comments (Mar/Apr 2010)

Narrow reading and flawed analysis can lead to morally bankrupt opinion. Awful, just awful.

Posted by Michael Duncan | May 14, 2010 12:48 AM EST

I agree with much of what the author (whose books I have enjoyed) and disagree with quite a bit too. But I will confine my comments to one issue which, it seems to me, that analysts such as the author always overlook. Intervention by the West in the Third World, even as broadly defined to include the Balkans, always smacks of Imperialism. The 500 years of Western Imperialism leading up to 1947, and the decolonization movement globally thereafter, cannot just be wished away. No matter how you cut it, no matter how loud, or indeed, sincere, the professions of a desire to do good and the utter selflessness of motives, it still comes down to Europeans, mostly Western Europeans, and their offshoots (Americans, Canadians, Australians), attempting to dictate to Africans, Asians, Oceanians, and other indigenous peoples everywhere. Some African politician or another once said that Africans, just like Western Europeans, must have the right to rule themselves badly. "We" simply have no business telling these folks what to do, and whatever the faults of their governments, it is not as if they don't have precedents in Western Europe and its Settler States. And it isn't as if only the Germans committed genocide. So did the Belgians in the Congo and the Americans in California. Not to mention the trans Atlantic slave trade which implicated, at one time or another, the USA, France, the UK, Spain, Portugul, the Netherlands, and probably more nations that I am overlooking. And it is not exactly a coincidence that the desirablity and legitimacy of full, Westphalian sovereignty only came under question when folks in the Third World finally overthrew their Western colonial masters and established nation states of their own. Somehow, the West was able to endure all of the above mentioned atrocities, and others as well, at its own hands, but it can't, out of some sense of morality and good conscience, abide by ethnic cleansing in the Balkans or the abuse of women in Afghanistan or even mere civil war (admittedly a nasty one) in the Sudan. No, now governments must be subject to some international, supranational "law." And that law is, of course, always to be formulated by the West itself and/or the institutions it dominates. And, just as obviolsly, that "law" must always be enforced by Westerners against non Westerners. Never vice versa. From any perspective but our own, the blatant neo Imperialism of such a regime of "law" is beyond debate. And that deligitimizes the entire enterprize beyond saving. It was always, even under the original Imperialism, the practice to garb the attempts to dominate and control in terms of what "was good" for those being dominated. Often, as now, in terms of "freeing" them from some local form of domination. Or "modernizing" their practices so that they conform to "universal" norms. Or simply to prevent the harms associated with "chaos." Thus the British in India and the French in Algeria, as long ago as the early 19th Century. The French were saying the same thing about the rights of women in Algeria in the 1800's as the Russians said about them in Afghanistan in the 1980's, and as the US says about them there now, and in Iran, Somalia, etc. At some point, an end must be called to this paternalistic, racist worldview. The West has no mandate to remake the world in its alleged image. And that is true no matter how many treaties on "human rights" and the like it rams through the institutions it dominates and bullies, bribes and blackmails weak Third World governments to sign off on.

Posted by ruddyturnstone | April 11, 2010 12:43 AM EST

I think it is naive to think that we can be purely humanistic. The Western involvement in former Yugoslavia was partially motivated by the desire to poke Moscow in the eye by dismembering its ally Serbia. The Iraq invasion was also motivated by oil. Part of what caused the failure in Somalia and Rwanda was that the US missed such egoistic motivations there. The other side of those egoistic motives is that they often cause and deteriorate the conflict in the first place. It was the West that destabilized Yugoslavia in the first place by prematurely recognizing its separatist republics. Anyone in former Yugoslavia knows how US in 1992 ambassador Zimmermann encouraged Izetbegovic to withdraw from an agreement that would have solved the Bosnian conflict. There is also the problem that humanitarianism has a narrow look. Belarus is seen as an utterly not free society. But it has much less prisoners per capita as the US. And while Belarus had a few suspicious political killings it may very well be that the US kils more innocent people who just have been convicted to death on false evidence.

Posted by Wim Roffel | April 7, 2010 3:21 AM EST

A valuable analysis that would have been improved if it had put the current 'resposibility to protect' UN doctrine into this historical context.

Posted by James Ingram | March 21, 2010 1:50 AM EST

The article does not distinguish between genuine attempts to foster human rights and the thin lies, disguised as humanitarian concern, proffered to justify the violent expansion of the imperialist power of the United States and other rich nations. Setting aside false compassion, like the unjustified invasion of Iraq, the question of how to deal with international human rights abuses remains, but it needs to be discussed honestly.

Posted by Bee | March 19, 2010 2:09 PM EST

Fascinating article. It has always surprised me that history is rarely cited when deciding whether to intervene in another nation or region. Why would countries with such bloody nation-building histories of their own wish to visit that on another country? There is a range from anarchy to tyranny on which every nation falls and often changes position during its history. Why does the current position of one nation give it the right to decide the position of another? And how often have empires claimed that they are helping the very people they are killing, selling, enslaving? The ancient Romans in Europe, the Belgian Congo under Leopold spring to mind right away.

Posted by michael | March 18, 2010 12:03 PM EST