LRB: Stephen Holmes on the ethic of responsibility

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Mon Nov 18 11:26:03 PST 2002


Stephen Holmes in http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n22/holm01_.html:
> ...
> Putting an end to atrocities is a moral victory. But if the
> intervening force is incapable of keeping domestic support back home
> for the next phase, for reconstructing what it has shattered, the
> morality of its intervention is ephemeral at best. If political
> stability could be achieved by toppling a rotten dictator or if
> nations could be built at gunpoint, this problem would not be so
> pressing. Human rights cannot be reliably protected unless a locally
> sustained political authority is in place. But how well prepared is
> the United States for rebuilding a domestically supported political
> system in, say, Iraq, where a multi-ethnic society has, so far, been
> glued together by a regime of fear administered by a minority ethnic
> group? A functioning state can be built only with the active
> co-operation of well-organised domestic constituencies. It cannot be
> imported by an occupying military force. Where are such constituencies
> in Iraq? Do we believe that militarily powerful outsiders with minimal
> understanding of Iraqi society can conjure well-organised
> pro-democratic groupings out of thin air? Or is the Bush
> Administration, despite its rhetoric about democracy, planning to
> establish a government in postwar Iraq by, of and for the US military?
> The failure to think through, in advance, cogent answers to these
> questions is part of the dubious legacy bequeathed by genuinely
> well-meaning humanitarian interventionists to the considerably less
> well-meaning non-humanitarian interventionists who bestride the
> Potomac today.
> ...

I doubt if states, or state-like groups, ever act altruistically, because the people who come to have power within them can't achieve that power by acting altruistically, but only through aggressive self- and team interest. There is no reason for them to suddenly change their habits when they succeed in achieving dominant power; quite the contrary. Therefore, the "morality of intervention" is not ephemeral; it never could possibly have existed in the first place. Interventions occur because intervening rulers see some material interest to be defended or advanced through the intervention, not because they moralize. Moralizers drive busses and sweep floors.

And so, whether Iraq were rebuilt following destruction and conquest by the U.S. government would depend on whether the U.S. government saw an interest in doing so, as it saw an interest in rebuilding Germany after World War II: as a rampart or platform from which to conduct further war. As there is a good possibility that they also wish to destroy and conquer Iran, or at least cow its leadership, the prospects are hopeful, for a certain very thin meaning of _hope_. One must doubt that the policy theorists of the ruling class have failed to think this simple syllogism through.

Well-meaning humanitarian interventionists are not to blame for this situation, except insofar as they contribute to the obfuscations and delusions which protect the actual political mechanics involved -- and probably, rulers who felt the need of such obfuscations could easily purchase them if they were not volunteered. Therefore, I do not agree with the notion of a "dubious legacy" except in our little aviary of Left discourse, where in its turnings it has caught up Hitchens and his kind and caused them to flap off to join other flocks. Is this necessarily such a bad thing?

-- Gordon



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