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Is Unilateral Intervention Always Unethical?

1

Ned Dobos

Legal scholars are split as to whether the UN Charter confers a right of
humanitarian intervention upon the Security Council. Those convinced that it
does typically cite the article which empowers the Security Council to sanction
the use of force in response to “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace,or act of aggression.” Their antagonists deny that this translates into a rightof intervention. “The peace,” they say, refers specifically to the peace between
states, which is not threatened by human rights abuses that occur entirely witha sovereign state’s borders. A common response is that the Charter leaves itto the Security Council to determine what constitutes a “threat to the peace,”and the nature of the peace to which this refers. But what of article 2 (7), which
explicitly disclaims any authority of the United Nations to “intervene in matterswhich are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state”? Apparently
this has no bearing on the issue, since the violation of human rights is not
something that is “essentially within the domestic jurisdiction” of individual2

states; it is the legitimate concern of the international community. The debate
3

rages on.

Among those who agree that the Charter does give the Security Council
the right to prosecute (or authorise) armed intervention in defence of humanrights, there is a further divide between those who believe that the UN enjoys
this right exclusively, and those who maintain that intervention by a regionalorganization, an ad hoc coalition, and even an individual state can also be lawful
under certain circumstances. Article 2 (4) prohibits states and coalitions from“the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political sovereignty
of any state.” But whether this proscribes unauthorised intervention is an open
question. It all depends on how “territorial integrity” and “political sovereignty”
are interpreted. Some have suggested that only conquest violates “territorial
integrity,” and that anything short of political subjugation leaves sovereignty

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4

intact. Thus humanitarian intervention, whether sanctioned by the UN or not,is (or can be) consistent with international law as long as it results in neither of
the above.
Relative to the abundance of literature devoted to the legal significanceof Security Council authorisation, little has been said about whether the
UN’s failure or refusal to sanction an intervention can ever suffice to make it
immoral. This is the question that I intend to take up here, (though admittedly,
the legality and morality of military intervention are closely related, as will
become apparent in the course of our discussion).
First, I argue that UN authorisation (or lack therefore) can have someindirect bearing on the moral status of a humanitarian intervention. That is,
it can affect whether an intervention satisfies other widely accepted justifying
conditions, such as proportionality, “internal” legitimacy, and likelihoodof success. Second, I consider whether the absence of a UN mandate canmorally delegitimize an intervention independently of these other familiar
considerations. The answer, I argue, depends on whether or not the Security
Council was given the opportunity to act. A state is rightly condemned, atleast under certain circumstances, for simply bypassing the UN. However
where a mandate is sought but refused, unilateral action remains justified.
Finally, I show that this has little to do with the contingent character of theUnited Nations Security Council. A number of ethicists have admitted that
UN authorisation is not essential from a moral point of view, but most have
put this down to the perceived ineffectiveness of the UN, or its various moral
deficiencies. The implication seems to be that if these flaws were to be somehow
ironed out, then the denial of a UN mandate would sometimes suffice toundermine the legitimacy of an intervention. This is mistaken. If the United
Nations is ever reformed into (or replaced by) a perfectly just and effective body,my conclusion would not require substantial revision or qualification.

International Authorisation: Indirectly Necessary?
Let us begin by introducing two of the familiar conditions that an armed
humanitarian intervention must satisfy in order to be ethical:

Is Unilateral Intervention Always Unethical?

971) Prudence: The intervention must stand a reasonable prospect of successat an acceptable cost. A predictably futile intervention is unjust, as is
an intervention whose expected human and material costs are excessive
compared to the benefits of the operation. These two requirements –the success principle and the proportionality principle – represent the“prudential” constraints on war.
2) “Internal” legitimacy: The government that is waging the intervention on
behalf of foreign nationals must not violate the rights of its own citizens
in the process.
In some cases, it seems that UN authorisation can be the difference between
a sufficiently “prudent”, internally legitimate humanitarian intervention, andan intervention which fails to satisfy prudential and/or internal requirements.
In other words, UN authorisation is sometimes needed because without it, theintervention fails to satisfy these other familiar justifying conditions. In cases
like this UN authorisation can be described as indirectly necessary. This point
requires some elaboration.
Whether a humanitarian intervention is “internally” legitimate depends
on whether the citizens of the intervening state are morally obliged to pay for
it. If they are, then their government does them no wrong by prosecuting theintervention with public funds, (since to compel someone to do his duty is no
infringement of his rights). On the other hand where a country’s taxpayers
are not under any such obligation, their government forces them to make asacrifice that they have every right to refuse by using their collective resources
for humanitarian war in another country, and this is plausibly a breach of theirtrust.
Now suppose that one state—state X—plans to execute a humanitarian
intervention in a troubled neighbouring country, and to shoulder all of its
associated costs. X may be asking too much of its constituents, especially if
success depends on a long-term and expensive occupation, justifying the peopleof X in declining to make this sacrifice. Should the government of X go ahead
with the intervention regardless, it would be infringing the rights of its own

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people. But what if the UN were to approve the intervention and arrange forits costs to be shared across different states? The sacrifice asked of the citizensof X would be reduced to a fraction of what would be required to facilitate a
unilateral action, and this might be a cost that the people of X are morally
obliged to sustain. Thus, while unilateral intervention would be internallyillegitimate, contributing to an internationally sanctioned multilateral effort
would be consistent with X’s fiduciary obligations toward its own people.
A UN mandate can also help to ensure that an intervention satisfies
the “prudential” constraints on war mentioned above. The motives of statesthat engage in humanitarian intervention unilaterally are often viewed withsuspicion. This can be expected to aggravate the resistance from within thetarget society, which could potentially lead to mission failure and also increase
the costs of the intervention. The motives of the international community, bycontrast, seldom arouse the same amount of suspicion. In this respect at least, a
UN mandate would seem to improve an intervention’s prospect of success at an
acceptable cost.
I do not mean to suggest that UN authorisation is always indirectly
necessary. Sometimes the involvement of an interventional institution
might actually interfere with the satisfaction of the prudential and internalrequirements. I am simply saying that, where a unilateral intervention would
be internally illegitimate, disproportional, or unlikely to succeed, a UN mandate
can actually reduce the costs of the intervention, remove the impediments to
its success, and reconcile it with the intervening state’s obligations to its own
people. In these cases, UN authorisation is necessary for the intervention tosatisfy other widely accepted justifying conditions.
There is also another sense in which UN authorisation is, or can be,
indirectly necessary.
The facts that are relevant to the evaluation of a humanitarian intervention
are often contested. In 1992 an editorial in The Chicago Tribune likened theassault against Muslims in Bosnia to the Holocaust: “Are Nazi-era death camps
being reprised in the Balkans? Unthinkable, you say? Think again… The ghost
5of World War II genocide is abroad in Bosnia….” Some reports estimated that

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the conflict had claimed upwards of 200,000 lives by that stage. But this was byno means unanimously accepted. George Kenney put the number somewhere
between 25,000 and 60,000 in total, and was dismissive of the Chicago Tribune’s
World War II comparison: “Bosnia isn’t the Holocaust or Rwanda” he wrote;6“it’s Lebanon.” The details of the Kosovo conflict later in the decade werealso disputed. NATO claimed that civilians belonging to the province’s ethnic
Albanian population were being systematically slaughtered and expelled en
masse. But the Wall Street Journal reported that there was only evidence tosuggest a “pattern of scattered killings [mostly] in areas where the separatist
Kosovo Liberation Army had been active.”

7

The question of whether an intervention is likely to succeed at an acceptable
cost has also attracted widely divergent responses. For example the National
Intelligence Council (NIC) predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq
would leave the country divided along sectarian lines and plagued by violence8

and conflict. Ken Adelman, a former assistant to Donald Rumsfeld and arms
control director under Ronald Regan, was more optimistic. He predicted that theliberation of Iraq would be “a cakewalk.”

9

Not only is there disagreement over the facts—the expected costs ofintervention, the kinds of rights abuses taking place, and so on—there is also
disagreement over whether the expected costs are “excessive,” whether therights abuses are “severe enough” to override sovereignty, etc. This can be seen
as a disagreement over the standards brought to bear on the facts. Take for
instance the US State Department’s resolution that as many as 250,000 Iraqi
civilian casualties would be acceptable to achieve the purposes of the recent
10

war in Iraq. Tariq Ali sees this as proof that the US government does notaccord to Iraqi life the same value that it accords to American life. There is anunderlying assumption that “we are a superior nation, a superior race, and asuperior people.”

11

Ali’s objection is not that the number of casualties is being

underestimated, but that the threshold for what is considered “excessive” is too
high.
Now a state is justified in going to war only if it is reasonably confident thatit has its facts straight, and that its standards are impartial and not skewed (by100

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a sense of racial superiority or any other factor). If it is unable to convince theinternational community of this, can it proceed with the degree of confidence
required? Plausibly UN approval is needed to validate the facts being cited
to justify war, and to verify that the standards being applied are not out ofsync with those of the international community. On this view, international
authorisation is needed not because it actually affects the prospect of success at
an acceptable cost, but because it determines whether a state has solid grounds
for the belief that the conditions of success and proportionality have been met.
Thus there are two ways for the lack of UN authorisation to delegitimize anintervention indirectly. On either approach, whether an intervention is justified
ultimately depends on whether it meets a number of familiar conditions, andinternational authorisation is important only because it has some bearing onwhether or not these conditions are met (or the certainty with which we canjudge that they have been met). The more interesting question is whether UN
authorisation has any ethical significance independently of this. Should wethink of UN approval as a condition of just intervention in its own right? It is tothis question that I now turn.

International Authorisation: Directly Necessary?
Suppose that a humanitarian intervention has a just cause, is internallylegitimate, and satisfies all of the standard prudential requirements, andthat none of this can be reasonably denied. Why should we still think thatinternational authorisation matters? What I want to consider here is whether
an unauthorised intervention, simply in virtue of being unauthorised, conflicts
with the rights of any identifiable individual or group. If so, then it may bepossible for the UN’s disapproval to morally delegitimize a humanitarian action
without actually causing it to fall short of any of the other conditions of justwar (prudence, internal legitimacy, etc). But whose rights are violated? Who iswronged by unauthorised intervention? The obvious answer is the UN itself.
If the organisation possesses legitimate political authority then it has a rightto rule. If it has a right to rule then to disobey its directives or to usurp its
authority is to infringe its rights. I will come back to this. First let us gloss oversome of the less obvious answers.

Is Unilateral Intervention Always Unethical?

1011) Rights of the Target State
What is it that justifies some people—those in government—in issuingcommands and compelling others—the citizens—to obey? How is this to bereconciled with the moral equality of persons? One answer is consent. If I
consent to your having the right to make and enforce law, your exercise of thisauthority is consistent with my autonomy and equality. This gives us someinsight into what makes vigilantism objectionable. Insofar as he does not enjoy
the consent of the people that he coerces into compliance with the law, thevigilante treats them in a way that is disrespectful; that is not consistent with
their moral status. This is why only the police and courts, qua agents of thestate, may enforce the law and administer punishments—assuming of coursethat the state does enjoy the consent that the vigilante lacks.
From this we can extrapolate that unilateral humanitarian intervention—
the international analogue of vigilantism—constitutes an injustice against thetarget state. If we take it that the UN Charter empowers the Security Council
exclusively to engage in or authorise humanitarian intervention—let us concede
this for the sake of discussion—then we can say that every UN member state,
having signed the Charter, has consented to the Security Council’s right toenforce international human rights agreements. But no state has consented
to unilateral law enforcement by other states or by ad hoc coalitions. Hence
unilateralism wrongs the target state in the same way that vigilantism wrongs
its object.
But this is too quick. Consider more carefully law enforcement at thedomestic level. On closer inspection it appears that whether or not the lawbreaker is wronged by the vigilante depends on the nature of his offence.
Suppose that your neighbour, a supermarket employee, spots you jaywalking
or not wearing a seatbelt while driving, and takes it upon himself to try to force
your compliance with the law. You response is likely to begin with “excuse
me, what right do you have…?” But what if the very same neighbour were tophysically restrain you in order to protect your spouse against physical assault?
Surely anyone is entitled prevent an assailant from murdering or maiming his
victim. No special authority is necessary.

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The difference between these two kinds of cases is that it is morally wrong
to assault people independently of its being illegal. Jaywalking, on the other
hand, is not something that is independently proscribed by morality. In legal
parlance, it is malum prohibitum: wrong merely because prohibited by statute,as opposed to malum in se, or wrong in and of itself. To put it another way, if
jaywalking is immoral, this is only because it is illegal and one happens to be
morally obliged to discharge his legal duties.
A “victim” of vigilantism has grounds for complaint only if he is forced
to refrain from behaviour that is malum prohibitum. The same can be said
for law enforcement in the international arena. Some international treaties,
especially those dealing with commerce and communications, require acts andforbearances that are morally neutral. With respect to these laws one could
plausibly say that unilateral enforcement wrongs the target state. But respectfor human rights is not a convention-dependent obligation with no force outsideof international law. Rather, like an individual citizen’s obligation not to commit
assault, the state’s obligation to honour human rights is pre-institutional andthese are requirements that anyone may enforce.
Now perhaps this is too sweeping a claim. While the denial of someinternationally ratified human rights is undeniably malum in se, is this true ofall rights? Or are some based only on the consent of states, with no normative
force outside of the law? Prominent human rights theorist James Griffin,among others, seems to suggest the latter. The right to periodic holidays withpay, the right to protection against attacks on one’s honour and reputation,
the right to inherit property, freedom of residence, the right to work, and theright to “the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” arejust a few of the more “lavish” human rights listed in the Universal Declaration
12and other international instruments. Griffin denies that these are bona fide
human rights. Hence a state’s obligation to honour them—if there is one—exists only in virtue of there being a law which requires that states do so. It
follows that unilateral intervention in defence of these rights is objectionable inthe same way that vigilantism is objectionable in cases of malum prohibitum
offences domestically. But given that humanitarian intervention is only evercontemplated where the rights violations are incontrovertibly malum in se,

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conceding this point is of little practical consequence.
Before moving on I should make one further qualification. Nobody would
deny that an ordinary citizen is permitted to intervene in a domestic disputeto prevent serious assault. But this example presupposes that there is notime to call on the proper authorities, such that private law enforcement isnecessary to prevent the crime. What if there is time to call the police? I takeit that because vigilantism is unnecessary in this case, it is also unjustified,
and this is despite the fact that the offence being committed is malum in se. Byanalogy, where there is time to engage the UN in dealing with a humanitariancrisis, a state that bypasses it and acts unilaterally is, at least in some cases,
rightly condemned. This, however, is not because the state targeted by theunilateral action is wronged in any sense. Rather, it is because the international
community is wronged.
2) Rights of our Co-signatories
By signing the UN Charter—which, we have conceded, confers a rightof humanitarian intervention upon the Security Council exclusively—a state
relinquishes its right to engage in unilateral intervention. Thus when a stateengages in unilateral action, it breaches this contract and violates the rights
of its co-signatories in the UN. This rather simple argument is I think themost persuasive of the lot. Yet it is only convincing where: 1) The intervention
proceeds without a UN mandate having been sought, and; 2) the intervening
state or coalition cannot plausibly claim that there was no time to engage theUN, or that authorisation would certainly have been denied. The argument fails
where authorisation is sought but refused, or where the intervening state canplausibly claim that there was either no time to pursue a mandate, or no chanceof winning one.
Admittedly this seems like a curious, if not downright incoherent position.
For it suggests that UN authorisation is not morally necessary, but that the
pursuit of it somehow is. Nevertheless we must follow the arguments wherever
they lead.
Recall one of W.D. Ross’ famous examples. You make a promise to meet a104

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friend at a certain time in a certain place for a trivial reason. On your way tothe meeting place you come across the scene of an accident that has left a person
injured and in need of urgent attention on the side of the road. If you stop to
render assistance you will not be able to meet your friend and therefore you will
break your promise. Nevertheless we all agree that stopping is permissible, if
not obligatory. The explanation, crudely put, is that the obligations arising out
of one’s promises are prima facie and need to be weighed against countervailingmoral considerations—including conflicting duties—before any all things
considered moral judgment can be reached. In the example, the countervailingconsiderations are so weighty that they justify you in defaulting on your prima
facie obligation to your friend.
Champions of multilateralism often fail to see or to acknowledge that the
obligations arising out of a state’s international contracts are equally prima
facie. Unlike the promise to meet a friend for lunch in Ross’ example, to be
sure, these commitments should not be seen as trivial, and so a very strong
justification needs to be provided for their transgression. Nevertheless in somecases there will be sufficiently weighty countervailing considerations.
Imagine that there are egregious human rights abuses occurring in somefaraway country—mass murder, deliberate starvation, you name it—andthat a neighbouring state proposes to intervene. If an application for a UN
mandate is rejected, or if appealing to the UN is genuinely believed to be futile
or prohibitively time consuming, then this state is caught between conflicting
moral demands: fidelity to international covenant, or the prevention of mass
starvation and killing. The state must break its international commitments inorder to rescue the victims, and surely the countervailing considerations in playhere are weighty enough to justify this. Unilateral intervention might, in thesecases, constitute a rights infringement against the international community, but
13

it is no rights violation. That is, it is not an unjustified infringement. For theimperative to prevent violations of human rights takes moral priority over theimperative to honour international agreements, just as the obligation to renderurgent assistance at the scene of an accident overrides one’s promise to meet afriend for lunch.

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On the other hand, where there is time to pursue a mandate, and no reason
to believe that the effort would be an exercise in futility, a state that intervenes
without engaging the Security Council seems to have no good reason forbreaking its international contracts. It cannot appeal to necessity here. It cannot
claim that honouring the Charter would have resulted in the continuation ofserious human rights abuses. It therefore does not simply infringe the rights of14

its co-signatories; it plausibly violates them.
3) Rights of the United Nations

Invoking the rights of the UN at this point does not take us any further
than we have already come. If the UN possesses legitimate political authority
then it has a “right to rule”—a right to make and enforce laws. This corresponds
to a duty of obedience (or at least a duty of non-interference) for everyone under
its jurisdiction. Like the contractual rights of our co-signatories, however, thisright is at most prima facie, and if it is overridden under any circumstances at
all then it is surely overridden in the face of humanitarian emergencies. This
merely reinforces the conclusion that states must seek a mandate, but need notrefrain from unilateral action if it is not forthcoming. And arguably even thisconcedes too much. The premise that the UN enjoys a “right to rule”—even a
prima facie, defeasible right—remains a bone of contention, especially giventhat the organisation does not seem to qualify as democratic in any meaningful
15

sense. Things brings me to my next point.

The ‘Non-Ideality’ of the UN
The UN has an embarrassingly poor track record when it comes toenforcing its human rights commitments. Its efforts in Rwanda and Bosnia areoften cited in this connection. When the killing in Rwanda began, the 2,500
UN peacekeepers stationed in the country were assigned the responsibilityof evacuating foreigners, but forbidden from defending Rwandans against
genocidal assault. Mark Huband offers a glimpse into what followed:
A few yards from the French troops, a Rwandan woman was being
hauled along the road by a young man with a machete. He pulled
at her clothes as she looked at the foreign soldiers in the desperate,

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terrified hope that they could save her from her death. But none of
the troops moved. ‘It’s not our mandate,’ said one, leaning against his
jeep as he watched the condemned woman, the driving rain splashingat his blue United Nations badge… At Antoine de Saint-Exupery
school, French troops lay on the roof with guns trained on the deserted
road outside as the names of evacuees were read out in the courtyard
below… The road was littered with up to 20 bodies. Halfway up the hill
lay a pile of corpses. From nearby houses women, old and young, werecasually led to the pile and forced to sit down on it. Men with clubs
then beat the dead and dying bodies which surrounded the womenas they sat, screaming, pleading for their lives. Suddenly the menturned on the women. They beat them until they no longer moved,
then went to find more people to kill, within view of the school where
the evacuees packed their children, pet dogs, teddy bears and suitcases
16

into trucks.

One survivor describes how she and 4,000 other Tutsis took shelter close
to some Belgian troops hoping to be kept safe, only for the troops to departand leave the people to their fate. “During that massacre I lost my husband,
members of my family, all of my friends, neighbours” she said. “I slept among17

the cadavers for the whole night.” An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate
Hutus were killed. The UN and former Secretary-General Kofi Annan have18

since accepted responsibility for failing to prevent the genocide.

The handling of the conflict in Bosnia also attracted criticism. Between
September 25 1991 and April 28 1995, the Security Council adopted 73
resolutions pertaining to Yugoslavia, and the President of the Security Council
19

made 70 statements on the crisis. But to say that the UN didn’t exactly “walkthe walk” would be an understatement. Units were sent to the region in 1992
but the Security Council did not permit them to use force. As a result, Glover
explains:
the UN on the ground found its authority endlessly mocked. In 1992
a Serb soldier shot Hakija Turajlic, the Deputy Prime Minister of
Bosnia, while he was being carried by a UN vehicle. Repeated ceasefire

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agreements were immediately broken. At one ceasefire signingceremony at Sarajevo airport, the agreement was broken so quickly
that the signatories had to take cover under the table they had just
20

used.

The incident at Srebrenica made international headlines. The UN had
declared the region a protected “safe area” before it was captured by Serbianforces under General Mladic. An estimated 8000 people were massacred—the largest mass murder in Europe since WWII—while 400 armed Dutch
peacekeepers looked on, lacking the authorisation to act. Mladic ridiculed his
victims in the presence of the troops: “Do you think the Dutch are afraid of me?
I don’t fear them. I am stronger than all of you. They cannot protect you.”

21

Now “The UN” cannot bear all of the blame for these failures. On May 17
1994 the Security Council did authorise a peacekeeping mission which allowed
for the use of military force to secure safe areas in Rwanda, but certain member
states were unwilling to provide the necessary troops and material. Neverthelessit has been argued that by its less than optimal performance on these occasions
and others the UN has forfeited its claim to being the only legitimate authority
22

that can sanction humanitarian intervention. A memorable editorial from the
New Republic reads:
After the slaughters of the 90’s, all of which numbered the fecklessness
and the cynicism of the UN among their causes, it defies belief that23

people of goodwill would turn to that organization for effective action.

Other contingent characteristics of the UN have also been highlighted todismiss the need for its authorisation. According to Mark Evans it is purely afunction of the “non-ideality” of the UN that humanitarian intervention can be24

legitimate without its approval. We should not insist on a UN mandate, Evansargues, because of the veto system which prevents the Security Council from25

reaching decisions in a truly democratic manner. In a similar vein, Fernando
Teson disclaims the need for UN authorisation on the grounds that “the decision
to assist victims of grievous injustice should not depend on the acquiescenceof rulers who, at the very least, do not represent their people, and, at the very

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Charles Krauthammer seems to share thissentiment when he asks: “By what possible moral calculus does an Americanintervention to liberate 25 million people forfeit moral legitimacy because it
lacks the blessing of the butchers of Tiananmen Square or the cynics of the Quaid’Orsay?”

27

Should we take this to mean that the lack of UN authorisation would
make an intervention unjust if the UN were reformed into something more
representative, more democratic, and more effective?
Such reforms might I think strengthen the case for the indirect necessityof UN authorisation. Earlier I suggested that a unilateral action might provoke
stiffer resistance from within the target society than an intervention which isseen to be the work of the international community. One reason for this is thatthe professed humanitarian motives of a state acting alone are likely to be met
with greater suspicion. However the United Nations in its current form is seen
by many around the world to be nothing more than an agent or puppet of thegreat powers, especially the US. Those who hold this view are likely to resist a
UN-led intervention with the same vehemence that they would resist unilateral
action. But if the UN were to become less reliant on, and less subservient to,
the major powers, its supposed neutrality would probably be taken a lot more
seriously, and this may well reduce resistance to its efforts to enforce humanrights norms.
Moreover, lack of approval from the UN does not always cast doubt on the
moral credentials of an intervention in the way described earlier. I suggested
that if a state is unable to convince the Security Council that an intervention
is proportional, likely to succeed, and so on, it arguably cannot judge thatthese conditions have been satisfied with the level of certainty and confidence
that morality requires. But the veto system currently in place weakens thisargument, or at least reduces the scope of its application. For even where theoverwhelming majority of member states are convinced of the moral legitimacyof an intervention and vote in favour of a mandate, a single negative votefrom any one of the Permanent 5 is sufficient to deny authorisation. The
UN’s disapproval would be a more reliable indication that an intervention isIs Unilateral Intervention Always Unethical?

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not justified according to the prevailing moral standards of the international
community if the veto system were scrapped.
Apart from this, however, changes to the character of the UN would
have little bearing on my conclusion. Where a mandate is sought but denied
unilateral intervention remains justified all things considered no matter how
close to the “ideal” the UN comes, since the imperative to prevent grave humanrights violations will always take moral priority over fidelity to international
contracts.
What if instead of reforms the UN were replaced by, or supplemented
with, some other international body; one less defective, morally, and less prone
to institutional deadlock and paralysis? US Senator John McCain has openly
advocated the creation of a “League of Democracies” that
could act when the UN fails—to relieve human suffering in places suchas Darfur, combat HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, fashion better
policies to confront environmental crises, provide unimpeded market
access to those who endorse economic and political freedom, andtake other measures unattainable by existing regional or universal28

membership systems.

John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter have similarly proposed what29

they call a “Concert of Democracies”, and advisor to the Democratic Party
Ivo Daalder has urged the democratic states of the world to unite for collective
30

action. The suggestion is not so much that a league of democracies should
be introduced to replace, or even to compete with the UN (though it has been
31

argued that competition between the institutions would be inevitable). Rather
the hope is that the democratic league would exist alongside the UN, and that
it would step in where action is desperately needed but the UN finds itself, yetagain, locked in a stalemate. This would bring us one step closer to Francis
Fukuyama’s vision of “multi-multilateralisms.”

32

I doubt that the endorsement of some such body would contribute to the
proportionality and success of a humanitarian intervention in the same way

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that the endorsement of a reformed United Nations might.
The authorisation of a UN Security Council in which no state exerts
dominance or undue influence would plausibly reduce resistance to armed
intervention and, in turn, minimize the costs and adverse consequences
associated with it. A league of democracies, by contrast, would likely be seen
simply as the latest manifestation of Western bullying, and its creation could
further alienate those that it excludes, including 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.2
billion Muslims. As things stand UN-authorisation often does little to dispel
the perception that a single state—usually the US—is behind the intervention.
Authorisation by a league of democracies, most of whose members are allies ofthe lone Superpower, is hardly likely to improve the situation.
Driving the League of Democracies initiative is the belief that, unlike theUN, the league would be capable of prompt and effective action. The failuresof the United Nations are attributed to its inability to bridge the ideologicaldifferences between its member states, as a result of which the organisation“usually endorses lowest-common-denominator actions or does nothing atall”. The claim is that the same thing is bound to happen in any internationalorganisation where autocracies and democracies are tasked with reachingcollective decisions, since the participants will always disagree not only onmaterial interests “but on the core values that should be embedded in theinternational system”.

33

The world’s democracies at least share common

values. Some think this would allow them to cooperate effectively and to avoid
34

impasse.

The question is whether the ideological commonalities among democratic
states will suffice to prevent deadlock when their material interests come into
conflict. If past experience is anything to go by we should not get our hopes
up. During the Cold War the United States sided with Communist China, andeven with the Pakistani dictatorship, against its democratic co-ideologue India.
More recently democratic South Africa refused to support Western efforts toisolate the Mugabe regime. State failure in Zimbabwe would have damaging
consequences for its neighbours, and this obviously trumped other considerations.
India started out supporting the West’s efforts to isolate Myanmar, but upon

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realising that this threatened to push the country into the hands of China
and create a satellite state on the border, India changed course radically andbegan to engage with the Burmese regime. So much for democratic solidarity.
Democratic states may be less suspicious of one another’s motives and more
likely to cooperate given their moral and ideological similarities. This much is
uncontroversial. But whether these ties are strong enough to resist the pull of
realpolitic and override geopolitical differences is another matter entirely.
A final point: There is every reason to anticipate that the league of
democracies will inherit many of the same moral defects that we find in the UN
Security Council today. Recall that the presence of undemocratic regimes is but
one of those defects. Another is the disproportionate power of certain member
states. Stephen Schlesinger is right to ask:
Once convened, by what procedures would the group [of democracies]
make decisions? One possibility is that each member state would havea single vote. But that means, for example, that Costa Rica would beequal in this regard to the United States. Would Washington see thisas fair or satisfactory? Further, if majority rule were to determine
decisions, might not a cabal of smaller democracies, constituting amajority, foist rulings on the larger democracies—the very complaintthat is so often levelled at the UN General Assembly? Might that not
actually push the bigger democracies to press for a two-thirds voterequirement for league action—or even unanimity, as was true inthe old League of Nations? Or, in yet another variation, might someof the larger democracies simply demand the veto, as in the Security
Council? That latter matter deserves serious consideration, for
American senators (who, after all, must ratify any such agreement)
have historically opposed U.S. involvement in global bodies where
35

Washington lacks the veto power.

Though its frequency may vary, deadlock in international institutions seems
inevitable. When it does arise—whether it be in the UN, a reformed UN, or the
League of Democracies—and, as a consequence, authorisation for humanitarian
intervention is withheld, this ought not be treated as a moral barrier to military

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action.

Conclusion
I do not mean to deny that international authorisation is morally preferable.
Indeed the preceding discussion has established that pursuing a UN mandateis an ethical imperative. For one, a UN mandate increases the chances of otherfamiliar justifying conditions being met: an internationally authorised actionis arguably more likely to succeed at an acceptable cost, and to be consistent
with the domestic fiduciary obligations of the state or states that prosecute it.
Nevertheless my conclusion is that the UN’s refusal to sanction an intervention,
where all other justifying conditions are clearly met, should not be treated as amoral barrier. And this conclusion would hold even if the various moral defectsof the United Nations were corrected.

End Notes
1 This paper builds on the arguments presented in chapter 7 of Ned Dobos, Insurrection andIntervention: the Two Faces of Sovereignty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012. Someof the material also appeared in Philosophia, 38 (3) 2010, under the title “Is UN Authorisation
for Armed Humanitarian Intervention Morally Necessary?”
2 Quoted in Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, New
York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p.44.
3 For more on the legal significance of UN authorisation, see Wheeler, Saving Strangers, pp.40-52;
Janne Haaland Matlary, “The Legitimacy of Military Intervention: How Important is a UN
Mandate?,” Journal of Military Ethics, vol.3, no.2, 2004, pp.129-141; Mark Stein, “Unauthorized
Humanitarian Intervention” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol.21, no.1, 2004, pp.14-38; Oliver
Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict: A
Reconceptualization, Cambridge Mass: Polity Press, 1996, pp.157-62; Brian D. Lepard,
Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention: A Fresh Legal Approach based on Fundamental EthicalPrinciples in International Law and World Religions, University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2002, pp.309-383; J.L. Holzgrefe, “The Humanitarian Intervention Debate,” inJ.L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane (eds.), Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal andPolitical Dilemmas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp.37-38. See Teson,
Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality, 3 rd ed, Ardsley NY:
Transnational Publishers, 2005, section 8.2, for a list of references to legal scholars who hold thatintervention is only legitimate when authorised by the United Nations.
4 For a defence of this view, see Teson, Humanitarian Intervention, p.151.
5 “What Goes on in Bosnia’s Camps?,” Chicago Tribune, August 6 1992, Section 1, p.24.

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6 George Kenney, “The Bosnia Calculation: How Many have Died? Not Nearly as Many as Some
Would Have you Think,” The New York Times Magazine, April 32, 1995, p.42.
7 Quoted in John Pilger, “How Silent are the Humanitarian Invaders of Kosovo,” New Statesman,
December 8 2004, at <http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2004/1208kosovocomp.
htm> retrieved on 30/8/2008.
8 See Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, New
York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2006, p.18.
9 Ken Adelman, “Cakewalk in Iraq,” The Washington Post, February 13 2002, p.A27.
10 Tariq Ali and David Barsamian, Speaking of Empire and Resistance, London; New York: The
New Press, 2005, p.27.
11 Ibid.
12 James Griffin, On Human Rights, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. The term“lavish” is used with reference to the right to the “highest possible standard” of health on. p.208.
13 The distinction between “infringement” and “violation” was introduced by Judith Jarvis
Thomson in “Some Ruminations on Rights,” The Arizona Law Review, vol. 19, 1977, pp.45-60.
14 Interestingly enough, my position bears some resemblance to that taken by the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). Its 2001 report, The Responsibility
to Protect, states that “Security Council authorization must in all cases be sought prior to any
military intervention action being carried out”. But it goes on to admit that, although the
Security Council should be the first port of call, “the question remains whether it should be thelast”. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility toProtect: The Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty,
December 2001, §6.15. Available online at <http://www.iciss.ca/report2-en.asp>, retrieved on
2/5/2007.
15 Perhaps our democratic standards, while appropriate for judging domestic political authority,
are too demanding when it comes to global governance institutions. Robert Keohane and Allen
Buchanan articulate an alternative; what they call a “complex standard of legitimacy” which
incorporates a raft of less stringent conditions by which to judge international regimes. Even on
this relaxed standard of legitimacy, however, the UN has some way to go. See Allen Buchanan
and Robert O. Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions”, Ethics andInternational Affairs, vol.20, no.4, 2006, pp.405-37.
16 Mark Huband, “UN Troops Stand By and Watch Carnage,” The Guardian, Tuesday April 12,
1994.
17 “UN Chief’s Rwanda Genocide Regret,” BBC News, 26/3/2004, at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
africa/3573229.stm> retrieved on 30/8/2008.
18 Ibid. See also “UN Admits Rwanda Genocide Failure,” BBC News 15/4/2000, at <http://news.bbc.
co.uk/2/hi/africa/714025.stm> retrieved on 30/8/2008.
19 Sean D. Murphy, Humanitarian Intervention: The United Nations in an Evolving World Order,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, p.216.
20 Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, London: Pimlico, 2001,
p.135.
21 Ibid., p.136.
22 See George R. Lucas Jr., “The Role of the International Community in Just War Tradition—
Confronting the Challenges of Humanitarian Intervention and Preemptive War,” Journal of
Military Ethics, vol.2, issue 2, July 2003, p.130.
23 “Again,” The New Republic, Monday May 15, 2006.

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24 Mark Evans, “In Humanity’s Name: Democracy and the Right to Wage War,” in Mark Evans (ed.),Just War Theory: A Reappraisal, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, p.82.
25 Ibid., p.72.
26 Teson, Humanitarian Intervention, p.166.
27 Charles Krauthammer, “Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World,”
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy research, Irving Kristol Lecture, February 10,
2004, at <http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.19912,filter.all/pub_detail.asp> retrieved on
30/8/2008.
28 Quoted in Kishore Muhbubani, “The Dangers of Democratic Delusions”, Ethics and International
Affairs, vol.23, no.1, 2009, pp.19-20.
29 “Democracies Must Work in Concert”, Financial Times, July 10 2008.
30 Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, “Democracies of the World, Unite”, The American Interest,
January-February 2007, available online at http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.
cfm?piece=220, retrieved August 10 2010.
31 Because the league of democracies would, in at least some cases, function as an alternative to theUN, Schlesigner worries that “the prospect of such a league, however one defines its exact
parameters, contains an implicit threat to the status of the United Nations.” See Stephen
Schlesinger, “Why A League of Democracies Will Not Work”, Ethics and International Affairs,
vol.23, no.1, 2009, p.15. “When a crisis arises, to which body should the affected parties turn inorder to seek redress? The intrusion of the league into some sort of crisis situation, even one thatis a violation of international law, could throw into disarray the role of the UN, place into
question the edifice of international law, and undermine peacemaking efforts.”
32 Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative
Legacy, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
33 Ibid., p. 7.
34 James M. Lindsay, “The Case for a Concert of Democracies”, Ethics and International Affairs,
vol.23, no.1, 2009, p.5.
35 Schlesinger, “Why A League of Democracies Will Not Work”, p.16.