Slavery and humanitarian intervention

Sandy Levinson

[Note: The following has been edited to correct a couple of typos and word omissions, beginning with correcting my misspelling of Alan Gilbert's first name, for which I apologize.]

I hope that Alan Gilbert will forgive me for addressing one aspect of his thoughtful response to my prior posting in this brand new posting. But it involves the issue of humanitarian intervention. I agree that the Bush Administration has never actually used the phrase, but the political logic of at least one of their arguments--when they focus on Saddam Hussein's vicious regime and, in effect, ask those of us who opposed the war if we'd be happier if he were still in power torturing his political opponents--certainly has affinities with logic of humanitarian intervention.

But I'm more interested in exploring the defense of the Civil War (or the suppression of Southern secession) as a legitimate exercise of humanitarian intervention. It is very interesting that Alan compares slavery with "genocide," for the following reason: When, at a conference in Germany three years ago, I raised the humanitarian intervention issue with regard to both Iraq and the American South, I was told by a world-famous human-rights specialist that such arguments didn't apply in Iraq because Saddam Hussein was no longer threatening Kurds with genocide (unlike 1988 or so, when this person said he supported armed intervention in Iraq). That is, he argued, only threats of genocide would support armed intervention (as against, presumably, "mere" sanctions and the like). So what about the South? There I was told that slavery, however concededly awful, didn't justify armed intervention either, because it wasn't genocidal. I make no comment about his responses per se. But they underscore some of the dilemmas created by the modern international human rights movement inasmuch as it has adopted (and encouraged) notions of armed "humanitarian intervention" but also, and properly, wants to limit their completely opportunistic use by given political regimes.

This could be an occasion for seguing into a question about what is the proper response of the US in Darfur. Everytime I read Nicholas Kristoff's columns (some of which have complimented Bush for his awareness of the problem there), I feel we should send troops in ASAP. Then I read David Rieff, and believe that it would ultimately compound the present disaster that is US foreign policy. How ought we think about such issues? Do we first have to be convinced that genocide is occurring, since nothing less would suffice to justify intervention? (Kristoff, of course, argues that that test is easily passed.) Do we have to be convinced that such intervention would in fact be efficacious in some calculable cost-benefit sense?
Posted 4:49 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]