International Intervention and Human Rights Abuse by State Actors

Thanks again to YYW for initiating this debate! I will use this round to present my own arguments. I will rebut Pro in later rounds. Please note that this debate, as set out by Pro, is about military interventions with humanitarian components. But, the type of intervention used is inherently military in nature.I have two qualms with Pro's definition of humanitarian intervention. Firstly, "threat" of force is not intervention. Intervention implies that positive action has been taken, not simply suggested. Secondly, delivering aid is, in itself, not intervention. Intervention implies interference in political goings on, specifically, protecting people against government abuse or creating a more just governmental system. Therefore, I propose the following definition: "military force against another state when the chief publicly declared aim of that military action is ending human-rights violations being perpetrated by the state against which it is directed." [1]CONTENTION ONE: Humanitarian Intervention(A) Military intervention has a losing record; it fails to establish long-term peace“In the case of Kenya, the first and only country to which R2P was applied, some 1,500 people died and some 600,000 were uprooted prior to international involvement. So R2P was not a preventive measure, but it did succeed in halting the violence and preventing further displacement. But should the story end there or should it extend to ensuring that displaced people are effectively protected in the aftermath of violence? Reports show a lack of security for ethnic groups in areas of return, an absence of planning for those who do not wish to return, inadequate compensation for destroyed homes and property. Moreover, thousands still live in camps and temporary settlements. Yet we don't hear…about the promotion of compliance with the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement with regard to rebuilding. Welcomed by the World Summit in 2005…the national human rights commission in Kenya considers its government to be violating these Principles in its treatment of IDPs after the violence.” [2]"Few interventions happen without a pervasive occupying force to ensure the peace. The intervention in Libya was remarkable, and fairly unique...But most interventions require commitments far beyond the initial phase of combat. The 20th century’s last humanitarian intervention, Kosovo, remains unsettled. As of February 2012, there are nearly 6,000 NATO troops still in Kosovo, nearly 2,000 of which are American – 13 years after the intervention. The intervention unleashed a massive humanitarian crisis: the forced expulsion of over 150,000 Serbs, according to Human Rights Watch. The treatment of those Serbs is, to this day, a spot of contention and even anger both in Serbia and in Russia. To this day the situation in Northern Kosovo remains tenuous and insecure, thanks to the American-led NATO intervention." Other examples of failed interventions include Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sierra Leone. "Military power is, at best, a clumsy instrument of statecraft, and we have a terrible record of realistically predicting the consequences of its use. Normalizing the use of the military to interfere in conflicts that don’t involve us carries enormous costs that are often ignored in the heated public debate about how to end suffering. Nevertheless, those costs need to be kept paramount as we consider options — and especially if we choose to use the military to intervene for humanitarian purposes." [3](B) Intervention is often futile“[We] must also recognize that many regional conflicts are so deeply rooted that no outside party, from within or outside the region, will succeed in ending the fighting.” [4] We can see this in the empirical examples of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan.(C) Intervention does not deter“Like the domino theory, deterrence by example is largely irrelevant in the context of actual events. The aborted U.S. intervention in Haiti, for example, is not going to lead to a rash of military dictatorships any more than strong American responses to Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein deterred Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic from pursuing his aims in Bosnia. To formulate policy on such a premise would be a mistake.” [4](D) Nations don't want to put boots on the ground, and so go to extreme measures to avoid it“While it might be possible to claim that NATO’s actions were purely altruistic, the actual intervention was severely limited in its ability to stop human-rights violations because NATO was unwilling to put its soldiers on the ground, in harm’s way, perhaps due to the results of the mission in Somalia." Instead, “NATO stepped up its show of force by expanding its target list to include infrastructure within the FRY. These new targets included civilian-use facilities such as bridges, factories, electricity grids, and water treatment plants.” In fact, in April 1999, while the bombing of the FRY was continuing, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued various reports that directly condemned the manner in which NATO was conducting its operations, drawing upon the principles of proportionality and legality. As one scholar notes, ‘[i]f the intervention was predicated, as it was by NATO, upon overwhelming humanitarian necessity, one must wonder how an intervention constructed solely of dropping bombs could quickly improve the plight of the Kosovars.'" [5](E) Prextextual interventions can--and likely will--occur“If humanitarian intervention were legal, the cost of the potential abuse of pretextual interventions would outweigh any benefit derived from altruistic interventions. A pretextual intervention is a nation's intervention in a different state for the nation's own gain, not for the protection of human rights. Furthermore…the [UN] Charter provides for collective security measures that sufficiently protect human rights." [6]CONTENTION TWO: Self-Interest(A) Instability not a danger to Security“The most common, and fallacious, argument for intervention is that global instability is a threat to security. That argument relies heavily on the discredited domino theory and the notion of deterrence by example. Global instability does not, per se, threaten vital [national] interests and is the normal state of affairs. A policy that views disorder or instability as a security threat would force [nations] to expend vast resources in pursuit of an unattainable objective.” [4](B) Using the example of the U.S. we can see that intervention is rarely in our 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.'" [4](C) Using the example of the U.S., we can see that intervention actual harms our strategic interests“As tragic as many of the regional wars are, most cannot be resolved by American military intervention. In fact, military involvement often aggravates the situation. Furthermore, intervention can create a number of problems for the United States, including a rise in anti-American sentiment, diminished American credibility if the mission fails, domestic skepticism about future military operations even when legitimate U.S. interests might be involved, and threats to vital interests where none previously existed.” [4](D) Intervention leads to war and conflictProf. Frederick Schuman explains: “Since other powers feeling themselves threatened by an expanding power, they will at some point resist its further aggrandizement; relentless pursuit of power spells war-which is the ultimate negation of all morality. But relentless pursuit of ethical ideals…also spells war, since we live in a world of inescapable diversity in which…formidable powers can always be counted upon to reject…any particular definition of virtue sought to be imposed upon them by the power of others.” The problems with a failure to deter only create conflicts that spiral further out of control as well, as interventions not only fail themselves, but also fail to reduce human rights abuses elsewhere, sometime even increasing global tensions (e.g. Iraq-Iran dynamic.) [7]SOURCES1 - http://en.wikipedia.org...2 - Cohen, Roberta [Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Panel on the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights], “The responsibility to protect: The Human rights and humanitarian dimensions,” Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, Harvard Human Rights Panel Annual Symposium3 - http://www.pbs.org...4 - http://www.cato.org...5 - Hafkin, Gregory [J.D. Candidate 2010, Boston University School of Law], “The Russo-Georgian War of 2008,” Boston University International Law Journal, Vol. 28:219 (2010)6 - Benjamin, Barry M. [J.D. Fordham Law School; Current Member of the New York Bar, specializing in Government and Public Affairs] “Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention: Legalizing the Use of Force to Prevent Human Rights Atrocities,” Fordham International Law Journal (1992)7 - Amatzia Baram, "Deterrence Lessons from Iraq," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2012