Humanitarian War

The seeming oxymoron “humanitarian war” refers to international interventions by conventional forces to halt mass killing of ethnic, racial, religious, or tribal minorities during unrest and civil war usually in Third World and failing countries.

Sometimes, a credible threat of intervention or offer of a safe and comfortable exile can persuade a tyrant to abdicate. Idi Amin, Jean-Baptiste Aristide, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Farouk I, Fernando Marcos, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Reza Pahlavi all accepted exile. Unfortunately, many refuse, and others such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Wilhelm II were exiled only after defeat in major wars.

One dilemma in humanitarian war is protecting human rights without compromising the principle of national sovereignty, particularly when a recognized government accused of the crimes represents a majority of the population whose wishes the intervention will override. A second dilemma is finding a basis for violating Just War traditions (Chapter 13) of only fighting defensive wars, particularly in the case of non-signers of the Helsinki Accords. A third dilemma stems from the possibility of turning victims into victors who become avenging victimizers. Furthermore, if interveners have no national interests at stake, they tend to keep their actions too small to be effective to minimize casualties, costs, and political opposition at home.

An exception to keeping the investment small occurs when national interests are at stake—but in the eyes of many proponents of humanitarian wars this sullies the purity of motive they demand. This was the case when the US chose to resume the war against Iraq in 2003. Saddam Hussein clearly was a criminal who had murdered many of his own people, but some groups who wanted to see Hussein gone opposed intervention as it might also advance US national interests. There were, of course, many additional reasons for resuming the war (Chapter 13, note 3 and below notes 14 and 16).

New problems arose with success, as they often do. Or, as George Bush said while standing under the infamous Mission Accomplished sign, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was the easy part. Next came the tough part of establishing a capable, untainted government acceptable to Iraqis—a task the early US departure left incomplete. This surrendered hard-won regional influence, presumably a goal of the war, to Iran.