The Temptation To Protect

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about our latest military escapade in Libya. I've struggled with the dilemma between allowing atrocities to occur on one hand, and on the other hand stopping them but setting the stage for worse. Initially, I tentatively supported an intervention. It looked like Qadaffi was going to go in to Benghazi and other rebellious eastern cities and commit horrific atrocities (are there any other kind?) against civilians who dared stand against him. Forgive me; I couldn't help but see ourselves a few years hence in them. And so, even though the motivations of our elite were less than pure (Can you say "oil", or "resource competition with China"?), one outcome of the attack would be to, at least for the moment, spare thousands or even tens of thousands of innocent lives. This line of thinking falls in with the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect: essentially since we have the power to stop an event, we bear some responsibility if we choose not to stop it. Certainly this doctrine has moral force on an individual and intranational level, else why are we outraged when onlookers watch a murder and do nothing, or when a nation leaves those stricken by a natural disaster to starve and die with callous indifference? Yet the doctrine also has limits and boundaries on those same levels: there are some events too large or too dangerous for any ordinary individual to affect directly, and there are interventions worse than the crimes that they seek to stop or prevent. The second point is the most relevant for the discussion of the responsibility to protect on an international scale.

Lord Acton famously said: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This I think is the maxim that must guide our thinking when we are tempted to intervene with force for humanitarian reasons. We feel responsible because we have the military power to stop it; in fact with a military force more powerful in relative terms than any since ancient Rome, we have close to absolute physical power. And it has absolutely corrupted and nearly destroyed us. In this realization though, is the answer to the dilemma: give up the power, remove the ability to intervene, and eliminate the temptation to protect.

Giving up the power to protect on an international scale by demilitarizing our society does not relieve us of the responsibility to protect, it only limits our ability to do so violently. As part of rebuilding our own civil society and shattered moral authority, we must create and support institutions that promote human rights, expose abuses of human rights, and prosecute crimes against humanity wherever they may occur. These actions, implemented with vigor and transparency, will prevent the need for many interventions. Future miscreants may self-limit their crimes when they know they will be pursued to the ends of the Earth in the name of justice. Here is another relevant Acton quote in closing: "Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity."

"When donkeys fly", you say. Well yes, for now, until they do.