DDO Tournament - Top Tier: Intervention to Stop Rights Abuses

Thanks to TN05 for a super debate! At this time, I will rebut Pro's case (his R2 comments). I will offer some off-case comments as well.PRO's CASEC1: Helping the Mistreated is Morally PermissibleClearly, helping those in need is a good thing, from a moral standpoint. However, we must situate this idea is a broader context. If I help person X by violating the rights of entity Y, we complicate the matter, because violations of rights are not morally permissible. Also, if I attempt to help someone in need but end up doing more harm than good, the morality of my action can also be questioned. Surely, in a void, helping others in need can be good, but the globe is not a void, and so we cannot make the statement that helping people in need is "ALWAYS" good, esp. if it violates the rights of others or produces net harms.C2: Government For and By the PeoplePro asserts that "a just government ruled by the people will protect the rights of the people." He implies that any unjust government opens itself up to intervention under the R2P doctrine--in effect forfeiting its sovereignty. First of all, let me argue than a just government is not a perfect government. A just government should protect the rights of its people on balance, but no government can reasonably be expected to perfectly protect all its citizens' rights. Consider that Guantanamo Bay can be viewed as a breach of human rights (e.g. due process), but that does not mean that the U.S. government is illegitimate or unjust as a whole. This sort of fits with the idea that good people can do bad things; the same is true of governments. Following from this, because the U.S. is still a "just" government, it retains its sovereignty and its claim against intervention, even under R2P.Similarly, human rights abuses occur worldwide, and in most cases it is not at the hands of some genocidaire backed by the government, but rather rebel groups like ISIS in Iraq, Basque Separatists in Spain, or Boko Haram in Nigeria. The outside world cannot intervene in those instances (without prior permission from the sitting governments) because the governments themselves were duly elected and law-abiding, on balance.Let me point out also that "R2P is not yet law, is not yet legally binding on the States." [1] Under the status quo then, R2P has yet to be codified as law, and so it is extremely dubious as to whether the doctrine can be used to justify interventionism in the first place. Therefore, Pro is false to state: "international community is obligated [by R2P] to help end human rights abuses when needed." In fact, the R2P document is merely a theory the UN has been developing, and Pro has yet to justify and warrant why any of us should be the logic underlying it.Why is the U.S. responsible for the rights of a person in Myanmar. There is no moral, ethical, or legal relationship between the U.S. and that person, and so it is absurd to claim that an obligation exists to help that individual. As for moral permissibility, questions of sovereignty and of whether the U.S. should waste resources better spent elsewhere arise. If the U.S. is part of a social contract, it's primary duty is to benefit its own citizens; so unless there is net benefit to be gained via intervention, the U.S. should not do so.C3: Covert InterventionPro cannot pick and choose what types of intervention he wishes to defend. He is required by the resolution to defend the broad idea of intervention, which includes support for opposition parties and such, but it also includes military intervention. But, let's address his actual arguments. Pro does an excellent job rebutting the usefulness and morality of sanctions for me. He states: "For one, many countries that were formerly isolated (like early communist China) simply grew too powerful to ignore, and many countries that engage in abuses (like Russia and present-day China) are already too powerful to ignore. For other countries like Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, the isolation isn't really doing much - the governments simply don't care that they are being isolated and use it to their advantage. Additionally, this policy can result in economic harm to the people, who are not the ones at fault for their government's actions."Clearly, Poland and South Africa are largely cherry-picked examples which I can counter with examples of my own. For instance, in the on-going conflict in Syria, it is often hard to distinguish between extremist resistance groups and moderate ones, making it difficult for the U.S. to ensure its aid is actually boosting its strategic interests and not simply making its way into the hands of terrorists. [2] Oftentimes, it is in the outside worlds best interests to back a dictator. For example, Hosni Mubarak was a leader who the U.S. helped prop up because it was in the U.S.'s best interests. If the U.S. is a government by its people for its people, then the U.S. should do what is best for its people, even if it means doing unsavory things such as cooperating with dictators. Furthermore, can Pro show that without the support of outside donors, that these opposition movements would not have attained their ultimate goal?Since I have additional space, I will now offer some off-case harms centered around the inefficacy of intervention. As much of Pro's case rests on the idea that intervention works, these off-case arguments will indirectly rebut Pro's case by showing the disutility of intervention. Some of these off-case points may also tie in to my earlier rebuttals of Pro's case.OFF CASEP1: Intervention is not Always in a Nation's Strategic Interests"There is widespread acknowledgement that most regional conflicts do not represent an intrinsic threat to America's national security. Even the interventionist-minded Clinton administration does not claim that regional wars are a direct threat to American vital interests, and officials have been quick to point out that foreign policy failures in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia should not be viewed as jeopardizing the nation's security. As Secretary of State Warren Christopher has cautioned, regional conflicts should not 'detract from our ability to concentrate on the strategic priorities.'" [3]P2: It is not morally permissible to intervene in some, but not all countries"If the United States were to declare genocide in Bosnia sufficient grounds for American military intervention, for example, it would be blatantly hypocritical to ignore the (clearer and considerably more severe) genocide in Sudan. Similarly capricious was Washington's determination that the breakdown of the Somali government merited American intervention, while officials ignored the crisis in Rwanda after the apparent assassination of President Habyarimana on April 6, 1994 (100,000 were said to have been killed in the first two weeks of fighting alone) except to evacuate Americans from the area. Likewise, demands that U.S. troops protect democracy in Haiti are incongruous in light of Washington's quiet indifference toward the suspension of democracy in Algeria when Muslim extremists were poised to win elections in 1992. The inconsistency and hypocrisy of those policies are evidence of the weakness of intervention on the basis of nebulous principles." [3] Ultimately, to intervene in one location but not another is to say that the human rights of group A matter more than those of group B, which is a clearly morally incorrect statement to make. Clearly, if R2P is to be applied fairly, it may lead to an unending obligation--and Pro even calls it an obligation--to intervene nearly everywhere abuses occur. Surely this is logistically impossible, and the international community should not be called upon to honor such a doctrine.P3: Locals don't always want outside Interference"The US expected that its forces would be welcomed by grateful Iraqis...The evidence, however, is that many or most Arabs view the US with suspicion...An American-led attack on a resolutely anti-Israel Arab state sitting on perhaps the world"s second biggest oil reserve was bound to arouse Arab suspicion...Many Arab Iraqis shared in these feelings of distrust and resentment, their negative feelings compounded by direct experience of the human impact of American--British air raids and Western-led economic sanctions." [4] Prof. Michael Newman adds, "Neo-liberalism"often exacerbate[s] conflict in vulnerable societies, and that international governmental regimes following humanitarian interventions have had very limited success in establishing sustainable peace." We can evidence these observations through examples such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, North Korea, etc.P4: The Slippery Slope of Intervention: SovereigntyConsider that if some outside body can determine at any time whether a nation has lost its sovereignty, based on some supposed breach of R2P, the world order itself comes under fire. Nations on the Security Council or in the UN General Assembly vote on their self-interest, and if it is in the self-interest of the nations in those groups to delegitimize a state to create a pretext for intervention, this risk is it could be done. Moreover, if a nation can unilaterally intervene in another's affairs, then it is even simpler to justify breaches of sovereignty because fewer administrative hurdles need to be crossed. Without sovereignty carrying weight, it would be far to easy for outside countries to point to minor breaches in human rights as a justification for some intervention.SOURCES1 - http://thenewinternationallaw.wordpress.com...2 - http://www.clarionproject.org...3 - http://www.cato.org...4 - Glaser, Daryl [Prof., Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa] (2010): Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?, Journal of Global Ethics, 6:3, 287-304