Review of International Studies http://journals.cambridge.org/RIS Additional serv ices for Review of International Studies: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The age of liberal wars LAWRENCE FREEDMAN Review of International Studies / Volume 31 / Supplement S1 / December 2005, pp 93 - 107 DOI: 10.1017/S026021050500 6807, Published online: 21 March 2006 Link to this article: http://journals. cambridge.org/abs tract_S026021050500 6807 How to cite this article: LAWRE NCE FREEDMAN (2005). The age of liberal wars. Review of International Studies, 31, pp 93-107 doi:10.1017/S0260 210505006807 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/RIS, IP address: 173.181.66.227 on 26 Sep 2013
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The age of liberal wars
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN
Review of International Studies / Volume 31 / Supplement S1 / December 2005, pp 93 - 107DOI: 10.1017/S0260210505006807, Published online: 21 March 2006
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210505006807
How to cite this article:LAWRENCE FREEDMAN (2005). The age of liberal wars. Review of International Studies, 31,pp 93-107 doi:10.1017/S0260210505006807
Request Permissions : Click here
Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/RIS, IP address: 173.181.66.227 on 26 Sep 2013
Review of International Studies (2005), 31, 93–107 Copyright British International Studies Association
doi:10.1017/S0260210505006807
The age of liberal wars
LAWRENCE FREEDM AN
Three diff erent types of arguments were used to justify the 2003 Iraq War. Thefirstwas based on the requirements of national security. Iraq was believed to bedeveloping deadly weapons which it might use against neighbouring states or handover to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. A second argument was based oninternational security. Iraq was supposed to comply with a series of UN SecurityCouncil R esolutions and was failingto do so, thereby underminingthecredibility of the leading international institutions. The third argument was based on humansecurity. TheIraqi people had suff ered too long under a tyrannical regime and thiswas an opportunity to overthrow it and replace it with something much better.
It was also thecase, of course, that these arguments were matched by opponentsof the war. The national security argument against war not only questioned theexistenceof weapons of mass destruction (WM D), or their relevanceif they did exist,but also argued that theoccupation of a M uslim country would provokesupport forand the ire of terrorist groups. The international security argument noted thedivisionswithin theSecurity Council, and theconsequent risk to thecredibility of theinstitution should leading states go to war regardless of the majority view. Thehuman security argument questioned whether people could be liberated by meansthat would in themselves be bound to cost many innocent lives.
These arguments were all in play prior to the war. Afterwards, as it becameapparent that there were no WM D to be found, the pro-war case increasinglydepended on thehuman security arguments. This argument could bechallenged fromall three perspectives. On its own terms the human security case, that the war wouldbea net gain for theIraqi peoplein terms of democracy and human rights, had to beset against thechaosand violenceof theaftermath and theapparent unpopularity of thecoalition forces. Theinternational security perspective, though sympathetic to thehumanitarian claims, worried that uninvited meddlingwas bound to end in tears andpointed out how such claims could be used to justify all sorts of mischievousinterventions. Theonly way to sort out theweak fromthestrong cases was to test itfor international support, and this could only be achieved through the SecurityCouncil. Thefailureto get a second Security Council Resolution to support militaryaction meant that the test had been failed and so the case must beweak. From thenational security perspective, conservatives could argue that Western countries hadno business getting involved in theaff airs of other countries other than for defensive
reasons. Even after thesuccessful elections at theend of J anuary 2005 this argumentstill enjoyed considerable credibility as the eff ort to transform Iraq into a liberaldemocracy faced stiff resistancefrom a combination of disaff ected Sunnis, Ba’athistsand Islamic militants.
M y concern in this article is not with the particulars of the Iraqi case or the ‘realreasons’ whystatesgo to war. I start with theassumption that thecasesmadefor warare not simply surface froth, designed to beguile and bemuse public and widerinternational opinion. During the debates on Iraq, radicals who found it hard toargueagainst theidea of removingSaddamHussein questioned themethods but alsocharged thecoalition with hypocrisy. Theinvasion of Iraq, they charged, had nothingto do with security at any level, but was ‘really about oil’ or even about securingcontracts for American firms such as Halliburton. This radical critique now lookseven less compelling than it did before thewar given its economic consequences, andthe lack of evidenceto support theoriginal propositionson motives. There is a viewthat in the harsh world of international aff airs the structure of the system obligesstates, even against their better nature, invariably to give priority to the starkestcalculations of interest and power. Certainly governments unable to provideconvincinganswers to questionsof short-termoutcomesand long-termbenefit will behandicapped when making thecasefor a militaryintervention, but they will also wishto demonstrate that they are doing the right thing as well as the safe thing. J ustifications for war habitually draw on normative arguments, on expectationsabout how governments should behave towards their own people, and on howhuman beings and states should behavetowards each other.
From this starting assumption that legitimacy matters in foreign policymaking inWestern countries I argue that, at least in Western countries and at least untilrecently, a vital sourceof legitimacy is evidencethat any forceisbeingused in pursuitof essentially liberal values. Whether or not they meant what they said, coalitionleaders felt that they wereon firmground using humanitarian arguments to justify asubstantial and potentially hazardous military operation in Iraq. At the very leastthey believed such arguments had some purchase with the bodies of opinion theywere seeking to influence. This tendency in justification is not difficult to explain.Governments no longer enjoy such natural authority with their own publics thatclaims of raison d’etat can serve as a blanket explanation for the more doubtfulaspectsof foreign policy. Thisis in part a consequenceof theinternational systemnolonger appearingso anarchic, as a remorseless competition between great powers. Asa result established methods of evaluating power and interest are under challenge.
L egitimacy has an elusive quality, involving questions of ethics and analysis aswell as legality. In terms of definition legitimacy refers to theability of governmentsto gain acceptancefor their laws. It is about thoseaspectsof compliancewith lawandpolicy that turn on respect for authority rather than fear of power, and reflectinternalised norms as much as calculated interests. Part of the difficulty withlegitimacy is the interaction between these relatively hard coercive and soft consen-sual sources of support. Authority can represent thesuccessful institutionalisation of power gained through armed force while public debate consists of a continuingattempt to reconcile the demands of doing what is right and what is self-interested.
Thepotential sourcesof legitimacy can besummarised by theconceptsof national,international and human security. Their individual characters, distinctiveness andmutual interaction are bound to be fuzzy. Because they reflect alternative political
priorities and competing analyses of the international environment they may all besupported to a degree within the society. They are not necessarily exclusive and canon occasion reinforceeach other in combination. Duringthecourseof an intenseandpolarising debate, as over Iraq, the protagonists will try to show that their preferred
course supports all three, even though in practice they may have to be weighedagainst each other. In each case their definition may be contested. Indeed I woulddescribe them as normative streams, within which values and meaning change overtimeaccordingto recent experienceand current challenge, and in relation to broadercultural changes and debates about public morality. Understanding these normativestreams is essential if sense is to be made of contemporary debates about thelegitimate use of armed force.
In thenext section I suggest that the normative streams associated with nationaland international security, at least as reflected in traditional international relationstheory, takefamiliar forms whilethat within thearea of human security has yet to beestablished, because they focus on the structures of power within states rather thanbetween states. In recent years, out of the normative stream of human security thestrongest theme to emerge, for purposes of international relations, is the need toprotect theweak and thevulnerable, especially in thefaceof great violence. Thewarsthat are conducted for this purpose I call liberal wars. While this is consistent withclassic liberalism, I address in subsequent sections the objections that such anapproach is now being encouraged by American neo-conservatives while resisted bymany associated with European liberalism. Certainly mainstream politicsduring theCold War gavepriority to international security because of thedangers of pursuingegoistical national security policies regardless of the consequences. The neo-conservatives (and the label initially had an ironic quality) demonstrated a moralunease with a policy of détente, that sought to reduce the risk of further Sovietexpansionism by tolerating repression in the territories already under M oscow’sdomination. The West was intimidated because it had allowed the Soviet Union togain an advantage in the military balance. In Europe this line of argument wasweaker, because the local stakes were higher and it was assumed that in an age of mutually assured destruction traditional notionsof thebalanceof power had becomemeaningless. With the end of the Cold War, more traditional liberal concernsreasserted themselves and led to a number of examples of humanitarian intervention. Theproblem with the notion of liberal wars, I argue, lies less with the ends than themeans. Wars are inherently illiberal in their eff ects and their consequences. Againstthis must be posed the illiberal consequences of inaction and the possibilities of mitigation, but this explains thediscretionary aspect of humanitarian interventions. The concluding section considers whether events since September 2001 have trans-formed thedebate. While notingthat they havethrust theissueof war back into therealms of national and international security, it is argued that thephilosophy behindthe campaigns of al-Qaeda and associated groups is profoundly illiberal while masscasualty terrorism in itself is an aff ront to liberal values. At thesame time, thestresson theliberal dimension to current struggles has important implicationsfor Westernconduct.
Thehumansecurity agenda
Traditionally international relations theory has assumed that for states nationalsecurity is the prime value because it deals with threats to their very existence. Thisrenders them self-reliant and encourages a wary view of other states. If attacked (or
sure that they are about to be attacked) states have a right to defend themselves.Giving priority to national security therefore encourages military provisions toensure that direct aggression can be resisted. One risk is that themilitary provisionwill prove to be insufficiently substantial to act as a deterrent; another is that it willbe excessive and so appear to threaten other states. These two types of risk haveargued for a moreenlightened form of self-interest which seeks to reduceexaggeratedsenses of threat and deal with disputes between states before they turn into violentconflict. A stable international order is thegoal of international security. This valueunderpins foreign policies based on cooperation with other states, which couldinvolve international institutions and law, but might also depend on more informalcontacts and transactions. Simply put, a good solution to the problem of major waris to ensure that strong states get along. It may of course be the case that somedisputes between states are too fundamental to be readily resolved and thatperceptions of threat are accurate. In such cases attempting to get on well with aradical state may just mean a lowering of the guard. The values of national andinternational security are not necessarily opposed: it is possible to cooperate whilekeeping guard. The costs and benefits of the competing approaches have, however,been the stuff of much foreign policy debate, often presented as a contest betweenrealists and idealists.
This contest, reflecting a dominant fear of major war, concerns the best way of securing therights of states. From neither perspectivedo the rights of individuals orof groups count for much. From the national perspective these rights must besubservient to those of thestate, especially at time of national emergency. F rom theinternational perspective it is essential that all states recognise each others’ rights.Order depends on prohibiting aggression and, critically, upholding the principle of non-interference in internal aff airs.
So far so familiar. Y et a national security agenda must be about more thanexternal enemies. States are not only threatened from within but they often deeminternal threats to be the most serious, whether in the form of insurrection,subversion, civil war or secessionism. The relationship between the requirements of internal order and those of external order is complex. States facing such problemsregularly blame the meddling of outsiders, sometimes correctly. In principleinternational security requires that the temptation to meddle in the problems of others should be prohibited. Y et in practice the consequences of a state’s internalproblems can haverepercussions beyond its borders, for example flows of refugees,or the methods of dealing with opponents become so obnoxious that they can nolonger be spoken of as a purely internal matter. At this point the needs of international and human security can clash. M eanwhile, from thenational perspec-tive intervention in the name of justice risks creating security problems where noneexisted and, at the very least, putting one’s own troops at risk in another’s civilwars.
The debate between the demands of national and of international security hassome continuity because these normative streams are not difficult to follow. This isnot thecasewith questionsof human security. Thesefocuson thestructuresof power
within states rather than thosebetween states. Class, religion, ethnicity, languagecanserveas thebasis of alternativepower structures. Democracy may beadvocated asameansof sortingout thesealternatives, yet in Western societiesat least theconcept of human rights is taken to beantithetical to attempts to establish an internal political
order based on the dominance of one section of society, even if the majority. This isa reflection of an attachment to classical liberalism with its commitment to freemarkets and human rights. Y et within thenormativestream of human security, freemarkets areoften blamed, for exampleby ‘anti-globalisation’ activists, for economicinjustice. Human rights can beposed in terms of essential needs(food, shelter, basicamenities, and a degreeof personal safety) rather than thepolitical terms of freedomof expression, movement and ideas and a degree of self-determination. These areareas of considerable analytical and even ideological controversy. Acceptingall theseproblems, the general impact of concerns about human security as a foreign policyissue has been to encourage attempts to rebalance political structures in othercountries, in favour of the weak and the vulnerable, while encouraging, as anunderlying theme, more open political systems, with improved governance, popularparticipation and respect for civil liberties.
This tendency has been at work since the end of the Cold War. I raq was hardlyunusual in this respect. Comparable arguments were an essential ingredient for therationales of the ‘humanitarian interventions’ of the 1990s. During this decade theClinton Administration was clearly attracted by the notion, adduced by someinternational relations theorists, that increased global democratisation would meanincreased peace. TheBush Administration hascommitted itself, if anythingwith evengreater vigour, to the same path. M ore seriously, a number of members of thenon-governmental humanitarian community bought into these arguments in waysthat they would have been loath to do during earlier decades. Even with Iraq, anumber of commentators who were clearly unhappy about many aspects of this warwere enthusiastic about the end of the Saddam regime. Buoyed by importantelections in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Ukraine, as well as Iraq, all of which couldbe said to set these countries on a new course, President Bush madewhat could bedescribed as a ‘war on tyranny’ thecorethemeof hissecond term. Such a ‘war’ doesnot necessarily require military operations. Bush has insisted armed forceis not theonly and not necessarily thebest meansto achievedemocratic breakthroughs. Eventsin Georgia in 2003, Ukrainein 2004 and L ebanon in 2005 wereeloquent testimoniesto ‘people power’ when challenging corrupt elites who were trying to hold on topower. The very fact that a President, and particularly one from the RepublicanParty, has taken such an avowedly interventionist stance in itself indicates animportant shift in American foreign policy. The support coming from a L abourPrimeM inister in Britain suggests that this approach cutsacross traditional politicallines of left and right, and certainly the campaigns for and against the I raq warproduced some political coalitions that would have seemed curious in the past.Robert Cooper, now a major influence on European foreign policy, has spokenapprovingly of therobust adoption of democratic norms as ‘liberal imperialism’.
A challengehad been mounted to theconsensusbehind theold coreprinciple thatthere should beno interference in the internal aff airs of other states, and that, evenif confined to non-military means, and violation of this principle was detrimental tointernational order. In the conditions of the Cold War this restraint had a nationalas well as an international security rationale. External intervention from one
direction risked prompting an equal and opposing external reaction from another. The end of the Cold War, bringing with it a marked increase in comity, and evenamity, amongthegreat powers, has reduced this moreprudential concern. A generalWestern confidencewith regard to theuniversality of their political values, especially
after their triumph in the confrontation with state socialism, has discouragedattemptsto justify the privileged position of thestatein all circumstances, especiallyin conditions of civil war, repression, or genocide, and encouraged account beingtaken of thefate of individuals or minority groups.
To what extent might this lead to the use of force? Scepticism about statepowerwasat theheart of classical liberalism, which wasanti-militarist. M ilitaryexpenditurewas considered to be as wasteful as military elites were reactionary. L iberalismchallenged the mercantilist assumption that military power was essential to thegrowth and consolidation of economic power. With no territory left for conquering,the old empires dismantled, and great-power antagonism much reduced, classicliberalism therefore would expect thepotential role of armed forces to haveshrunkconsiderably. While the ‘victory’ in the Cold War, which was at root an ideologicaltriumph, may have turned the erstwhile status quo Western powers into radicals,simply by living successfully according to their core values. Through this example,they undermine disagreeable regimes and encourage changes in inefficient economicpractices, without any question of employing force.
Even classical liberals recognised that forcemight berequired to protect theweakagainst the strong in circumstances where violence is already being used on asubstantial scale. Such violenceis not unknown within Western societiesbut it is mostlikely to be found in states marked by social cleavages, fragile economies andnon-consensual political systems. Theprocessesof decolonisation haveresulted in theproliferation of states that either havefallen into this category in thepast or mightdo so in the future. In this context the shift from a focus on preparations forgreat-power conflict to humanitarian intervention is a natural one. The states thatprompt such intervention are unlikely to be liberal capitalist in character, butWestern interventions, even when they are largely economic in character, tend toencourage a move in that direction.
Warsconducted in pursuit of a humanitarian agenda, and which arelikely to leadto pressures for domestic political reform and reconstruction, I call liberal wars. Theideal type for a liberal war is that it is altruistic in inspiration and execution. Such awar would focus on thebalance of power within a state rather than between states,and can be presented as rescuing whole populations, or particularly vulnerablesections, fromtyrannical governmentsor social breakdown. It addresses and rectifiessomeabuseof human rightsbut doesnot act asthecauseof abuse. It is liberatingandempowering while involving as few casualties as possible.
L iberal wars are not pursued in the name of strategic imperatives but becausevalues are being aff ronted. Interests might beinvolved at themargins, but these areunlikely to count as ‘vital’, except in the most enlightened terms. For this reasonliberal wars have acquired a discretionary aspect, to be assessed on a case-by-casebasis. On this basis they havebeen described as‘wars of choice’ to becontrasted withthose of the past, which were ‘wars of necessity’ or ‘of survival’. These involvedgreat-power competition and direct threats to security, often prompted by theriseof radical but strong states. Wars of choice, of course, appear as wars of necessity forthelocal belligerents, who may well consider their most vital interests to beat stake,
including their right to persist with their illiberalism. Questions of choice ariseonlyfor thosewhosesurvival is not threatened. I shall return to this question of choiceinthe conclusion of this essay: for themoment suffice it to note that this issue took ona diff erent complexion after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
Describing such interventions as liberal wars raises a number of objections. Theseobjections tend in one direction to accusations of hypocrisy, of bad intentionsmasquerading as good, and in the other to accusations of naivety, of bad conse-quences flowing from good intentions. I do not intend to cover those objectionswhich claim that the altruism is a guise, and that there are other, moretraditionally‘imperialistic’ motives behind thesewars, includingthedesire to control oil supplies,or to maketheworld safefor multinational companies. Thequestion of ‘real’ motivesmay beinteresting, and a degreeof cynicismmay bewarranted, but thevalidity of therationales can and should be assessed on their own terms.
A moreseriousobjection is that a ‘liberal war’ is a misnomer. It assumesa conceptof liberalism that does not reflect its actual usein contemporary politics, particularlyin theUnited States where the urge to war is associated with neo-conservatives andis largely opposed by liberals. Y et it hasoften been noted that manyof theviews nowassociated with neo-conservatismderivefromtheliberal President Woodrow Wilsonwho believed that American power could beused to promotejusticeand democracyabroad. Conservatives would tend towardsa much morecautiousapproach, moreinthe sceptical mould of President J ohn Quincy Adams. While it is the case that themeanings of conservatismand liberalismin theAmerican context havechanged, theyalso remain fluid, at least in the area of foreign policy. There are certainly manyAmerican conservatives who reject the interventionism of the neo-conservatives,while many American liberals are drawn towards it in principle even if they recoilfrom the way it has been implemented.
Furthermore, theoriginsof neo-conservatismin theUnited Statesaretruly liberal. They lie in the response to a section of the Democratic– not Republican – Party totheforeign policy debates of theearly 1970s. On the onehand theneo-conservativesopposed the M cGovernite tendency in the Party which questioned the need fordefence expenditure and doubted the role of forcein international aff airs. This theythought was naïve. In this they were exactly in the tradition of the liberal realists of themid-century, who insisted on theneed to fight for thegood lifewhen dealing withtotalitarianism, whether Nazi or Communist. Where they diverged was in resistingthe logic of containment, originally promoted by theliberal realists to demonstratetherecklessness of theright. Thismanifested itself in opposition to theforeign policyof détente as practiced by both the U S and European governments during theNixon/Ford periods. This they also thought to benaïvebecause it assumed that theSoviet Union could bea status quo, conservativepower, prepared to follow thesamenorms as the United States, for example in honouring arms control treaties, or inaccepting thelogic of mutual assured destruction in thenuclear field. But thehumansecurity agenda was very strong aswell – reflected in thesupport for theright of J ewsto leave Russia for Israel – the ‘refuseniks’. This led to the J ackson-Vanik amend-ment to the 1974 US trade bill that would only allow M ost Favoured Nation statusto begranted to the Soviet Union in return for concessions on emigration. Anotherexample was the objection to President Ford’s refusal to meet notable dissident
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. There was a continued undercurrent of opposition toaccepting repressive rule in East Europe as a price worth paying for regional orderand dismay at the ease with which deals were done with authoritarian governments,from China to Saudi Arabia.
Thepropensity to exaggerate threatsto national security, and to insist on high levelsof defence preparedness, may be an enduring characteristic of neo-conservatism, whichgivesit a natural point of contact with moretraditional conservatism, but it flowed in the1970s from a view that the rottenness of the Soviet system was apt to make its leaderslash out as much externally as internally. Traditional conservatives, such as Nixon and
K issinger, assumed that there was no necessary correlation between beastliness towardsone’s own population and a propensity to external aggression. Regimes anxious abouttheir own survival tended to becautious in their assessments of power balances.
In this both K issinger and, for that matter, Soviet leader L eonid Brezhnev missedthe full significance of the human rights provisions contained in ‘Basket Three’ of the1975 ‘F inal Act’ of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe(CSCE), whichthey saw asa collection of platitudesof minor importancebecausetheylacked legal force. Brezhnev saw thepurposeof CSCE as confirming Soviet hegemonyover Eastern Europe, without appreciating theextent to which this minor concessionwould undermine this hegemony by providing dissident elements with the basis uponwhich to maketheir voicesheard and makecommon causewith Western opponentsof the Soviet system. President Gerald F ord’s maladroit attempts to defend a pragmaticand thereforeweak approach to change in the Eastern bloc was one reason hewas sobadly skewered in the 1976 election. The cause of human rights was still clearly aliberal onein the U S as J immy Carter became President. T heneo-conservatives werehappy with that but unhappy over Carter’s caution on military matters and readinessto engage in arms control negotiations. His perceived softness on national securityissues proved to be Carter’s undoing, and it was on that basis that a number of neo-conservatives joined the Reagan Administration. Their views influenced its rhet-oric, particularly with regard to the Soviet U nion. I t is fair to say, however, that in aclash between anti-communism and anti-repression, the former tended to win. Thiswas evident in both L atin America and the M iddleE ast. Thefirst President Bush wasa traditional conservative, concerned morewith stability and order than with justice–hence his slow response to the stirrings in Eastern Europe that marked the end of theCold War and hisreluctanceto continuewith military operationsto overthrow theregime of Saddam H ussein, although he had an opportunity to do so. During the1990s it was President Clinton who embraced thehumanitarian agenda, although, likeCarter, hecombined this with a cautious approach to armed force.
Thesecond President Bush’sthemeof using power to end tyranny around theglobewould traditionally, therefore, have been seen as a liberal theme. It is true that thosewho would describethemselvesas liberalstend to befirmopponentsof President Bush,but more because of the other themes in foreign policy, and the execution of specificinitiatives, including the ineptitude in the diplomacy prior to the Iraq War, and themismanagement of the occupation after it. As was evident from the circumlocutionsadopted by Senator K erry during his failed bid for the presidency, liberals were loatheither to reject the Wilsonian tradition or to disavow the human security agenda.
Liberalismand Europeanmoderation
A further objection is that in Europe liberalism has been more associated with theinternational security than the human security agenda. Not surprisingly, in view of
twentieth century history, European liberalism has been designed to solve theproblemof war rather than theproblemof injusticeand has, in consequence, stressedthe potential role of international organisations and law. The experience of thenineteenth century would, however, haveled to a diff erent conclusion, with liberalismless uneasy with the occasional interference in the internal aff airs of others andalways celebrating the erosion of authoritarian governments.
The point of the realist critique of liberal internationalism was that the mainten-anceof order, and theprotection of theweak against thestrong, could not besensiblyconsidered asa matter of theruleof lawandthesupport for institutions, but also hadto consider matters of power and interest. Therealists, however, were vulnerable tothe charge of being too cynical in assuming that power and interest were all thatmattered. Contrary to the view that the domestic politics of the great powers werelargely an irrelevance, and that theindividual units related to each other on thebasisof a straightforward calculusof relativestrength, varied bymeansof alliancesandtheoccasional war, the ideological battle was always central to prevailing concepts of international order. Thesystem was sensitivenot only to acts of external aggressionbut also internal subversion, and the boundary between the two was never asclear-cut astheclassic ‘realist’ textswould haveit. If threatsto international order donot simply take the form of criminal, aggressor states who disregard the rules, but achallenge to thephilosophical basis upon which power within individual states rests,then great powers cannot duck issues of ideological hegemony.
So theoccasions when therights and duties of theGreat Powers wereestablished,such as the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the League of Nations in 1919 and theUnited Nations in 1945, each followed the defeat of a threatening ideology –revolutionary republicanism, anti-democratic authoritarianism, racist nationalism.Each time the hope was that a new consensus could be based on a set of sharedprinciples. They failed when new ideological fault lines opened up. In practice,therefore, theprinciple of non-interferencein internal aff airs was alwaysconditional.Disinterest in each others’ internal aff airs was only possible for states when theirrespective ideologies did not threaten each other. TheNapoleonic Wars left Europedominated by essentially conservative states. They shared hostility towards anyrevolutionary ideology which might provide not only a motor for theaccumulationof power and territory but also contest their very legitimacy. The radical ideologiesof socialism and anarchism posed themost direct threat to internal order yet it wasthe rise of liberalism that was most influential. L iberalism if taken seriously isinherently disorderly. It promotes the right to liberty at the individual level andself-determination at the national, and also poses a free market challenge tomercantilism. Demands for self-determination were particularly subversive. A senseof nationhood could lead to new aggregations of states, as with Italy and Germany,as well fragmentation, as in the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires.
By thetwentieth century, liberalismwas theascendant ideology, even amongst thestatus quo powers. It therefore became associated with the maintenance of a stableinternational order. Theattempts to establish therule of international law, and evenmovetowardsworld government, assumed that thecoreprinciplesof liberalismcould
provide the foundation. I f there was mutual respect for individual and group rightsthere would beno basis for conflict. Theproblem for European liberalismthereforelay in thepotential disconnect between therequirementsof international security andhuman security. When political movements challenged basic rights, the issue for
international order, as with domestic order, was to ensure that the community as awholeprotected them. Thisrequired a theory of political obligation, alwaysa difficultarea for liberalism in that it qualified the basic freedom to ignore the problems of others. Once key states in the system were led by illiberal regimes, then prioritisinginternational security meant overcoming distastefor theseregimesin order to achievewar-avoiding accommodations.
During theCold War there was an impasse between liberal democracy and statesocialism. This meant that any attempt by either to roll back theboundaries of theother carried a risk of major, and possibly nuclear, war. Common prudencesuggested caution, however distasteful the accommodation. This was confirmed inthe détente of the 1970s, which began with the ‘Ostpolitik’ of the German socialdemocrats in thelate 1960s. This was a deliberatedecision to ease tensions betweenEast and West Germany, and by extension thetwo halves of Europe, by ignoringtheaspirations of those in the satellite states of Eastern Europe. Although this waspicked up and taken forward by the Nixon/K issinger team, Europeans always hadthegreatest stakein its continuation, and they becamealarmed when, under theearlyinfluence of the neo-conservatives, détente was subjected to a severe Americanchallenge. It was easy enough to dismisstheparanoid tendency in neo-conservatism,which could becriticised for exaggerating themilitary prowess and inherent strengthof the Warsaw Pact. The moral critique was much more difficult, reflected in theambivalent attitudes shown towards President Carter’s preoccupation with humanrights and then the rise of Solidarity in Poland. Even during the 1980s, manyEuropean ‘moderates’ saw progress being made through détente and arms control,arranged at grand summits, rather than through the ideological subversion of communism, although that is how the Cold War in fact ended. They had assumedthat communism would continueindefinitely.
Oncecommunism collapsed, thefocusof European foreign policy was, in thefirstinstance, to work out how to put an institutional lock on the new Europeanconstellation. Enlargement of the European Community (as it was then) initiallycame up against the preference for ‘deepening rather than widening’. It was theClinton Administration more than the governments of what became the EuropeanUnion that appreciated that thelogic of thenew situation was to support rather thanresist the aspirations of the former Communist states to join the Western world,however destabilising that might appear (especially in M oscow). This is why thepost-communist states have been more supportive of A merican foreign policy.
Asa liberal hegemonywassteadily being established in Europethehuman securityagenda moved into the rest of theworld. If ‘failed’ and ‘rogue’ states were menacesto their own people and also their neighbours, sovereignty came to be seen to beincreasingly conditional. Theforeign policy debatein Europeas in theUnited Statesstruggled with how to identify the point at which states were no longer allowed tomismanagetheir internal aff airs without interference, when their behaviour becomesso off ensiveas to demand action. During the1990sthetrend was towardsacceptanceof the need to intervene and that this might require resolute and robust force. Theconsequences of passivity in Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica the next year weighed
heavily on liberal consciences. The high point of this approach came in the 1999operation in K osovo. Here legitimacy won over legality (at least in so far as notrequiring any Security Council vote, which Russia and China would have vetoed).European governments could take comfort in a sense that they were riding the tide
of history. Theinternational consensus was moving in this direction, reflected in theassertion of a ‘responsibility to protect’, in a report commissioned by the Canadiangovernment and theincreasing embraceof this norm by international organisations,most recently by the Secretary-General’s High-L evel Panel on Threats, Challengesand Change.
Unnatural wars
Before considering the impact of events since11 September 2001 on such thinking, afurther and potentially more substantial objection to the notion of a liberal war mustbeaddressed. Wars are inherently illiberal in their eff ects and their consequences andso a liberal war constitutesan unnatural act. War appeals to thebaser human instinctsand requires the suppression of individuality in pursuit of the collective good.L arge-scale violence, whatever the motives which prompt its use or theprecision withwhich it is applied, is bound to put people and property at risk, threatening the mostfundamental human right of all – theright to life. They are violent and unpredictableand can develop a ferocious dynamic which can lead to consequences which in theirhuman cost appear to contradict the claims made on their behalf.
In principlethis can becountered by fighting in thejust war tradition, not only interms of just cause but also with a methodology that distinguishes betweencombatants and non-combatants and achieves a degree of proportionality in theforceused, sufficient to right theoriginal wrong but not so much as to makemattersworse. Wars fought with excessive force and indiff erence to all casualties, butparticularly civilian, will bedrained of legitimacy. Oneof theclaimsmadefor modernmilitary technologies that it allows lethal firepower to bedirected with extraordinaryand discriminating precision, thereby mitigating this risk to legitimacy. If civilianssuff er it will not be because they are deliberate targets but because of ‘collateraldamage’, and so the suff ering will be far less than in past wars.
Y et despite the possibilities of the new technologies, summed in the notion of the‘revolution in military aff airs’, it remainsdifficult in war to relatemeans to ends in areliably proportionate manner. M ilitary methods must be geared not only to thepolitical stakes but also to thecapacities and methodsof theadversary. Thepoliticalpressures may betowardsminimumforcebut themilitary pressures may point in theopposite direction. Whilethestakes for the intervening powers may belimited thosefor the local parties are likely to be total. The intervention will be unlikely to haveoccurred were it not for illiberal actions against civilians. The strategies adopted tocounter or deter external intervention will play on thedetermination of theintervenerto keep the war limited by challenging attempts to separate the civilian from themilitary in targeting, and threaten considerable casualties all round over a prolongedperiod. If thecostsof thecommitment can bemadeto risethen a choiceto enter cansoon beovertaken by a determination to exit. Except that exit also carries a politicalcost: a reputation for reneging on commitments and vulnerability to pressure.
Western governments soon become well aware of the reputational risks, ascould beseen with NATO deciding that it had to continue with the K osovo War or the USconcluding that it had to accept an unexpectedly high level of casualties among itsown troops in Iraq.
L astly, there may bean underlying cultural arrogance, not only in the belief thatsuch wars can be undertaken without causing major casualties but also that theymight improveconditionsin troubled partsof theworld whereconflictshavemultipleand deep-seated causes. It is onethingto enter a broken country to relieveimmediatesuff ering, but it is quiteanother to mend thecountry. If thesuff ering is not to returnthen it is not enough to deal with the immediate problem and then leave, butexperience suggests that the eff ort required to turn a country round, especially if itremains internally divided, can be substantial and prolonged.
There are therefore both principled and prudential reasons to object to war as ameansof achieving supposedly liberal goals. This leadsto a view that it is best if theWestern world leaves the weak and failed states of the world alone. Thebombast of petty dictators, the suff erings they inflict and the fear they engender should all bedeplored, but weneed do no morebecause in the end they are irrelevant to our ownprosperity and security. There are a number of problems with this alternative view.In a world of permeable borders and easy movement across continents, the conflictsof one region are soon imported by others. It is not so easy to avoid the impact of events elsewhere. Such a view also overstates the ease with which governments cannote the pain of others and move on, especially once the international media havetaken an interest. As things stand there are good reasons for the current levels of discomfort at the international responses to the plague of HIV/Aids or the terriblecarnage of some of the civil wars in Africa.
It would of course bebetter to use non-military meansto achievethesame goals. The most successful instruments of liberal (or potentially liberal) change in recentyears have been popular movements. This was evident in the 1989 collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe, then in the later undermining of manypost-Soviet regimes. Popular movements work best against regimes which are onestep away from being completely ruthless and, crucially, cannot rely on thesupportof the police or army. Alternativeforms of external pressureto armed force, and inparticular economic sanctions, can havean influenceover time, but, as theIraqi casedemonstrates, they raise their own problems. The net result of sanctions can be tostrengthen a regime, by giving it greater control over residual trade flows, includingsmuggling, thereby allowing it to look after its own needs first and put those of thepopulace second, while blaming the international community for any hardships.Even when forceful methodsarecontemplated, it may still bethecasethat sometimestheseproblemsappear too great to handle, even when stateswork in concert togetheror through the UN.
So theinherent illiberality of war may at timeshaveto beset against theeven moreilliberal consequences of inaction. Sometimes the consequences of passivity may betoo awful and the military options credible; at other times the case for interventionmay be strong but the military options poor or the economic requirements toolarge. Political leaders in democratic societies dare not take on too many externalproblems. The needs of a particular country – for example Sierra L eone– might beaddressed, but when thecases are multiplied and become so diverse and geographi-cally spread, then it is not surprisingthat even themost committed governmentsfrom
themorestableand prosperous states tend to pick and choose, dealing only with theproblemswith which they can cope. Therearethereforea number of opportunitiestoengagein liberal wars, but only a few arelikely to betaken up. This is why thesewarshave been presented as discretionary.
I have argued that liberal attitudes to war reflect the combined impact of theideological currents at play at diff erent stages in the history of the internationalsystem as well as the contemporary configurations of power. There is a traditionaldislike of theprimacy given to the rights of states in the international system. In theabsenceof a utopian world government, a moral foreign policy requires that at leaststronger states think beyond their narrow self-interest and accept a responsibility topromote and enforce essential values, and, when necessary, protect the weak.Historically the focus was on defending weak states against larger, predatory,aggressive states. M ore recently there has been a shift towards what is happeningwithin states, particularly those which are either being torn apart through civil waror whoserulingelitescan only achievesecurity for themselves through thesystematicoppression of their own people or thevictimisation of vulnerable groups.
Defending weak states against aggressors meant upholding therights of states toconduct their own aff airs asthey wish. Thenew focusposesthequestion of theextentto which the sovereignty of states can be compromised or qualified or just ignoredbecause of the impact of their weakness on others, or because of their treatment of their own people. Theneed to prevent great human suff eringmust limit therightsof states to conduct their own aff airs without external interference. Because there is areluctance to jettison the old principle of non-interference, deemed essential forinternational security, much contemporary diplomatic discourse takes the form of establishing the conditions in which it is legitimate to set it aside. One relevantexample might be Prime M inister Blair’s speech in Chicago of April 1999, clearlydelivered with theongoingK osovo war in mind, which wasoneof thefirst bya seniorWestern leader to address this problem directly, and set out a series of tests, whichtaken together were potentially restrictive, including the quality of the case, theexhaustion of diplomatic remedies and the feasibility of military remedies, thereadiness to commit for thelong-term and some conformity with national interests.Others have put a greater focus on process, for example only engaging in interven-tionssanctioned bytheU nited Nations, or on consequences, ensuringthat at theveryleast more harm is avoided than caused. M ost recently, the Secretary-General’shigh-level panel came up with seriousness of threat, proper primary purpose, lastresort, proportional means and a favourable balance of likely consequences. Goingback to Caspar Weinberger, after the fiasco of the Beirut intervention of 1982–4,whose unhappy conclusion reflected a clash between initial, liberal humanitarianmotives and grander strategic ambitions, American policymakers when consideringany non-essential operation havepaid particular attention to their ability to sustainpublic support. This has involved considerations of likely casualties, the ability toapply overwhelming force and appropriate command structures.
Few of these tests could be considered objective, in many cases because theyinvolve anticipating the outcomes of inherently unpredictable events, and there isalways the problem with such lists as to what should be done when most but not allof thetestscan bepassed. All assumemilitary engagementsout of choicerather than
necessity, so they are particularly relevant to contingencies connected to humansecurity. As my starting example of Iraq illustrates, however, in rationalising warpolitical leaders will seek to address the international and national security dimen-sions as well as the human. Indeed, when the non-interference principle ruled
supreme, the core rationales were normally national, and the evident humanitarianbenefits were if anythingplayed down, for exampleduring the1970s with India intoPakistan, Tanzania into Uganda and Vietnam into Cambodia.
An important feature of the2000s is the insistence by the United States that thetwo major military interventions it has led, into Afghanistan and Iraq, have beenwars of necessity as much as choice, with a primary purpose of national securityalthough clear benefits for international and human security. The case for war wasbased on the need to prevent further, and even more devastating, terrorist attacks,following theoutrage of September 2001. They came under theumbrella heading of a ‘global war on terror’ as declared by President Bush. L iberal critics haveobjectedto casting this struggle as a war rather than as a multi-faceted problem with social,cultural, economic and political aspects, thereby encouraging a search for militarysolutions, which can maketheseother aspectsworse, and a disregard of civil liberties.
But there havebeen evident tensions within liberal opinion. There are often linksto situations which prompted past humanitarian interventions, such as K osovo orEast Timor, or might have done had not prudence dictated otherwise, such asChechnya or Sudan, as well as to other long-standing struggles, such as those overAfghanistan, K ashmir or Palestine. But thestakes go well beyond ethnic cleansing orrepression to the propagation of particular worldviews, and to direct threat tohomelands as much as to innocents abroad. The ideological roots of the jihadistterrorism, of which al-Qaeda is the most notable exponent, are profoundly illiberal,in stressing theocracy and intolerance of diversity and dissent abovedemocracy, aswell as being socially homophobic and misogynist. Theenemy is not a rogueregimeor faction, which though nasty might beisolated, but rather a movement that seeksto draw upon a sense of grievance, humiliation and outrage throughout theIslamicworld, connectinga rangeof conflictsin a global struggle. In manyWestern citiesthisideological struggle is evident, as extreme Islamist groups are seen to challenge theprevailing secular, liberal consensus.
This ideological threat to liberal values is not at the same level as Nazism orCommunism, becauseit is not backed by a powerful state, and within thenormativestreams that make up Islam it is controversial and contested. It appears dangerousbecauseof theviolenceat its centre, often described in a somewhat apocalyptical andvengeful form. So while it has been observed correctly that it is odd to declare waragainst a particular tactic, often defined carelessly to include any irregular actionagainst a repressivestate, mass casualty terrorismhas a particular quality, which canreadily be framed as an issue of human security. As with the acts that prompthumanitarian intervention, thevictims aremost likely to bedefenceless civilians. Themoral objection lies in theuseof violent means against non-combatantsfor politicalobjectives. Over thepast century wemoved froma situation where90 per cent of thecasualties of war were combatantsto one where 90 per cent were civilians. To stressthe importance of protecting civilians, is to reinforce the trend in Western militarythinking that emphasises capabilities to deal with enemy armed forces, and to stressthe importance of restraint in situations where innocent civilians may get harmed.
There is an important diff erence between vicious domestic persecution or ethnic
cleansing as measures used by the strong against the weak, and the desperatemeasures to which theweak may resort to find redress, which may tend towards theterroristic. So while the victims of ethnic cleansing and other human rights abuseshaveby definition already been marginalised, thevictims of terrorismaremorelikely
to befound in thecities of thestrong. This is why terrorism is morelikely to prompta response by the strong, and why a war to ease humanitarian distress may well beagainst theestablished regimeyet a war against terrorism may well bein its support.Henceconcernsthat authoritarian regimeswill label all dissident groupsasterroristicas a means of avoiding addressing legitimate grievances.
The greatest concern is that the readiness to inflict mass casualties will befacilitated by access to weapons that would hitherto havebeen only available to themore powerful states. We now call these capabilities weapons of mass destruction,but perhapsthat is thewrong term. Our concern is weaponsof civil destruction. Theproblem lies in the intent rather than the method. In sufficient quantities machetesand handguns can have the eff ects of large bombs while a few knives can turnairliners into lethal missiles, just as chemical and biological weapons can beused onquite small scales.
So although concerns about terrorism and weapons of civil destruction appear toput Western security interests to the fore, they link back to the concerns that mightprompt liberal wars in two critical respects. First terrorism feeds off theconflicts of thetroubled regions of theworld. Themorethesecan becalmed theless scopetherewill befor theterroriststo find sanctuary and recruits. Second, thereis an underlyingtheme that attacks on those unable to defend themselves, whether in a Westernskyscraper or an African village, must always be condemned and those whoperpetratesuch crimes against humanity must berestrained and if possible broughtto justice. The ideological dimension adds a third linkage, because of theprofoundilliberalism of the jihadist movement.
Thetenseturn in international politics since2001 does not thereforetakeWesternconsiderations of the use of force away from liberal norms but adds a furtherdimension. It is important to be clear that this is not an argument for additionalmilitancy in foreign policy. Thestress on democracy and human rights that has nowbecome a feature of thepronouncements of Western governments and internationalorganisations will make itself felt in many ways. Change will often come aboutthrough popular movements or authoritarian governments attempting to adjust tothe new normative environment. Nor should this be taken to suggest that becauseliberal values may be involved, all Western military actions are thereby vindicated. The advantage of stressing the importance of the liberal dimension is that it setsstandards for Western governments, against which they should be judged whenputting civilians at risk or in their treatment of prisoners. It reinforces theargumentthat the values at stake must be reflected in the conduct of wars and the struggleagainst terrorist groups. In addition, becauseinterventionsrisk lives, cost money, andcan last a longtimethey must always requirespecial justification, and in practicewillnormally beviewed with reluctancerather than enthusiasm. M y point is only that wemay now beentering a stage where all wars in which the major Western powers getinvolved will take on aspects of liberal wars, designed to provide relief to thedisplaced and thedispossessed and prevent mass murder. In sum, thelegitimate useof armed force will be in support of liberal values, and in particular against thosepreparing for, supporting or engaging in acts of civil destruction.
