Necessary and Sufficient

by William Galston

New Republic
March 24, 2011

Writing in 1977 on the topic of humanitarian interventions, a noted political philosopher had this to say:

[W]hen a government turns savagely upon its own people, we must doubt the very existence of a political community to which the principle of self-determination might apply. ... When a people are being massacred, we don’t require that they pass the test of self-help before coming to their aid. It is their very incapacity that draws us in. ... Any state capable of stopping the slaughter has the right, at least, to try to do so.

Returning to this topic in 1999, he observed that “the greatest danger most people face in the world today comes from their own states, and the chief dilemma of international politics is whether people in danger should be rescued by military forces from the outside.” The problem, he argued, is not that individual states are prone to engage in such interventions, but the reverse: There have been “a lot of unjustified refusals to intervene.” It is, he said, “more this neglect of intervention [by individual nations] than any resort to it that leads people to look for a better, more reliable, form of agency.” And he offered a number of reasons why humanitarian interventions conducted under U.N. auspices might well meet this standard.

I agree with this distinguished scholar, who is (as you may have guessed) Michael Walzer. And that is why I disagree with his recent critique for TNR of our intervention in Libya.

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