MANDATES, INSTRUMENTS, RESULTS: OUTLINING A CONSEQUENCE-BASED ETHIC OF INTERVENTION

Marie-Jolle Zahar Assistant Professor Department of Political Science Universit de Montral marie-joelle.zahar@umontreal.ca

Paper presented at the 46th annual convention of The International Studies Association March 1-5, 2005, Hawaii

Paper abstract-If interested in a copy of the paper, please contact the author

In the post-Cold War era, several instances of "humanitarian intervention" have challenged politicians and analysts to strike a balance between respect for state sovereignty and the defence of human rights. In the wake of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda, the Security Councils inability (some would even say unwillingness) to respond to serious violations of fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law raised the spectre of unilateral interventions outside the framework of the United Nations. The crisis between Albanian Kosovars and the regime of then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic would provide the first litmus test in this search for the aforementioned balance. The North Atlantic Treat Organizations humanitarian war in Kosovo in 1999 brought to the fore the longstanding legal, political and moral debate surrounding the doctrine of humanitarian intervention (Simons 2001). When and under what circumstances could states intervene militarily in another state, without Security Council authorisation, to prevent gross violations of fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law? What connection, if any, is there between military intervention and postconflict peace building and reconstruction efforts? What duties and responsibilities devolve upon the international community in the post-conflict stage? The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty has attempted to answer these questions producing a much-discussed report entitled The Responsibility to

Protect (ICISS 2001). Meanwhile, decision-makers have repeatedly invoked human rights
and IHL abuses giving interventions in Timor-Leste, Afghanistan and Iraq a partial if not full humanitarian garb; however, not all managed to secure Security Council authorisation to use force.

The debate over the legitimacy of intervention outside of the framework of the United Nations rages on in the wake of the US decision to send troops into Iraq in spring of 2003. However, this debate is often cast in terms of moral vs. legal arguments with the political dimension of intervention receding in the background. Most arguments have been cast either as defence of the principle of sovereignty or as an impassioned case for the priority of moral considerations. In this paper, I make a case for practical considerations to re-enter the debate, thus steering away from juridical and philosophical approaches to the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. This, in part, is a pragmatic decision. Given the number of contemporary and foreseeable crisis flashpoints, and given the likelihood that these may see serious violations of fundamental human rights as well as transgressions of international humanitarian law, humanitarian interventions, as this new breed of military operation is now labelled, are likely to happen with or without proper authorisation from the Security Council. I also argue that humanitarian intervention cannot be artificially separated from peace building and reconstruction efforts in the morrow of military operations. I therefore challenge what I perceive as a debate on moral ends and military means that does not give due regard to non-military instruments. In other terms, I contend that much of the debate focuses on the criteria and conditions for just interventions (mirroring debates over jus ad bellum and jus in bello) but that there is a relative paucity of systematic analysis of jus in paci. The paper therefore seeks to propose criteria for a consequence-based "ethic" of intervention that does not separate the military operation proper from larger efforts at peace building and post-conflict reconstruction.