Union.[3] Russia successfully annexed Crimea and remains undaunted when inflicted with economic sanctions. The Arab Spring which once carried the promise to unshackle the MENA region has soon proceeded with the worst famine we have witnessed in a century and long-drawn civil wars with dictators vanquishing.

The past year characterizes an even more extreme reality: we live in a world where China indifferently imprisons and detentions millions of Uyghurs in its concentration camps without capitulating to any international pressure. In a world where the leader of the free world practices quotidian negligence to all common values and go as far as to permit the building of concentration camps. In a world where the COVID crisis threaten hundreds of millions to slip back to extreme poverty and thereby stymie the development and hope for both economic and democratic progress (Burkhart & Lewis-Beck, 1994; World Bank, 2020). In a world where the Turkish President Erdogan, a NATO ally, turns to rhetoric reminiscent of Nazism and Armenian genocide (“Kilic artigi” — which means the remnants of the sword) to refer to the Armenians, one must reimagine and reflect what is to be done about the crumbling LIO (Mearsheimer, 2019; Niblett, 2017).[4]

The U.S. led LIO although subjects to much valid criticism, but it simultaneously constitutes the most powerful tool to us and offers us the best chance to guarantee the prevail of democracy and human rights everywhere. The recent retreat of human rights practices can very well be temporary if we restrengthen the LIO with a Biden administration and sustain our commitment to liberalism by enacting policies to deter human rights violations whenever possible and invoke R2P when necessary. Domestically, if the Americans and the Congress still believe that America is exceptional and the promotion of democracy and freedom ought to be a pillar of U.S. foreign policy, it must take up the responsibility to exert pressure on the executive branch and move beyond this disgraceful hypocrisy which we all are too commonly aware. Human Rights then should not just be a matter of coinciding interests but also of principles which we should uphold.

Although the recent political realities have been less than ideal, it does not suggest that the flame of human rights and international law are to be soon distinguished and replaced. Remarkable success has been achieved in curtailing international slave trades in the 19th century when coupled with “powerful nations willing to use their hard powers to support the soft power of international law” and this overlooked history “provides grounds for cautious optimism about the contemporary possibility of promoting human rights through international law, at least in the long term (Martinez, 2008). The ideals which we cherish and the institutions that protect them are now more needed than ever. A common hope, optimism, and a revolt against the fatalist status quo are imperative to guide us out of this grim episode of history.

[1] R2P has its success in Libya but the circumstances in Syria are different from those of Libya, resulting a deadlock in the security council. But what was particularly indicting about the circumstances is “when the Security Council was confronted with unequivocal evidence of a mass atrocity crime, with the 2013 chemical weapons attacks in Ghouta, consensual action swiftly followed, authorising the destruction of the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons and foreshadowing consideration of coercive action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter should it not cooperate. True, the decision was framed as a response to the proven use of an outlawed weapon of mass destruction, rather than a major war crime or crime against humanity breaching R2P principles. But what drove the decision was manifestly a unanimous sense of the total unconscionability, in this day and age, of this kind of indiscriminately inhumane action” (Evans, 2014).

[2] There is a moral case to be argued for overthrowing the Saddam regime. However, the moral case would not gain nearly as much as support as the possibility of Saddam regime has a “weapon of mass destruction” and therefore must be overthrown line of reasoning. After Bush administration’s lies could no longer sustain public attacks, only then they turned their justifications towards the moral cause.

[3] I am aware that Turkey is not a part of the European Union, but one would think that the EU would at least exert political pressures on a country that plays much importance towards the EU’s common defense against Russian aggression. Such development is highly undesirable for both NATO and the EU. Furthermore, the strategic importance of Turkish security in providing stability to the ME region and defense against the Russians has permitted Turkey to reign freely in the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict without subjecting to western backlash.

[4] I had the chance to audit an introduction to public policy class awhile back and I remember my professor saying quite a memorable line during our first meeting: “if you can take away only one thing from this class, you should remember that the status quo policy 99% of the time is a matter of choice.”

Citations

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