{"id":8402,"date":"2011-03-18T16:52:53","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T20:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pbs-wnet-preprod.digi-producers.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/?p=8402"},"modified":"2014-03-05T13:11:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T18:11:34","slug":"march-18-2011-the-ethics-of-intervention-in-libya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbs-wnet-preprod.digi-producers.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/03\/18\/march-18-2011-the-ethics-of-intervention-in-libya\/8402\/","title":{"rendered":" The Ethics of Intervention in Libya"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOB ABERNETHY<\/strong>, host: The situation in Libya remains uncertain. The Gaddafi government Friday (March 18) announced a ceasefire following UN authorization of outside military intervention. On Thursday (March 17), after a week of vigorous international debate, the Security Council approved establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya as well as \u201call necessary measures\u201d to protect civilians.<\/p>\n

What are the moral considerations that should guide a decision to intervene in another country? Kim Lawton took a closer look.<\/p>\n

KIM LAWTON<\/strong>, correspondent: As the situation continued to deteriorate inside Libya, calls for international military intervention escalated. The UN\u2019s resolution demanded a ceasefire, and if the violence doesn\u2019t end, authorized enforcement of a no-fly zone and pledged to take \u201cany necessary means\u201d to protect civilians. But there are never easy solutions.<\/p>\n

\"post02-libyaintervention\"Shaun Casey is professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary.<\/p>\n

SHAUN CASEY <\/strong>(Wesley Theological Seminary): Whether you act or whether you don\u2019t act, the stakes are really quite high, and that\u2019s what makes it so daunting from a moral perspective: trying to find the right way to know when to intervene and when not to because the consequences, the body counts are quite high.<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: In the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the United Nations hammered out a set of principles known as the \u201cResponsibility to Protect.\u201d The principles say that nations must protect their population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. And if a state doesn\u2019t live up to that responsibility, the international community has a responsibility to step in. The United States has endorsed those principles.<\/p>\n

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA<\/strong> (from Nobel acceptance speech, December 209): I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in the other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later.<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: According to Casey, the principles draw heavily from the just war tradition, which says there must be a just cause for such intervention.<\/p>\n

\"post01-libyaintervention\"CASEY<\/strong>: What people need to be looking for, particularly with respect to Libya, is to what extent are war crimes being committed, are innocent people being directly targeted, is there something approaching genocide occurring on the ground at this point?<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: Once that has been determined, the next questions are who has the authority for approving an intervention and who has the responsibility of carrying it out?<\/p>\n

CASEY<\/strong>: Simply because you may have a justification for intervention, that doesn\u2019t answer the \u201cwho\u201d question. Should France be the one who intervenes? Should Saudi Arabia intervene? Should the Arab League? Should the Africa Union? There are a lot of regional entities there that may actually have some resources that could be applied militarily.<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: Atrocities in and of themselves don\u2019t automatically trigger intervention.<\/p>\n

CASEY<\/strong>: Sure, we have a commitment to fighting injustice, but that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re going to go militarily instantly wherever injustice occurs. We have to ask the question \u201chow large,\u201d and do we actually have the empirical, sort of pragmatic capability to do anything about it?<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: Casey admits it\u2019s difficult to know where that moral line is.<\/p>\n

\"post03-libyaintervention\"CASEY<\/strong>: Nobody is going to say, \u201cWell, you have to have 50,000 people die before we go in.\u201d So you have to take it case by case, and certainly in a situation like Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were butchered, in retrospect you\u2019d say, oh my goodness, of course that was on a scale that would\u2019ve justified intervention.<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: Another question is whether there is what the just war theory calls a \u201creasonable chance of success.\u201d<\/p>\n

CASEY<\/strong>: So let\u2019s say we do a no fly zone and Gaddafi still sends in ground troops and tanks and manages to defeat the rebels. Does the fact that we established a no fly zone mean we want to actually then put ground troops to deter Gaddafi if he continues to be successful?<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: Casey says concerns about potential success have so far prevented the international community from intervening in Darfur, even though there is strong consensus that atrocities continue to be committed there. He acknowledges that not acting in a particular situation can also be a moral failure.<\/p>\n

CASEY<\/strong>: If you have the ability to intervene and to stop an injustice or stop an atrocity and don\u2019t, I think you do have moral culpability as a result of that.<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: The moral questions are getting increasingly complicated, and Casey says they\u2019re not going away any time soon.<\/p>\n

CASEY<\/strong>: If history\u2019s any guide, we\u2019re going to see more of these failed states and more of these sort of nascent civil wars, and we\u2019re going to be asked a lot more to intervene in these kinds of conflicts.<\/p>\n

LAWTON<\/strong>: All the more reason, he says, to stay vigilant in doing the moral calculus.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Kim Lawton in Washington.<\/p>\n

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