Eric A. Heinze

Commonsense Morality and the Consequentialist Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract Finding a moral justification for humanitarian intervention has been the objective of a great deal of academic inquiry in recent years. Most of these treatments, however, make certain arguments or assumptions about the morality of humanitarian intervention without fully exploring their precise philosophical underpinnings, which has led to an increasingly disjointed body of literature. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to suggest that the conventional arguments and assumptions made about the morality of humanitarian intervention can be encompassed in what is essentially a consequentialist framework. After a brief examination of consequentialist ethics, this essay reveals a number of morally relevant factors concerning humanitarian intervention, wherein I suggest that the general consensus in the literature on these factors constitutes ‘commonsense morality’. In doing so, I argue that consequentialism as a theory of the right provides the best fit with commonsense morality on humanitarian intervention. This is important not only to reveal the precise philosophical underpinnings of the debate, but also to bring ethical, prudential and political considerations together in a coherent ethical discourse.

Norms of Intervention, R2P and Libya

It has been widely suggested that the March 2011 NATO intervention in Libya is evidence of a new international norm that has emerged as a consequence of advocacy of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle. Before this assessment solidifies into conventional wisdom, we propose an alternative reading: that the policies that led to the Libya intervention, particularly in the United States, were also driven by a generation of foreign policy elites who used the failures of the 1990s as a set of ‘formative experiences’ that provided shortcut comparisons to springboard the Libya intervention in 2011. Yet the substantive normative basis for these elites’ claims are based on norms and practices that have been around for some time, suggesting that humanitarian intervention is something states may choose to do under certain circumstances, but are under no obligation to do. In short, it is a permissive norm invoked at the discretion of foreign policy elites as a way to justify or enable policies that they see to be in their states’ interests.

Introduction: Non-state Actors and the Just War Tradition

This volume is about the ethics of war in an era in which non-state actors are playing an increasingly prominent role in armed conflict. While the notion that nation-states have a monopoly on the use of organized violence has proved analytically useful in the field of international relations, it is becoming clear that this is no longer an empirically airtight observation, if it ever was. From the July War of 2006, when Hizbollah launched some 150 rockets per day into the territory of Israel, to the ongoing war in Iraq, where the United States Department of Defense employs some 100,000 private military contractors (30,000 of them armed) that operate largely independent of the sovereign jurisdiction of a state, non-state actors are demonstrating a striking array of state-like military capabilities and judicative capacities.1 How can these twenty-first-century non-state entities be accommodated by prevailing normative frameworks that seek to place moral limitations and requirements upon those who seek to use armed force? Given that our moral vocabulary about war is primarily equipped to apply to the conduct of states, how are these state-centric normative frameworks impacted by the presence and practices of these non-states?

The (D)evolution of a Norm: R2P, the Bosnia Generation and Humanitarian Intervention in Libya

The March 2011 NATO intervention in Libya has been widely touted as evidence of a new international norm that has come about as a result of advocacy of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle (Ban 2011; Gerber, 2011; Adams, 2011). Likewise, the Libya intervention has been characterized as an ‘unprecedented moment’ that is indicative of a new commitment and consensus by states that they have an obligation — indeed, a responsibility — to protect people who are being grossly abused by their own government (Williams 2011: 249). In contrast to the position that the Libya intervention is somehow groundbreaking or indicates the emergence of a new norm of humanitarian intervention that has been empowered by R2P advocacy, we argue that what enabled the Libya intervention is essentially an international normative environment that was brought about by precedents set during humanitarian interventions in the 1990s, while its proximate causes were the unique political and empirical circumstances that surrounded the Libya crisis. What supplemented this similarity in normative environments and confluence of political factors was a generation of policy analysts, advocates and practitioners who used the failures of the 1990s as a set of formative experiences that provided shortcut comparisons to springboard the Libya intervention.

Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy

Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy. By William C. Martel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 436p.

The Rhetoric of Genocide in U.S. Foreign Policy: Rwanda and Darfur Compared

35.00. With the United States currently fighting protracted wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the question of what it means to achieve victory in war has never been more important for U.S. foreign policy. While policymakers, scholars, and military strategists have studied for millennia how to achieve victory in armed conflict, Victory in War seeks to provide an answer to a more fundamental question: What precisely is the meaning of victory in war and how do we know when victory is achieved? William C. Martel begins this book with the basic premise that there is currently no theory, framework, or set of organizing principles for understanding victory, yet paradoxically, “the implicit assumption [is] that the unalloyed purpose of [war] strategy is to achieve it” (p. 3). To address this glaring omission, the author sets out to develop a “pretheory” of victory, which entails the organization of principles about victory that can provide an analytic foundation for examining the concept of victory more systematically.