Intervention: When and How Posted by Morton H. Halperin

My friends at the America Abroad blog have been conducting a lively debate about whether liberals have become too committed to intervention.  Ivo Daalder has been kind enough to encourage me to join the debate and I am pleased to do so.

There is as much confusion about this topic as almost any.  One part of the confusion is whether the term "intervention" means the use of military force.  I am going to use it in that way. Otherwise, we need to cope with the fact that the great powers, and especially the United States, are always  "intervening" in all sorts of situations, both by action and inaction.  The interesting and hard questions are about when we should use force.

The second confusion comes from lumping together different motives for intervention, especially those that pertain to American ideals, including stopping humanitarian disasters and promoting democracy.  I want to deal with these two motives for the use of military force.

I start with a strong bias in favor of a double standard.  That is, I recognize that we cannot intervene every time there are people being deprived of basic human rights.  Nor can we intervene every time democracy is threatened or an opportunity to establish democracy may be lost. However, that does not mean that we should never intervene.  That we cannot deal with all deprivations cannot mean that we should not act in those situations where we can make a difference for the better.

Let me start with humanitarian intervention. Certainly a commitment to react to a human rights violation by sending in military force would be a recipe for perpetual war.  There are many other things we can and should do to try to reduce suffering, including referring cases to the ICC and imposing targeted sanctions on the leaders of governments engaging in human rights abuses.

There have been a number of efforts to list the conditions to be met in determining when force should be used in reaction to systematic human rights abuses. They all reach similar and sensible conclusions.  First,  we would always prefer to go in pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution, but we cannot rule out acting when it is impossible to get one, especially if we try and are thwarted by a veto when a large majority of the Council is ready to authorize force.

Second, there must be proportionality of various kinds.  We must have reason to believe that the level of force contemplated can do the job and that it will not cause more harm and suffering than it will stop or deter.  Third, the nature of the human rights violation must be extremely serious, amounting to genocide or systematic violation of fundamental human rights.

As we contemplate the use of force we must be willing to use the amount of force necessary to accomplish the humanitarian goal -- no more and no less.  What that will be will vary from situation to situation.  In Somalia it was possible to establish safe havens where people could come for food and security without intervening in the civil war and seeking to capture warlords.  In Kosovo the administration that I was a part of concluded that the ethnic cleansing could be stopped only by securing three objectives -- the Serb military out,  an international military force in, and the future of Kosovo left for another day. 

When we intervene for humanitarian purposes we have an obligation to put into place institutions that can preserve the peace and to help build new governmental structures.  We have done very badly at that and will continue to do so until we create new organizations at the national and international level to perform these tasks.  Appointing coordinators, moving bureaucratic boxes around and even creating commissions is not enough.

On the question of intervention to promote democracy I start with a different premise.  The use of force can never be justified to seek to impose democracy on another country.  There are many reasons for this.  As Iraq reminds us, it is very very hard to do and often will lead to more suffering and armed conflict.  Moreover, democracy is not yet a universal value and I do not think we have the right to impose this form of government on others.  Democracy can work only if the people of a nation find a way to get on the path to democracy.  Then we have an obligation to help them stay on that path.  Once a people have started on the path to democracy, they have taken sovereignty into their hands.  Any group in that state which seeks to usurp that power is acting to undercut the sovereignty of a people and the international community, in my view, has a duty to do what it can to protect the people's sovereignty.

Only in rare circumstances does it make sense to contemplate the use of force to insure that a people who are on the path to democracy are able to remain on that path. That would happen when there is an illegal use of force -- usually a military coup -- to disrupt the democratic process.  (See Halperin and Galic, eds., Protecting Democracy, Lexington Books. 2005).

Even then military force may not always been sensible.  In some cases diplomacy and economic sanctions may be sufficient.  In other cases the government that was deposed, even if originally elected in a democratic free and fair election, may have become so corrupt that there is no chance to bring it back into force.  In those cases diplomacy should focus on the rapid return to democracy.

When there is a coup against a functioning democratic government and diplomatic and economic efforts fail to restore the legitimate government, the international community should consider the use of force.  A UN Security Council resolution, as in the case of Haiti, would provide the best legitimacy, but regional organizations to which the state belongs would have the right to act if necessary. Force must be limited and aimed only at restoring the previous legitimate government.

We must not let George Bush give intervention for humanitarian purposes or to advance democracy a bad name as he seeks to use them in retrospect to justify his Iraqi intervention.  At the same time we should not be driven to the view that such interventions are always justified if only done by the right people.

Claiming the New Security Terrain Posted by Lorelei Kelly

The past four days crossed the spectrum from grass-roots advocacy training in New Mexico to the venerable Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, also fondly known as "Nukestock".   For a good overview of the conference topic, click into Joe Cirincione's 60 year retrospective.  Joe is a policy wonk with a lounge act in his soul.  He makes rocket science go down easy.  Check out the daily conference blogs here, here, and for a Russian perspective here.  In between the activists and the wonks, I caught a day of Irregular Warfare discussions put on by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy--one of the best civil-military dialogue projects going.

All these conferences prove how much great material is out there, just waiting for progressive politicians to grab hold of it.  Much of it is already user-friendly (the session I led in Santa Fe was called "de-wonked")  Why is the learning curve so steep for our elected leaders, then?   To re-cap one of the problems with Congress:  Much of the informal infrastructure for discussing new security issues was eliminated by the Contract with America in 1995, in particular the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus.  Gingrich then outsourced the conservatives' needs to the Heritage Foundation's Stepford wonks.  Moderate Republicans and all Democrats suffered as they had no equivalent manpower to massage information into talking points. This contributed to the decay of civility on the Hill, for the built-in infrastructure for collaborating outside the party leadership disappeared.  A good example of this loss, the Democratic Study Group, which produced rapid-response briefs on national security issues--had 40 Republican members. The Republican Study Group did not deliver comparable products. It did come back, however, as the Republican Study Committee (which now has 5 staff).  Sign up here for regular updates on its activities.  The Democrats on the House side still have nothing.

Before leaving last week, I wrote about the Cold War dinosaurs in the defense budget. Well, the next day, I read front page in  Defense News that both the weapons platforms that I had panned (The Navy's DDX destroyer and the Air Force's  F-22) got top billing in these services' budget priorities.  In every challenge that we're facing in the world today, human beings are the weapons platform that counts. (The "Army of One" finally makes sense!) One arabic speaker in an Army unit in Iraq is worth dozens of Flash Gordon anti-gravity sprocket watches. What's it going to take to de-corporatize our priorities?

Now, I don't believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in well-orchestrated collaborative intent.  To compete with the defense industry's surround-sound advertising and lobbying presence, academics, vets and citizens with a global cooperation bent have to really organize. The internet is still under-utilized by progressive security types.  Groups like Citizens for Global Solutions have a great report card site for Members of Congress.  But it pales in comparison to this  site.

This is a spoof  set up by National Journal columnist Jonathan Rauch.  With it, he mimics  the effectiveness of the "Prosperity Project" organized by the Business Industry Political Action Committee.  Its Members pay thousands of dollars to join and then become part of a vast "grass roots" lobbying campaign.  Go to the "about your elected officials" link to see how Members of Congress are rated.  I checked the California links...funny how Republicans had many happy green check marks next to their votes and Democrats had alarming red "X's".  BIPAC, like the Chamber of Commerce, is pretty much a Republican shill. The Norquist/Luntz/Delay/Abramoff constellation might be the  self licking ice cream cone  of influence and politics--but groups like BIPAC own the whole soda fountain. Participatory democracy for regular citizens beware.  What would a progressive security website--based on this model--look like?  How can we get newly organized  "deliberative democracy" citizen groups like  this and this and this to include a consistent security angle in their work?

This weekend I will post a whole new list of military sites for progressives (I just got my Army War College conference CD in the mail)

What Does the Democratic Party Believe In? Posted by Shadi Hamid

It's been a pleasure guest blogging for Democracy Arsenal. I hope I'€™ve provided some insight into the question of democracy promotion in the Arab world, and Egypt in particular. For this, my last post, I want to just throw out a few disjointed, but hopefully useful, thoughts about the future of the Democratic Party.

For a while now, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with our party's approach to foreign policy. Let me just backtrack a little bit. I remember, last year during the election campaign, when John Kerry cited "stability" as our most important objective in Iraq. There was something disturbing about the idea that our soldiers were dying by the hundreds for "stability." For some it seemed a perfectly logical statement - yet more evidence that Kerry would be the safe, sober choice relative to the recklessness of George Bush and his coterie of war-crazed advisors. For others like me, we wondered, perhaps with looks of incredulity on our faces, how and when sobriety had become the revered hallmark of the Democratic Party. (Of course, stability is of vital importance. But one would hope that stability is not, by itself, all we are striving for in Iraq).

This otherwise unremarkable statement from John Kerry was evidence of the poverty of new, or even interesting, ideas in our party. It's become a cliche by now, but we're lacking the "vision thing." For all its faults, at least the Bush administration acted (or pretended) like it operated out of conviction and not calculation. When you listened to Bush speak about a variety of foreign policy issues, you got a sense that he was presenting a vision, however frightening that vision sometimes was. Ideology mixed with foreign policy can be dangerous (i.e. the last 5 years) but, then again, I suspect that few Americans have an emotional affinity for the dank grayness of realpolitik.

There doesn'€™t seem to be even a trace of Woodrow Wilson in our Democratic leaders (Joe Biden is an exception that comes to mind). More often than not, we'€™ve avoided the issue of democracy promotion in the Middle East like it was some kind of partisan plague unleashed by Karl Rove. I dislike many things about Bush's foreign policy, but I -€“ and I say this with a more than a hint of reluctance -€“ really liked the language Bush used in his state of the union and inaugural addresses earlier this year. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you," or "the road of providence is uneven and unpredictable, yet we know where it leads: It leads to freedom." It'€™s unfortunate that these words, so long overdue, came from a Republican president. This used to be our issue. A passion for promoting freedom, democracy and human rights used to be what animated us and what drove us. This was the essence of what it meant to be a liberal internationalist. But now it seems that the liberals have turned conservative and the conservatives turned liberal.

It seems to me that a keen awareness of the West's often destructive role in the region coupled with well-deserved anger over the last 5 years of President Bush's messianic militarism has pushed many democrats to disengage from the noble and worthwhile venture of democracy building. In the process, the Democratic Party -€“ which used to be most vigorous in its support of humanitarian intervention abroad -€“ has ceded this crucial issue to the neo-conservatives.

So a few questions to all of you Democracy Arsenal readers and I'd love to hear your feedback: What do we believe in ? What are the ideas that guide us ? Will we be able to provide a bold, comprehensive vision for US foreign policy ?  More importantly, what is our overarching theme, our  message, our meta-narrative ?

Yes, I am a Democrat, and a proud one at that, but I have no problem saying that I hope that America's great project this century will be the unapologetic, vigorous promotion of democracy in the Middle East (note: this does not mean using military force). This is not so much a policy choice as it is a moral commitment. Moreover, it'€™s an idea and it'€™s a vision and, yes, it'€™s also in our national interests. This was once also, long ago, our language -€“ the language of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. It is easy to forget it now, but the driving force of the Left has always been something much greater, and certainly more noble than "stability." Let us, then, work to reclaim that lost spirit.

Europe is Simmering Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Well, I will say one thing for Dick Cheney -- he keeps it discreet.  Imagine your country mired in crisis and having the news screen full of senior officials, very senior officials, bickering over approaches in public.

That's what they're getting in France -- from cars burning in the suburbs to toupees burning in central Paris.

There is much to say about the disturbances in France, what they do or don't say about multiculturalism, what they do or don't mean about Islam, assimilation, and the value of US vs. European models of pluralism.  The New York Times in all its "select" wisdom won't let me link to it, but the two op-ed pieces by French commentators today are excellent, thoughtful contributions.  A few quotes from Oliver Roy, one of the world's pre-eminent observers of political Islam:

Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society.  But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence.  Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond.

Read through that again...

But the French youths are not fighting to be recognized as a minority group either ethnic or religious; they want to be accepted as full citizens.  They have believed in the French model (individual integration through citizenship) but feel cheated because of their social and economic exclusion.  Hence they destroy what they see as the tools of failed social promotion: schools, social welfare offices, gymnasiums.

A fantastic gloss on a quote in the Washington Post over the weekend; the rioters, an older Muslim man said, are "destroying their kindergartens."

Now, before you get too smug about Europe, think a little bit about the violence that raced through New Orleans after Katrina (although, I know, the media overstated it).  This is just a grim, grim diagnosis of how we have allowed an indigestible lump of poverty and hopelessness to grow up in our midst.

Almost 15 years ago I spent an unlikely night in a Paris bainlieu.  My host was a junior French diplomat who had moved back to the capital and found his means very limited.  He picked me up at the train station, we got into the Metro and got out into a vista of high-rises and Arab faces.  It wasn't the Paris of my school trips, but it didn't seem to faze him.  I politely said nothing.  Later, we took the Metro back to Paris, this time with a sea of immigrant teenagers whose surprise at seeing us in their midst only grew as we switched back and forth between English and French.

Finally one of them said to my friend, "yo, where'd you get her?"

"In Vienna," he answered, as if that explained everything.  Finally, we struck up a conversation.  The kids were within five years of our age, but as my friend explained his career path -- university, learning languages, the diplomatic service, a posting in Vienna where, yes, there were women from all over, it was clear that he might as well have arrived from Mars.  Although he was himself the child of hardscrabble immigrants -- French repatriated from Algeria -- their lives had no points of commonality beyond the train we all sat in.  They couldn't imagine any of his options being opened to them.

I could go on forever about the broader implications of all this.  Instead, I think it's time for those of us who focus on foreign affairs to start thinking, again, about the implications of a Europe that is AWOL from its accustomed role in world affairs.  Last week I promised to track and post on Europe's reaction to the news that the US has outsourced its prisons to Central Europe.  But another diplomat friend gently chided me:

Europe is too busy looking inward to care, he said, and reminded me that, while Paris burns, Spain is wrenching itself around the problem of Catalan autonomy, the Dutch are having a parliamentary wrangle over why they went to Iraq and whether they should up their ante in Afghanistan; Italy is in the throes of yet another corruption scandal as its government continues a long (by Italian standards) slow decline.  Germany, remember, still doesn't officially have a government.

Progressives have gotten into the nice but lazy habit of figuring the Europeans will help us over the humps we can't quite get over ourselves: international pressure and money for Iraq, troops for Afghanistan, a new approach for Iran, aid money for Africa and Asia, greasing a final status deal for Kosovo, etc. etc.  Then there's the whole matter of trade policy, where the planets must align creativity and flexibility in both Europe and the U.S.

Fuhgeddaboudit.

I'm not saying Europe will disappear; but if you are a progressive thinker hatching plans that require Europe to stick its neck out, take the lead, or change its own policies dramatically, better start re-thinking.

Remembering Dayton Posted by Derek Chollet

The discussion here and elsewhere on the future of humanitarian intervention, muscular Wilsonianism, and the use of force serves as a reminder of the role that the 1990s debate about Bosnia played in shaping much of the current thinking – and rethinking – about these questions.  Which also gives reason to remember an important anniversary: 10 years ago today, American negotiators were holed up behind a high-barbed wire fence on a secluded Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, in the midst of an intense effort to end the Bosnian war.  The story of how the U.S. got to this point – three years of dithering and indecision as Bosnia bled, followed by five months of diplomacy to end the war capped by the Dayton Peace Accords – is an important one to draw lessons from.

I try to tell this story – and draw some lessons for today – in a new book I have written about the Dayton peace process (shameless, I know).  Let me take this chance to develop briefly some ideas about why I think Dayton mattered – and what this means for today.

Dayton’s core accomplishment is what it did for Bosnia: it ended a war and gave hope to millions who suffered immense hardship.  But it did more than that.  Dayton brought to an end one of the most difficult periods in the history of U.S.-European relations, helping define a new purpose for the Transatlantic Alliance and organizations like NATO, and ultimately, restored the credibility of the United States in the world. 

The Dayton agreement was also a turning point for American foreign policy.  The course the U.S. chose fit within a well-established American diplomatic tradition: a policy that challenged the status quo and reflected an all-or-nothing approach driven less by concerns about niceties or allied consensus than by getting something done.

This mattered for America’s global standing; it mattered for President Bill Clinton personally.  After years of disappointment in foreign policy – from their inability to solve Bosnia, to the “black hawk down” disaster in Somalia, the chaos of Haiti, and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda – Clinton and his team emerged from Dayton with greater command, confidence, and global respect.  In less than six months during 1995, Clinton had taken charge of the Transatlantic Alliance, pushed NATO to use overwhelming military force, risked America’s prestige on a bold diplomatic gamble, and placed 20,000 American military men and women on the ground in a dangerous environment to enforce the agreement.

The Bosnia experience has taught many lessons, but the most important one is this: when it comes to solving global problems, American leadership remains indispensable.  America’s failure to lead during the early 1990’s contributed to the international community’s inability to solve the Bosnia’s crisis; but its bold action in 1995 stopped the war. 

And here’s what progressives today need to remember: this approach included allies, but in the end it was largely unilateral, rejecting the United Nations and keeping our friends at long-arms-length (during the negotiations in Dayton, the Europeans were largely reduced to being spectators).  The United States acted first and consulted later.  And it was not only truly maximalist in means, but in ends: rather than simply seek a cease-fire between the parties (as most Europeans wanted), the United States sought to create the contours of a new Bosnian democratic state.

Perhaps it is fitting that the best description of this comes from the top European involved in these negotiations, Sweden’s former Prime Minister, Carl Bildt.  The “simple and fundamental fact” of the history made in Dayton, Bildt recalls, is that the “United States was the only player who possessed the ability to employ power as a political instrument and, when forced into action, was also willing to do so.”  This lesson from Dayton is sometimes easy to overlook today, ten years later, when many around the world are questioning the purpose of U.S. leadership, chafing at the exercise of American power, or claiming that American assertiveness is something new. 

Can Parliamentary Elections be Both Fun and Important ? (The Opposition Gears up For November 9th) Posted by Shadi Hamid

In previous posts, I’ve focused on the external dimension of this month’s parliamentary elections in Egypt, primarily the failure of US policymakers to exert substantial pressure on the Mubarak regime in recent months. Nevertheless, these elections will be conducted in a considerably more open and competitive atmosphere than in previous years. This is party due to an increasingly emboldened (although still fractious) opposition, which rightfully recognizes these elections as the most crucial political event in recent memory. Where the September Presidential elections were  largely a well-orchestrated charade with a predetermined outcome (the only excitement was whether Mubarak would win with 77.5% or 88.5% of the vote), the parliamentary elections, which begin on Wednesday, are sure to be full of surprises.

I tend to be very skeptical about the Egyptian opposition only because they never miss and opportunity to miss an opportunity. They seem congenitally unable to form anything resembling a unified front. This is, to some extent, still true today although there are positive signs that the opposition might finally be burying the hatchet.

The Unified National Front for Change (UNFC) is an interesting amalgam of secular and Islamist parties. In theory, it includes nearly the whole opposition, including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wafd (center-right), and Tagammu (left) parties. The idea behind the coalition was to present a unified electoral list instead of dividing up the votes between the parties. When the rather impressive coalition of 11 parties and groups was announced in October, it generated a lot of buzz in Cairo’s political circles. Some of the anticipation, however, died down when the Muslim Brotherhood, although still officially part of the UNFC, decided to run its own candidates under its own campaign and platform. Not to mention the fact that al-Ghad party was not even invited to participate in the coalition due to the longstanding feuds between its leader, Ayman Nour, and Wafd leader Noman Gomaa. So, the opposition remains fractious but less so than previous years, which I suppose is a sign of progress, at least by Egyptian standards.

The Brotherhood remains the group to watch. Seemingly more confident than ever, they are fielding 150 candidates, three times more than they did in 2000. They have certainly benefited from the relatively open atmosphere. Where before the 2000 elections, nearly 6000 Brothers were detained (and in 1995, many including leading moderate Esam el-Erian were tried in military courts), this time around, there have been no arrests. Its candidates campaign openly despite the fact that the group is still technically banned. Their ubiquitous slogan “Islam is the Solution” reportedly plastered all over Egypt, albeit with a nice subtitle – “Together for Reform” to emphasize their democratic proclivities (you’d think that with Bush’s unfortunate use of “democracy” and “war” in the same sentences would turn people off, but, no, everyone in Egypt today - Islamists, socialists, communists, dictators - wants to be a democrat). Interestingly, their slogan has been “branded.” Progress indeed.

 There are whole host of fun subplots in the election. Secularist opposition leader Ayman Nour, who was arrested last January and released thanks to pressure from Condi Rice, is the victim of an appropriately ironic government smear campaign. The ruling party has plastered posters all over his home district of Bab al Sha’riya, accusing him of being a “US agent.” This of course despite the fact that the Egyptian government receives $2 billion of aid each year from the US, and despite the fact that President-for-life Hosni Mubarak and President Bush are still apparently buddies. In another interesting development, there’s the one female candidate who is running on the Muslim Brotherhood ticket. She happens to be a professor. More importantly, she is running for political office (something which will presumably divert her attention from the “household”). Yet, she still tells the press, without the slightest hint of irony, that asking for sexual equality "goes against nature." "Would women be happy if men were to stay home to look after the children while they worked outside?" she asks rhetorically.

Then there, of course, are the usual rumors that 1 million dead people, despite being dead, will somehow find a way to vote for the ruling party.

Yep, it’s going to be fun.

What Iraq Has Taught Us About Humanitarian Intervention Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There's an important debate underway on America Abroad about where the liberal internationalist consensus for humanitarian intervention stands after Iraq (see Anne-Marie Slaughter's latest post for a partial summary).  The gist is an argument over whether, as David Rieff claims, after Iraq, humanitarian intervention can no longer be distinguished from self-interested, imperialistic interventions done under the guise of promoting human rights and ousting despots.  Back in the Spring of 2004 (actually, the Summer of 2003, in light of FA's pub cycle) I fretted that exactly this would happen, writing in Foreign Affairs that:

After September 11, conservatives adopted the trappings of liberal internationalism, entangling the rhetoric of human rights and democracy in a strategy of aggressive unilateralism. But the militant imperiousness of the Bush administration is fundamentally inconsistent with the ideals they claim to invoke. To reinvent liberal internationalism for the twenty-first century, progressives must wrest it back from Republican policymakers who have misapplied it.

Shadi Hamid has touched on similar issues in posts immediately below.   There's much I agree with in responses to Rieff from Slaughter, Bruce Jentleson, Ivo Daalder and John Ikenberry, including the essential point that Iraq was emphatically not a humanitarian intervention.  It doesn't even qualify as the hard case that might make bad law.   But that said, Iraq has taught us key lessons that can and must guide future thinking on humanitarian intervention, mostly raising the bar for when we should intervene and how we need to do it.  I list 10 of them.  Look forward to additions, subtractions and comments.

1.  Principle Motivation Must be Perceived as Humanitarian - I disagree strongly with Rieff that humanitarian intervention has already been discredited beyond salvation.  But after a few more Iraqs, that likely would be true.   No matter the stated reasons for intervention, audiences in the affected country and at home will judge motives for themselves.  Humanitarian intervention will normally implicate some strategic US interest, writ broadly.  But any whiff of narrower self-interest (especially involving economic or domestic political considerations) can foul the air completely.  James Baker's observation that we had no dog in the fight in Bosnia may, ironically, have helped legitimize our interventions in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.

2.  While it Need Not Necessarily Derive from Any Single Source, Legitimacy is Essential - Anne-Marie Slaughter and Ivo Daalder illuminate how the US operation in Kosovo, though without UN imprimatur, had the effect of "pushing" international law to provide broader license for similar interventions, culminating in this Fall's adoption of a UN "responsibility to protect" (a duty that, unaccountably, has not been invoked in Darfur).   Rather than fixating exclusively on a single form of sanction (UN Security Council, for example), advocates of humanitarian intervention will need to ensure they can credibly claim some source of legitimacy (for example, from a regional organization).

3.  Humanitarian intervention is war - Rieff is right to emphasize this, particular since the point was forgotten by those (outside the Administration) who favored war in Iraq on humanitarian grounds.    Many expected a quick, clean conflict and thought that if a brutal tyrant like Saddam could be ousted relatively bloodlessly well, then, why not?  Iraq is a reminder of the  risks that make going to war a momentous decision:  loss of American lives, loss of foreign lives, physical dislocations, social and psychological disruptions, regional destabilization and risk of unpredictable horribles.  While we rightly rue our failure to act in Rwanda, we perhaps don't think enough about what the never-fought "Rwanda War" (and subsequent occupation?) might have been like.

4.  Humanitarian intervention is more than just war - Those of us who believe that humanitarian intervention needs to be among the options available to US policymakers face a major challenge in bringing US capabilities to carry out the non-military aspects of intervention (stabilization, state-building, socio-economic reconstruction, etc.) up to the standards applied to our conventional military operations (counter-terrorism, unfortunately, excluded).   See here for more.

5.   Intervenor Bears Strict Liability for Anything That Goes Wrong - The reasons the operation in Iraq has gone so badly wrong have everything to do with the fact that this was not a humanitarian intervention:  if the US's motives weren't at issue, we wouldn't face the kind of insurgency we do.  But Iraq has nonetheless taught a sobering lesson about the responsibility an intervenor shoulders, fairly or not.  We should never again intervene without a serious examination of the worst-case scenario consequences and how to deal with them.

6.  Negligent Intervention May be Worse than No Intervention - Until Iraq, it never dawned on most of us that the US was capable of an operation as poorly planned and executed as the aftermath of the Iraq intervention.  But we know now.  A hard-headed assessment of preparedness and capabilities is essential to any future humanitarian intervention debate.

7.  When We Go at it Alone, We'd Better Understand Why - Many progressives subscribe to the mantra "with others where possible, alone where necessary."  When it comes to humanitarian intervention, we need to answer honestly why we're alone.  If its because of the rest of the world's biases, indifference, cowardice or helplessness, fine.  If its because we haven't proffered a rationale convincing enough to rally others, because they suspect our motives, or because they believe that measures short of intervention might work, we need to look hard at whether to go ahead.   Analyzing this objectively will be tough.

8.  Humanitarian Intervention Represents a Preventive Policy Failure - Given the emphasis that we progressives place on diplomacy, alliances, multilateral institutions, and fostering democracy and the rule of law, humanitarian intervention should only arise as a need once our best efforts on all these fronts have failed.  That notion may seem obvious, but truly embracing it means rejecting humanitarian intervention"ism" as a major pillar of progressive foreign policy (an pillar that wins favor partly because it allows liberals to demonstrate that they don't shy away from force).  John Ikenberry makes a similar point.

9.  Putting Values into Action Abroad Invites Scrutiny at Home - This is one of the most dangerous aspects of the neo-conservative hijacking of progressive priorities like human rights and the rule of law.  The abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have tainted the way these concepts are understood abroad, and we will spend years undoing that damage.

10.  Today's Interventions Will Both Dictate and Circumscribe Tomorrow's - What we used to think of as "Vietnam Syndrome" has turned out to be an eerie pendulum that swings from one era's mistakes of action (Vietnam, Somalia) into the next's errors of omission (Rwanda, Bosnia), and then back again (Iraq) and again (Darfur).   The challenge of us defenders of humanitarian intervention is to take the last 30 years of experience and build from it a vector of progress (Anne-Marie Slaughter's faith) rather than than a bloody cycle of repetition (Rieff's fear).

The Meaning of "Power" Posted by Shadi Hamid

In response to some of the comments on my previous post, I want to make clear the distinction between "power" and "military force" (similar to the difference between "aggressively promoting democracy" and "aggressively promoting democracy with tanks"). Unfortunately, because of the Bush administration's numerous missteps, "power" and "force" have become conflated and are, more often then they should be, used interchangeably. I am not advocating using military force to fight tyranny in Egypt or anywhere else. Rather I am saying that we should use the full extent of our economic, political, and moral resources to pressure these regimes to democratize. The notion of liberal interventionism or "muscular Wilsonianism" (vis-a-vis the Arab world) that I am advocating consists of several things:

1. Passionately committing ourselves to democracy as the best available form of government and as something which all peoples, regardless of culture or religion, both deserve and aspire to.

2. Making the vigorous, unapologetic (but peaceful) promotion of democracy and human rights the centerpiece of our policy in the Middle East, not just in words but in deeds.

3. Actively supporting non-violent, pro-democracy opposition movements against authoritarian regimes.

4. Emphasizing soft power in our public diplomacy efforts (a la Clinton) and avoiding Bush-style belligerency. This means understanding that not only military force but the threat of military force must be used judiciously and with an eye to its inherent limitations as an instrument of societal transformation.

Declarations of a Liberal Interventionist ? Posted by Shadi Hamid

I was speaking at a conference this past April and had an interesting exchange with the predominantly left-of-center audience during the question and answer session. I said something along the lines of “the US has a moral obligation to fight tyranny and promote democracy throughout the Middle East.” God forbid. I heard grumbling in the crowd. Raised eyebrows. Frowns. Several people raised their hands, presumably to grill me about my just revealed neo-con affinities, or perhaps to attack me for my “muscular Wilsonianism.”

I continued, and presented them with a couple of choices. We can decide to be “sensitive” gradualists and let things evolve naturally. After all, it took the West centuries to make the transition to liberal, democratic life – so what’s the harm if we wait, say, 50 years to let the Egyptians build strong bottom-up democratic institutions, at their own pace ? (After all, if we move to quickly, it will empower Islamic fundamentalists, or so the argument goes.) – Or, option # 2, we can come to terms with the fact that we are the most powerful nation in the world and, more importantly, that we are a country founded upon a noble sense of mission. If we truly believe in democracy as the best available form of government, then it only makes sense that we marshal our country’s great influence, resources, and power in the service of the ideals to which we subscribe (note: "power" is the not the same thing as "military force").

Silence, on the other hand, is complicity. To wait and watch the Arab people suffer under the yoke of authoritarianism, and to do nothing, to say nothing, is an abdication of responsibility. If we give Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak $2 billion of economic and military aid each year, then we have a right to demand that our dollars not go toward legitimating an authoritarian regime which has denied the God-given rights and aspirations of a people for a quarter-century (Mubarak came to power the same year as Reagan). Not only is this about ideals, but it's also about  our national security. If people are not able to express their grievances and aspirations in legitimate, peaceful ways, then they will often resort to violence to accomplish their political objectives. That’s obviously not what we want. A 2003 study conducted by Princeton University Professor Alan Krueger and Czech scholar Jitka Maleckova, which analyzed a vast amount of data on terrorist attacks, came to the alarming conclusion that “the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties. Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists.”

In a perfect world, oppressed peoples would rise up on their own, demand their freedom, and force constructive change . However, in places like Egypt, where apathy reigns supreme, this is not going to happen anytime soon. The Egyptian opposition is notoriously fractious and has repeatedly failed to unite behind a common pro-democracy agenda. Coalitions rarely last more than a few months, if not a few weeks. The government, for its part, has mastered the art of divide and conquer and used the fears of Islamist ascendancy to convince secular liberals that secular authoritarianism is better than the alternative. The government has at its disposal an extensive security network which can crush at a moment’s notice any threatening display of anti-regime opposition.

For all these reasons, sustained external pressure is needed. This means telling President Mubarak that if the parliamentary elections this month are not sufficiently free and fair, we will begin to withhold economic aid. In other words, If you want our money than you have to agree to play by the rules of the democratic process. In the post 9-11 world, the Faustian bargain of silence in exchange for stability is no longer operable. That is the message which must be clearly relayed to those regimes which think that we will continue to turn a blind eye to their transgressions.

Torture, Civil Liberties and Terrorists Posted by Morton H. Halperin

The only way we can lose the fight against terrorists is if we allow them to goad us into betraying our deepest values.  By sanctioning torture and violating civil liberties, the Bush Administration has set us on a course that does just that.  But the administration's misguided efforts are finally meeting with effective resistance.  There is a real chance that with continuing public pressure Congress will adopt two important measures for the end of the year.

(My colleague Suzanne Nossel dealt with the merits of the arguments about sanctioning torture at some length yesterday and I will not repeat this, but I endorse her comments.)

The Senate has led the way by adopting with overwhelming support two critical restrictions on the President's power.  First, by unanimous consent, it accepted significant changes in the Patriot Act section usually known misleadingly as the "library" provision since it relates to a whole range of documents (I return to this below). Second, it adopted by a vote of 90-9 an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill (HR 2863 sections 8154, 8155) which prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of persons held anywhere by the Department of Defense or any other agency of the government. 

But success is not yet assured.  The House did not adopt either of the rights-protective provisions adopted by the Senate. Both hang in the balance in negotiations between the House and Senate.  Meanwhile, the administration threatens to veto both the reauthorization of the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act and the Defense Appropriations bill.

The anti-torture provision was adopted in the Senate under the leadership of Senator McCain and with the support of 90 Senators.  It has now been endorsed in the House by more than 13 moderate Republicans.  Their support, along with that of key Democrats including the ranking member of the DoD approrpriations sub-committee, gives the provision a clear majority in the House. House Republican leaders have reportedly told the administration that if put to a vote, the provision would be approved by the House.  For that reason the Republican House leadership put off appointing conferees on the bill since this would have permitted ranking Democrat Murtha to offer a motion to instruct the conferees to accept the Senate anti-torture language.

The anti-torture provisions were adopted in the Senate despite intense lobbying by Vice President Cheney.  The indictment of Scooter Libby may further weaken the hand of those within the administration who have staunchly defended the notion of presidential power to authorize torture, including Cheney (or "Official C," as perhaps he should be known).  After the torture provision was adopted, Cheney secretly suggested that the administration could live with the prohibition if the CIA was exempted.  Leaders of the anti-torture effort on both sides of the aisle in the House as well as the Senate have shown no interest in that proposal.

Senator McCain put his amendment on the Defense Appropriations bill only after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled the DoD Authorization bill off the floor in order to avoid a vote on the McCain amendment.  He has now agreed to bring the bill back next week and to permit a vote on the amendment.  There is no doubt that it will pass overwhelmingly again.  In the meantime, moderate Republicans in the House are signaling their strong and growing support for the provision in the wake of strong endorsements from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and many retired military officers.  Leading Republican foreign policy statesmen are expected to express their concern about torture and degrading treatment shortly.

Reports suggest that the administration is deeply split on this issue.  With continuing strong public pressure, this is a fight that can be won.

The favorable change in the Patriot Act -- now in conference between the House and Senate -- could lead to another important victory for respect for human rights and the rule of law.  The Senate version of the bill limits the ability of the government to get records from libraries and other institutions by either sending a letter demanding it or getting an order from the FISA court.  Under current law the government need only assert that the information is needed for a terrorism investigation and the judge can only determine that the government is making that assertion, not that it has underlying facts to support it.  The Senate amendment to the renewal of the expiring Patriot Act provisions requires proof of a much clearer nexus to a suspected terrorist and gives the Court the role it should have in determining if the government has demonstrated that there is probable cause to believe that the facts are true.

The Patriot Act conference is reportedly bogged down in fights over extraneous provisions added by the House and has not yet reached this issue.  When and if it does, there is a real prospect of getting the Senate language adopted.  Key civil liberties groups have made it clear to the conferees that this provision is the most important one in the  bill and have urged Senators to hold fast.  It is not yet clear if the House would go along with the Senate language.

By the time Congress goes home at the end of the session it might well have adopted these two provisions.  If so, this will mark at long last not only a turning point towards a greater role for Congress in the struggle against terrorists, but also recognition of the need to stand for the highest ideals of the nation as we protect our security.