BY

ACHIN VANAIK

Despite the disastrous outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporters of US-led military intervention still claim war can be a humanitarian project. It can't.

During the late 1990s and the early 2000s, the doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” came to the fore as a justification for US-led military adventures in the Balkans and the Middle East. A number of recent events have revived our memory of those debates, from the ignominious US withdrawal from Afghanistan, just as the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was approaching, to the deaths of leading Bush administration officials such as Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell.

For many people, the disastrous outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan will be enough to discredit the idea of humanitarian intervention. But past experience suggests that the justification it offers for military action is too useful to be discarded by the United States and its allies. Such arguments may well be used in support for future wars. We still need to address and refute the case for “humanitarian” warfare on its own terms.

Balancing Rights

It is now generally accepted that all humans possess a basic set of rights, deriving from their status as moral beings who are owed such rights. In this respect, we must now see human rights as a trans-historical and transnational phenomenon, although they are a product of modern history.

Since nation-states are historically contingent phenomena, the rights of nations, such as the right to national self-determination, cannot in principle override such universal rights. We do have an obligation to intervene across national boundaries to promote human rights.

As a normative attitude or set of principles to guide our action, this much is not really in dispute. It allows for all kinds of external initiatives — diplomatic, cultural, humanitarian, etc. — to correct wrongs and to promote justice.

However, the real point of disagreement does not concern the legitimacy or morality of intervention when it assumes such forms. The question is whether we can justify forcible military intervention from outside the country in question to prevent human rights violations.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the greatest single act of global political emancipation was decolonization. This established the formal principle of equality between all nations, and therefore of the right to national self-determination or national sovereignty as the supreme legal principle of the international political order.

“During the second half of the twentieth century, the greatest single act of global political emancipation was decolonization. This established the formal principle of equality between all nations.”

This was and remains a crucial form of protection for the weaker and newly emerging countries in relation to the more powerful ones, in law if not always in practice. The tenets of international law in this respect constitute a major gain for global peace, security, and justice — particularly Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter, which declares national sovereignty to be the supreme legal principle, and which is formally accepted by all UN member states.

Upholding Sovereignty

We can identify three broad positions on the issue of external military intervention in the name of human rights. The first position comes from those who would defend the existing framework of international law against such interventions.

They argue that it is naïve and wrong to believe that powerful states are motivated to intervene elsewhere for humanitarian reasons, and that the principle of humanitarian intervention by military means will never be applied consistently by the major world powers. Moreover, there is no agreed consensus among states about what the principles that could justify such interventions might be.

From this perspective, the level of order and justice currently provided in the world system by upholding the principle of nonintervention is much better than the disorder and injustice that would result if we were to accept periodic violations of that principle in the name of human rights. We must therefore not extend the two exceptions already provided for in the UN Charter when it comes to the use of force.

“The right to self-defense can only be invoked against an actual attack or against a threat that must pass a certain ‘threshold of gravity’ — in other words, it must be imminent or inevitable, not merely possible or probable.”

These exceptions can be found in Article 2(4) and in Article 51 of Chapter VII. The former concerns the right of a country to self-defense against the official armed forces of another country or countries. The right to self-defense can only be invoked against an actual attack or against a threat that must pass a certain “threshold of gravity” — in other words, it must be imminent or inevitable, not merely possible or probable. The doctrine of “preventive war” deployed by the United States or Israel in support of their use of force is not legitimate.

The second exception requires the authorization of the UN Security Council to militarily rectify a “breach” of international peace as a “last resort” measure. Such authorization will only be forthcoming if is there no veto by one of the Security Council’s five permanent members (the United States, the UK, France, China, and Russia).

This exception would allow the so-called P5, if they agreed with one another, to manipulate the other, non-permanent members into endorsing unjustifiable forms of military action. However, it remains a legal barrier to frequent military intervention with the UN’s sanction. If we made the defense of human rights into the basis for another exception, this would ensure more abuses in its name.

Advocates of Intervention

Supporters of some or all of the US-led military interventions since the end of the Cold War have put forward the second position. They argue that such interventions in the name of human rights are morally justified, even if they are currently in violation of international law. From this standpoint, the promotion of human rights is at least as important as international peace and security, if not more so.

Advocates of this position prefer to cite Articles 1(3), 55 and 56 of the UN Charter on human rights, claiming that these sections are more important than Article 2(4). All three articles, which refer to the promotion and defense of human rights “without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion,” nevertheless present this as a task to be performed within the framework of accepting “national sovereignty” and cooperation among nations. However, the supporters of humanitarian intervention claim that morality must trump legality in particular cases if moral considerations require the use of force to end slaughter.

“The supporters of humanitarian intervention claim that morality must trump legality in particular cases if moral considerations require the use of force to end slaughter.”

They also present the motivations of would-be interveners as a less important factor than the outcome of the action they take. If the intervention ends human rights violations, that is what matters most. Since there are both short-term and long-term outcomes, the first can be cited to justify external military intervention to end a crisis, while the second can be cited to justify regime change and a long-running occupation.

Michael Walzer, one prominent liberal advocate of humanitarian intervention, coined the term “justice in endings.” According to this principle, even if an intervention was unjustified in the first place — for example, the invasion of Iraq, which Walzer initially opposed — the intervening power can still be justified in staying on as an occupier in order to bring about democracy. The judgement of how long the occupation must continue will rest, of course, with the intervener.

The Agency of the Oppressed

There is a third position that should be held by those on the Left, whether they are revolutionary socialists or simply genuine progressives. While this position is closer to the first than the second, it does allow in principle for military intervention in the name of human rights.

Such interventions can only be justified under very specific conditions, which by their nature are extremely rare. This position offers little comfort to those who would advocate support for imperialist actions by the United States or other powers, great or small, in the name of democracy.

This third position bases itself on the normative principle of respecting the freedom of peoples. It is morally and not just legally founded. This perspective recognizes the fact that we live in a world where different peoples are constituted as different nations. It therefore insists that we must respect the right of peoples to overthrow their own tyrants.

We can oppose oppressive regimes from the outside in many different ways and offer material support to those fighting them, including arms supplies. However, that does not mean we would be justified in carrying out an external military intervention to overthrow such regimes.

In brief, we are not entitled to substitute ourselves for the oppressed peoples in question, for to do so would be to deny them their agency — the freedom to fight against their own tyrant. They have a right to claim our support, but we must respect them as the primary agent of their own future. It follows that we would not have supported an external military invasion to overthrow the Shah of Iran, the apartheid regime in South Africa, or British rule over one of its colonies.

Two Qualifications

In normative terms, there are only two qualifications to this principle. Firstly, if one side in a civil war calls for and receives external military help, the other side may be entitled to do the same. This happened, for example, in Angola in 1975.

A left-wing nationalist guerrilla force, the MPLA (Movement for the Liberation of Angola), which had been the leading force in the struggle against Portuguese colonial rule, came to power after decolonization. It faced opposition from a rival force, UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), which had support from the United States and the apartheid regime in South Africa.

UNITA invited South African troops to intervene on its behalf in order to overthrow the MPLA government. At the MPLA’s request, the Cuban government sent its own soldiers to support the Angolan government against the South African invasion force, which was decisively defeated. Cuba also sent reinforcements to Angola in 1987–88 to repel a major offensive by the apartheid regime.

“If we must respect the right of a people to overthrow their own tyrant, this presumes that the people in question can, in the first place, continue to exist.”

The second qualification is even more important. If we must respect the right of a people to overthrow their own tyrant, this presumes that the people in question can, in the first place, continue to exist. If their very existence as a people is at stake, then military intervention can be justified, regardless of what the intervener’s motives may be. However, mass expulsion does not qualify as a justification, since a people in exile retain their agency to struggle for justice.

Defining Genocide

Here one must be careful. Advocates of humanitarian intervention have repeatedly invoked the need to prevent “genocide” in support of particular wars. This raises the question of what constitutes genocide.

Unfortunately, the definition provided by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is of no help to us: “acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” But how “substantial” must the part of the population killed or threatened be to determine that mass atrocities have become a case of genocide?

If the very existence of a people is the criterion, then clearly the killing must be of a scale that is significant in proportion to the overall population. Of course, there is a grey area here. In the face of an ongoing massacre, when should one call for intervention?

Read more:

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/humanitarian-intervention-cloak-military-aggression-human-rights

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Russian warships are in Cuba, try not to overreact

Yes, Putin is showing off but Havana needs an economic lifeline that Moscow can provide and the US has failed to offer...

BY Dr. William M. LeoGrande

The news that four Russian warships are in Havana for naval exercises brings to mind the old mariner’s aphorism, “Any port in a storm.” 

Cuba is in desperate need of economic help, and Russia has been providing it. The result is a deepening partnership that has geopolitical echoes of the Cold War, although the Cubans are now drawn to Moscow less by ideological affinity than economic necessity.

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cuban economy has been wracked by the gales of a perfect storm — a confluence of intensified U.S. sanctions imposed by President Trump, a pandemic that shuttered the tourism industry, and ill-conceived government policies that have made things worse rather than better. 

Desperately short of foreign exchange currency, the Cuban government is unable to import sufficient basic necessities like food, fuel, and medicine, let alone the requisite inputs for domestic production, which has plummeted. Shrinking production means declining foreign exchange earnings from exports and an even greater need for imports — a vicious circle that has no easy exit. 

Some of the economic reforms the government has undertaken may help restart the economy in the medium and long-term, but in the short run, Cuba’s only hope to alleviate the immediate crisis, to put food on people’s tables and, literally, keep the lights on, is foreign help. That’s where Russia comes in.

In the early 1960s, the assistance from the Soviet Union saved the Cuban economy from the ravages of the U.S. embargo, thwarting the plans of successive U.S. presidents to subdue the revolutionary government. The Soviets saw Cuba as a valuable ideological outpost in Latin America and Cuba saw the Soviet Union as a necessary partner in its struggles to break free of U.S. domination.

Although that partnership collapsed with the end of the Cold War, Vladimir Putin has worked hard to rebuild it ever since his first term as Russian president. His principal lever has been economic assistance. Putin forgave 90 percent of Cuba’s Soviet-era debt and has extended larger and larger amounts of economic assistance ever since. In 2009, the economic relationship expanded into the political and diplomatic spheres when the two countries declared a “strategic partnership.”

When the Cuban economy suffered an 11 percent decline as a result of the pandemic, Russia sent desperately needed food and medical supplies that saved Cuban lives — a move that rekindled the affection for Russians felt by some Cubans, especially those who studied in the Soviet Union when they were young.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine strained the new partnership. Cuba had a close relationship with Ukraine dating from the 1990s, when it provided medical treatment to more than 18,000 Ukrainian children suffering from radiation sickness due to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Moreover, non-intervention and opposition to Great Power spheres of influence have been cornerstones of Cuban foreign policy and a rallying cry against U.S. policies of regime change ever since Fidel Castro rode into Havana in 1959. 

At first, Cuba tried to steer a middle course on Ukraine, reiterating its opposition to intervention and calling for a negotiated end to the conflict, while at the same time blaming the United States and Western Europe for provoking Moscow by expanding NATO to Russia’s borders. At the United Nations, Cuba abstained on resolutions calling for Russia to withdraw, but opposed resolutions imposing sanctions on Moscow.

Over the past year and half, however, Cuba’s position has gradually become less equivocal and more closely aligned with Russia’s. Since President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited Moscow in November 2022, and declared “Russia is not responsible” for the war, a parade of Russian and Cuban officials have travelled between the two capitals, signing more than a dozen new economic cooperation agreements. 

On a trip in June 2023, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev met with Raúl Castro, who, according to the Russian news agency Tass, “expressed full support for Russia in regard to the situation in Ukraine and confidence in Russia’s victory.”

Last month, Díaz-Canel visited Moscow again and, in his meeting with Putin, repeated Cuba’s condemnation of NATO expansion, declaring, “We wish you and the Russian Federation every kind of success in the special military operation.”

The visiting Russian warships are Putin’s way of reminding President Biden that Moscow can challenge Washington in its own sphere of influence, a symbolic counterpoint to U.S. assistance to Ukraine. For the past several years, the U.S. Southern Command’s annual Posture Statement has cited the growing influence of “Strategic Competitors” — especially Russia and China — as the top national security challenge to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere.

On this issue, like the issue of migration, U.S. sanctions against Cuba have proven counterproductive. By exacerbating the economic hardships Cubans face, Washington’s policies have accelerated migration and left Cuba no alternative but to seek help from those same strategic competitors. As Southcom commander General Laura J. Richardson told Congress, referring to Latin America more broadly, “When you need a rope to grab, you aren’t necessarily looking to see who threw it. We must be the ones throwing the rope, not our strategic competitors.” 

That, in a nutshell, is a good explanation for Cuba’s evolving relationship with Russia and sound advice for U.S. Cuba policy.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/cuba-russia/

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