When Should We Interfere in Another Country’s Internal Affairs? Posner

The Peace of Westphalia was a series of treaties among the European states that ended the Thirty Years’ War, with its enormous carnage, and established the principle of national sovereignty—that a nation is sovereign over its population. This meant that a Protestant nation, for example, had no right to make war against a Catholic nation merely because the Protestant nation very much wanted the citizens of the Catholic nation to become Protestants. 

The results of the Peace of Westphalia have not always been pretty. After Hitler took power and before World War II broke out, Germany’s persecution of its Jewish population was implicitly acknowledged by the United States, and (as far as I know) by all other nations as well, to be Germany’s business, and not a casus belli. The most dramatic post-World War II example of that kind of hands-offness was the refusal by the United States to intervene in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when, in the midst of a civil war between Hutus and Tutsis, the dominant ethnic groups in Rwanda, the Hutu population in a period of about 100 days killed between 500,00 and 1 million Tutsis, before being decisively defeated by the Tutsis. The Hutus were armed mainly with machetes, and the United States could have prevented the genocide with modest military means and little risk, but, in keeping with the Peace of Westphalia (though I don’t think that was ever mentioned), did nothing. 

Five years later, however, the United States intervened in a civil war in Yugoslavia between the Serbian majority and the people (mainly of Albanian ethnicity) of the province of Kosovo. We sided with the Kosovans, and as a result Kosovo became an independent country. Our intervention flouted the Peace of Westphalia, though again I don’t recall the Peace having been mentioned. 

We flouted it again when we intervened in the Libyan civil war in 2011, on the side of the rebels against Muammar Gaddafi. And we violated the spirit though not the letter of the Peace of Westphalia just months ago in threatening withdrawal of aid from Egypt in the wake of the Egyptian Army’s ouster of the elected Muslim Brotherhood government. The threat was contrary not only to the spirit of the Peace of Westphalia but also to U.S. national interests; for the Muslim Brotherhood spells trouble for the United States, and the Egyptian Army does not. Moreover, it is naïve to criticize the Egyptian Army for ousting a democratically elected president (Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood), as if it were any business of ours whether a foreign country is a democracy or an autocracy or something in between. We have friendly relations with a number of nondemocratic countries, and indeed such countries frequently are our allies; think of Saudi Arabia, the other Arab monarchies, and a number of autocratic African and Central Asian nations. We never tried to dislodge Franco, for example, or for that matter the Cambodian nut government (the Khmer Rouge) that killed 2 million Cambodians without cause. We became friendly with Mao’s China. We even had good relations with Saddam Hussein before he invaded Kuwait (relations unperturbed by his poison gas attack on the Kurds in 1983, which killed two or three times as many persons as Assad’s recent attack killed). We had excellent relations with the successive Egyptian military dictators Sadat and Mubarak, relations that I imagine we will soon re-establish with the new Egyptian military dictatorship. 

Which brings me to Syria, which the President wants to bomb as punishment for the Syrian military’s use of poison gas against civilians believed to support the rebels in the civil war that has been raging for more than two years and that has caused some 100,000 deaths and a flood of refugees. It is something of a puzzle that poison gas should be considered a weapon of mass destruction that no nation should be permitted to have, because it is not a very effective weapon—except against civilians. Be that as it may, the Peace of Westphalia was intended to eliminate a nation’s mistreatment of its population as a ground for war against that nation, and thus to reduce the frequency of war, certainly a laudable aim. 

Syria is a dictatorship, but it is not a threat to the United States. On the contrary, it will become a threat to us only if Al Qaeda, which is prominent in the rebellion, takes over the country, or a significant chunk of it (for Syria may fragment). An irony of our threatened bombing of Syria is that it may strengthen Assad’s position by doing little damage and thus making it look as if he’s successfully defied the United  States, and by inducing Russia, China, and Iran to increase their aid to him in order to make us look ineffectual. Conceivably our government secretly desires survival of the Assad regime in a weakened state; even a Syria divided on ethnic lines. We were not troubled by the Syrian dictatorship before the rebellion broke out—we will be troubled if Al Qaeda takes over the country. Al Qaeda and affiliated extremist Sunni groups endeavor to commit terrorist acts inside the United   States; Assad and his Shiite allies do not. 

Partly because of the information revolution, which brings vivid images of war into our cell phones and laptops, it has become difficult from an emotional standpoint for the mighty United States to be seen as standing aloof from grave abuses of human rights in foreign countries, though we managed to do that in the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides, and in other genocidal episodes as well, and Assad doesn’t need poison gas to kill civilians. It doesn’t help that the consequences of our bombing Syria are not easy to foresee, and that wars develop their own momentum. 

I would prefer that we refrain from military activities that do not hold substantial promise of advancing at reasonable cost policies reasonably deemed essential to the security and well-being of this country. In other words, we need to prioritize—cold-bloodedly.

Comments

[Don Harris]

Posner faults the lack of consistency in U.S. foreign policy over the past 80 years, and then uses that inconsistency to advance the "we didn't do it then, so why should we do it now" argument. (In fairness, that is not Posner's only proposition.)

I wonder if such an argument makes any sense in the U.S. when presidents come and go every 4 or 8 years and there is no constitutional requirement for consistency in foreign policy, the never mentioned Peace of Westphalia notwithstanding.

I'm also curious about Posner's closing statement:

"I would prefer that we refrain from military activities that do not hold substantial promise of advancing at reasonable cost policies reasonably deemed essential to the security and well-being of this country. In other words, we need to prioritize—cold-bloodedly."

Should we refrain from "essential" security measures that are unreasonably costly? Does everything, even survival, comes down to a cost-benefit analysis?

Finally, does Posner really believe the Holocaust was none of our business until Hitler declared war on the U.S.? Here is an alternative to the Doctrine of the Peace of Westphalia: taking action to end the mass slaughter of innocents whenever possible.

[Jjj Jjj]

Rather odd to not talk about how action without the UN is illegal, or that you seem to condone funding the borderline genocidal military in Egypt.
It's surprising that you aren't guided by law or morality but by interests.And if interests guide your line of thinking then ,at least , it could be the world's interests not one nation's interests.
This line of thinking is what drove most of the world's history , maybe it's not a land grab now but that doesn't mean it's any different. Europe is above this kind of greed induced ideology , the US needs to catch up.

[Fourstepstraining.wordpress.com]

I have to say in the Syria debate I have only heard mention of International Law rather than the Peace of Westphalia so thanks for the history lesson!

I am assuming that you are concentrating on interests rather than the legality of an action because there appear to be so many historical precedents that someone can always pick the one which can justify what they want to do.

Intervention in an internal dispute to save lives is problematic. Intervention in Kosovo did in my view save lives and timely international intervention in Rwanda could have prevented a huge number of deaths. In Syria I really struggle with what military intervention, particularly of the cruise missile variety, could add to a conflict that has cost so many lives. It appears as if the only hope for the moderate citizens of Syria is agreement within the security council for a negotiated political settlement.

[Neilehat]

We as Americans, over the years, have developed what I consider to be a "National Character Flaw". Especially in the field of Foreign Affairs and Policy. Such that, We desire the World to "LOVE" us and count us as good fellows even when it runs against our own self interest. The problem is, we as a Nation seem to have forgotten or are ignoring the three fundamental principles of Foreign Affairs and Policy. Those three principles are:

1. It is our true Policy to steer clear of any permanent Alliances with any portion of the Foreign World.

2. There is nothing so likely as to produce Peace as to be well prepared to meet an Enemy.

3. As for Foreign Affairs, I believe, that the Ends will justify the Means.

Or too put it another way, "We need to reintroduce a certain "Cold Bloodiness into our Policy making, calculations and actions"...

[Curtd]

@Posner

This breach of peace is because that lesson has atrophied into a moral conviction expressed as policy.

a) People have the right to self determination.
b) Self determination is limited to good citizenship in the pattern of production and trade.
c) That destabilization of the pattern of production and trade that influences commodities that could encourage warfare is equal to the waging of war against a neighbor.
d) That if a people choose a government that abridges a, b or c, then we, the USA, will punish that government and the citizenry for their poor choices.

We are not a peer nation. We are an empire. We act like an empire. We act like an empire in no small part because we must out of economic self interest, and in no small part, because our main trading, political, and cultural partners, actually WANT us to, so that they can participate in the reconstruction of Europe, after the first world war that destroyed human civilization as we know it, and from which we only begin to emerge in the present decade - albeit over a century behind what might have been.

So, in closing, I'm a little uncomfortable with harkening back to historical reference of equal states, when our empire is run pragmatically for pragmatic purposes, and our policy has been reduced to ideology

Curt Doolittle
THe Propertarian Institute

[B Wilds]

The red line was crossed in Syria, but few people have yet to talk about the most likely and only real solution which is to break the nation into two parts. If Assad remains in power those who have suffered and been displaced will never forgive him and live under his rule. A change in ruling factions is also not a viable solution in that it would probably unleash a wave of killings, and reprisals. Remember the Shiite-related Alawites rightly fear an Al Qaeda led triumph as the worst possible outcome, they would make the mass killing of Alawites their first priority. The secular leaders of the Syrian rebels, clustered in the exile group known as the Syrian National Council, also must worry about the extremist threat they themselves would face if the Assad government fell.

The crux of the problem is how it end the violence and allow refugees and the rest of Syria to go about rebuilding their lives. Life in a refugee camp will have a long-term negitive effect on these people and especially on the children. The people in this part of the world are a hardy bunch seasoned by hundreds of years of war, but millions living in tents and bombed out buildings is saddening and heart breaking. Again I return to the message at the beginning of this post, few people have yet to talk about the most likely and only real solution, that is to break Syria into two parts. More about this bad situation below,

http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/09/syria-must-be-split-in-two.html