On Sun, 17 Aug 2008, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> This isn't hard. Russia wasn't acting in its own self-defense, so
> technically, they should have done nothing. If they wanted to stop it,
> convent an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and dispatch
> neutral troops as peacekeepers. That is what they and we and every other
> country is committed to do by international law.
>
> War is ONLY permitted in self defense in exigent circumstances if the UN
> can't get there first, and only until the UN does get there. That's what
> they were supposed to do.
>
> If you believe in unilateral humanitarian intervention like NATO in
> Serbia/Kosovo, then use absolutely minimal force. That is what just war
> theory tells you to do Take out the missile launchers and stop.
Funny. As I remember Kosovo (a) it wasn't authorized by the UN, and (b) they bombed Belgrade, far from Kosovo, killing 2000 people and including lots of specifically targetted civilian sites including TV stations and embassies.
So it would seem that if you believe in unilaterial humanitarian intevention like NATO in Kosovo, this follows your model.
[To make clear: I'm using "you" in the sense of one. I'm not attributing these sentiments to andie, who seems personally to be clearly against them based on his defense of the originally designed UN operating principles. I'm just using this as a jumping off point to consider what's happened to those principles and why they no are no longer the operative principles of legitimacy.]
This is in fact the main problem with the humanitarian intervention model. By making protection of minority human rights its first principle -- and by not making UN approval necessary to it -- it basically gives free license to aggressive war, precisely the thing that the whole UN based structure of international law was set up to stop in the first place.
It's not that the guys who set the UN didn't care about protecting minority rights. That was pretty high on their mind. But stopping aggressive war was for them the first principle of international law. And using the excuse of protecting minority rights to launch aggressive invasions was not only a favorite of Hitler's, and of most imperialist actions during the golden age of imperialism, but it's been the favorite excuse throughout history. So it was clear to them that if being against aggressive war was their first principle, the other one would have to be sacrificed to it.
It's unfortunately not clear to most humanitarian interventionists that if they reverse the order, and make protection of minority rights their first principle, they need to create a new structure of international law, and a new UN substitute to go with it -- one that could be depended on to authorize it, and without whose authorization it wouldn't be done. Because otherwise, if this principle is elevated above the UN, it will consume the entire existing structure of international law in a sandwhirl of legitimated aggressive wars. Just like the founders foresaw.
And it's not mere impatience and contempt (although that plays a role) that has led humanitarian interventionists to end-run the UN. It's because it so often stands in its way, and rightly so in its own terms, precisely because it's based on these old principles (and because of its constitutive structure, where the executive is the committee of the victors of WWII (plus China as the not-Japan substitute)). It's not an accident that the UN didn't authorize the invasion of Kosovo. It didn't do it because Russia vetoed it. And if they followed the rules, Russia would have continued to veto it until the end of time, and would have been right until the end of time based on these old principles.
The interventionists had a choice, the old principles or the new. They chose the new. Russia is complying with them.
****
BTW, although it isn't part of the main argument, IIUC, Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia are UN-mandated, exactly the same as Australia peacekeepers were in East Timor. The UN mandate was part of a 1994 treaty that ended the Ossetia revolt. And those peacekeepers were personally attacked, and the zone they were defending was invaded. So although this wouldn't authorize a Kosovo-size response -- which I should point out they didn't come near to doing -- it would seem to make the minimal response -- repelling the attack -- fully justified and authorized under UN rules of proxy peacekeeping.
And repelling the attack and securing the area could be easily be extended to attacking air bases and military bases from which the attacks were launched to make sure they weren't relaunched -- especially when it seems that that the defending force has inferior equipment and so can't secure the safety of its men unless it destroys the sources. Once peacekeeping is extended to proxy forces, reasonable military doctrine like that seems grandfathered too.
Michael