Humanitarian Intervention Term paper
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A Look at Intervention as a Philosophy
OCdt. Amitabh Chauhan
In a world plagued with conflict and political instability there are many manners in which the international community is prone to react. In current day the Nobel Peace Prize winning direction of Peace Making, an ideology that has been accredited to former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, has received much time and attention. A further step beyond the latter movement has been referred to as "Peace Making". This rather new philosophy is founded on the premise of establishing peace even through forceful military presence. The final step is intervention; this is the deployment of an external party into a conflict where the external party has not been invited. The many moral and ethical implications set by such a precedent is subject to much debate and poses one of the toughest philosophical problems today. It is the contention of this thinker that the practice of intervention is one that should never have been used and furthermore must be seized as it is not fit for practice today in our world for the following points of reason: the concept is altruistic in theory but is practiced by political players, there is a dangerous standard set into place that could possibly be used maliciously by parties against the sovereignty of other nations and finally it is very difficult to determine the legitimacy of a nation state considering that the countries of the world do not share the same philosophical criterion to define "legitimate government".
The question of involvement in any sort of intervention is a difficult one to approach because the implications of the ideology are idealistic and altruistic to the point that the notion is completely hypothetical as opposed to being plausible phenomena. This poses a great problem for thinkers who ponder the virtue of intervention policy. An uninvited independent party whom occupies and intrudes foreign lands to protect the people of the land from the existing government is the bases of intervention. An example of this is found in Kosovo, where the NATO has been occupying the Sovereign lands against the will of the elected government. This founding of such an ideology is a genuinely good altruistic outlook. The premise is basically that the strong should not be allowed to violate and take advantage of the weak. Essentially, it is nothing more than the active condemnation of tyranny.
There cannot be anything wrong with protecting the peoples of a land from slaughter, as slaughter is innately considered wrong and negative. Thus the protection offered by the intervening party is much like that of the Children's Aid Society intervening when there is report of suspected child abuse. The concept of Children's Aid would never be questioned as it reflects the values of all societies. The fine line of when the Society intervenes however is an area that is questioned as abuse is defined differently from household to household. The spanking of a child to reprimand a behavior in one culture may be acceptable, while others may find it absolutely immoral. Likewise the idea of protecting children is considered altruistic, as there is no self-interest but only the interest of the children at heart. Intervention can be similar to the Children's Aid model, as there is not supposed to be any self-interest involved by the intervening parties, and the intervention is supposed to be the mere means of protecting human lives from a tyrant. Since this intervention is altruistic in theory it must be good in theory, and to that end, this thinker must stipulate the virtue of the concept. Unfortunately the practice of altruism is not in good keeping with political agendas. The intervention that may be embarked upon for publicized reasons may not be as pure as the people of the nations are given to understand.
The invisible hand as outlined by Adam Smith in, The Wealth of Nations, describes human behavior as self-serving especially when it comes to economic and political ideas. This invisible hand however is supposed to automatically help others or the economy as a whole, an externality that is unanticipated by the executer of the selfish acts. In the political sphere, more precisely the intervention model, the invisible hand is not as transparent as outlined in Smiths paradigm, nor does it simply work unidirectional. In helping others one helps oneself. The intervening parties always have something to gain from intervention and knowingly they intervene. This intervention is not altruistic, as the intervening party is serving self-interest and is aware of it. Thus the intrinsic good in such an act is compromised and the act becomes only potentially beneficial to the people being tyrannized. For example, the Western Nations who clearly hold the most influence in the United Nations have not intervened in China, although it is shared belief that China is a tyrant to the people of the land. Instead, the western nations of the world are too busy trying to secure trade with the super power. There intervention in Kosovo is credited to the fact that Kosovo is the 'backyard of NATO'. There is no help being offered in Sierra Leone, where genocide is far worse than in Kosovo. Even in Rwanda where Canadian General Romeo Dallaire reported vicious atrocities to the United Nations and Canada, no one was interested in saving the Hutus from the Tootsies....
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