Andrew Hagen

Does the United States or any another country have the right to invade a country like Cuba or Myanmar purely for the sake of protecting human rights? Should a tyrannical nation-state ever lose its sovereignty because of its tyrannical nature? These are key questions of the day. To answer them, the Canadian government commissioned a report, released in December of 2001. This report, the Responsibility to Protect has only increased in importance over time. (*)

Over the past decade, the UN Security Council has failed with regard to: Bosnia, Rwanda, the Sudan, Kosovo, and Iraq. Further failures seem certain. Is the case of Cuba strong enough to justify a humanitarian intervention? Myanmar? Zimbabwe? Is the need to protect people from tyranny, mass slaughter, or starvation so compelling as to justify an abrogation of state sovereignty? It may be, even at the risk of unsettling the balance of power in a region.

A large problem is with firmly responding to crises. Today, we must first muster up sufficient domestic support in the US and in other countries. Then, international support must be generated. By the time these steps are accomplished, if they are at all, hundreds of thousands or even millions may be dead.

The Canadian report challenges us to suggest possible solutions. One policy response would be to provide the UN Secretary-General with a standing armed force that could intervene anywhere in the world promptly. Such a force could fight tyrants, ethnic cleansers, or warlords where needed. Once the conflict is over, UN peacekeepers would be sent in. It’s not clear what would happen if the Secretary-General and the Security Council disagreed, however.

I am extremely wary of giving the United Nations a standing army. The UN is accountable to no one. No person in the world enjoys representation at the UN. The UN only recognizes representatives of nation-states and quasi-nation-states, like the Palestinian Authority. Yet, the need for an institutional response is apparent, rather than the status quo where a series of ad-hoc responses require the same overly bureaucratic hoops to be jumped through for every crisis. Could a new world institution be in order?

To me, this is the beginning of what may be a good argument for a new international organization to be comprised exclusively of the world’s liberal democracies. It would wrest from the UN Security Council the authority to decide when, if ever, an initiation of hostilities may be justified. The UN would continue in its present form, but certain responsibilities, primarily that of maintaining peace and security, would be superceded by an international organization of liberal democracies. Certain members would include: the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, South Africa, Poland, Germany, France, and the UK. Of course, many more countries are both democratic (majority rule) and liberal (minority rights are respected). The trick would be devising a procedure that would make the new organization effective in intervention but not dangerous to its founding ideals.

It’s an idea worth exploring.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2003 at 19:59 and is filed under Foreign policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.