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National sovereignty has to be overridden to avoid the horrors of crimes against humanity
Simon Jenkins writes on the shortcomings of liberal interventionism in Libya (By merely bolstering the weaker side, we are prolonging Libya's civil war, 1 April). His own response is to oppose the intervention altogether: "I want nothing to do with this… the dispute of eastern Libya with Gaddafi is not my dispute." More broadly, he casts liberal interventionism as a neo-imperialist project that lacks the courage of its convictions: "It claims to know what is best for the world and glories in bombing to get its way. But when push comes to shove it backs off."
But he should not forget that "non-interventionism" can itself be a barbaric doctrine, expressive of the indifference of power to human suffering. Each time we look at Picasso's rendition of Guernica we are reminded that, during the Spanish civil war, "non-intervention" was the pretext under which western democracies refused to help the republic while Franco, aided by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, terrorised Spain.
Jenkins says "the end of the cold war seemed to release an urge [by western powers] ... to use military might to reorder the world in the west's own image". But let's not forget what transpired during the cold war. Non-intervention was formally treated as sacrosanct but brutally violated by the US and USSR in the name of protecting their own "spheres of influence". Liberal interventionism was born out of resistance to this kind of military intervention, which reminds us more of Goya's Disasters of War than of anything to do with humanity.
Non-interventionism was no better after the cold war, when the western powers failed to put an end to the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Srebrenica and Sarajevo and refused to take any action that might have prevented the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
Liberal interventionism did not begin in the "west" but in India's invasion of East Pakistan in 1971, Tanzania's invasion of Uganda in 1978, and Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1978. There were always other interests at stake but in every case the interventions put an end to horror. The principle was established that when matters of genocide, crimes against humanity and mass killings are concerned, there are grounds to override national sovereignty.
The west has generally been reluctant to adopt the principles of liberal interventionism. The disastrous experience of US and Pakistani troops in Somalia between 1992-94 did not help. Liberal interventionism can be abused by powers and politicians. The invasion of Iraq is the obvious case in point, though lies about WMD had more to do with the justification of war than humanitarianism.
Jenkins may be right to say of William Hague's ill-informed formulation of liberal interventionism that it offers "a licence to attack virtually anyone you choose". However, it is Jenkins who misses the point. Those who treat non-intervention as absolute demonstrate a genuine imperialist disdain for the lives of non-western others.
