Debating Humanitarian Intervention: Should We Try to Save Strangers?

289 Pages·2017·2.048 MB·English

by  Fernando R. Tesón, Bas van der Vossen

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DEBATING HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION
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DEBATING ETHICS
General Editor
Christopher Heath Wellman
Washington University of St. Louis
Debating Ethics is a series of volumes in which leading
scholars defend opposing views on timely ethical questions
and core theoretical issues in contemporary moral, political,
and legal philosophy.
Debating the Ethics of Immigration
Is There a Right to Exclude?
Christopher Heath Wellman and Philip Cole
Debating Brain Drain
May Governments Restrict Emigration?
Gillian Brock and Michael Blake
Debating Procreation
Is It Wrong to Reproduce?
David Benatar and David Wasserman
Debating Climate Ethics
Stephen Gardiner and David Weisbach
Debating Gun Control
How Much Regulation Do We Need?
David DeGrazia and Lester H. Hunt
Debating Humanitarian Intervention
Should We Try to Save Strangers?
Fernando R. Tesón and Bas van der Vossen
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DEBATING
HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION
Should We Try
to Save Strangers?
FERNANDO R. TESÓN
AND BAS VAN DER VOSSEN
1
iv
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Teson, Fernando R., 1950– author. | Van der Vossen, Bas, 1979– author
Title: Debating humanitarian intervention : should we try to save strangers? /
Fernando R. Teson, Bas van der Vossen.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
Series: Debating ethics | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017004866 (print) | LCCN 2017026190 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190202934 (online course) | ISBN 9780190202927 (pdf) |
ISBN 9780190202910 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190202903 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Humanitarian intervention—Philosophy. | Humanitarian
intervention—Moral and ethical aspects. |
BISAC: PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy. |
PHILOSOPHY / Political. | PHILOSOPHY / Social.
Classification: LCC JZ6369 (ebook) | LCC JZ6369 .T43 2017 (print) |
DDC 341.5/84—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004866
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
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CONTENTS
Introduction  1
By Fernando R. Tesón and Bas van der Vossen
PART I A DEFENSE OF HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION
By Fernando R. Tesón
1. Humanitarian Intervention as Defense
of Persons  23
2. Just Cause in Humanitarian Intervention  39
3. Intervention and Revolution:
The Equivalence Thesis  77
4. Proportionality in Humanitarian Intervention  98
5. Further Issues in Humanitarian Intervention  129
Appendix: The Iraq War  145
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vi | CONTENTS
PART II HUMANITARIAN NONINTERVENTION
By Bas van der Vossen
6. A Presumption Against Intervention  153
7. Between Internal and External Threats  158
8. Why Sovereignty (Still) Matters  172
9. The Success Condition  192
10. Justice Ex Post or Ex Ante?  211
11. Three Structural Problems  232
12. Looking for Exceptions  251
13. Humanitarian Nonintervention  262
Index 271
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DEBATING HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION
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1
Introduction
FERNANDO R. TESÓN
AND BAS VAN DER VOSSEN
THIS VOLUME EXAMINES THE ETHICS of humanitarian
intervention. We use the tools of modern analytical philosophy—
in particular, modern just- war theory. Our arguments are
necessarily abstract, but they bear on a moral issue of the
greatest practical importance— namely, whether and under
what conditions governments can start wars for the ostensi-
bly benign purpose of saving human lives. Fernando R. Tesón
argues that some humanitarian interventions are morally per-
missible. Bas van der Vossen argues that humanitarian inter-
ventions are almost always morally prohibited.
We define humanitarian intervention as the international
use of military force to defend persons from attacks, in their own
territory, by their own rulers or other groups.1 Writers some-
times use the concept of humanitarian intervention loosely to
denote any war to save persons from atrocities, including those
committed by armies in the course of war. An intervention to
1. We use the term “attack” as shorthand for “severe rights viola-
tions.” We will not address intervention to save people from
natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis, although our dis-
cussion will apply mutatis mutandis to these humanitarian crises.