The false case for ‘humanitarian’ intervention

The hypocrisy, double standards and selectivity displayed in the Western military action in Libya defy enumeration.

In Yemen and Bahrain, Western-backed regimes are violently repressing the democracy movement the West claims to back in Libya.

In Iraq, a US-sponsored regime protected by 47,000 US troops is trying to do the same —shooting demonstrators, detaining thousands and subjecting many to torture.

The “urgency” of the response to Gaddafi is in marked contrast to the infinite patience extended to Israel. No one proposed a no-fly zone when Israeli aircraft were pummelling Gaza.

Nor did they when the Sri Lankan government killed some 20,000 civilians in its final assault on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009.

In Burma, condemnation has never been matched by the merest hint of military action. Millions have perished in a war in the Congo financed and armed by Western corporations.

But if the Western powers are hypocritical and selective, does it mean they are wrong in this instance? Our guilt elsewhere is not an excuse for failing to protect the innocent in Libya.

But what are these “double standards of our own”? We don’t demand the invasion of Burma or the bombing of Tel Aviv and no one called for “no-fly zones” over South African townships during the apartheid years.

We want an end to Western support for repressive regimes everywhere, but our solidarity is not expressed at the tip of a Cruise missile.

The point about the hypocrisy is that it unveils the real motive forces driving the intervention. And motives are not incidental factors; they guide and shape the intervention and tell us a great deal about its likely impact.

What the double standards reveal is a very clear and consistent policy standard, i.e. Western elite interests (or lack of them).

The Libyan crisis is too good, too rare an opportunity to pass up. It offers them the chance to guarantee a pro-Western regime in an oil-producing nation, reassert their role in the region after a series of setbacks and renew their prerogatives as world policemen in the wake of the catastrophic performance in Iraq.

There is also a pressing need to realign and channel the Arab popular movements, which have defied so many Western assumptions. Crucially, these movements have combined demands for political rights with demands for economic and social justice — the part of the movement that is a revolt against neoliberal rule has to be diverted.

If liberal interventionists were consistent, they would advocate similar Western military action in relation to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Congo, Kashmir, Iran, Israel, Burma and elsewhere.

This would not only be wildly impracticable but deeply undesirable. It would lead to chaos and escalating violence on a global scale, overwhelmingly detrimental to the poor and fatal to the cause of democratic advance.

Liberal interventionists treat great powers as neutral agents, disinterested entities that can be inserted into a situation for a limited purpose and time, like a surgeon’s knife.

In reality, however, these powers have clear and compelling interests and their deployment of military force is guided by those interests.

Western troops are accountable not to the people they’re supposed to be protecting but to a chain of command that ends in Washington, London and Paris.

The liberal interventionists omit from their equations the realities of unequal power. Their approach to crisis is managerialist. Problems will be solved by the implementation from above of sound policies. They see the masses as passive recipients of democracy, not the creators of it.



Those who believe democracy can be imposed by outside military assault have missed some of the essence of democracy, not to mention the powerful lessons of Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

It’s argued that badly motivated actions can still have unintended positive consequences. The same argument was advanced in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The argument ignores that intentions, however contradictory or confused, shape outcomes.

Liberal interventionism is underpinned by a lack of sensitivity to the inevitable costs of warfare and in particular warfare waged by one country on the soil (or airspace) of another. It ignores the vast range of unpredictable ramifications.

It treats military intervention as if it were the same as raising or lowering taxes, a mechanical incentive to a desired form of behaviour.

Liberal interventionism is entirely dependent on the great powers. It relies on a coincidence of Western and humanitarian interests — a historical rarity at best.

The current intervention ensures that if Gaddafi falls, his replacement will be chosen by the West. The new regime will be born dependent on the Western powers, which will direct its economic and foreign policies accordingly.

The liberal interventionists will say that’s not what they want, but their policy makes it inevitable.

The problem is not the ambiguities of the UN mandate. “Mission creep” is inherent in the process. The mission will become what the major powers want it to be, according to their own agendas.

[This article is abridged from www.mikemarqusee.com .]