Check out this great new article in support of humanitarian interventions!
http://www.straight.com/article-382483/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-today-libya-tomorrow-syriaGwynne Dyer: Today Libya, tomorrow Syria?
By Gwynne Dyer
Publish Date: March 21, 2011
SNIP
The current Syrian ruler, Bashar al-Assad, is allegedly a gentler person than his father Hafez, but the Baath Party still rules Syria, and it is just as ruthless as ever. So what happens if the Syrian revolution gets underway, and the Baath Party starts slaughtering people again? Do the same forces now intervening in Libya get sent to Syria as well?
SNIP
The “responsibility to protect” concept that underpins the UN decision on Libya was first proposed in 2001 by Lloyd Axworthy, then Canada’s foreign minister. He was frustrated by the UN’s inability to stop the genocides in Kosovo and Rwanda in the 1990s, and he concluded that the problem was the UN’s own rules. So he set out to change them.
SNIP
By the early 21st century, however, the threat of a nuclear war between the great powers had faded away, while local massacres and genocides proliferated. Yet the UN was still hamstrung by the 1945 rules and unable to intervene. So Lloyd Axworthy set up the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to popularize the concept of humanitarian intervention under the name of "Responsibility to protect”.
SNIP
Nobody will ever attack Russia to make it be nicer to the Chechens, or invade China to make it change its behaviour towards the Tibetans. Great powers are effectively exempt from all the rules if they choose to be, precisely because they are so powerful. That’s no argument for also exempting less powerful but nastier regimes from the obligation not to murder their own people.
Great powers? They're exempt from the rules.
Little powers? Watch out!
As Dwyer concludes: "Consistency is an overrated virtue."
Damn, things would have been so much better in South Africa if it had only been invaded and divided into occupation zones by predominantly white-skinned Western armies in the 1980s to end the murderous apartheid system several years before the negotiated solution. What could have gone wrong?
And that UN founding nonsense in the 1940s! Focusing on utter trivialities, like ending war, when we all know war brings human rights to oppressed peoples!
Great power wars are so yesterday. History shows the way to assure peace among the great powers is to get them all involved in lots of little crusades on their peripheries. We need to get each and every great power invading at least one of the 10 most oppressive small regimes, to help the people there.
Maybe we can use the Amnesty International rankings to determine the 10 bottom regimes that should get relegated, and have each of the Top 10 human rights champions take the lead in organizing a customized coalition for each liberation war. Using Amnesty will allay liberal concerns, I'm sure. It should also help in better integrating the Americans, teaching them they can also
follow for a change. (You may read a little dig there, but note I'm also assuming they wouldn't be in the bottom 10!)
Question China's domestic policies all you like, but its record on external aggression is pretty good. Well, with a few exceptions, like Tibet, and that little bloody war with Vietnam, and a couple of border wars with India and Russia, and that involvement in Korea, but still better by miles compared to some other big doofy superpowers I might name! They'd be just the ones to invade and occupy Colombia and put an end to its human rights violations. It would take their minds off Taiwan, and I'd bet they could teach those Latins how to work! For a start.
Maybe the rule should be for each Big Power to knock over an oppressive regime on a different continent from its own, to minimize conflicts of interest. Russia can do Zimbabwe. The big old US may have its hands almost full with its already quite remote do-gooding, but it should be able to handle the addition of one little North Korea. And it's the perfect choice for liberating the Palestinians, taking the dangerous Israelis by surprise. As the Klingons say, "You can't very well betray your enemies!"
Brazil can have its first test-run in liberation imperialism by freeing the Somalis! In fact, I figure pretty much every African country needs its own benign invader, so why not carve it up amongst the new great powers? Give Nigeria to India, Angola to France, split the Congo between Brazil and the UK. With an efficient division of labor according to Ricardo's principles, the production of freedom will skyrocket, creating demand for more. In no time there will be a humanitarian rush to improve whatever pieces of the continent remain unsponsored.
I can't believe no one ever thought of that before!
Berlin Conference, 1885: "La Question Du Congo".
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