Unresolved dilemmas in the age of global intervention

The Australian ^ | August 06, 2003 | Paul Kelly

[Int]

Unresolved dilemmas in the age of global intervention

06aug03

THE decline of national sovereignty as an absolute concept has triggered a new global debate over the terms and conditions that justify the right to intervene with military force.

The coming decades will witness far more military interventions in the name of humanitarianism, security and saving failed states. The stories of Rwanda, Iraq, Solomon Islands and Kosovo illustrate this diverse trend.

This will have a profound effect on Australia. Our multiple roles as a US ally, proficient peacekeeper, supporter of the UN and as the metropolitan power in a highly unstable part of the world guarantees our involvement as national sovereignty is redefined and reduced.

This trend is unstoppable – the issue is whether it means more chaos or a better, rules-based global system. The pressure for intervention is driven by deep political forces on the Left and Right, and because a crisis anywhere in the world has the potential to affect anywhere else. This will change international law, the UN and national strategies.

One of the early markers was the historic April 1999 speech by Tony Blair in Chicago after NATO's military action without UN sanction in defence of Kosovo. Blair said: "Twenty years ago we would not have been fighting in Kosovo. We would have turned our backs on it . . . [but] we are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not. On the eve of a new millennium we are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community."

Blair offered five tests to govern the decision on military intervention. Are we sure of our case? Have we exhausted all diplomatic options? Is the military option prudent? Are we prepared to commit for the long term? And do we have national interests at stake? He saw the UN as the "central pillar" of the new rules but warned that "we need to find a new way to make the UN and its Security Council work".

But after its Iraq failure the Security Council is even more discredited and compromised. The frustrated UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan knows the global community must devise better rules to govern intervention but also knows this issue cannot be separated from reform of the UN, an intractable challenge.

The Security Council is mired in an unresolved politico-strategic dilemma over the US. It is trapped between, on the one hand, seeking to deny legitimacy to the use of US power and, on the other, needing to be a viable and useful body for the world's sole superpower, else the UN's relevance would collapse.

In a powerful critique, Michael Glennon (Foreign Affairs, May-June 2003) argues that the UN, in effect, has failed because the gulf is too great between its rules and the reality of international politics, with the US as a hyper-power. In Iraq the Security Council faced a choice: to accommodate US power or to deny such power, with dire consequences in both cases.

Post-Iraq, the UN is still faced with the need to expand the scope of legitimate interventions. A heroic recent effort to codify a new system came from a 14-member commission co-chaired by Australia's Gareth Evans and Algeria's Mohamed Sahnoun. Its report – the basis for much of the global debate – was published in 2001, with Evans offering an update last year (Foreign Affairs, November-December 2002).

The Evans-Sahnoun position involves a redefinition of state sovereignty. "No state holds unlimited power," they argue. "It is now commonly acknowledged that sovereignty implies a dual responsibility: externally, to respect the sovereignty of other states, and internally, to respect the dignity the basic rights of all people within the state. Although this new principle cannot be said to be customary international law yet, it is sufficiently accepted in practice to be regarded as a de facto emerging norm: the responsibility to protect."

This has the potential to unlock a radical shift in the international system. If a state fails this responsibility for its people, then the issue of military intervention is triggered. It is a philosophical transformation in the Westphalian idea of sovereignty from focus on the state's right to control people to its responsibility to safeguard such people.

THE Evans-Sahnoun position is that a series of conditions must be met to justify military intervention – but the critical test is authorisation. The authors say that Security Council approval is pivotal because "there is no better body" to justify military action. If Security Council approval is not possible, they suggest fallbacks, notably a majority vote from the General Assembly. They insist that no consensus is possible on military action unauthorised by either the Security Council or General Assembly.

This alone would rule out Iraq which, under these rules, would not satisfy the criteria for humanitarian intervention.

The problem with this report (written pre-Iraq) is that it does not address the fact that strategic and humanitarian issues have become intertwined in the debate about intervention. For example, the threat of the profileration of weapons of mass destruction lies at the heart of the new US-driven focus on intervention and pre-emption. This doctrine, a permanent change, is integral to US security needs and its new world view.

The problem exposed by Iraq was the UN's inability to encompass the security demands of the US – the one nation with an unrivalled capacity for military action. The point is that rules governing intervention are utterly doomed if they contradict the core interests of the US. This is the dead end into which France's policy has led the UN.

Of course, a wise US security policy would seek a lot more global support than the US now enjoys – the real lesson of Iraq's reconstruction.

The upshot is that a vast gulf exists today between the worlds of geopolitics and multilateral sanction; it will only be bridged by collective action from the big powers, of which there is no sign.