I tend to agree with Yglesias often enough that I worry whether I’m actually adding an value. Heck, I’ve got a copy of his book Heads in the Sand and gave it a rather positive review. That said, the one area I tend to disagree with him his humanitarian intervention, specifically on Kosovo. Quoting myself from the review:
[T]he book elides some potential faults within the liberal internationalist camp. The disagreements go back to Kosovo which in other venues Yglesias has treated it as legitimate but considers it a bad model for the future. Kevin Drum, operating from within the liberal internationalist tradition, demurs and offers support for Kosovo that I personally find compelling.
When I asked him about Kosovo in a session on his book at the New America Foundation, he basically said that there’s no real point arguing about a special case when we’ve got bigger issues to focus on. Fair enough, but in a post on The Trouble With Genocide Prevention Yglesias never mentions Kosovo but sets up a dichotomy that calls it unilateral:
But then whenever anyone suggests that the U.S. commit itself to following international law and not using non-defensive military force absent a UN Security Council authorization, people show up insisting that we need to maintain the right to unilateral non-defensive war in order to stop genocide. Then whenever humanitarian emergencies break out, we do nothing to stop them.
Not surprisingly Jon Chait over at TNR vehemently disagrees with Yglesias arguing the Kosovo case and that no U.S. government has ever committed itself to giving the UN a veto. I think the later point is weak, the US has historically reserved the right to do a lot of stupid thing. Happily, there is a middle ground commonly discussed in international relations circles: requiring the support of the UN or a regional organization. Rather than treating Kosovo as a special case, this is a rather straightforward standard that gets both Kosovo and Iraq right. No major regional org supported the war in Iraq, NATO didn’t even come close.
More after the cut.
Why would regional organizations provide a good standard? Well lets go with what Yglesias said in his book on page 17:
Western leaders of the period were, and are, often accused of a selective approach to humanitarianism, acting forcefully in Kosovo, while being less concerned with more serious humanitarian problems in Africa and elsewhere. The charge is essentially accurate but largely misses the point: that Kosovo presented a mixture of humanitarian and interest-based reasons for intervention was precisely what strengthened the case for playing fast and loose with the UN rules, making intervention a reasonable option.
The Europeans do the heavy lifting in the phrase Western leaders. Kosovo wasn’t in America’s backyard and our interests were mostly on behalf of our allies. Similarly mixes of interest and humanitarian bases may happen in Latin America and Africa with the Organization of American States and the Organization of African Unity respectively. The OAS is willing to condemn coups and the OAU has a role to play already in Sudan. Obviously, the member states for both organizations have less resources than Nato, but most likely intervention spots in those regions are in a similar situation.
That said, this standard does would not lead to many new interventions, both the OAS and the OAU can be suspicious of American designs on their regions and speak up on behalf of sovereignty and against neo-colonialism. Similarly, there aren’t really any organizations in the Middle East or Asia with the legitimacy and the will to approve a humanitarian intervention, but that just reflects the realities of those areas.
So taking on Chait’s side, why shouldn’t we be willing to go it totally alone? Well, any humanitarian intervention is going to require more than just force upfront, it will require rebuilding thereafter. The U.S. may have the resources to do it, but in almost no cases do we find our interests compelling enough to commit them. Practically speaking, an intervention will likely fail if we don’t at least have some of the resources of highly interested local actors
In short, there’s a way to keep Kosovo in as a reasonable intervention while keeping out Iraq and other potential U.S./coalition of the willing interventions. I think this is a pretty sensible way to keep the peace between various progressive factions and allowing us to focus on the point where Yglesias is absolutely right. Force is typically not our most effective tool and where armed forces work best it will probably be in the form of U.N. Peacekeepers and not invaders.
[Update: A Krugman post reminded me that I should post a recent strong post by Yglesias that I agreed with, with the self-critical note that I was a fool that didn’t cheer it on, but didn’t oppose:
The harsh reality is that [the Iraq War] was not a noble undertaking done for good reasons. It was a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards. And it’s seen as such by virtually everyone all around the world — including but by no means limited to the Arab world.]
DoD photo by Sgt. Craig J. Shell, U.S. Marine Corps.
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