Analysis & Opinions - Namibian

The Intervention Dilemma

| June 12, 2012


This op-ed was reprinted on June 13, 2012, by the Daily Star as "In a Brutal World, a Responsibility to Protect Will Stay on the Table" and by the Korea Times as "The Intervention Dilemma" on June 17, 2012.

WHEN should states intervene militarily to stop atrocities in other countries? The question is an old and well-traveled one. Indeed, it is now visiting Syria.

In 1904, US President Theodore Roosevelt argued that, "there are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror" that we should intervene by force of arms. A century earlier, in 1821, as Europeans and Americans debated whether to intervene in Greece's struggle for independence, President John Quincy Adams warned his fellow Americans about "going abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

More recently, after a genocide that cost nearly 800 000 lives in Rwanda in 1994, and the slaughter of Bosnian men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, many people vowed that such atrocities should never again be allowed to occur. When Slobodan Miloševic engaged in large-scale ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution recognizing the humanitarian catastrophe, but could not agree on a second resolution to intervene, given the threat of a Russian veto. Instead, NATO countries bombed Serbia in an effort that many observers regarded as legitimate but not legal.





There are other reasons why R2P has not been a success in the Syrian case. Drawn from traditional "just war" theory, R2P rests not only on right intentions, but also on the existence of a reasonable prospect of success. Many observers highlight the important physical and military differences between Libya and Syria that would make Syrian no-fly zones or no-drive zones problematic. Some Syrians who oppose President Bashar al-Assad's regime, pointing to Baghdad in 2005, argue that the one thing worse than a cruel dictator is a sectarian civil war.


Prudence does not mean that nothing can be done in Syria. Other governments can continue to try to convince Russia that its interests are better served by getting rid of the current regime than by permitting the continued radicalisation of his opponents. Tougher sanctions can continue to delegitimise the regime, and Turkey might be persuaded to take stronger steps against its neighbour.

Recent large-scale interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, though not primarily humanitarian, have eroded public support for military action. But we should recall Mark Twain's story about his cat. After sitting on a hot stove, it would never sit on a hot stove again, but neither would it sit on a cold one.


Joseph S. Nye, a former US assistant secretary of defence and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, is a professor at Harvard University and one of the world's foremost scholars of international relations.

For Academic Citation: Nye, Joseph S..“The Intervention Dilemma.” Namibian, June 12, 2012.