The trouble with mixed motives: debating the political, legal, and moral dimensions of intervention

Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2004 by Susan D. Fink

The lesson is that of the three imperatives that influence international behavior, the solidarist approach will be increasingly important in the decades ahead but that laws and institutions have not caught up to the social reality. This is nothing new. In the nineteenth century, the dominance of the power tradition stimulated bilateral international relations and brought an institutionalized balance of power. In the twentieth century, the cooperative approach prevailed in the aftermath of two world wars, and multilateralism and international institutions proliferated. Entering the twenty-first century, the solidarist imperative is on the rise, fostered by transnational movements, the democratization of information technology, and other trends. (44) Current political and legal structures are inadequate to address this increasingly collective consciousness, on one hand, and increasing transborder threats, state failure, and poverty on the other. The legitimacy of unilateralism and multilateralism is no longer the issue; the need is for a three-tiered diplomacy that integrates--by addressing simultaneously--the persistence of power, the embedded nature of cooperation, and the reemergence of the solidarist imperative. (45)

A way to begin is to identify and bolster the elements of the old order that nations hold most dearly and in common. Norms of humanitarian intervention, protection, and prevention of WMD proliferation have all been proposed as ripe for codification, but states continue to resist engaging the matter. (46) A decade after the Rwanda genocide, decision makers have yet to develop criteria for responding to such crises. In his address to the UN on 23 September 2003, Kofi Annan lamented that the international community was "hesitant and tardy" in engaging in "serious discussions of the best way to respond to threats of genocide or other comparable massive violations of human rights." (47) With that task still undone, leaders must now agree upon criteria for countering imminent threats of rogue states and terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Codification and criteria development will be a difficult process, but one well worth the diplomatic toil. (48)

That said, nations should give existing universal values a chance. Western intellectuals are often the quickest to question the universality of norms, such as those in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They can do so only by ignoring the fact that the declaration had international authorship and offers international benefits. (49) Likewise, critics may continue to argue that the trend away from United Nations mandates means that all talk of right and wrong should be expunged from the law and replaced by state practice. The Kosovo and Iraq decisions, however, show that moral talk is state practice. The reason is that, despite significant legal and political disagreements surrounding authorization and justification for forcible intervention, fundamental freedoms, to those who do not yet possess them, remain more than rhetorical.