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The Justice of intervention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Gordon Graham
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Extract

The principle that no sovereign state should intervene in the affairs of another state is enshrined in almost all international agreements made since World War II. For instance, the Charter of the Organization of American States of 1948 contains, in Article 15, the declaration that

No State or group of states has the right to intervene directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State, or against its political, economic and cultural elements.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 133 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1987

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References

1. Quoted in Brownlie, Ian, International Law and the Use of Force by States (Oxford, 1963), p. 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Ibid., p. 118.

3. Brownlie, (ed.), Basic Documents in International Law, 3rd edn. (Oxford, 1983), p. 40Google Scholar.

4. A discussion of the issues on this point will be found in Lillich, R. and Newman, F. (eds.), International Human Rights: Problems of Law and Policy Problem VIII sect. 2B. (Boston, 1979)Google Scholar.

5. Nicaragua is a good example. Contemporary US policy may instructively be compared with British policy in 1895 and US policy in 1907. See Stowell, E. C, Intervention in International Law (Washington, 1921)Google Scholar.

6. A full historical and legal review of the subject of non-intervention is in Vincent, R. J, Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar.

7. Quoted in Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States, p. 339.

8. Kelsen, Hans, Principles of International Law (New York, 1952), p. 440Google Scholar.

9. Kirkemo, Ronald B., An Introduction to International Law (Totowa, NJ, 1975), p. 26Google Scholar.

10. Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (New York, 1977)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

11. See Beitz, Luban and Doppelt, , ‘Replies to Walzer’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 9, no. 4 (Summer 1980)Google Scholar.

12. For obvious reasons I shall have nothing to say about anarchist conceptions of the state, or of those varieties of Marxism which look for its withering away. Both can only regard the question of intervention as, at best, of transient interest since ‘true’ political theory will have no place for the state at all.

13. The socialism here discussed, namely the pursuit of social justice, is only one variety of socialism Others, particularly some inspired by the early Marx, take freedom to be the most fundamental value. The arguments to be brought against the second sort of socialism are similar to those addressed to the liberal conception of the state.

14. This point is of some contemporary interest since it renders irrelevant a question in which many people were interested—Did the majority.of Grenadans agree with US intervention? If rights violations were the basis of the intervention, it does not matter who did or did not agree with it.

15. The ‘domestic analogy’ which is rejected here has met with a good deal of philosophical criticism. See especially Wicclair, Mark, ‘Human Rights and Intervention’ in Brown, Peter G. and MacLean, Douglas (eds.), Human Rights and US Foreign Policy (Lexington, 1979)Google Scholar.

16. Luban, David‘Just War and Human Rights’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 9, no. 2 (Winter 1980)Google Scholar.

17. See Stowell Intervention in International Law, ch. 3.

18. I have discussed this case, in the light of the theory of non-intervention here presented, in ‘Should the US Intervene in Nicaragua? Intervention an d International Justice’, Review of the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, vol. 5, no. 3 (Summer 1985)Google Scholar.

19. Outright conquest is not intervention, as I understand it. Intervention implies an acknowledgement of the present and continued existence of another, independent state. Conquest seeks to eliminate the other state's independent existence.

20. This is the basis of Beitz's, C. R objection to intervention. See Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, 1979)Google Scholar and ‘Communal Integrity’, note 11 above. But Beitz does not, it seems to me, make this point into the strongest possible argument, which is what I have attempted to do here.