Dr. Lucas addresses what is likely to be a central moral issue of international relations in the 21^st Century: when is it appropriate to override the presumption of national sovereignty for humanitarian reasons? I take there to be two parts of Dr. Lucas’s paper. The first half argues for the descriptive claim that there is no way to explain all recent humanitarian military interventions by appeal to realist or neo-realist theories. I will leave discussion of this descriptive claim to political scientists so that I can focus on the second part of Dr. Lucas’s paper, which raises the normative question of when it is justifiable to intervene in the affairs of other states for moral reasons.

Dr. Lucas expresses broad support for Secretary Albright’s endorsement of using military force for humanitarian reasons by claiming that "if the defense of liberty, the enforcement of justice, and the protection of human rights and the hopes of human flourishing do not constitute sufficient justification for the use of military force, then nothing does." He enunciates a clear Kantian moral principle in the "interventionist imperative" which yields a prima facie obligation to intervene when we are in a position to prevent "clearly recognizable injustices." At the same time he expresses the strong reservation that if the Albright Doctrine commits us to acting on this imperative, we may be forgetting the wisdom of the Weinberger Doctrine, which reminds us that whenever we intervene—and Weinberger had in mind conventional rather than humanitarian interventions—we had better be more sure than we have been in the past that we know what we are doing. Lucas ends by warning that whereas the Weinberger doctrine wisely places severe restrictions on the use of military force, the Albright Doctrine relaxes those constraints and "broadens (often to the point of severe ambiguity) the range of political objectives in which the use of military force may be justified."

I think Dr. Lucas is right to remind us that the danger of our intervening and "not knowing what we are doing" applies when we are motivated by concepts of morality just as it does when we are impelled by notions of national interest. But I think his criticism of the Albright Doctrine, in relation to Weinberger’s, confuses two questions. One question is whether it is appropriate to intervene in the affairs of nations not only for conventional reasons of national interest but for humanitarian reasons as well. A second question is whether we should require a higher standard of evidence than we have employed in the past before we conclude that any proposed intervention, conventional or humanitarian, is feasible and can accomplish its objectives. Secretary Albright’s position addresses the first question and challenges the realist idea that the only acceptable reason for intervention is national interest. It does not, however, address the second question. There is no reason that we cannot interpret and apply the Albright Doctrine in a way that is consistent with Weinberger’s demand for a higher standard of evidence before engaging in any foreign intervention.

With this in mind, I would like to advance the discussion of humanitarian intervention in a way that is nonetheless consistent with Dr. Lucas’s two main claims: first, that we do have some moral obligation to respond to horrendous violations of human rights; and second, that we should be wary of an "engineering mentality" that sees military intervention as the solution to every humanitarian problem.

Though there is no necessary reason to interpret the Albright Doctrine as undermining Weinberger’s admonition to be more cautious, we might reasonably ask whether humanitarian interventions create special problems that are not shared by conventional military interventions. I think that they do, in at least three ways. First, they presume that we know what is morally good for people of another culture, which is arguably more difficult than knowing what is best for ourselves. When we try to do this, we run an especially high risk of not knowing what we are doing. Second, given the tragically large number of humanitarian crises and the widespread violations of human rights in the world today, it is difficult to find a reasonable basis to select which ones merit our making the human and monetary sacrifices required for humanitarian intervention. Third, humanitarian intervention violates an implied contract with military personnel who volunteer to put their lives in harm’s way only for the furtherance and protection of their own nation’s interests.

I will respond to the last concern first both because it is the easiest to dispense with and because the response points in a direction that will also help address the first two issues. One might deal with the implied contract with the military in one of two ways. First, once the Albright Doctrine is well established, the earlier implied contract no longer exists and anyone volunteering for the American military would be well informed that he or she may be asked to risk life and limb not only to protect the national interest but to enforce compelling moral values. Second, and I think preferably, one might look beyond unilateral intervention by the American military and propose that the United States support the existence of a volunteer international police force to which many countries, or the people of many countries, would contribute. Perhaps eventually such a force would be totally under the authority of an international organization such as the United Nations. But even if each nation retains the authority to choose whether to contribute to each particular humanitarian effort, those volunteering for the force would know that its purpose is, to quote Dr. Lucas, "the defense of liberty, the enforcement of justice, and the protection of human rights and the hopes of human flourishing."

To propose that military intervention be internationally supervised, or at least internationally sanctioned, also goes some distance toward addressing the first concern about humanitarian intervention, that we need to presume that we know what is best for the people of another culture. If intervention needs to be sanctioned by an international body such as the United Nations, and especially if such a body is restructured so that non-Western countries are more fairly represented, the danger of intervention based on not understanding another culture’s distinctive values is at least lessened. There are, of course, cases where we have good reason to believe that we do know what is best for the people of another culture. We know that it is best for Bosnians and Kosovars not to be massacred. The more difficult cases are those like the enslavement of women to local priests which Dr. Lucas mentions, or the much-discussed issue of female genital mutilation. If an international consensus exists that a practice is so horrendous that it warrants intervention, we then have some assurance that the intervention is not based merely on an ethnocentric American response or, equally dangerous, a self-interested response disguised as a moral one. Of course a mere consensus is not sufficient to protect the "minority rights" of a distinctive culture; nor does it assure that any international intervention will be effective and "know what it is doing." But it does provide what the Weinberger Doctrine aims for, a higher standard of evidence before embarking on military intervention.

The requirement that humanitarian intervention be international rather than unilateral also helps to address the problem of selecting among the seemingly limitless number of tragedies that might call for our attention. But it leaves open the question of what criteria an international body should use to decide when intervention is appropriate or what criteria the United States should use to determine when to urge intervention. Clearly there is a strong initial role for utilitarian considerations: how great is the disaster one aims to avert, how large are the risks for the intervening forces, and how great is the likelihood that intervention will succeed in its humanitarian aims. I believe that the numbers do matter, and perhaps in that respect I disagree with Dr. Lucas. But beyond the utilitarian considerations is an ethically more interesting question that Dr. Lucas’s paper points to and which confronts both the difficulty of presuming that we know what is best for another culture and the need to select among all humanitarian causes those in which intervention is appropriate. The question might be put this way: beyond massacres and genocides, when is it appropriate to override national sovereignty in order to protect human rights that are not recognized by the societies that would be the targets of intervention?

As Dr. Lucas suggests, Michael Walzer, starting from his legalist paradigm, objects to most such interventions. I think it will be helpful to examine the moral foundation of his resistance. On Walzer’s view national sovereignty is not merely something recognized by international law or a relic of a tribal mentality or an obstacle to the achievement of international human rights. National sovereignty has a moral foundation, the protection of distinctive ways of life. If we are committed to the idea that there are a plurality of ways of life worth preserving and that individuals have a right to live in a community that protects distinctive values, then there is a strong burden of proof for anyone who recommends intervention in the name of supposedly "universal human rights" that a local community does not recognize. According to Walzer, any such intervention is actually a violation of human rights, the "rights of contemporary men and women to live as members of a historic community and to express their inherited culture through political forms worked out among themselves [my emphasis]." The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that men and women are entitled to equal rights with respect to marriage, but Walzer would presumably insist that this conflicts with the right of individuals to live in an historic community with a way of life that sees the roles of men and women quite differently.

Actual interventions challenge governments rather than whole communities, and Walzer’s position is that outsiders should start with the presumption that there is a "fit" between the community and the government. Even in an undemocratic country where the people within a community would have a right to revolt, outsiders must act as if the state is legitimate "unless the absence of ‘fit’ between the government and community is radically apparent." This clearly applies in cases of massacre or government-sponsored slavery. When pressed, Walzer is willing to include the "virtual slavery" of South African blacks under apartheid as rising to a level where outside intervention would be appropriate. But Walzer places the Somoza government in Nicaragua on the other side of the line. He claims that although revolution against the oppressive Somoza regime was appropriate, it would be wrong for foreigners to intervene because then

The line Walzer draws thus depends not only on the degree of oppression but on who is doing the oppressing. Had the Somoza government not been Nicaraguan, the Sandinista struggle would have been one of national liberation, the Nicaraguan people would have been at war with foreigners, and intervention to help them would have been appropriate. Even in South Africa, Walzer’s case for outside intervention depends not only on his seeing apartheid as "virtual slavery" but also on his recognizing the struggle of blacks as one of national liberation. He notes that even the Republic of South Africa regarded blacks as a separate nation. The moral basis for respecting national sovereignty is that it protects a distinctive way of life, but there was no way of seeing the national sovereignty of the Republic of South Africa as including blacks when it exercised its protective role. But if the oppression had been the work of a black government, the case for overriding national sovereignty would be much weaker.

Walzer’s defense of national sovereignty has been criticized for implying that "domestic tyrants are safe," a point Walzer is actually quick to affirm. The line must be drawn "to rule out interventions in cases of ‘ordinary’ oppression," and, according to Walzer, there is a significant moral difference between oppression by one’s own government (however undemocratic) and oppression by a foreign occupying power. The Republic of South Africa was more like a foreign power in relation to blacks under apartheid. In contrast, though the Somoza government’s values may have been alien to the majority of Nicaraguans, the struggle between the Sandinistas and the Somoza government was an internal Nicaraguan one; therefore, foreign intervention was not appropriate.

The weight Walzer gives to national sovereignty addresses several concerns Dr. Lucas and I have raised. It adds a dose of the Weinberger Doctrine’s caution to Secretary Albright’s interventionist imperative. Respect for national sovereignty as the protector of a distinctive culture whose values we must respect also addresses my concern about imposing moral values—whether American or internationalist—on another culture. At the same time it offers a basis for deciding where intervention is appropriate in a world where abuse of human rights is so widespread; specifically, it allows overriding of national sovereignty only where the absence of "fit" between government and community is radically apparent. The moral basis for respecting sovereignty is our obligation to respect communal autonomy and integrity; for example, the right of Nicaraguans as a group to shape their own political institutions and the right of individual Nicaraguans to live under institutions so shaped. When the government itself fails to act in the name of the community it purports to represent, it loses its presumptive legitimacy.

I agree with Walzer that we should impose a stronger burden of proof in order to justify acting against the values of another community. Communal autonomy counts for something—morally. The problem with Walzer’s standard is that it ignores that, increasingly, even most legitimate governments do not represent unified national communities and that in practice the values and the "ways of life" of national minorities are at best ignored and quite frequently suppressed. Now that apartheid has been overcome, what community must South African sovereignty protect? Only the majority Xhosa community or the distinctive Zulu and Afrikaaner ways of life as well? Must Turkish sovereignty protect the culture, language, and way of life of those so-called "mountain Turks" whom we know as the Kurds? Must Israeli sovereignty protect the way of life of Palestinian citizens, not to mention those in the West Bank and Gaza?

Walzer does write separately about intervention to aid national liberation movements and demands for secession, but this focus is an inadequate response to human rights violations for at least three reasons. First, many human rights violations involve ethnic groups where secession is not an immediate issue; for example, the Shiite Muslims of Iraq or the Copts of Egypt. Second, some groups, such as devout Muslims in Turkey, homosexuals in Zimbabwe, and women in many countries are suppressed, but there is no element of ethnicity that could possibly be the basis for national liberation and the attainment of sovereignty. Third, we should not promote a world in which human rights for minorities, even ethnic or national minorities, are protected only through secession. Unless we want to see the world splinter into as many nation-states as there are ethnic groups, national sovereignty should not be invoked as the best protector for each distinctive way of life. I think there is good reason to work for the acceptance of tolerant, diverse, multinational and multicultural states not because this is an American value to be imposed on other cultures but because the realities of migration, whether voluntary or forced, have rendered obsolete the concept of ethnically or culturally homogenous states.

But the problem is deeper than this. Even if we could somehow insure that governments have constitutional protections for both ethnic and other minorities, this will still leave many cases where we, from an American or Western or even internationalist point of view, are offended by a culture’s whole way of life. And we are not only offended; we have good reason to think that some cultures (not just governments) violate human rights. Imagine an Ibo culture living the traditional life as Achebe describes it in his novel. If a central Nigerian government tried to stamp out the Ibo’s traditional practices, such as banishing infants to suffer and die in the forest as the gods demand, then Walzer would say that the Ibo’s only recourse is to mobilize support for secession and appeal to the outside world for help. On my preferred scenario, minorities should not have to secede and we would work for a Nigerian government that respects the distinctive ways of life of minority cultures. Well, there is something wrong with this picture. Obviously individual rights may be violated not only by governments backed by national sovereignty but by minority cultures as well. And if the traditional Ibo have a right to protect their way of life against intrusions from the Nigerian government, Christian missionaries, and Scandinavians from Human Rights Watch, a similar case could be made by minority cultures that enslave girls or require that they be subjected to the longstanding traditional practice of genital cutting.

Neither Dr. Lucas nor I has offered an answer to the moral perplexity which the "reluctant interventionist" feels in the face of such dilemmas. I have suggested two ways of curbing our interventionist impulses: first, that we should work toward international rather than unilateral American intervention and second, in agreement with Walzer, that the protection of cultures and their distinctive ways of life is a moral imperative that must be weighed alongside the goals of any proposed humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, I have criticized Walzer’s reliance on national sovereignty as a mechanism for this protection and recommended that we work toward the acceptance of multicultural and multinational states with constitutional protection for minorities. Finally, I have simply repeated Dr. Lucas’s disturbing reminder that there seem to be minority cultures whose practices seem unworthy of protection.

It may be some consolation to realize that these are probably also cases where military intervention is either unlikely to be effective, would entail unacceptable risks, or would be too blunt an instrument for bringing about humanitarian change. And this is not only a consolation but a helpful instruction that leads to my final point, that we not only need criteria for determining the range of acceptable humanitarian military interventions but also need to devote more of our resources to exploring non-military measures that will reduce the need for future humanitarian military actions. Many others have discussed coercive and non-coercive forms of non-military intervention, such as sanctions, international war crimes trials, withholding foreign aid, and promoting democratic institutions. Particularly important, I think, are measures to curb the power of state-controlled media to foment extreme nationalist agendas, something which occurred in both Rwanda and Bosnia.

In exploring non-military measures, we should not only be concerned with the climate of other countries. As educators we have the power to influence the intellectual climate in this country more than we can either directly affect American foreign policy or influence the cultures of other countries. So I would like to close by very briefly addressing the important and rather different concern that Dr. Lucas expresses earlier in his paper; namely, that the United States often makes excuses to avoid its moral responsibilities to help endangered and vulnerable peoples. I think the most important single response for us, as moral philosophers, is to promote the idea of a cosmopolitan education in the United States.

To summarize what could be a sustained argument over each of its premises: the effectiveness of the United States to respond to humanitarian disasters depends in large part on its political will to act; political will in a democracy depends on gaining support of the people at large; the American people will be motivated to support national sacrifice to help aid people in need to the extent that they are able to form some kind of emotional identification with them; and this emotional identification can be enhanced by a cosmopolitan education. A disaster killing hundreds in England evokes a stronger desire among Americans to act than a similar disaster killing thousands in Rwanda. It is not so much a failure of altruism but a failure to understand and identify with more distant peoples that prevents many Americans from supporting humanitarian intervention. A cosmopolitan education among citizens could lead, in the long term, to a demand for better informed elected public officials and for less provincial news media. It could create immunity to jingoistic appeals by opportunistic politicians and stronger support for international organizations. Of course cosmopolitan education will not transform human nature or enlarge the average person’s sense of "family" to include the world at large. But it can increase both interest in and knowledge about other cultures and make it more likely that the American government will act, in cooperation with other governments, to promote human rights and human flourishing. And when it does act, it should be more likely to know what it is doing.

Elias Baumgarten

March 1999 (Delivered at Pacific Division of American Philosophical Association meetings)