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ЧТО вы будете делать тэим летом?!

I want to thank Mr. Levine for the well-considered input.

I agree that there must be a change. The future process cannot be something that can be based on deceitful negotiations, propaganda, lies and rhetoric like Kosovo and Iraq. War has to be the very last option, not the first that is ramped up through the above.

The UN appears corrupt and useless. Is Paddy Ashdown really British Secret Service? That would be worse than the UN sending William Walker as an observer.

Thank You Across the Aisle!

I think it’s better to keep the distinction between legality and what you call “legitimacy.” The latter is essentially a moral standard, and is likely to be difficult to codify. If we try to allow for every possibility (e.g., it is *possible* that only one nation is moved by the moral horror of some situation, while the rest of the world venally looks the other way), we will end up with a standard like the ICISS’ that is so flexible as to be, I fear, easily abused.

This is not to say that we cannot say *anything* procedural about the moral legitimacy of an intervention. For instance, approval by a multilateral institution would certainly play a useful epistemic role – i.e., if NATO approves of an intervention, that does not *make* it right, but it is some evidence for its rightness that you were able to convince other nations to approve. Similarly/conversely, if my trusted friends think that I am morally in the wrong about something, I’m apt to reconsider my position. But procedural rules – try to get a position that can attract consensus, exhaust diplomatic avenues first (given their generally lower cost in human suffering), try to ascertain the wishes of the population in the intervened-upon nation, be vigilant against biasing interests (e.g., with Mr. Thompson, we should ask ourselves if our intervention might not be motivated by the promise of a military base rather than genuine humanitarianism), etc. – are unlikely to be both sufficiently nuanced to capture the moral dimensions of a situation *and* straightforward enough to be easily understood and applicable.

That should not mean that we despair of finding worthwhile rules of international *law.* Law is, after all, only one consideration about what should be done. But I think there are reasons for writing the legal rules more strictly, perhaps requiring at least GA approval of any intervention (or maybe approval by the *local* regional organization). Having fairly restrictive legal rules, with some genuine penalties, will encourage nations to do the sort of due diligence required for a good moral decision – even a nation that decides to break the law will have reason to be very sure that its actions are worthwhile before doing so, rather than making a superficial appeal to human rights and finding a friendly multilateral organization to sign off on it.

Of course, a nation might as easily break a robust law because of weighty, but selfish interests. I don’t think we can avoid that. But a relatively restrictive legal framework combined with a serious international conversation (helpfully started by the ICISS) about the morality of intervention might help create a situation where a state which breaks the law from what are obviously morally sincere motivations will ‘get off easier’ than one that does so for apparently selfish ones.

I suppose Sudan would make a great place to have a U.S./E.U. airbase. Darfur is just the convenient excuse, like Bosnia, like Kosovo, like Iraq.

Call in some recycled diplomat!