With the military intervention in Libya, has America entered its third concurrent war in a Muslim nation?
Depends on how you define “war.” The Marine Corps manual on Warfighting states that the essence of war is “a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other.” By this standard, I would say that we are indeed in a limited interventionist war in Northern Africa.
Of course, some folks may legitimately disagree. While the standard of “they are shooting at us, we’re shooting at them” may be enough for soldiers, others—especially pundits and politicians—may prefer to use a less bellicose term. For this reason I’ll refrain from pointing out what (as a former Marine) I believe to be the correct designation and concede that we can use other terminology. Let’s simply call it a “military intervention.”
Since the set of criteria that Christians generally use to determine whether entering into war is justifiable is called jus ad bellum, let’s call the criteria of just cause needed to judge the Libyan action jus ad interventionem.
How does this conception of just cause impact on the issue of armed humanitarian intervention? The Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy explains:
This is when a state does not commit cross-border aggression but, for whatever reason, turns savagely against its own people, deploying armed force in a series of massacres against large numbers of its own citizens. Such events happened in Cambodia and Uganda in the 1970s, Rwanda in 1994, Serbia/Kosovo in 1998-9 and in Sudan/Darfur from 2004 to the present. Our definitions allow us to say it’s permissible to intervene on behalf of the victims, and to attack with defensive force the rogue regime meting out such death and destruction. Why? There’s no logical requirement that aggression can only be committed across borders. Aggression is the use of armed force in violation of someone else’s basic rights. That “someone else” might be: a) another person (violent crime); b) another state (international or “external” aggression); or c) many other people within one’s own community (domestic or “internal” aggression). The commission of aggression, in any of these forms, causes the aggressor to forfeit its rights. The aggressor has no right not to be resisted with defensive force; indeed, the aggressor has the duty to stop and submit itself to punishment. If the aggressor doesn’t stop, it is entirely permissible for its victims to resort to force to protect themselves—and for anyone else to do likewise in aid of the victims. Usually, in humanitarian intervention, armed aid from the international community is essential for an effective resistance against the aggression, since domestic populations are at a huge disadvantage, and are massively vulnerable, to the violence of their own state.
While most students of just war theory would agree that this standard can be used to justify armed humanitarian intervention, there is often heated disagreement about how it is to be applied in geopolitical situations. Additionally, the determination about when jus ad interventionem is legitimate and when it is immoral can appear to observers to be rather arbitrary.
For example, in 1994 the Bosnian civil war had been underway for two years when Pope John Paul II endorsed military action to disarm the aggressors. Yet a decade later, the Pope opposed efforts to use similar force to stop Saddam Hussein from slaughtering citizens in Iraq. (I’m sure there are some non-hairsplitting distinctions that were used by the Vatican to determine why using force to save Bosnians was good while using force to save Kurd’s was immoral. But I’ve never been able to find them.)
We are seeing a similarly capricious standard being applied by the Obama administration in determining which Muslim citizens should be defended against their autocratic regimes. For instance, the government of Bahrain—aided by troops from Saudi Arabia—is using violence against pro-democracy protestors. Instead of establishing a no-fly zone and protecting them by force, though, our secretary of state is warning Iran not to intervene on the side of the dissenters. While this may be a justifiable action from the context of national security, from the perspective of moral consistency it appears arbitrary and cynical.
However, our government’s inconsistent standard of jus ad interventionem is not my only concern. As a general rule, I am moderately in favor of limited armed intervention by outside nation-states if it can prevent outrages against humanity. I am also, as a general rule, in favor of the intervening nation-state being some country other than the United States.
My preference would be for the responsibility to fall on the geographically closest legitimate nation-state that is powerful enough to intervene effectively. We could call this the “Neighbor Rule” and promise that the U.S. would abide by it ourselves (i.e., if Canada or Mexico engages in intrastate genocide, we’ll send the Marines to straighten them out).
The fact that European and Arabic states can sufficiently could handle this situation is one of the many reasons I’d prefer that we not get involved in a Libya’s civil war. While it may pass the criteria for jus ad interventionem, there are sufficient practical reasons for letting other countries take the lead while we sit this one out. If the U.N. asks, we can says we have a two-war maximum, and that since we are currently meeting our warfighting quota, we’ll have to wrap one of those up before we can start another.
March 21st, 2011 | 10:08 am
(I’m sure there are some non-hairsplitting distinctions that were used by the Vatican to determine why using force to save Bosnians was good while using force to save Kurd’s was immoral. But I’ve never been able to find them.)
Without trying to speak for JPII, I’d venture first off that the Bosnian civil war was not merely a civil war. The Yugoslav army was involved for a while, and arguably its involvement never ended. Likewise the Croat military.
Perhaps you meant the civil wars of Yugoslavia in general, which would be a different beast, and I think that there the Europeans were worried the warfare would not be contained. On the other hand, many people felt Hussein was well contained ten years ago (“the sanctions are doing their job”).
None of this strikes me as hairsplitting, but I’m sure readers more informed than I will have better explanations.
March 21st, 2011 | 10:24 am
This is not a civil war. The forces fighting for Qaddafi are mercenaries hired from neighboring African states to do his bidding. Qaddafi has minimal support from his own people; the elements loyal to him have literally sold their souls to him. Also, it must be kept in mind that Qaddafi is a life long enemy of the United States, and currently harbors one of the masterminds who brought down Pan Am flight 103 which killed 189 Americans, including scores of Syracuse University students returning from Europe on their Christmas break. This came on the heels of a Libyan terrorist attack that killed two American soliders in Berlin in 1986. President Reagan considered Qaddafi a “madman,” and he sould have been removed long ago. My only concern is that this mission will be halted before Qaddafi is put in a pine box, a locale he richly deserves and where hopefully he will soon reside.
March 21st, 2011 | 10:30 am
Instead of establishing a no-fly zone and protecting [Bahranian's] by force, though, our secretary of state is warning Iran not to intervene on the side of the dissenters. While this may be a justifiable action from the context of national security, from the perspective of moral consistency it appears arbitrary and cynical.
I don’t understand this argument. The safety of Bahranians isn’t the only moral good to be considered. What is “hypocritical,” to use the word many commentators are using, or cynical, about factoring in our national security? Isn’t the president’s first duty to protect U.S. citizens? What’s cynical about husbanding our limited military resources? Not to mention that Gadhafi is killing many more people than Bahrain’s government is killing.
March 21st, 2011 | 10:52 am
publius Also, it must be kept in mind that Qaddafi is a life long enemy of the United States, . . .
That shouldn’t be a factor in deciding whether to use armed force for a humanitarian intervention. If you are saying that we should be attacking Libya because its current leader is an enemy of the U.S., then we should apply the more stringent criteria of just war in deciding whether to use violence for the purposes of regime change.
Ken I don’t understand this argument. The safety of Bahranians isn’t the only moral good to be considered.
Notice that I said from a “perspective of moral consistency” that is was inconsistent. That seems to be rather obvious. Other moral goods should obviously be considered, but it does not change the fact that the Bahranians are just as worthy of protection as Libyans.
What is “hypocritical,” to use the word many commentators are using, or cynical, about factoring in our national security?
There is no national security justification for intervening in either Libya or Bahrain. The only justification is, obviously, one of mere justice. If a nation decides that it will only side with justice when it it convenient, then it might be prudent but it is nevertheless cynical.
March 21st, 2011 | 11:22 am
Joe, thank you for the response, but I should note that the first words you attributed to publius are mine.
There is no national security justification for intervening in either Libya or Bahrain.
Yes, but there is a national security justification for refraining from intervention in Bahrain, because that country has been a sorely needed Arab ally. We have a naval base there.
The safety of Bahranians isn’t the only moral good to be considered.
Notice that I said from a “perspective of moral consistency” that is was inconsistent. Other moral goods should obviously be considered, . . .
Again, I don’t see the distinction. Why does moral consistency exclude those other moral goods? It’s true that “the Bahranians are just as worthy of protection as Libyans,” but so are many other people around the world. Are we inconsistent for not protecting them all?
March 21st, 2011 | 11:36 am
Ken Joe, thank you for the response, but I should note that the first words you attributed to publius are mine.
Oops. Sorry. That’s now fixed.
Yes, but there is a national security justification for refraining from intervention in Bahrain, because that country has been a sorely needed Arab ally. We have a naval base there.
True, but that’s my point. If we are willing to do justice only when it doesn’t interfere with our national security concerns, then it shows that we really aren’t all that concerned about doing justice.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I think we should intervene in Bahrain, only that we shouldn’t be surprised when other countries point out that we are not really being guided primarily by humanitarian concerns when we intervene in the affairs of other nations.
Are we inconsistent for not protecting them all?
Yes, we are.
I supported the invasion of Iraq because it entailed both humanitarian and national security concerns—and was justified on both criteria. But if we are going to lead humanitarian interventions in some countries to protect citizens then we need explain why we choose some countries and not others.
March 21st, 2011 | 11:55 am
The humanitarian aspect of this is a fraud – - you don’t lob a cruise missile into Gaddafi’s HQ/home under the guise of humanitarianism. The Russians, members of Congress, etc. are right to be concerned, because we are trying to decapitate this regime, which should have been done long ago. This is war by Obama, which means you don’t engage in the kind of bluntness George W. Bush was noted for and criticized for – - you shield it under layers of “international-speak” and pretend we are merely in a supporting role. It is in our national interest to see that Gaddafi is killed, and that the members of the regime who sponsored and abetted terrorism be brought to American justice. That’s all we should care about in this third front of the War on Terror (pardon me, this third front of the “Overseas Contingency Operations”).
March 21st, 2011 | 11:55 am
A similar point made from a substantial distance away from Joe on the ‘political spectrum’:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/03/special_pleading_quote_of_the.php
March 21st, 2011 | 12:25 pm
This former soldier agrees with the marines (for once!) on the definition of war. Of course, following Clausewitz, if there is a war between the UN coalition and Libyan forces, it is actually Gadhafi, as the defender, who started it.
That said, I’m not sure why the governments of any of the countries involved should be concerned with whether this is, as Mr. Carter puts it, jus ad interventionem, as they are not Christian regimes[1]. The US Constitution says that it was promulgated to, amongst other things, “establish Justice,” but this can hardly be taken to mean worldwide. Representative governments are by their nature amoral and generally act only in their own best interest (or rather, in what the politicians currently in charge see to be in their best interest); all rhetoric about justice to the contrary is simply beside the point: this is the essential facelessness of democracy. Only in a despotism does a government have true moral agency.
[1] I’d argue that despite its established church, the UK is for all practical purposes not a Christian regime as well.
March 21st, 2011 | 12:37 pm
I opposed any intervention in Libya at all. There’s a great scene in the movie “Training Day” in which Ethan Hawke’s character asks Denzel Washington’s character, in reference to inner city violence, “So we just let the animals kill each other?” To which Washington’s character replies “God willing.”
Americans tend to see things in terms of good guys and bad guys (probably a legacy of Christianity). But there are no good guys in the Middle East. There are only bad guys and worse guys. Gaddafi is undoubtedly a very bad guy, but he stopped supporting terrorism and obtaining WMD when our invasion of Iraq scared the **** out of him, and he kept order. The people fighting him are at best no better than him, and they could be considerably worse. I predict a scenario similar to Afghanistan circa the 1990s in Libya after Gaddafi, i.e. savagely warring tribes slaughtering each other until one tribe emerges strong enough to impose a Taliban-like dictatorship and potentially an Al-Quaeda base.
Having said all that, though, in for a dime, in for a dollar. Now that we’ve stuck our naive noses into that hornet’s nest, we’d better end up taking Gaddafi out if we don’t want to look weak thereby inviting attack from those savages.
March 21st, 2011 | 1:16 pm
War implies a two-sided contest in which somebody shoots back. As such, the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya is more in the nature of a live fire exercise at a bunch of cooperative targets.
The critical question is why we did not do this three weeks ago, when it would have made a significant difference. The results with regard to Libya’s air forces and heavy weapons would have been the same. One carrier battle group could (and did) do it in the course of a day.
March 21st, 2011 | 2:02 pm
Every Christian soldier and citizen for that matter should read the story of St. Martin of Tours (died 397). He was a soldier and the son of a soldier in the Roman army, which was now Christianized after the conversion of Constantine. Still, once St. Martin converted to Christianity, he immediately quit the army saying, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.” St. Martin was imprisoned for cowardice and offered to go to the front unarmed. Peace came before he could be taken to the front, and he was released from jail.
The story of St. Victrius (died 407) is similar. He, too, served in the Roman army but quit after he converted. He was whipped and sentenced to execution. He later became Bishop of Rouen.
St. Paulinus of Nola was a friend of both St. Martin and St. Victrius. He was a Roman governor who converted and established a monastery, becoming famous for his tender care of the poor. He was also a friend of St. Augustine. When the Roman soldier Crispinianus wrote and told him of his desire to convert, St. Paulinus encouraged him to quit the army, saying, “Therefore, no longer love this world or its military service, for Scripture’s authority declares that ‘whoever is a friend of this world is an enemy of God.’ Whoever serves as a soldier with the sword is the servant of death, and whenever he sheds his own blood or that of another, this will be his reward: he will be regarded as guilty either because he caused his own death or because of his sin.”
Calvinists like Joe Carter should read the life of Roger Williams, who was booted out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for insisting that the colonists recompense the Indians for their land. It was his solicitude for the Indians that ultimately preserved the Bay Colony from being defeated in the Pequot War since he persuaded the Narragansett to ally themselves with the colonists. While the Bay colonists insisted on seeing the Indians as “savages” that were incapable of either rule or self-rule, Williams saw them as children of God, a lesson we would do well to remember.
In the meantime, let’s insist on recognizing the difference between national ‘defense’ and national ‘security.’ The US has had, what, just two or three wars in which soldiers actually defended the country. The rest have been wars of aggression with Indians, Mexicans, and Spain. Most of the rest of our wars have been for ‘national security’ or ‘national interest,’ euphemisms that translate into protecting particular business interests and the ‘lifestyles’ to which we’ve been accustomed. We’ve had a couple of humanitarian wars of which we might be partially proud—Korea, Kuwait, Bosnia, and now Libya come to mind. But even these wars have had primary ulterior motives.
The so-called ‘War on Terror’ is the emptiest and therefore the most dangerous of euphemistic excuses. Terrorism has never succeeded. It’s a loser’s game, and al Qaeda is more about the failures of Middle Eastern governments than it is about the US.
March 21st, 2011 | 2:05 pm
Joe wrote:
we shouldn’t be surprised when other countries point out that we are not really being guided primarily by humanitarian concerns when we intervene in the affairs of other nations.
No, we shouldn’t, but I think they’re holding us to impossible standards – are theirs that high? whose are? -if they object to that, especially since the case of Libya shows that we are, when circumstances allow, willing to intervene for purely humanitarian reasons.
March 21st, 2011 | 2:46 pm
Stuart wrote:
The critical question is why we did not do this three weeks ago, when it would have made a significant difference.
I think the answer is clear. For obvious reasons, we didn’t want to intervene without widespread Arab support, or intervene unless it was clear that this time we really were just partners in a coalition.
March 21st, 2011 | 7:09 pm
“I think the answer is clear. For obvious reasons, we didn’t want to intervene without widespread Arab support, or intervene unless it was clear that this time we really were just partners in a coalition.”
Nonsense. The reality is, nobody in either Europe or the Arab world has any real capacity for military intervention (see my “Coalition of the Incapable”, here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/321dgshp.asp), and unless the U.S. leads, nothing gets done. What the Arab world wants is largely irrelevant–the Arab League’s response to the UN resolution (a resolution brought at their behest) is highly instructive).
March 21st, 2011 | 9:39 pm
What the Arab world thinks of us is of obvious importance these days. Their relative capacity for military action is beside the point.
March 22nd, 2011 | 7:12 am
“What the Arab world thinks of us is of obvious importance these days. Their relative capacity for military action is beside the point.”
What Arab dictators (not the “Arab world”, an amorphous concept that, like the “Arab street”, exists only in the minds of Western foreign policy gurus) think of us is directly proportional to whether they think our military force will be turned against them. Qaddafi taken down quickly and efficiently would have been an unmistakable signal to other Arab dictators that certain kinds of behavior won’t be tolerated. After a couple of such object lessons, it no longer becomes necessary to employ force–the mere threat is sufficient to ensure compliance.
March 22nd, 2011 | 10:37 am
By “the Arab world,” I’m not talking about dictators at all, I’m just using casual shorthand for Arabs vulnerable to radicalization. Sure, we we’d have intimidated other dictators in the region if we’d moved immediately to help Libyan rebels oust Gaddafi, though we can only speculate about whether we would have succeeded. But taking action before the Arab League asked for a no-fly zone would have given radical Islam a great propaganda tool. And radical Islam is what threatens us, not Arab dictatorship.
March 22nd, 2011 | 7:43 pm
“By “the Arab world,” I’m not talking about dictators at all, I’m just using casual shorthand for Arabs vulnerable to radicalization.”
That assumes what we do has some impression upon Muslims vulnerable to radicalization, whereas that phenomenon seems to correlate most closely to the difference between expectations and reality for young Muslim men; i.e., in the underperforming, corruption-riddled, crony-dominated economies of places like Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, etc., educated young men see no future for themselves, no ability to use their skills and talents, to build lives for themselves, to marry and to raise families.
And that, in turn, leads to disillusionment with the current regime, and a turn to radical Islam as an alternative way out of their dead end existence.
Our great mistake, from the beginning, was thinking Islamism was primarily about us, or about Israel, whereas it’s always been about Islam addressing the future of Islam.
March 23rd, 2011 | 8:54 am
Joe–you are thinking way too hard about this. Why not just ask, “What would Jesus bomb?”
http://www.redletterchristians.org/bombs-cookies-and-the-cross/
Seriously though, thanks for the thoughtful piece. However, I confess to being less troubled by the fact that we will selectively intervene for humanitarian reasons and that just national interests (rather than pure altruism) will be often be the tipping point.
March 23rd, 2011 | 9:01 am
Joe-your opening paragraphs reminded me of the old joke about “low-intensity conflict,” back when that was a doctrinal term. The joke: Low intensity conflict is like a ham and egg breakfast; it may be low intensity for the chicken but it is high intensity for the pig.
Meaning, of course, if you are in the fight it is all high intensity.
March 23rd, 2011 | 1:21 pm
A better comment comes from former Marine Corps Commandant Al Gray, who said, “If they are shooting at me, it’s high intensity”.
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