Iris Marion Young on responsible intervention: reimagining humanitarian intervention

Iris Marion Young took a strong stance against humanitarian intervention and other so-called legitimate instances of what she calls ‘official violence’. Nevertheless, she was also aware that there may be some situations for which military humanitarian intervention should at least be considered. Young was concerned that some states will use their obligation to defend against human rights violations as a mechanism in securing or maintaining global dominance. In addition, she recognized that what counts as a violation of human rights is not uncontroversial; human rights norms and conventions are interpreted, negotiated, and otherwise contested. In this article, I build on Young’s arguments for a social connection model of responsibility by applying it to a situation where a forceful response to violence might be justified. I juxtapose Young’s position with the emerging international standard called ‘the responsibility to protect’ in order to suggest an account of intervention for global governance relations.     

‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights

This paper explores the international implications of liberal theories which extend justice to sentient animals. In particular, it asks whether they imply that coercive military intervention in a state by external agents to prevent, halt or minimise violations of basic animal rights (‘humane intervention’) can be justified. In so doing, it employs Simon Caney's theory of humanitarian intervention and applies it to non-human animals. It argues that while humane intervention can be justified in principle using Caney's assumptions, justifying any particular intervention on behalf of animals is much more difficult – and in present circumstances impossible. If these claims are correct, a number of important conclusions follow. First, all states lack legitimacy because of the horrors that they inflict upon animals. As a result of this, all states are prima facie liable to intervention by external agents. To remedy this situation, all states have the responsibility to massively transform their relationship with non-human animals, and to build international institutions to oversee the proper protection of their most basic rights.     

Reconciling Just Causes for Armed Humanitarian Intervention

Michael Walzer argues that the just cause for humanitarian intervention is not met if there are only “ordinary” levels of human rights abuses within a state because he believes that respecting the right to collective self-determination is more morally important than protecting other individual rights. Several prominent critics of Walzer advocate for a more permissive account of a just cause. They argue that protecting individuals’ human rights is more morally important than respecting a right to collective self-determination. I argue that these two accounts are far more similar than either Walzer or his critics realize because collective self-determination requires the protection of some human rights in order to allow each person the opportunity to participate in collective choices. Consequently, the just cause for intervention is met whenever at least some important human rights of one person are violated and others are being credibly threatened. The counter intuitive conclusion of my argument is that justified interventions can actually promote rather than undermine collective self-determination because just interventions allow innocents, who otherwise would have excluded from this process, the opportunity to contribute to collective choices. Of course, a just cause is insufficient in itself for intervention to be permissible because other just war precepts must also be met.     

Self-Determination, Wellbeing, and Threats of Harm

David Rodin argues that the right of national‐defence as conceived in international law cannot be grounded in the end of defending the lives of individuals. Firstly, having this end is not necessary because there is a right of defence against an invasion that threatens no lives. However, in this context we are to understand that ‘defending lives’ includes defending against certain non‐lethal threats. I will argue that threats to national‐self determination and self‐government are significant non‐lethal threats to the wellbeing of individuals that can justify lethal defensive force. Therefore the end of defending individuals can ground a right of national‐defence against a ‘bloodless invasion’. Secondly, Rodin argues that defending lives is not a sufficient condition for military action to be national self‐defence, because humanitarian intervention is military action to defend individuals, and such action is in deep tension with national self‐defence. I will argue that a reductive account, grounded in claims of need and threats of harm, can justify principles of both intervention and non‐intervention on the same grounds; that is, protecting the wellbeing of individuals.     

Humanitarian intervention and historical responsibility

Some suggest that the duty of humanitarian intervention should be discharged by states that are historically responsible for the occurrence of violence. A fundamental problem with this suggestion is that historically responsible states might be ill-suited to intervene because they are unlikely to enjoy support from the local population. Cécile Fabre has suggested a way around that problem, arguing that responsible states ought to pay for humanitarian interventions even though they ought not to take part in the military operations. We claim that Fabre’s idea is subject to two concerns. First, the duty to perform might not be appropriately transferrable from the historically responsible state to another state because it would allow the primary duty bearer to escape the worst costs of intervention. Second, an intervention might be as unlikely to generate local support when a historically responsible state pays for an intervention as when it performs it. These problems are enough to cast doubt on Fabre’s idea. However, the idea is helpful because it highlights as yet neglected questions about how the financial and material burden of humanitarian intervention is to be shared.     

Humanitarian Intervention, Altruism, and the Limits of Casuistry

This essay argues that the ethics of humanitarian intervention cannot be readily subsumed by the ethics of just war without due attention to matters of political and moral motivation. In the modern era, a just war draws directly from self-benefitting motives in wars of self-defense, or indirectly in wars that enforce international law or promote the global common good. Humanitarian interventions, in contrast, are intuitively admirable insofar as they are other-regarding. That difference poses a challenge to the casuistry of humanitarian intervention because it makes it difficult to reason by analogy from the case of war to the case of humanitarian intervention. The author develops this point in dialogue with Michael Walzer, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and President Clinton. He concludes by showing how a casuistry of intervention is possible, developing a motivational rationale that draws on the Golden Rule.     

Individual‐level and community‐level effects of war trauma on social representations related to humanitarian law

Theoretical and empirical accounts of violent intergroup conflict or reactions to victimization suggested psychosocial processes that are likely to paradoxically enhance war victims' justification of violations of humanitarian norms. To test for differences and similarities between individual and community reactions, multilevel analyses of the ‘People on War’ dataset were conducted. This data combines survey responses from fourteen different communities recently involved in armed conflict (N = 12, 047). At the individual level, findings support a specific cycle‐of‐violence hypothesis, indicating that victims of war report less support for a legal conception of humanitarian norms than do non‐victims. In contrast, at the community level, the higher the rate of victims, the more frequently community members adopt a legal conception of humanitarian norms. Further, the strength of condemnation of humanitarian norm violations is positively related to war duration and magnitude of fatalities. These findings are interpreted within a social‐representational framework. The collective experience of generalized vulnerability strengthens a shared perception of the need for formal justice, which cannot be reduced to the sum of the psychological consequences of community members' individual experiences of war trauma. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is U.N. Security Council Authorisation for Armed Humanitarian Intervention Morally Necessary?

Relative to the abundance of literature devoted to the legal significance of UN authorisation, little has been written about whether the UN’s failure to sanction an intervention can ever make it immoral. This is the question that I take up here. I argue that UN authorisation (or lack thereof) can have some indirect bearing on the moral status of a humanitarian intervention. That is, it can affect whether an intervention satisfies other widely accepted justifying conditions, such as proportionality, “internal” legitimacy, and likelihood of success. The more interesting question, however, is whether the UN’s failure to provide a mandate can make a humanitarian operation unjust independently of these other familiar considerations. Is a proportional, internally legitimate humanitarian intervention, with a just cause and strong prospect of success, still morally unacceptable if it is not approved by the United Nations Security Council? This is the question that I turn to in the second half of the paper.     

A model theoretic approach to ‘natural’ reasoning

A general framework is proposed for accommodating the recent results of studies into ‘natural’ decision making. A crucial element of this framework is the notion of a ‘partial structure’, recently introduced into the semantic approach to scientific theories. It is through the introduction of this element that connections can be made with certain problems regarding inconsistency and rationality in general.     

Secular humanitarians and the postsecular: reflections on Habermas and the Typhoon Haiyan disaster response

The international humanitarian system aims to save lives and alleviate suffering following disasters worldwide. Secular and faith-based actors make up the system, but the system can operate to a secular standard that may, some have argued, marginalise religious experience and well-being post-disaster. This article assesses what can be learned from examining secular humanitarianism from a postsecular perspective. Debate on secularity in the humanitarian system is reviewed, before Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the postsecular is proposed as a theoretical lens. Habermasian postsecularism invites the secular to take part in a process of ‘complementary learning’ with the religious. Results from interviews and focus groups in the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan are used. Results show the reflexivity of secular individuals within the humanitarian system, with cases demonstrating co-operation and consideration of other views at the interpersonal level. Yet, at a system-wide level, instances of marginalisation of religion were noted, such as responses to requests for chapel reconstruction and psycho-social assistance. While some organisations made a contextualised decision that either maintained their strict secularity or negotiated a compromise, in other cases, these decisions were based on preconceptions rather than deliberation. Overall, a level of reflexivity required in Habermasian postsecularism was found, but there were also further opportunities for complementary learning.     

The ‘Enforcer’ in Elite-Level Sport: A Conceptual Critique

The role of the ‘enforcer’ in elite-level sports contests is a familiar one. Simply, the role involves establishing or restoring a ‘moral balance’ to the sporting encounter when it is absent – usually when match officials are thought to be failing to apply the laws/rules of the game. How the enforcer secures this outcome is more morally contentious as it may involve deliberate violations of the laws/rules of the sport. In this paper we consider the role of the enforcer in rugby union. First we interrogate some of the extant sports ethics literature and explore the notion of ‘fairness’ in the well-played game, including the role of the enforcer. Second, we illustrate conceptually how the ethos of elite sport as a moral discourse creates a theoretical platform from which to assess the intervention of an enforcer. Third, we address the role of match officials as members of the practice community from an institutional sense (what the international governing body for rugby union makes explicit) and from an empirical sense (what actually occurs or might occur) in the circumstances that precipitate the intervention of ‘enforcers’. We conclude that the conceptual tension between the laws and the spirit (ethos) of the game is reflected in the choices facing players when playing the game.     

Teaching critical psychology of ‘race’ issues: problems in promoting anti‐racist practice

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the difficulties faced by teachers of issues related to ‘race’ and racism in psychology when trying to develop anti‐racist practice in their teaching. I argue that the promotion of anti‐racist practice can be impeded by the institutionalised cultures of some psychology departments and that such cultures have developed out of an over‐reliance on positivist ideas. Positivism obscures the fact that knowledge is constructed from positions of power and privilege, which in turn obscures the social and ideological construction of ‘race’. This is clearly a problem when trying to develop anti‐racist practice in teaching. It also leads to fixed ideas about what should be included in teaching content and what can be considered as good pedagogical practice, where notions of ‘balance’ and ‘neutrality’ are advocated, effectively overriding arguments for understanding the dynamics of knowledge production. It also obscures the power and privilege associated with workings of ‘whiteness’. I illustrate this by presenting examples from my own experiences of teaching ‘race’ issues on undergraduate degree courses. I conclude with suggestions for developing anti‐racist teaching by proposing a collective reflexive approach to changing institutional cultures that are currently at odds with anti‐racist practice. I also invite further discussion and suggestions on how best to achieve such collective conscientisation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Archetypes and Spirits: A Jungian Analysis of Puerto Rican Espiritismo

In this paper a comparison is made between Jung's approach to healing with a traditional healing system practised in Puerto Rico, called ‘Espiritismo’. Jungian psychology and ‘Espiritismo’ have several strong similarities in their conception of the therapeutic process, similarities which suggest that the healing process itself has generic properties which can be found in several therapeutic systems. In addition, by analysing Jung's development as a healer, it is possible to draw parallels between his development as a psychotherapist and the process of becoming a spiritist healer. In both healing systems, a transpersonal dimension is recognized as an integral element in the healing process. In ‘Espiritismo’, the suffering individual has to confront the spirit world; in analytical psychotherapy the patient has to confront the collective unconscious. This parallel was explicitly recognized by Jung in his autobiography when he compared the collective unconscious with the land of the dead. For Jung, knowledge of the figures of the unconscious enormously facilitates the individuation process; in ‘Espiritismo’ it is necessary to know the spirit world and to establish a relationship with the spirits. In Jungian psychology, healing is a process of ‘exorcizing’ some types of complexes or integrating others to consciousness. On the other hand, spiritist healers ‘exorcize’ ignorant spirits in order to heal a client or help him/her to identify spirit guides. In both systems, healing is essentially a process of establishing a dialogue with a transpersonal dimension (archetypes or spirits). Healing in ‘Espiritismo’ and Jungian psychology is a process of transcending the limited perspective of the ego (the ‘material world’) in order to experience a much broader reality (spiritual world or collective unconscious). Both systems emphasize the need to work with resources beyond the boundaries of the ego and to connect with forces that belong to a different reality.     

Variability in the collective behaviour of England fans at Euro2004: ‘Hooliganism’, public order policing and social change

This paper presents an analysis of collective behaviour among England football fans attending the European football championships in Portugal (Euro2004). Given this category's violent reputation, a key goal was to explore the processes underlying their apparent shift away from conflict in match cities. Drawing from the elaborated social identity model of crowd behaviour (ESIM) data were obtained using semi‐structured observations and interviews before, during and after the tournament. Qualitative analysis centres first on three key incidents in match cities where the potential for violence was undermined either by ‘self‐policing’ among England fans, or by appropriately targeted police intervention. These are contrasted with two ‘riots’ involving England fans that occurred in Algarve during the tournament. A phenomenological analysis of England fans' accounts suggests that the contexts created by different forms of policing helped bring to the fore different understandings of what constituted proper and possible behaviour among England fans, and that these changes in identity content underpinned shifts toward and away from collective conflict. The implications of this analysis for the ESIM, understanding public order policing, social change and social conflict are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion,Violence, and Human Rights

Beginning with the support given by religious groups to humanitarian intervention for the protection of basic human rights in the debates of the 1990s, this essay examines the use of the human rights idea in relation to international law on armed conflict, the “Responsibility To Protect” doctrine, and the development of the idea of sovereignty associated with the “Westphalian system” of international order, identifying a dilemma: that the idea of human rights undergirds both the principle of non‐intervention in the internal affairs of states and the idea of an international responsibility for humanitarian intervention in cases of oppression. The pre‐Westphalian conception of sovereignty as moral responsibility for the common good is then examined as an alternative that avoids this dilemma, and the essay concludes by suggesting that religious ethics also has other resources that, if used, may shed useful light on resolving this problem.     

The Principled Case for Employing Private Military and Security Companies in Interventions for Human Rights Purposes

The possibility of using private military and security companies to bolster the capacity to undertake intervention for human rights purposes (humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping) has been increasingly debated. The focus of such discussions has, however, largely been on practical issues and the contingent problems posed by private force. By contrast, this article considers the principled case for privatising humanitarian intervention. It focuses on two central issues. First, does outsourcing humanitarian intervention to private military and security companies pose some fundamental, deeper problems in this context, such as an abdication of a state's duties? Second, on the other hand, is there a case for preferring these firms to other, state‐based agents of humanitarian intervention? For instance, given a state's duties to their own military personnel, should the use of private military and security contractors be preferred to regular soldiers for humanitarian intervention?     

British Citizenship and the ‘Other’: An Analysis of the Earned Citizenship Discourse

This paper presents an analysis of interviews conducted with citizenship officers in London, working within the field of British naturalisation. We draw from a rhetorical psychology perspective to study the dilemmatic tensions that exist in the participants' discourse about naturalisation applicants who are constructed as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, as both ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ of British citizenship. In line with a rhetorical approach, we argue that these different constructions of the migrant are strategic and are associated with different constructions of Britain as humanitarian and tolerant, on the one hand, and as being under threat by the influx of immigration, on the other hand. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this ambivalence for processes of inclusion and exclusion. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Culture and collective argumentation

What are the mechanisms underlying the reproduction and change of collective beliefs? The paper suggests that a productive and promising approach for dealing with this question can be found in ontogenetic and cross-cultural studies on ‘collective argumentations and belief systems’; this is illustrated with regard to moral beliefs: After a short discussion of the rationality/relativity issue in cultural anthropology some basic elements of a conceptual framework for the empirical study of collective argumentations are outlined. A few empirical case studies are summarized; the results deliver some empirical evidence to the assumption that as the ‘logic of collective argumentations’ develops in children and adolescent there will be different and increasingly more complex constraints on the kinds of basic moral beliefs that can be collectively accepted. Most importantly, as children approach adolescence they may have acquired a ‘logic of argumentation’ which makes possible a collectively valid distinction between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ of some disputed particular moral issue. A comparison with a land litigation among Trobriands (Papua New Guinea) shows that the ‘logic of argumentation’ and the corresponding basic moral beliefs of Trobriands very much resemble the ‘logic of argumentation’ and moral rationality standards of (German) adolescents.     

Collective Narcissism and Intergroup Hostility: The Dark Side of ‘In‐Group Love’

This paper reviews current research on intergroup consequences of collective narcissism – an emotional investment in an unrealistic belief in exaggerated greatness of an in‐group. Integrating findings of the psychology of intergroup relations with findings regarding psychological outcomes of individual narcissism, the collective narcissism construct addresses the relationship between ‘in‐group love’ and ‘out‐group hate’. Differentiating between narcissistic and genuine positive group regard uncovers the potential of genuine ‘in‐group’ love to motivate positive out‐group attitudes and intergroup tolerance. Collective narcissism is also shown to be the aspects of positive group attachment that inspires defensive and retaliatory intergroup hostility under perceived threat. Narcissistic idealization of an in‐group is contingent on external validation and underlain by internal doubts. Collective narcissists are never fully satisfied with external acknowledgement of the in‐group and they are sensitive to anything that may undermine the in‐group’s exaggerated image.