Abstract
The practice of humanitarian military intervention has been a component of the just war tradition for centuries, though it has allegedly acquired increased legitimacy since the end of the cold war. Within the past decade or so, NATO’s campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 over the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians has spurred perhaps the most systematic and sustained scholarly discussion of this general topic. Until recently, however, scholarly treatments of this morally, legally, and politically controversial topic have mainly dealt with the conditions under which humanitarian intervention would be morally desirable, as well as when, if ever, it would be permissible under international law2 An unspoken assumption of much of this literature is that some actor would be willing and able to undertake this operationally and politically demanding task when and where it was needed.3 However, even during the 1990s—the supposed heyday of the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention—numerous cases of gross human rights violations were allowed to occur with little meaningful response by the international community. Many of these cases have been considered by scholars to constitute moral, and even legal, grounds for armed intervention to stop such suffering. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda is perhaps the most dramatic example of the consequences of inaction in the face of such blatant massacre.
1. I would like to thank James Pattison, Jonathan Havercroft, and Brent Steele for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
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Notes
See, for example, Fernando Tesón, Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational, 1988);
Brian D. Lepard, Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention: A Fresh Legal Approach Based on Fundamental Ethical Principles in International Law and World Religions (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002);
Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention in International Law (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003);
J.L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane, eds, Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
and Terry Nardin and Melissa S. Williams, eds, Humanitarian Intervention (NOMOS 47) (New York: New York University Press, 2006).
See International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa, ON: International Development Research Centre, 2001), 47–56.
Madeline K. Albright, “The End of Intervention,” New York Times, 11 June 2008. See also the various columns in the New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof, perhaps the most vocal advocate for action in Darfur.
P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 40–48.
Christian T. Miller, “Private Contractors Outnumber US Troops in Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, 4 July 2007, A1.
James Cockayne, “Commercial Security in Humanitarian and Post-conflict Settings: An Exploratory Study,” International Peace Academy, March 2006, 1.
Rebecca Ulam Weiner, “As the International Community Dithers over Darfur, Private Military Companies Say They’ve Got What It Takes to Stop the Carnage, If Only Someone Would Hire Them,” Boston Globe, 23 April 2006.
I deal with the precise nature of such human suffering in Eric A. Heinze, Waging Humanitarian War: The Ethics, Law and Politics of Humanitarian Intervention (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009), Chapter 2.
James Pattison, “Legitimacy and Humanitarian Intervention: Who Should Intervene?,” International journal of Human Rights 23 (3) (2008): 397.
See Sarah Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).
On the question of mercenaries under international law, see Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 3; International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries, 4 December 1989, UN Doc. A/RES/44/34. See also Louise Doswald-Beck, “Private Military Companies under International Humanitarian Law,” in Simon Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt, eds, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 122–123.
Simon Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt, “Introduction,” in Chesterman and Lehnardt, eds, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3.
Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War (London: Polity, 2005), 71.
Michael Walzer, “Mercenary Impulse: Is There an Ethics That Justifies Blackwater?,” The New Republic, 21 March 2008.
Deborah D. Avant, The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 101–105; Singer, Corporate Warriors, 126.
Theodore Lowi, “Making Democracy Safe for the World: On Fighting the Next War,” in G. John Ikenberry, ed., American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays (New York: HarperCollins, 1989), 258–292.
See especially Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002), 329–391;
Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003).
Eric A. Heinze, “The Rhetoric of Genocide in US Foreign Policy: Rwanda and Darfur Compared,” Political Science Quarterly 122 (3) (2007): 365.
Bruce Grant, “US Military Expertise for Sale: Private Military Consultants as a Tool of Foreign Policy,” National Defense University, Institute for National Security Studies, 1998, available at http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/essaych4.html, cited in Avant, Market for Force, 156 no. 63.
C.A.J. Coady, “Mercenary Morality,” in A.G.D. Bradney, ed., International Law and Armed Conflict (Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992), 64.
James Pattison, “Just War Theory and the Privatization of Military Force,” Ethics and International Affairs 22 (2) (2008): 146.
Herbert Wulf, “Privatization of Security, International Interventions and the Democratic Control of Force,” in Andrew Alexandra, Deane-Peter Baker, and Marina Caparini, eds, Private Military and Security Companies: Ethics, Policies, and Civil — Military Relations (London: Routledge, 2008), 195.
Tony Lynch and A.J. Walsh, “The Good Mercenary?,” Journal of Political Philosophy 8 (2) (2000): 136.
Bruno Simma, “NATO, the UN, and the Use of Force: Legal Aspects,” European Journal of International Law 10 (1) (1999): 12–13.
See also Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000);
Earl H. Tilford, Jr., “Operation Allied Force and the Role of Air Power,” Parameters 29 (4) (1999/2000): 24–38.
Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000), 62. See also Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace?, 73. I am grateful to Brent Steele for bringing this to my attention.
See the following competing views on this issue: George Packer, Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005);
Douglas J. Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (New York: Harper, 2008).
See also Eric A. Heinze, “The New Utopianism: Liberalism, American Foreign Policy, and the War in Iraq,” Journal of International Political Theory 4 (1) (2008): 105–125.
Fernando Tesán, “Ending Tyranny in Iraq,” Ethics and International Affairs 19 (2) (2005): 4–5; Terry Nardin, “Introduction,” in Nardin and Williams, eds, 10; Pattison, “Just War Theory,” 147.
Robert Fisk, “Untouchable Ministries,” The Independent, 16 April 2003. See also “US Shamed by Looting of Antiquities,” The Scotsman, 19 April 2003.
The most notable example is DynCorp, which was awarded several lucrative deals by the US even after it broke a contract with the State Department in Liberia amidst heavy fighting. See Christopher Spearin, “Between Public Peacekeepers and Private Forces: Can There Be a Third Way?,” International Peacekeeping 12 (2) (2005): 246.
James Cockayne, “The Global Reorganization of Violence: Military Entrepreneurs and the Private Face of International Humanitarian Law,” International Review of the Red Cross 88 (863) (2006): 462.
Mark Evans, “In Humanity’s Name: Democracy and the Right to Wage War,” in Mark Evans, ed., Just War Theory: A Reappraisal (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 78.
James Turner Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just? (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 23.
See also Cian O’Driscoll, “James Turner Johnson’s Just War Idea: Commanding the Headquarters of Tradition,” Journal of International Political Theory 4 (2) (2008): 101–193.
Lindsey Cameron, “Private Military Companies: Their Status under International Humanitarian Law and Its Impact on Their Regulation,” International Review of the Red Cross 88 (863) (2006): 582.
Michael N. Schmitt, “Humanitarian Law and Direct Participation in Hostilities by Private Contractors or Civilian Employees,” Chicago Journal of International Law 5 (2) (2005): 519. Geneva Convention (Third) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 12 August 1949, 75 UNTS 135, Article 4.
Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, Roger A. Coate, and Kelly-Kate Pease, The United Nations and Changing World Politics, 5th edition (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2007), 17.
Daphna Shraga, “UN Peacekeeping Operations: Applicability of International Humanitarian Law and Responsibility for Operations-Related Damage,” American Journal of International Law 94 (2) (2000): 406.
David Sloss, “Schizophrenic Treaty Law,” Texas International Law Journal 43 (3) (2007): 17.
Marc Lindemann, “Civilian Contractors under Military Law,” Parameters: US War College Quarterly 37 (3) (2007): 83–94.
See Paul R. Verkuil, Outsourcing Sovereignty: Why Privatization of Government Functions Threatens Democracy and What We Can Do About It (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
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© 2009 Eric A. Heinze and Brent J. Steele
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Heinze, E.A. (2009). Private Military Companies, Just War, and Humanitarian Intervention. In: Heinze, E.A., Steele, B.J. (eds) Ethics, Authority, and War. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101791_6
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