International Intervention and Human Rights Abuse by State Actors

Once more, many thanks to my opponent and to any judges who may read this debate. Indeed, this one's been dense, but certainly one of the more engaging debates I've been a part of in a while. To explicitly clarify something that I assumed CON knew, my definition of hard power is Joseph Nye's, and it is Joeseph Nye's conceptual definition that CON's "framework" argument has thus far failed to refute. I mean, semantics are fun, but facts are facts: "hard power, is achieved through military threat or use" of force. (Stratiegic Studies Institute, United States Army) In that way, while I applaud CON's attempt to explicate how I've failed to counter his objection, I've not only not failed, I've rendered incoherent -to use his word- any possibility of CON's framework's viability. But of course, we're talking about international humanitarian military -which is why the second paragraph under his "framework" heading at once doesn't make much sense, and doesn't undermine anything I've said. So, I'm going to address CON's rebuttals, and then talk about my own case some more. I'll remind the judge that CON's cited example (Kenya) does not mean that the Responsibility to Protect, "fails" as both an international legal concept and as a justification for military intervention -but what transpired in Kenya only illustrates that wherever any state intervenes, intervention must be a viable means to ameliorate human rights abuses by state actors and that the intervening state must have an interest in stoping human rights abuses by state actors. The essential thrust of CON's argument is that because there were some problems in Kenya, no state should ever intervene to stop human rights abuses by state actors. What CON fails to grasp is that even if there was one instance of intervention's failure, that does not mean that all future cases of intervention will also fail and should therefore not even be attempted. Even if there were problems like CON cites, that doesn't mean that intervention in some other case would necessarily result in catastrophe. CON's little anecdote about military power being, "at best, a clumsy instrument of statecraft" is funny, namely because it doesn't mean what he thinks it means, but also because of how naive and obtuse it is. But, because I don't think CON knows what statecraft is, I'm going to define it for him. Statecraft "seeks through strategy to magnify the mass, relevance, impact, and irresistibility of power. It guides the ways the state deploys and applies its power abroad. These ways embrace the arts of war, espionage, and diplomacy." So, CON's article might justifiably conclude that military power might be a "clumsy" measure for a state to nation build, that is beyond the scope of this resolution because the resolution is not about the extent to which military force might be used to stop human rights abuses by state actors. Indeed, military force might very well be the only means by which an intervening state could coerce an abuser of human rights to stop brutalizing his or her people -and that would have to be the case for military intervention as articulated by the resolution, to be justified. I'd just like to remind my opponent and the judge, at this point in time, that this is a debate over the conditions under which military intervention to stop human rights abuse by state actors is justified. This debate's purpose is only to frame the conditions under which military force may be justifiably used to stop human right's abuses. This debate's purpose is not to, contrary to the kinds of arguments CON has been proffering, reflectively evaluate the successes of historical interventions in various times and places. So, the judge, then, must only consider those arguments which speak directly to that end. Subsequently, CON attempts to reconstruct his Conry article's relevance, with paltry success. Even granting the premise that "many regional conflicts are so deeply rooted that no outside party... will succeed in ending the fighting," what CON fails to recognize is that we're not talking about regional conflicts. We're talking about human rights abuses by state actors, and whether if (1) military intervention is a viable means to stop that abuse, and (2) the intervening state has an interest in stopping the abuse, that intervention is justified. But, even if some regional conflicts were an instance of human rights abuse by state actors, and even if those conflicts were irresolvable by external means, I am perfectly consistent in saying that in those cases, intervention as proscribed by the resolution wouldn't be justified because intervention in this hypothetical case wouldn't be a viable means to ameliorate human rights abuse. Indeed, I'm not arguing that in all cases where there are human rights abuses by state actors, that intervention is necessarily justified. Rather, I'm arguing that ONLY WHEN (1) military intervention is a viable means to stop human rights abuse, and (2) the intervening state has an interest in stopping that abuse, then is military intervention justified to stop human rights abuses by state actors. CON then deviates beyond the scope of the resolution while misstating my rebuttal in a prior round and proceeds to incorporate some interestingly irrelevant information before extrapolating on some structural problems with the UN. CON claims that I'm implicitly arguing for multilateral intervention, in egregious error. I never said that, nor will I say that, because the unilateral v. multilateral dichotomy speaks to 'whom will intervene if there are human rights abuses', but not a question of whether those states which do intervene are justified in doing so. Likewise, while I acknowledge that there are all kinds of problems with the UN, and the obstinance of certain P5 members of the security council in their recalcitrant obstruction whenever human rights abuses need to be stopped, (ahem, Russia, and China, I'm looking at you!), that's a separate issue beyond whether military intervention is justified because even if Russia and China veto a UNSC resolution authorizing the use of military force to stop human rights abuses by a state actor, that doesn't mean that a country which both could stop that abuse and had an interest in stopping that abuse would not be justified (in a moral sense, as justification for this debate was framed in the first round) in intervening. CON attempts to piece back together one of his arguments by stating "due to a reticence to put boots on the ground for solely humanitarian reasons, nations tend to drop bombs and take other, more extreme measures that do more harm than good." I think he meant "reluctance" rather than "reticence" because the latter doesn't really fit, but I'm not concerned. The reason I'm not concerned is simple: even if states want to do more than intervene (by any military means) for humanitarian purposes, that doesn't mean that intervening states loose justification for intervention for humanitarian reasons because there are other interests in play. In the matter of CON's self interest point, while the realm of international politics and world affairs is always already more or less unstable, that doesn't mean that states don't have an interest in facilitating stability at all. While also no state necessarily has an interest in facilitating universal stability, the reason that Conry's logic is without merit centralizes on the reality that all states have at least some interest in stability in some place because in the absence of stability, the kind of peace required for commerce to take place, for citizens to live their lives and indeed for their own society to function is imminently jeopardized to the extent that stability is lost. So, even if the world is never going to be perfectly stable, that doesn't mean that the pursuit of stability is always in vain. Ergo, Conry's logic dissipates like the smoke in mirrors that it is. CON claims that I've ignored a lot of his arguments, which really isn't true. I've dismissed all the irrelevant stuff he's written, because it's irrelevant, or at least not directly on point -as has been the case with virtually every example he's offered because this debate is not about evaluating historical interventions. This debate is about framing the conditions under which military intervention to a very specific end is justified. In conclusion, what CON had to do here is argue that even if a state can ameliorate human rights abuses by state actors by intervening militarily, and even if the prospectively intervening state has an interest in doing so, that state is not justified in intervening militarily. CON didn't do that. Instead, he wanted to evaluate historical interventions and offer reasons why they were problematic, and incorporate a plethora of irrelevant information that doesn't speak to whether or not military intervention is justified if it is a viable means to stop human rights abuses and the intervening state has an interest in stopping human right abuses. Specifically, this debate"s purpose is not to state specific cases where military intervention would have been a good idea, but rather to conceptually frame the conditions under which humanitarian military intervention was justified. I argued, (1) international humanitarian military intervention must be a viable means to remediate human rights abuses, if it is to be justifiable and (2) international humanitarian military intervention must be in the intervening state"s best interest, if it is to be justifiable. CON never directly refuted either of those points, so they still stand and PRO has won this debate. It's been fun! Peace and Love, YYW -- More Sources: Strategic Studies institute: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil... Statecraft, defined: http://www.au.af.mil...