Questioning Intervention

I suppose it is too much to expect a reviewer to read my footnotes, but had he done so, James Traub ("A Fight to Protect," November/December 2008) would not have accused me of passing over non-Western interventions, such as India’s invasion of Bangladesh or the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, in my book The Thin Blue Line. As it happens, I also discuss the Indian peacekeeping mission to Sri Lanka at some length.

I simply noted that these actions cannot be classified as humanitarian according to the definition that Traub himself uses. If you expand the concept to include self-justifications by invading states, we would have to accept Russia’s recent intervention in Georgia as humanitarian as well.

Traub also makes a couple of notable errors over Somalia, the cause célèbre of humanitarian interventionists. It is simply not true to say that Operation Restore Hope "saved several hundred thousand lives." The famine was abating before U.S. marines arrived.

His blithe dismissal of the view that peace will only be restored to that long-suffering country by a process that engages its traditional clan-based community leaders also contradicts the findings of numerous expert studies and most impartial observers.

These errors mar what is otherwise a generally benign review.

— Conor Foley
Brasilia, Brazil

James Traub replies:

It’s true! Footnote 20 of chapter 6 of The Thin Blue Line lists the Bangladesh and East Pakistan interventions, as well as Tanzania’s move against Idi Amin of Uganda, but it says they don’t qualify as "humanitarian," presumably because of the interveners’ mixed motives. But if we are expected to await the angelic intervenor, many people will die in the meantime. What matters, according to the doctrine of the responsibility to protect, is the obligation of outsiders to act when states are unable or unwilling to protect their citizens from atrocities.

By the way, International Crisis Group President Gareth Evans reviews each of these three cases in his book The Responsibility to Protect and finds the humanitarian argument for action overwhelming. The intervening powers chose not to invoke this rationale, he notes, because of "the absolute primacy of sovereignty claims during this period."

When it comes to Somalia, the figures are disputed. Alex de Waal, who shares Foley’s view of intervention and whom he often cites, claims that Operation Restore Hope had zero impact on mortality rates. Others cite the "several hundred thousand" figure I use. The 1994 report of the Refugee Policy Group cautiously puts the number of lives saved at 110,000. Perhaps I should have written "100,000 or more."

Should the United Nations have followed the advice of Mohamed Sahnoun, its envoy in Somalia at the time, to work with tribal elders rather than sending a vast peacekeeping operation? Sahnoun’s counsel does look wise in retrospect, though the calamity that occurred makes almost any alternative course of action look preferable. My dismissal of this point should have been less blithe.