| |||
The Case for Inhumane Intervention
June 11, 2008
When a cyclone hit Burma (alias Myanmar) recently, the repressive regime that rules that country dawdled for weeks before allowing international relief teams to enter the country. "Aid agencies estimate more than one million storm survivors, mostly in the delta, still need acute help," reports the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "Cyclone Nargis killed more than 78,000 people. . . . More than 58,000 are still missing and unaccounted for."
Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state during President Clinton's second term, blames George W. Bush. Before he came along, she claims in a New York Times op-ed piece, "diplomats and foreign policy experts" were moving toward "an integrated world system" in which "the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situations--to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so":
During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The administration of George H.W. Bush intervened to prevent famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.
Three guesses as to what caused this brilliant plan to collapse:
The invasion of Iraq, with the administration's grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments, especially in the developing world, are now determined to preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human costs of doing so are high.
Thus, Myanmar's leaders have been shielded from the repercussions of their outrageous actions.
What principle, exactly, is Albright putting forward here? The 1990s interventions she cites favorably are all cases in which, in her account, the intervening power was motivated by humanitarian concerns rather than national interest. But she also approves of the liberation of Afghanistan because it was "clearly motivated by self-defense."
On what basis, then, does she object to the liberation of Iraq? It was both a humanitarian intervention (toppling one of the world's most brutal dictators) and an act of self-defense ("the administration's grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption" is merely a dysphemistic way of saying this).
Is Albright's idea that intervention is acceptable for reasons of humanitarianism or national interest but not both? Maybe. That would explain the Clinton administration's intervention in Iraq, which Albright does not mention in this article. Although the administration did not take action to remove Saddam Hussein from power, it did bomb the country and support strict U.N. sanctions.
In 1996, as the hard-left radio show "Democracy Now!" recounted some years later, Albright, then ambassador to the U.N., gave an interview to CBS's "60 Minutes":
Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that"s more children than died in Hiroshima. And--and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeline Albright replied "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
That the sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children was almost certainly a pro-Saddam canard. But Albright did not dispute the premise. Instead, she defended as "worth it" the policy that purportedly killed several times as many people as are believed to have perished in this year's Burma cyclone. You can see why her New York Times op-ed does not reprise this case for inhumane intervention.
Even if Albright is unable to articulate the principles that guided the Clinton administration's foreign policy, maybe she is right that it was better than its successor's. Let us test her specific claim that the Bush administration's policy to Iraq is to blame for the intransigence of the Burmese junta. Did that regime behave differently when Clinton was in the White House and Albright at Foggy Bottom?
Nope. This is an excerpt from the State Department's 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices:
Burma continued to be ruled by a highly authoritarian military regime. Repressive military governments dominated by members of the majority Burman ethnic group have ruled the ethnically Burman central regions and some ethnic-minority areas continuously since 1962, when a coup led by General Ne Win overthrew an elected civilian government. . . .
The Government's extremely poor human rights record and longstanding severe repression of its citizens continued during the year. Citizens continued to live subject at any time and without appeal to the arbitrary and sometimes brutal dictates of the military regime. Citizens did not have the right to change their government. There continued to be credible reports, particularly in ethnic minority-dominated areas, that soldiers committed serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and rape. Disappearances continued, and members of the security forces tortured, beat, and otherwise abused detainees.
The Clinton-Albright foreign policy was a failure even on its own terms (or at least on the terms she sets forth in today's op-ed). And indeed, why would you expect U.S. humanitarian interventions against repressive regimes in Haiti and the Balkans to make the Burmese junta any more willing to risk its own power to help the people over whom it rules? Albright's position is simply incoherent.
No comments:
Post a Comment