From Subject to Citizen: Walzer on Libya

March 7, 2011 /Dissent

The Libyan crisis provides a classic test of the liberal doctrine of nonintervention, now entrenched in international law, and famously defended by John Stuart Mill roughly one hundred and fifty years ago. What is at issue here isn’t “humanitarian intervention.”

The current crisis isn’t of such a kind as to make that a plausible response. No doubt, the Qaddafi government is killing Libyan citizens, but nothing like mass murder is going on. One Libyan tribe isn’t setting out to exterminate another tribe. There are refugees at the borders, east and west, and more refugees waiting in the port cities, but this isn’t the result of ethnic cleansing. These people can be helped, and should be, by efforts well short of a military invasion. The point of calling in an army would be to overthrow the dictator and help move Libya toward a democratic transformation. And that is just the kind of intervention that Mill opposed and that international law rules out.

Mill had a “tough love” theory of democratization. Democratic politics depended on the citizenly virtues of the people, and these virtues were sure to be underdeveloped after a long period of despotic rule. So how do subjects become citizens? They have to do it themselves, Mill argued; they have to turn themselves into citizens by actively resisting the despot. “It is during an arduous struggle to become free by their own efforts that [the virtues of citizenship] have the best chance of springing up.”

This is the democratic version of the Marxist maxim that “the liberation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself.” No one else can do it for the people or for the workers. They must be allowed to liberate themselves—even at the risk of failure. For Mill, failure would be a sign that the people weren’t ready for democracy. “The only test…of a people’s having become fit for popular institutions is that they, or a sufficient portion of them to prevail in the contest, are willing to brave labor and danger for their liberation.” If they win they are “fit,” and if they don’t they are not.

It is indeed a hard argument, but not a foolish one. Surely the rest of the world should give the Libyan rebels a chance to win on their own—a chance to mobilize support, organize a revolutionary movement and a fighting force, and build government institutions in the parts of the country they control. We (Westerners, Americans, democrats) can offer moral, political, and ideological support; we can provide material aid of different kinds; we can launch diplomatic campaigns against the tyrannical government; we can shut down any trade that strengthens its hand. But the fight inside the country should remain just that—a fight among insiders.

What if it looks as if Qaddafi is going to win? Would we be willing to go all the way with Mill and say that if the rebels lose, it’s because the country isn’t ready, isn’t “fit,” for democratic government? I don’t think I am tough enough for that. But if there is to be, somewhere down the road, a military intervention, let it not be an American intervention. Ideally, I suppose, it should be an Italian intervention.

According to post-colonial theory, the Italians are responsible for everything bad that has happened in Libya since they left. But if they tried to fix things, it wouldn’t be a post-post-colonial effort; it would look very much like the old colonialism. In any case, they could act effectively only as part of a NATO force, and NATO is second-worst to the United States as a potential intervener. United Nations auspices would provide a little cover, but it would almost certainly be vetoed in the Security Council. So why not call in the Egyptian and Tunisian armies? A high-tech force isn’t necessary here; with logistical help, these two armies could do the job. And who knows? Promoting democracy in Libya might push them to do the same thing, a bit more eagerly than they are doing now, in their own countries.

When intervention is necessary, neighbors are the best substitute for insiders. But when does “necessity” kick in—when the rebels have been utterly defeated, or when they are on the brink of defeat, or when too many of them are being killed? I would like to say, we will know necessity when we see it—except that so many people see it too soon, and so many never see it. We should begin that argument right now.

Me:

I found Walzer’s “op ed,” if that’s what it is, interesting. When Walzer speaks I listen. I tend to approach him as someone presumptively correct. But I don’t buy his arguments this time. The key quote from Mill relevant here, I think, is this (as noted by Ted Bromund):

….But the case of a people struggling against a foreign yoke, or against a native tyranny upheld by foreign arms, illustrates the reasons for non-intervention in an opposite way; for in this case the reasons themselves do not exist. A people the most attached to freedom, the most capable of defending and of making a good use of free institutions, may be unable to contend successfully for them against the military strength of another nation much more powerful. To assist a people thus kept down, is not to disturb the balance of forces on which the permanent maintenance of freedom in a country depends, but to redress that balance when it is already unfairly and violently disturbed. The doctrine of non-intervention, to be a legitimate principle of morality, must be accepted by all governments. The despots must consent to be bound by it as well as the free States. Unless they do, the profession of it by free countries comes but to this miserable issue, that the wrong side may help the wrong, but the right must not help the right. Intervention to enforce non-intervention is always rightful, always moral, if not always prudent…

So here the Millian argument flows from the premise that Kadaffy is importing into his war foreign mercenaries. On this premise, as I read this text, there is no principled reason for non intervention.

I of course readily bow to Walzer in his understanding of Mill but do not understand why necessarily Kadaffian mercenaries engaged in civilian slaughter as a tactic and Kadaffy engaged in air strafing rebel forces and civilian populations do not in Mill’s terms invoke the need for humanitarian intervention or, in modern terms, the duty to protect.

I find a tension in Walzer’s initial rejection of intervention on a humanitarian ground but his looking to it in the face of a likely Qadaffy victory:

…What if it looks as if Qaddafi is going to win? Would we be willing to go all the way with Mill and say that if the rebels lose, it’s because the country isn’t ready, isn’t “fit,” for democratic government? I don’t think I am tough enough for that…

I don’t understand the willingness to intervene at some later point but not at an earlier point. An answer may lie in the distinction between between intervention short of ground invasion and intervention as ground invasion. But unless I am missing it, Walzer doesn’t entertain that distinction in his argument and that muddies it some and makes it incomplete.

Some of Bromund’s comments speak to the importance of maintaining that distinction in addressing these issues (as he proceeds from the premise of Kadaffy’s use of foreign mercenaries):

…The U.S. should be working with its allies to warn the states of north and central Africa — and others, but the African states are the most likely sources of assistance — that any cooperation with Qaddafi, or any evidence they looked the other way, will be viewed with extreme disfavor and lead to public denunciations, the reduction or elimination of aid, and further steps if warranted. With the administration now (finally) committed publicly to the idea that Qaddafi has to go, it is literally the least we could do…

Finally, for Walzer advancing a principled argument proceeding by moral reasoning, I also find a tension between that and his final reversion to a kind of bloody minded pragmatic reckoning in arguing that at the acceptable point of ground invasion intervention:

…why not call in the Egyptian and Tunisian armies? A high-tech force isn’t necessary here; with logistical help, these two armies could do the job. And who knows? Promoting democracy in Libya might push them to do the same thing, a bit more eagerly than they are doing now, in their own countries…

If the point is ever reached warranting ground forces—and Walzer countenancing that issues, I diagnose, from his failure to make the distinction I noted—I don’t know why neighboring forces are better to make that fight than forces under some international banner, some true coalition of the willing, a consensus Walzer (to me) inexplicably rejects:

“In any case, they could act effectively only as part of a NATO force, and NATO is second-worst to the United States as a potential intervener.”

I agree that at such a hypothetical point the U.S. ought not act alone but if the U.N. will not act—as Walzer assumes—I don’t understand NATO as objectionable as he asserts. After all, from Mill, once more:

…But the case of a people struggling against a foreign yoke, or against a native tyranny upheld by foreign arms, illustrates the reasons for non-intervention in an opposite way; for in this case the reasons themselves do not exist…