17
Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics EDITORS Christian Reus-Smit Nicholas Wheeler EDITORIAL BOARD Thomas Biersteker, Phil Cerny, Michael Cox, A.J.R. Groom, Richard Higgott, Kimberley Hutchings, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Steve Lamy, Michael Mastanduno, Cohn McInnes, Louis Pauly, Ngaire Woods ge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of Cambridge y Press and the British International Studies Association (BISA). The series de a wide range of material, from undergraduate textbooks and surveys to based monographs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the series is to he best new scholarship in International Studies from Europe, North and the rest of the world. GE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ima Haddad e refugee in international society :ween sovereigns a Booth eory of world security namin Miller tes, nations and the great powers t, sources of regional war and peace ire Jahn (ed.) issical theory in international relations drew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami e English School of international relations •ontemporary reassessment continues after index I W Edited by RICHARD M. PRICE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics

EDITORS

Christian Reus-SmitNicholas Wheeler

E D I T O R I A L B O A R D

Thomas Biersteker, Phil Cerny, Michael Cox, A.J.R. Groom, RichardHiggott, Kimberley Hutchings, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Steve Lamy,Michael Mastanduno, Cohn McInnes, Louis Pauly, Ngaire Woods

ge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of Cambridgey Press and the British International Studies Association (BISA). The seriesde a wide range of material, from undergraduate textbooks and surveys tobased monographs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the series is tohe best new scholarship in International Studies from Europe, Northand the rest of the world.

GE STUDIES I N I N T E R N AT I O N A L RELATIONS

ima Haddade refugee in international society:ween sovereignsa Bootheory of world securitynamin Millertes, nations and the great powerst, sources of regional war and peaceire Jahn (ed.)issical theory in international relationsdrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganamie English School of international relations•ontemporary reassessment

continues after index

IWorld Politics

Edited byR I C H A R D M . P R I C E

CAMBRIDGEU N I V E R S I T Y PRESS

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!cl in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

mthridge.orglion on this title: www.cambridge.orW9780521716208

ridge University Press 2008

blication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionhe provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,aduction of any part may take place withoutten permission of Cambridge University Press.

blished 2008

in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

)gue record for this publication is available from the British Library

78-0-521-88816-5 hardback78-0-521-71620-8 paperback

dge University Press has no responsibility for,istence or accuracy of URI s for external ortrty internet websites referred to in this book,

not guarantee that any content on suchs is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

List of contributors p a g e viiPreface i x

1 Mora l limit and possibility in world politics 1RICHARD PRICE

2 Constructivism and the structure of ethical reasoning 5 3CHRIST IAN REAIS-SMIT

3 T h e role of consequences, comparison and counterfactualsin constructivist ethical thoughtK AT H R Y N S I K K I N K

83

4 Sovereignty, recognition and indigenous peoples 1 1 2J O N AT H A N H AV E R C R O F T

5 Policy hypocrisy or political compromise? Assessingthe morality of US policy toward undocumented migrants 1 3 8A M Y G U R O W I T Z

6 L i e to me: sanctions on Iraq, moral argumentand the international politics of hypocrisyMARC LY N C H

7 Paradoxes in humanitarian intervention 1 9 7M A R T H A F I N N E M O R E

8 Inevitable inequalities? Approaching gender equalityand multiculturalismANN T O W N S

165

225

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y Iraqis who considered them to have been supportingLim° Finally, the United States has perhaps suffered

findings of recent global public opinion surveys amply conveyfound mistrust of the United States throughout much of thethe outcome of these strategic practices and rejection of com-tive engagement. The sanctions on Iraq formed one of the)Ianks in Osama bin Laden's campaign against America, andutcd immensely to solidifying Arab and Muslim beliefs inan hostility and dishonesty.Lobal response to the American campaign for war against Iraq in003, while beyond the scope of this chapter, powerfully demon-this corrosive power o f hypocrisy. The world questionedan arguments for war in no small part because of the experiencereceding decade. Deeply entrenched complaints about movingus, indifference to Iraqi civilian casualties and unauthorisedchange preferences juxtaposed easily onto the new debateswar with Iraq. American inability to substantiate its claimsraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qacida onlythis scepticism. And post-war revelations about the mendacity) administration claims confirmed the worst criticisms fromier period. While hypocrisy alone cannot explain the outcomemomentous political battles, it would be impossible to fullyfor the global response to the American position without

ating its corrosive effects.

:h, Voices of the New Arab Public, chapter 6.

The rash o f humanitarian interventions since the end o f the ColdWar has posed serious analytical problems for International Relations(IR) scholars. Traditional security scholars have struggled to under-stand the nature of 'humanitarianism' as an interest, often with theresult that they simply discount it and emphasise other possible motiva-tions for intervention. In these analyses, the intervention in Somalia isexplained as an effort to export US values, intervention in Haiti wasabout controlling unwanted refugee flows, interventions in Bosniaand Kosovo are explained by the need to protect NATO's (NorthAtlantic Treaty Organization) credibility and maintain stability inEurope.' Humanitarianism was only window-dressing in every case.Constructivists, legal scholars and an increasing number of policy ana-lysts have taken humanitarianism more seriously as a source of stateaction. They point to the increasingly dense network of human rightsnorms, law and transnational activist groups that all persuade (orcoerce) policy makers and publics to support these interventions. Theanalytic problem for this group has been to understand why humani-tarianism produces the sorts of actions it does in world politics and whyits influence and effects seem so inconsistent and varied. Humanitarianconcerns do not always produce interventions (as the Rwanda casemakes painfully clear) nor do they produce interventions o f thesame kind.

Humanitarianism is not some single isolated impulse nor does i tconsistently produce identical effects. This seems obvious but analyt-ically we have tended to treat norms and values like humanitarianism inisolation, trying to attach particular causal significance to each one

1 Michael Mandelbaum, 'Foreign Policy as Social Work', Foreign Affairs 75:1(1996), 16-32 at 17; Richard Haass, Intervention: The Use of American Force inthe Post-Cold War World (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace, 1994).

197

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Any policy decision of consequence is taken within a dense webmative claims that often conflict with one another and create; ethical dilemmas for decision makers. After all, if the prescrip-,f norms and values were always clear or if they never conflictedtie another, we would not have to make any decisions; we wouldHow the prescriptions. In this sense, normative conflict is what: decisions since, absent conflicting normative claims, there wouldlung to decide.aanitarian intervention always occurs within an intricate struc-conflicting norms and values that determine whether and how itas. Humanitarian intervention may be supported by powerfulational human rights norms that have unprecedented power inworary politics. It may be undercut by geostrategic considera-Doted in the moral duties of politicians to protect their own state•zens in uniform. It is often in tension with other values we holduch as self-determination, and when coupled with military force,ensions are greatly exacerbated. Waging war always involvesread human rights violations, raising questions about whetheratarian ends justify the suffering caused by military means.aitarianism, by itself, never provides a satisfactory explanationatervention, either analytically or morally. Only by examining theT normative landscape in which it rests can we begin to under-he practice and ethics of humanitarian intervention.2

urse, one need not use COTIStrUCtiViSt analytics to find dilemmas innitarian intervention. See, for example, J. L. Holzgrere and Robert O.me (eds.), Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Politicaltmas (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Comparing those; with this one illustrates the different things one 'sees' about humanitarianention with different theoretical glasses. For another collection, includingessays from a construetivist perspective, see Anthony F. Lang, j r (ed.), Just,ention (Washington

of perspectives that includes practitioners and engages many issues raisedwe Jonathan Moore (ed.), Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian,ention (New York,

1 - - l f l J L I L l a L A v L L L U L L U I t i s M a a r

creates humanitarian crises. I t defines who counts as 'human' andcan make claims for protection. In the nineteenth century, humani-tarian intervention was undertaken to protect white Christians only;by the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, most such interventions areundertaken to protect non-white, non-Christian people who previouslywould n o t have registered o n the consciousness o f potentialinterveners? In addition, over the past 200 years and even in the pasttwenty-five years there has been a qualitative change in the kinds ofexpectations we as an international community have for governmentperformance. We expect much more from governments than we everhave before, in terms of providing for citizens, guaranteeing their rightsand protecting them from harm. Both o f these changes shape ourperceptions o f what constitutes 'a humanitarian crisis'. Events thatwould have been regrettable or gone unnoticed twenty, fifty or onehundred years ago now constitute crises that provoke internationaldebate and response, sometimes even military response.

Second, the normative structure and political rules we have to dealwith these crises are often in tension or opposition in ways that makethese conflicts particularly difficult to resolve. Some of these tensionsare obvious, like the tension between intervention and self-determination.Others are less obvious but have powerful effects on our practical abilityto achieve the kinds of solutions we say we want, and I discuss some ofthe operational implications of normative conflict on the ground. Third,changing normative structure shapes, not only our perception of crises,but our responses to these crises and the kinds of military action andpost-conflict peace-building we undertake. We now offload much ofthe work in these crises onto international organisations, both inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations (IGOs and NG0s),without thinking much about the implications o f this move. Among

3 Martha Finnemore, 'Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention'. In PeterJ. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity inWorld Politics (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996), 153-185, andMatha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Useof Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), chapter 3.

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onstructivist scholars. Humanitarian crises pose genuine moralalias. They often involve conflict among norms fundamental toaational life — sovereignty, human rights and self-determination.

are not situations like some others discussed in this volume.is knows what a morally desirable outcome would be ands to use her scholarship to help construct that solution. More, for example about the violent behaviour of Swedish men towardsen, and new cultural frames, for example about gender equality inilticultural setting, could create morally preferable outcomes.arly, Gurowitz knows what a morally better immigrationy would look like; it would be a policy that helped migrants andnated current policy confusion, and she sees constructivism as ato promote this policy. In many humanitarian crises, however,simply is no good solution. Letting violence continue is clearly

Having an outside party impose a government that violates self-mination, is illegitimate or incompetent (or all three) is not soeither. These are often genuine moral dilemmas. The world is full

lem and I discuss what constructivism can show us in thesedons.lese are certainly not the only insights to be gained from an exam-Dil of the normative structure within which we do these interven-. I offer them only as examples of the many ways in whichnave structures shape our perceptions of problems, structure thees of response we consider and limit the effectiveness of thatinse in our own normative terms. We tend to think of humanitarianventions as having obvious material causes (e.g. lots of peopleg). We also tend to think about the reasons solutions are difficultimarily material (e.g. lack of troops on the ground, lack of relieflies in the right place at the right time). In both cases, however,material facts are related to human action through a complex

lative structure that often provides conflicting interpretations ofts and conflicting prescriptions for action. My goal is to understand2 of these changing relationships in internationally held values andmpact they have on humanitarian intervention.

don. Someone counts as 'human' in political and social life only if othersrecognise him or her as such. Something is a crisis only if it flies in theface of what we agree is acceptable. Thus, what constitutes a humani-tarian crisis is always a function of the normative fabric of political lifeand standards of acceptable behaviour in the world.

One reason for the spate of humanitarian crises landing on the policyagenda in the 1990s was that these standards of acceptable behaviourhad changed. Ethnic cleansing, genocide and mass killings of variouskinds are hardly new in world politics, but they did not provoke thekinds of responses in earlier periods that we saw in the 1990s. Just a fewdecades ago a wide range of state-sponsored violence was tolerated thatwould now constitute major international crimes. People rarelyapplauded internal repression (or not publicly), but governments rarelyintervened militarily if a state decided to kill, torture, relocate anddispossess its own citizens, and states did commit such abuses withsome frequency!' The end of the Cold War may account for some ofthe change in responses but it certainly does not account for all of it.Fear of the Soviets was not blocking the US's ability to intervene in thishemisphere, yet large-scale massacres o f indigenous peoples i nGuatemala in the 1980s, and political 'disappearances' in Argentinaand Chile during the 1970s did nor provoke military intervention byWestern governments.5 P e o p l e c e r t a i n ly n o t i ce d a nd m ade a f uss a bo ut

4 Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the2062 Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); Samantha Power,

'A Problem from Hell': America and the Age of Genocide (New York, NY:PerennialfhlarperCollins, 2002).States did occasionally intervene for these reasons during the Cold War. The threecases are India's intervention in what is now Bangladesh in 1971, Tanzania'stoppling of the Idi Amin regime in Uganda (1979) and Vietnam's intervention tooverthrow Pol Pot in Cambodia (1979). For a fuller treatment see NicholasWheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), esp. chapters 2-4; andFinnemore, 'Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention'. My point here isthat the frequency with which mass killing is met with military intervention rosedramatically in the 1990s and the target state does not have to present additionalsecurity threats to the intervener to merit such attention.

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„e changed normative climate. The increaseevent mass killings is another.

) is 'human'?

--n military interventions

normative structure for humanitarian intervention is complex, butist two prominent features have changed. First, who is 'human' andLegitimately claim protection has changed.6 W h i l e t h e r e w a s h u -Ltarian intervention in the nineteenth century, it was always under-

by European powers to protect Christians, mostly against the;Kling Ottoman Empire. European powers did not intervene to•ct non-Christians. Pogroms against Jews did not provoke inter-on. Neither did Russian massacres of Turks in Central Asia in the)s. Neither did mass killings in China during the Taiping rebellionlst the Manchus, mass killings by German colonial rule in Namibiaassacres of Native Americans in the United States.Certainly somepeans recognised the victims in these atrocities as human but not allnd the degree of identification with these 'others' as fellow human

was circumscribed.forts by a large number of people around the world were requiredliversalise humanity and transform understandings of it in wayswould make contemporary humanitarian interventions conceiva-ergo possible. Two changes are of particular importance for theiry of these interventions. One was the abolition of slavery and thetrade. While human beings were legitimately and legally property,were beyond the edge of humanity. Abolition made the humanityese people harder to deny in formal, legal and political debates andthat status came certain, albeit minimal, privileges and protections.le other process that institutionalised a new, more universal con-on of humanity was decolonisation and the creation of sovereign

s discussion draws on my earlier work in 'Constructing Norms ofmanitarian Intervention'. Citations to relevant historical material can be foundre.

1

arrangements, and entering into the European-based internationaleconomy. With decolonisation, this discourse changed. By the twentiethcentury, humanity was no longer something one could create by bring-ing savages to civilisation. Rather, humanity was understood to beinherent in individual human beings. It had become universalised andwas not culturally dependent as it had been previously.

Neither change — abolition or decolonisation — was easy. Both werehard-fought by broad coalitions of slaves, former slaves, national lib-eration groups and their European sympathisers. But without the crea-tion of this universalised understanding of humanity and codification ofthat understanding in formal international organisations like the UnitedNations (UN), the pattern of intervention we see in the late twentiethcentury would be hard to predict or explain.

Changed expectations for government performance

Also changed are internationally shared views about what governmentsowe their citizens. At a minimum, governments are expected to refrainfrom abuse; more generally, governments are expected to guarantee andprovide a bundle of rights and services. This change in expectations, andconcomitant rise in standards for government performance are clearlybound up in the rising power of human rights norms over the pastseveral decades. The international human rights network has beenhugely successful at mobilising publics and institutionalising standardsfor acceptable treatment of people in a wide range of states, especiallypowerful states, over the past thirty years/ It is easy to underestimatethe effects of this change. Because there are still so many human rightsviolations going on all over the world, it is tempting to conclude that

7 For a detailed examination of this process see Thomas Risse, Steven Ropp andKathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights (New York, NY: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999); Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists BeyondBorders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), chapters. 1-3; DanielThomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and theDemise of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

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ban it was in the 1960s.8xpansion and institutionalisation of human rights claims con-major qualitative change in the normative fabric of world

Specifically, human rights compromise basic features of statenty since human rights are claims that states cannot do any-ty want to their citizens, ergo they cannot have absolute controlat happens inside their borders. States cannot, for example,such basic things as keep political control or prevent secessionneans without paying some kind of political price. It is impos-:now how much these changes have dissuaded or deterred statesDressing citizens, since we cannot have information on non-What we can very clearly see, however, is an increased will-of governments to create 'political prices' for human rightsis. This is true even against very large states now. European)r example, have used the International Monetary Fund (IMF)Pressure on Russia in response to its treatment of civilians inta. It is not simply the case that decision makers in these Westernlents have become so high-minded and other-regarding inws. Underpinning these and other protective actions by govern-strong pressure by the extraordinarily well-organised human

;tworks that have sprung up since the 1970s.9; standards of human rights respect are only part of a muchackage of changed expectations about governments, however.!ct states to do more than just refrain from torturing and killingWe also now expect 'good governance' from states. What,

id Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, chapters 1-3; Thomas, The HelsinkiKathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin3 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).McElroy describes a variety of ways in which moral norms can influenceaviour of governments. One is through internalisation of these norms by1) makers; another is through outside pressure by activists on decisionBoth could be at work here; Robert W. McElroy, Morality and American

! Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). On activists, seeid Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders and Thomas, The Helsinki Effect.

,3“ ,3 F e n t a i y a n u n 33t V d i y i l i g K H I O S a n d d e g r e e s . G o o d g o v e r n a n c e

in this sense has become an important feature of a wide range ofintergovernmental interactions and has become a major criterion forall kinds of development aid. The IMF and World Bank both now haveextensive 'good governance' requirements and anti-corruption pro-grammes, as do most bilateral aid programmes." This is new.Corruption of the kind now being condemned, which usually involvesuse of public office for private gain, did not used to be an internationalissue. I t might have been an issue in the domestic politics of somecountries, sometimes an important one, but in many places practicesnow labelled as 'corrupt' were standard and normal for years. Thewide-ranging attempt to impose this standard on all governments andpublic officials in all countries is unprecedented. 11

Not being corrupt and providing some measure of transparency andaccountability is only the new minimum among standards of perfor-mance for states, however. Increasingly, the standards are being pushedto include democracy and elections. In fact, the term 'good governance'is increasingly being defined to include democracy and elections. Thereis strong normative pressure on states to adhere to formal elements ofdemocracy, such as having elections. The irony is that we apply thispressure even when we know that elections might actually promoteinstability in fragile states. In post-conflict states, elections are oftendivisive as candidates play the 'nationalist' or 'ethnic' card to rally

10 Paul Wolfowitz, 'Good Governance and Development: A Time for Action',speech by Paul Wolfowitz, Jakarta, April 11, 2006, available at http://web.w o r l d b a n k . o rg / W B S I T E /F X T E R N A L /E X T A B O U T U S/O R G A N I Z A T IO N /

E X T O F E I C E P RE S I D E N T /0„ c o n t e n t M D K :2 0 8 8 3 7 5 2 -m e n u P K :6 4 3 4 3 2 5 8 -

pagePK:51174171-pipK:64258 873-theSitePIC1014541,00.h Erni; World Bank,'Helping Countries Combat Corruption: The Role of the World Bank' (TheWorld Bank, PREM network, 1997); Thomas A. Wolf, Emine Gurgen, EuropeanII Department, 'Improving Governance and Fighting Corruption in the Baltic andCIS Countries: The Role of the IMF', IMF Working Paper WP/00/1, January 1,2000.

For a discussion of the ethical implications of this change see Mlada Bukovansky,'The Moral Core of the International Anti-Corruption Regime', unpublishedmanuscript, Darnnouth College. For details about current anti-corruption effortssee the website of Transparency International at www.transparency.de.

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;overnance standards and human rights standards are bothof changed (and rising) international standards for states'

)ehaviour. In both cases, matters that formerly lay within avereign control have become accepted topics of internationalAs the scope of international scrutiny widens and standards,vel of performance required to be a state 'in good standing' inlational community has become higher now than ever before.risingly, many states do not meet these standards. When this

outside actors increasingly feel justified i n intervening.ons are rooted in the fact that normative standards are beingand are buttressed by claims that these standards are widelyoften formally legitimised by international organizations

:ause IOs are often the forum in which standards are set andJd, IOs are often given the task of intervening to uphold them.rruption is the problem (a largely economic violation of nor-a•ndards), intervention is usually economic and economicch as the IMF and World Bank play a large role in policingof performance. However, when state failures result in wide-iolence, states, publics and IOs begin to call for forceful; and, increasingly, those demands are met with force wieldedries who intervene in these states.

Lye tensions that make intervening difficultlew about humanitarian crises is not the fact of mass killing.new is the normative framework through which the worldse episodes. Rising expectations for government performance

Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (New York, NY:dge University Press, 2004); and Roland Paris, 'Peacebuilding and the/l International Liberalism', International Security 22:2 (1997), 54-89.1 communication, NGO staff member. For more on this irony see Michaeltett and Martha Finnemore, 'The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of'ional Organizations', International Organization 53:4 (1999), 699-732

-• w v ay L 11 , 1 F l u a . A LLCM a t e w r i t 111111erSMOCI

rules they must follow to make their intervention legitimate in the eyesof other states and mass publics, both abroad and at home. Those ruleshave changed by increments over the past twenty, fifty and one hundredyears and now contain deep tensions that create serious ethical, politicaland logistical dilemmas for interveners. In this section I examine severalof the most fundamental normative tensions facing interveners andshow how these are not simply isolated matters for ethicists but filterdown into the most basic operational details of military action. Theyshape our military responses to these humanitarian crises and makesuccess elusive in our own normative terms, as I discuss below.

Perhaps the most powerful normative tension surrounding theseactions is that between self-determination and humanitarian interven-tion. International legal scholars, among others, have written exten-sively about conflicts between such interventions and sovereigntynorms, but sovereignty has hardly proved an insurmountable barrierto intervention and, in fact, has always been malleable and conditionalin a host of ways.14 E v e n a m o ng l e g al s c h ol a r s, n o ti o ns of s o ve r ei g nt y

are coming under pressure to include understandings that would allowor even require intervention by outsiders in cases of humanitarian crisisand gross human rights abuse.' Underlying much of this malleability ofsovereignty are two other sets of norms which I would argue are morebasic and more powerful. One is human rights norms, discussed above.The other is self-determination norms, which have come to be inti-mately connected to human rights. In discussions about whether tointervene in humanitarian crises, sovereignty norms are almost always

14 See Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NI:Princeton University Press, 1999) and Sean D. Murphy, HumanitarianIntervention: The United Nations in an Evolving World Order (Philadelphia, PA:University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).

15 Fernando Teson, Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality(Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1988); Francis M. Deng,Sovereignty as Responsibility (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution,1996). For a political scientist's analysis of legal change in this area see TheoFarrell, Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO:Lynne Rienner, 2005), chapter 5.

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ions are often done, in part, to promote self-determination ofEIS.

:termination does not sit comfortably with humanitarian inter-It is in tension with both words in that phrase: it is in tensionaanitarianism and it is in tension with intervention.

3rmtnation vs. humanitarianisme intervene in humanitarian crises we want to save lives andence which is often being perpetrated by officials of the govern-the same time, we refuse to simply overthrow governments andelv, more humane ones that will protect human rights and.e humane treatment of citizens. To do so would violate widelyms about self-determination. The tension here lies in the factDie (or at least some of them) often freely choose to 'determine'using violence.

:termination, at bottom, may not be a very humane process.7 it has not been so historically. If one examines the ways inites have 'determined' themselves in the past, they have killed any people in the process. The consolidation of the current arrayin Europe was an extremely bloody process that took several;. Self-determination in the United States only occurred throughic cleansing of an entire continent of native peoples and any bloody civil war.ssumption that seems to underlie much of the humanitarian:ion since 1989 is that self-determination can and should onlythrough enlightened discussion and the ballot box. Viewediberal cosmopolitan ethical perspective, this may be progress.uld like to have peoples 'determine' themselves in this wayIan through violence, and raising the ethical bar for the self-iation process might be a good thing ethically. However thisy also be naive, at best, and hypocritical at worst. Citizens of thestates who are pushing these norms and doing most of the

ing were not able to 'self-determine' without a great deal of

LiU l l a ' e r r O r t S t o

bring self-determination to the non-Western world through these inter-ventions? Sikkink's discussions of consequentialism and 'comparison tothe ideal', elsewhere in this volume, speak to some of these issues. Thefact that the past behaviour of the messenger (Western interveners) doesnot fit the ideal self-determination process should not logically compro-mise the ethical value of the message (humane self-determination isdesirable and good). However, Sikkink's concern with rigorous empiri-cal evaluation o f consequences as a component of ethical calculusmeans that interveners have a moral duty to be clear-eyed about thekinds of consequences that can reasonably be expected from differenttypes of intervention. There may be situations where the consequences ofintervention might be worse than the atrocities it seeks to stop. Certainlyauthors like Edward Luttwak believe this to be the case?' I suspect amore common problem is that potential interveners might know whatactions might reasonably lead to better, if not perfect, outcomes thanatrocity but cannot muster the political will to act. Assessments of theRwandan genocide often make this case.' Alternatively, and perhapsrelated, potential interveners might find that assessing consequences ofboth intervention and non-intervention is extremely difficult, particu-larly in some of these very messy humanitarian crises. Inaction forseveral years in Bosnia was justified by worries about the consequencesof intervention?' This would not obviate a moral duty to bring the bestpossible knowledge to bear in assessing consequences, but the best onemight hope for is to be clear-eyed about the uncertainties. These areempirical debates about counterfactual consequences and whether

6 Edward Luttwak, 'Give War a Chance', Foreign Affairs July/August 1999 and 'IfBosnians were Dolphins C o m m e n t a r y 96:4 (1993), 27-32; Richard Betts,'The Delusion of Impartial Intervention'. In Chester Crocker, Fen OsierHampson and Pamela Aall (eds.), Turbulent Peace (Washington, DC, U.S.Institute of Peace, 2001).

7 Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf2004); Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 2002); Power, 'A Problem from Hell'.

8 I thank an anonymous reviewer for this point.

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erminatton vs. Intervention

;ion is obvious. Citizens of the West pushing for intervention all;rem support for self-determination, but will go in with troops;e the self-determination process if they do not like either theor the result. I f the political process becomes violent (e.g.), the state becomes a candidate for outside intervention; if an;overnment becomes violent, the state becomes a candidate fortion (e.g. Serbia). This raises the question: if we force people tormine only by the processes and with the results we happen tothey really 'self-determining'? At a practical level, this raises

Ls about whether it is possible to force other states to be demo-Id humane. At a more abstract level, it raises questions aboutstates suffering such intervention are really self-determining.19tormative tension between humanitarian intervention and self-Dation creates a variety of political problems for policy makersDst of operational dilemmas on the ground for militaries. Theportant and most worrisome of these surround the problem ofwhat, exactly, are we intervening for in these crises? Whator end state do we want to achieve? One might think, in the

, that the logical outcome of a humanitarian intervention woulde interveners to install a new humane government that does nots citizens. In fact, something very like this was an option forers in the nineteenth century. When the French intervened inDow Lebanon, then Syria under Ottoman rule, in 1860 they didhis. They stopped the killing, brokered new governing arrange-consultation with other Europeans, put new people in charge

it home.n I t i s n ot c le ar that this kind

early argument about the widespread illusion of politically 'neutral'iitarian intervention and its effects, see Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst,Fa and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention', Foreign Affairs 75:2I, 70-85.Piwabi, A Modern History of Syria (London: Macmillan, 1969), 131;in E. Echard, Napoleon I I I and the Concert o f Europe (Baton Rouge, LA:Ina State University Press, 1983), chapter 8; R. W. Seton-Watson, Britain in

a n, um, • wou 1,811.11110A, UL1i1UULLd1lUi1 ui COliSent IS elections. It is not

legitimate for interveners, even for the UN, to impose a particularsolution, much less a specific government, on the target of a humanitar-ian intervention. The goal of these interventions is always some kind ofa negotiated (i.e. consensual) settlement among the parties inside thetarget state.

A variety of practical and operational dilemmas flow from this valua-tion of political process (and settlement) over substantive outcomes.One is that interveners may find themselves intervening for a processthat includes negotiated settlement and elections, which ultimatelyproduces precisely the substantive outcomes they were intervening toavoid. This is what happened in Bosnia. The West intervened to preventethnic cleansing, but subsequent elections essentially ratified this result.Candidates who played ethnic and nationalist cards to rally voters werevery successful in elections and garnered the lion's share of support.

Another consequence of this emphasis on negotiated settlement as agoal is that militaries on the ground find themselves fighting a warwithout enemies. Reflecting the larger political and social climate,military manuals on 'peace operations' now explicitly incorporate thisprocess-oriented end state. In outlining these missions, the relevantarmy field manual says: I l l he conflict, not the belligerent parties, isthe enemy.' It goes on:

As with any mission, commanders at all levels must have a commonunderstanding of the end state and the conditions that constitutesuccess prior to initiating operations. In peace operations, settlement,not victory, it the ultimate measure of successil

Europe, 1789-1914 (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1937),420-421.21 Both quotations from Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-23: Peace

Operations (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army,December 1994), v. Italics original. Department of thc Army, Field Manual3-07.31: Multi-Service Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for ConductingPeace Operations (October 26, 2003) elaborates practical implications of manyof these dilemmas, often with reference to recent operations experience.

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—ficated to execute in practice. Militaries are being asked to fight foriples but not against any bad guys in these situations. This differsstandard war fighting, where there are clearly enemies. I t also

•s from policing (another possible model of behavi

tries in these situations) because there are no criminals one canup and take to jail. The political end in these humanitarian

Tentions is neither victory (as in war fighting) nor justice (as it is'firing). The political end is some kind of reconciliation among.c who are doing horrible things to each other. To achieve recoil-on, interveners have to treat all parties as if they were dealing infaith (even when they are not) and treat them with a kind of even-edness and impartiality. In the humanitarian intervention modeling force, you have to make peace with the criminals, not lock

22up.,w one implements this kind of imparti

and civilian decision makers are not always providing a lot ofnce to militaries on these questions. We as civilians are supposedcontrolling our militaries, which means providing guidance, butwe not thought through this problem politically or ethically. Wemilitaries to 'enforce peace' but at the same time we do not wantto mess up possibilities for a political settlement by making anyoneSituations such as the reluctance of NATO's IFOR troops to arresttiminals in Bosnia, even though they intervened precisely to stop.ind of criminal behaviour, are one logical outcome of this. Such1 is the product of this underlying tension between the need forcal settlement and the 'enforcement' of law and justice.ccond consequence for militaries of having settlement, rather than-y, as a goal is that it m

[bons with a clear 'exit strategy' already mapped out. Americans,Lps because they have been scarred by the Vietnam experience,

ntually, some criminals may be named and efforts may be made to round themas in Bosnia or Rwanda, but this happens only much later, and very

ompletely• It provides little guidance for initial interveners on the ground.

(

„ , 1 L x g , c x x x , i - c i M I A “ 1 3 1 3 i t n a i S S I S L a t I C e p u r p o s e s w i t h o u t a c l e a r p l a n f o r

getting them out again. The problem is that, i f the goal is settlementand reconciliation among the local belligerents, US commanders do notcontrol that outcome; other people do. If you do not control achieve-ment of the goal (settlement), i t is difficult to plan for an exit afterachieving it since you cannot know how long settlement will take orthe terms on which it will be achieved. Often, the terms of settlementinvolve prolonged stays by intervening troops to guarantee the agree-ment and provide a secure environment in which reconciliation andrebuilding processes can begin. The more of these interventions we do,the more we are learning that the political requirements within inter-vening states for deploying troops in these crises (quick in, quick out,home by Christmas) run directly counter to some of the basic functionalneeds of achieving lasting settlement in the target states.

A third important operational norm that flows from this need forimpartiality to achieve settlement but makes these interventions logisti-cally difficult is multi lateralism. As John Ruggie and his colleagues havenoted, this is an extremely powerful norm in contemporary politics thatpermeates all kinds of political interaction. Particularly since the end ofWorld War II, multilateralism has become essential to legitimate allkinds o f decisions and exercises o f authority in world polit ics.23Humanitarian interventions have been no exception. States very muchwant authorisation by some prominent international organisation con-doning their intervention and, if possible, they want multilateral parti-cipation by other states in the enterprise. This has most often translatedinto intervention by an international organisation rather than by a stateor states in their individual capacity. The UN has been the most frequentintervener in humanitarian disasters but well-publicised institutionalweaknesses of that organisation have resulted in diversification of theorganisations who intervene, rather than a move towards unilateralism.NATO intervened in Kosovo; the Economic Community o f WestAfrican States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) intervened in Liberia.

23 John G. Ruggie (ed.), Multilateralism Matters: Theory and Praxis of anInstitutional Form (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993).

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le multilateralism makes humanitarian interventions easier po-i, it does not obviously have that effect logistically. Multilateralismthe same as 'burden-sharing' among states since multilateralism:reates more costs than it reduces. Coordinating with other mili-particularly those outside of NATO where training and equip-; not up to a common high standard or may not be interoperable,isance and would not usually be the Pentagon's first choice.' Butson to do these interventions multilaterally is not logistical, butal. While it may not make lots of logistical or tactical sense to-oops from a variety of different national armies mixed togetherintervening force, such multinational participation sends a

MI message of broad support for the operation that is essential:imating it both overseas and with civilian publics back home.26

ie played by international organisations")le of international organisations in legitimating and executingtumanitarian interventions is one clear change in the normativetre within which we do these operations, but the change in theirmuch broader. After the intervention, when we have achieved:ind of settlement, it is international organisations who are givend roles in reconstructing these states and societies. It is the UN,

iinnemore, 'Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention', for anided discussion of this change.views with Pentagon officials. FM3-07.31 tactfully phrases this as follows:it PO [peace operations] are multinational in character. This multinational•L-t brings legitimacy to

nation brings with it individual perspectives and unique capabilities', 1-2.in analysis of these dynamics with particular attention to the 2003 Iraqlict see Martha finnemore, 'Fights about Rules: The Role of Efficacy and

in Changing Multilateralism', Review of International Studies 31 (2005),-206.section draws heavily on Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules forVorld: International Organizations in Global Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornellersity Press, 2004).

_exploring because they say something about the nature of authority incontemporary politics as well as the sources of legitimacy.

The role of IOs in legitimating and implementing these interventionsis related to several characteristics of the kinds of process-oriented endstates we now view as legitimate, discussed earlier. First, there is aperception that IOs will somehow be impartial, at least more impartialthan any state, in the implementation o f internationally legitimateprocesses for choosing new governments (like elections.) No onewould even consider asking a national government to come in andrun elections in Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia or East Timor. The onlyentities that have this kind o f authority arc international bodies.Related, there is a sense that IOs embody some kind of 'internationalwill', international opinion or some generally accepted principles thatare broader than the interests or views of any one state. This kind ofrepresentativeness adds to the credibility of these organisations in aworld where consensual and participatory decision making are themost legitimate forms of decision making in political life. Finally, IOsare now able to lay claim to some amount of expertise in the business ofreconstructing states and running elections. At a minimum, they haveexperience at it, which is often equated with expertise.

The fact that impartiality, expertise and a commitment to principlesover particularistic interests contributes to authority and legitimacy issuggestive. It suggests that we are investing more authority internation-ally now in rational/legal bodies in much the same way Max Weberobserved a century ago at the national level. International organisationsare, after all, bureaucracies, and we are busily bureaucratising 'globalgovernance' of all kinds, including humanitarian intervention, in muchthe way Prussia was bureaucratising domestic governance in the latenineteenth century. It is therefore worth entertaining the possibility thatthe reasons for this and the implications of this may be similar to theones Weber identified.

28 Current moves at the UN to institutionalise this function in a new PeacebuildingCommission underscore the growing importance and acceptance of this role.

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lye problems (which we tend to think must be more effective). It is aof authority that modernity particularly values and views as legit-andethically 'good'. Certainly the general impersonal rules by

h bureaucracies exercise their power are widely viewed as moremate and more authoritative than other sources of authority thatcommanded respect in the past — dynastic affiliation, religion or evenly the will of Great Powers. In contrast to these, the rationalAegalority of IOs appears principled, impartial (ergo fair) and knowledge-These I0s, after all, are staffed by 'experts' in their areas of specialityhave clear, rational procedures for what they do (at least in theory).us trend, whereby we create more organisations, treaties, regimes,national laws and other rational/legal authorities to govern inter-nal life, has broad implications for world politics. It means that iny contexts, international organisations like the UN and OSCE aree legitimate actors than individual states. States, after all, are gen-y understood to be safeguarding their own particularistic interests;ed, state leaders have an ethical duty to safeguard their citizens. I0s,ontrast, are both products and producers of general, impersonalinternational rules of accepted, civilised behaviour. They are cre-by treaties — generalised rational/legal rules — and (in theory) actrding to those rules. As a consequence, fOs become uniquely legit-e actors in world politics. They can do things that individual statesot legitimately do, for example reconstruct other states. If a statetterally were to go into a humanitarian crisis situation in anotherand stop the killing, organise a new government and try to recoil-

:t that society by itself, these actions would be viewed as a form ofaialism and the government viewed as a puppet.29 F o r t h i s k i n d o fastruction to be legitimate, it must be done by I0s.; with other features of the normative landscape, however, this roleOs is not without its problems. The same qualities that make lOs

ates do, of course, take this kind of action anyway at times. Other states maycept these actions as inevitable in certain situations, but will not accept them asOtimate. To the extent interveners value legitimacy, they will work through 10s.

have clear rules for choosing new governments in reconstructing hu-manitarian crisis states: new governments must be the product of elec-tions. IOs may be right that, in general, elections produce more stableand just governments, but in particular instances they can be destabilis-ing. However, rules are rules, and IOs often proceed with elections

even when they know that elections will be divisive and destabilising.Similarly, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees (UNHCR) has rules about how it treats refugees that lead itto provide aid to all-comers, regardless of their political opinions. Theserules flow naturally from the humanitarian first principles which theorganisation embodies but in practice may prove counterproductive. InCongo, for example, UNHCR found itself sheltering many of the sameHutu interhamwe militia members who had committed the genocidefrom which the refugees had fled. Further, the UNHCR found its campsbeing taken over by these militias who began to use them as bases forrenewed anti-Tutsi attacks across the Rwandan border.

These dysfunctional tendencies in IOs may not be any worse than theflaws in other possible methods of accomplishing these reconstructiontasks. They may, in fact, be preferable. My point is only that we areoffloading large pieces of these humanitarian operations onto interna-tional organisations without thinking through the adequacy of theseentities for their assigned tasks. Some inadequacies are clear and havebeen widely discussed: IOs have insufficient resources and some, like theUN, were not designed for the kinds of military missions with whichthey have been charged in recent years. Other relevant features of theseIOs have been less fully thought through. One such feature is theparadox that the same features that make bureaucracies effective andlegitimate at performing complex social tasks (their rules and expertise)can also make them ineffective and dysfunctional. Another neglectedfeature of this relocation of authority to international bureaucracies isits consequences for accountability and representation. Max Weberunderstood very well that bureaucracy, for all its virtues, would alsobe unresponsive, repressive and unaccountable. What recourse, forexample, do citizens in Bosnia or Kosovo have against the army of

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-"Ey

t;tings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), IMF, World BankG8 are evidence that this is a broad problem of global governance,its impacts on people at the receiving end of humanitarian inter-

tions require some extended consideration.

nal dilemmas and constructivist analysis, hardly original to argue that humanitarian interventions are difficult:arry out. The question I have tried to engage is why, exactly, theserations are so difficult and why success is often elusive. They are notdifficult technically or logistically, although they may well be that.

y are also difficult normatively in ways that only become apparent bying normative structures seriously and analysing their effects.:onstructivist analysis cannot make moral conflict disappear but it.s have important uses in these situations. One thing it can do isify, not just the norms in conflict, but for whom they are in conflict.ighlights the ethical referents of the analyst. The dilemmas I havetched above are only dilemmas from a particular ethical perspective,we might loosely call cosmopolitan or liberal. A realist might have ate different normative orientation and assessment of these crises.[lists come in several varieties, but generally they would deny the;tence of ethical duties across borders of the type entailed in cosmo-'tan humanitarianism. They would be sceptical of any notion ofversal human rights that required action on behalf of non-citizens.;y also would not be terribly concerned about self-determination of!ign peoples. Realist ethics focus inward, on the national commu-r. As George Kerman put it, 'The government is an agent, not aIcipal. Its primary obligation is to the interests of the national societypresents'.3° K e n na n g oes on to v oi ce s ce pt i

know what is right and moral for others, imposing our beliefs on

1eorge Kennan, 'Morality and Foreign Policy', Foreign Affairs 64:2 (1985/986), 205-218 at 206, italics original. He is explicit a few lines down that theseuerests are primarily military security.

protect foreigners, particularly foreigners of no strategic value, is notonly foolish but ethically dubious.31 A r e a l i s t w o u l d t h u s b e m u ch l e s s

troubled by the normative tensions described earlier. The fact that theworld's contemporary normative structure is largely a liberal cosmo-politan one means she would have to formulate policies to serve hernational interest within that structure of liberal social realities, but shewould not lie awake at night worrying about dead and dying Bosnians,Rwandans or Sudanese, and she certainly would not worry aboutensuring free elections and a democratic state for them at the cost ofher own citizens' lives.

Another consequence of constructivist empirical analysis is to suggesta different view of history than that of the realists, one in which peopleplay a role in making their own world and bear some responsibility forthe world they make. Contrary to the realist view — that the basicdynamics of world politics are immutable and that our world isnot different in essentials from that of the Athenians and Mel i —constructivist analysis suggests that norms and norm structures dochange and behaviour changes as a consequence. People's understand-ings of themselves, their relations to others, and of their desires, dutiesand interests change. World politics changes as a result. Empiricalanalysis of the history of humanitarian intervention makes this clear.Non-white, non-Christian people now can and do make claims onothers for humanitarian assistance in a way unimaginable 100 or 200years ago. Those claims are not always answered, as the Rwandans andSrebrenicans know well, but sometimes they are. Sometimes, indeedoften, such claims mobilise transnational action through states, IGOsand NGOs on a global scale even when they do not produce militaryaction. This is new. It is not part of some recurrent pattern of self-seeking power competition or some response to unfolding materialist

31 For an extended discussion see Jack Donnelly, 'Twentieth-Century Realism'. InTerry Nardin and David R. Mapel (eds.), Traditions in International Ethics (NewYork, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 85-111.

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the views of the weak, the marginalised, the 'done to' in worldSocial facts like a universalised humanity, like human rights

d responsibility to protect become powerful as they become broadlyared with deep conviction. As Sikkink points out in her chapter, oneIson human rights norms are so powerful in contemporary life is that

are the product of negotiation among the world's states and havepport among the world's peoples. These norms undergirding hu-initarian intervention gain legitimacy among potential Western inter-nets and the publics in part because they have been supported byople all around the globe; they are not simply Western creationsposed on less powerful targets of intervention.Constructivism's emphasis on such intersubjective understandingsifts our analytic focus in ethically important ways. Analytically, con-uctivist analysis creates space for, even demands, attention to thews of the many different actors involved in an intervention, since the;itimacy of an intervention, and to some extent its success, depends onreactions of those upon whom intervention is visited. Views of the

:ervened upon, the 'done to', in these cases create political effects thatalysts must study. The corollary of this view is that interveners mustend to the views of their targets if they are to formulate successfullicies.Assessing the views of target populations and, in particular, views of

marginalised in those places, is not always easy and not simplycause of poor data. The intervened-upon often face their own norma-e dilemmas, as acute as any faced by interveners, and may be of mixednd or split among themselves about the efficacy and ethics of foreigntrvention. African National Congress support for sanctions againstuth Africa in the 1970s and 1980s was important in galvanisingestern publics to pressure their governments, but different situations'ate different reactions. Lynch's discussion in this volume of reactionsanctions against Iraq illustrates the opposite dynamics. Initial sup-rt for sanctions against Saddam among Arabs declined quickly as theman cost of sanctions was publicised in Arab media and elsewhere.the extent of suffering caused by sanctions grew and became known

-regime interveners put in place. Emphasis in these operations on elections,'ownership' of policies and programmes and local capacity-building

are all practical effects of interveners' recognition that intersubjectiveu nd er st an di ngs and normative judgements of the intervened-upon have

powerful effects on the ground.Finally, a constructivist analysis of these normative tensions does not

lead us neatly to some blanket conclusion that, 'This should be ourhumanitarian intervention policy'. To the contrary, it shows why weshould be suspicious of blanket prescriptions of this type. Formulating ageneral policy would require us to specify a priori which among several

conflicting norms we will privilege regardless of circumstance or con-sequence, yet the ethics of these interventions depends very muchon both.

Circumstances and context matter a great deal in deciding whetherforce is a moral response to humanitarian crisis. Attitudes of the victims,local politics in the target state, availability of willing interveners andmotives of those interveners will all differ across cases and rightlyshould influence our judgements about whether intervention is desir-able. Consequences, too, are integral to our moral judgements of theseinterventions. Violent intervention is a means, not an end. Whetherhumanitarian intervention is a good thing depends critically on whetherit achieves, or can reasonably be expected to achieve, the moral goalsproponents set for it and at what price. Again, this will vary. In somecases, there might be a straightforward military strategy that one couldreasonably expect will save many lives at the cost of few. In other cases,applying standard ethical rules about inflicting harm proportional togood achieved might yield a much less certain result.

This crucial role of context and consequences means that judgementsabout the morality of humanitarian intervention cannot be left only tophilosophers. Assessing context and consequences requires detailedknowledge of particular conflicts in particular parts of the world and

32 See also Marc Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, allazeera, andMiddle East Politics Today (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006).

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rmation and analysis about likely consequences of our actions.he very mixed consequences of military intervention as a tool ofIan rights enforcement have been the subject of some soul-searching)ng humanitarians in recent years. Failures to act in Srebrenica andnada and the resulting atrocities there persuaded many that militaryan was an essential tool for protection.33 S u b s e q u e n t i n t e r v e n t i o n s:osovo and Timor were hardly unmitigated successes, however.ovo raised big questions about which military means should be1. Charges that NATO forces did know or should have knownbombing would escalate ethnic cleansing were made loudly as

2 complaints about civilian casualties resulting from NATO's tar-ag civilian infrastructure it deemed important for Milosevic's poli-

and military contro l . ' Both Kosovo and Timor also raise;tions about whether military means can create any kind of self-aining and self-determining polity. As Anne Orford points out,e is a powerful sense in which these interventions, even multilateral;, have an 'imperial', even 'colonial' character that quashes thegery of non-Western others (often ignoring roles played by thet in creating local tensions) and reconstructs target communities)rding to their preferred liberal capitalist mode1.35 H u m a n i t a r i a n-Mons do not, by themselves, ma

areseeable consequences, shaped in part by learning from experi-, must also play a role.hese changes expanding humanity, giving voice to the targets ofvention, paying serious attention to likely consequences would all

a history of this shift, see David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul: Humanights and International Intervention (London: Pluto Press, 2002); Thomasteiss, 'Principles, Politics, and Humanitarian Action', Ethics and International(fairs 13 (1999), 1-22.:e for example Noam Chomsky, Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World(fairs (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), esp. chapter 3, and Edward:id, 'Protecting the Kosovars' at www.zmag.org/ZMagisaidkosovar.hrm. For aTy different analysis see Wheeler, Saving Strangers, esp chapter 8.ane Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of)rce in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

now appeal for humanitarian intervention who previously were noteven considered human, but more appeals for intervention are whatcreate many of the paradoxes and dilemmas discussed above. Morally,most of us would not want to go back; ignoring genocides and atrocitieswould be moral regress. But the fact that we now have to think aboutthese events and that our standards for successful outcomes are high(including both peace and democracy) means that we face new prob-lems. Morally, this is what my grandmother might have called 'a fancyproblem'; we agonise about these problems (to intervene or not,whether humanitarian ends justify violent means, what would consti-tute a moral and feasible outcome) but at least we now live in a worldwhere such problems are entertained and choices about them are con-sciously made.

As the foregoing has shown, tensions in the normative structuresurrounding humanitarian interventions are a large part o f whatmakes them so difficult, operationally. I t makes i t difficult to craftpolitically acceptable solutions that will achieve the ends intended. Inmoral terms, however, these interventions may be difficult for the 'right'reasons. At the risk of some simplification, I suspect we are finding theseoperations difficult in part because we are demanding better (in ethicalterms) policy solutions than we ever have before. Features of theseinterventions that plague us now were simply not matters of greatconcern to policy makers or publics fifty or one hundred years ago. Inearlier eras, peace simply got imposed, repression was part of thatprocess, and if a lot of locals got killed during these interventions, thatwas an unfortunate but necessary part of political life. Many of theparadoxes and tensions I have outlined here come about preciselybecause people are not willing to settle for this kind of solution anymore. Interveners cannot simply impose a peace of their choosing; somekind of consent is required. international law now demands due processand other legal protections for perpetrators of genocide and ethniccleansing. •

Current efforts to deal with these humanitarian crises according tothese more demanding ethical criteria may fail. Western interveners

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uggling with these contradictions and to be a bit more patient as we)rk towards solutions for these crises.

i N N I k J W J N J

Introduction

Through the identification of previously understudied dynamics andmechanisms of change, constructivist analyses can provide new leverageon ethical dilemmas as well as distinctive guides for action. Drawing on

the constructivist strand within International Relations (IR) concernedwith identity/difference, I try to demonstrate that its (1) focus on self/othering practices, (2) deconstruction of taken-for-granted binarics and(3) demonstration of alternative, feasible interpretations of a prob-lematic all have crucial ethical implications. Although there is no dis-tinctive constructivist set of ethics as such, constructivism is nonethelesscentral to ethical action since it provides a unique understanding ofhow the world operates. This, in turn, opens new possibilities forthinking about ethical dilemmas and shows distinctive venues foraction. Constructivist scholarship, like the study of international rela-tions in general, is unavoidably normative.

The empirical focus of this chapter is the presumed contradictionbetween multiculturalism and gender equality, a contradiction whichhas become a topic of debate concurrent with a rising tide of interna-tional migration. The alleged contradiction between multiculturalismand gender equality presents an ethical dilemma for those committed toequality, as there is an apparent trade-off between gender equality andthe equal worth of the value systems of different cultural groups.Assertions that the empowerment of women is uniquely and closelytied to Western values and beliefs have indeed become remarkablyprevalent. As an illustration, Susan Okin argues that multiculturalismin Western countries is detrimental to women, since it is non-Westerncultural traditions that presumably support male violence againstwomen, female genital mutilation, rape and other deplorable practices.

As a number of IR scholars have noted, cross-border move-ments of peoples have challenged established definitions of national

225