In an increasingly interdependent world, the forms of intervention involve a spectrum of actions from radio broadcasts through spying by satellite to economic embargoes and military intervention. Given both the history of intervention and the conditions that facilitate it today, the fact that intervention is continuing is not surprising.
What is noteworthy, however, is the call from several quarters to change the norms governing intervention, to expand the justification for intervention, including even military intervention. The call to do this is not a unanimous opinion by any means, but it is a substantial voice. The pressure for change arises from two sources: the internal conditions within countries and the erosion of restraints on intervention at the international level.
Internal atrocities of "ethnic cleansing" revive the memory of genocide; the appalling mass starvation in Somalia assaults even the most hardened conceptions of what is tolerable in human affairs. Yet the growing propensity toward intervention, in my view, is due less to the nature of the atrocities than to the loosening of the restraints on intervention.
During the Cold War, there were two barriers to intervention -- one rooted in principle, the other in prudence. The prudential restraint was the fear on the part of both superpowers (and the other major powers) that intervention in a third country could draw them into a wider conflict with the ultimate threat always being a nuclear engagement. At the level of principle, the norms of international law uphold a standard of absolute non-intervention. The norm has never been entirely obeyed (particularly by the superpowers, as Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, and Afghanistan testify), but it was neither denied in principle nor denigrated by states.
The collapse of the Cold War has removed the prudential restraint on intervention. The more significant development has been the challenge to the principle of non-intervention. Observance of prudential restraint was always a product of power relationships, but the willingness to change the legal principle involves an explicit moral choice.
THE PRINCIPLE OF non-intervention has been an integral part of the "Westphalian legacy" of international order. Rooted in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the principle of non-intervention embodied the notion that international peace among states should take precedence over actions designed to correct injustices within states. The Westphalian order was built upon a consequentialist calculus: It judged that a greater threat to peace existed from a system of widespread intervention than a threat to justice from a system that allowed "internal issues" to be placed beyond the concern of the international community. It is this moral calculus of the Westphalian order that is being challenged today.
The result of this call could be a more interventionist international order in which situations of injustice would evoke action from other states and multilateral institutions. Such a shift would be a major move in international relations.
How might a Christian ethic assess a shift toward a more flexible rule of intervention? A response will be governed in the first instance by the prior moral position taken on the ethic of military force. If no use of force is ever justified, then intervention is simply one more case which falls under this proscription. If some uses of force are possibly legitimate, then intervention must be tested by the categories used to legitimate and limit the use of force in other situations.
A case can be made that the Christian tradition has been more inclined toward a duty of intervention than the Westphalian order envisioned. The thrust of the tradition is reflected in St. Ambrose's dictum: "They who do not keep harm off a friend, if they can, are as much at fault as those who cause it." On the face of it, this guidance mandates a very expansive obligation of intervention.
The obligation is rooted in the Christian conviction that a moral community of humankind is antecedent to and takes precedence over the claims of lesser political entities, including states. Taken without qualification, Ambrose's perspective yields the reversal of the Westphalian model; it tends toward a policy of universal intervention. In a world of states of differing size, capabilities, and ideologies, such a prescription would produce constant conflict.
Neither strict non-intervention nor universal intervention is adequate for the post-Cold War order. How to shape an adequate ethic of intervention? Begin with a presumption against military intervention as a method of resolving problems within states; the Westphalian insight has some validity. Then test the presumption for legitimate exceptions in light of the ethical categories of cause, authority, and means. Each requires specification.
The major exception to non-intervention allowed by the Westphalian order was to prevent genocide. Today the cause category needs to be expanded beyond genocide, but not to justify military intervention to resolve most human rights violations. To expand the category that far would yield a world of multiple interventions.
If the cause category is expanded, however, it must be balanced by a restrictive conception of legitimate authority. If the reasons to justify intervention are expanded, there must be a way to protect against individual states using the expanded norm for purely political reasons of state. Hence, I would argue for expanding just cause only in the case of multilateral intervention. More actors do not guarantee greater moral probity, but the multilateral requirement does build in a procedural restraint on the decision to intervene.
Finally, the means test should be stringently employed both before and during the decision on intervention. The tests of last resort, possibility of success, and proportionality are inherently difficult to apply, but they do provide hurdles that must be surmounted in contemplating the idea of intervention.
The proposal offered here arises from dissatisfaction with the Westphalian legacy but also apprehension about providing license to the major actors in the world to intervene at will. The balance is struck by expanding the justification for intervention and then containing the logic of wider intervention by a restrictive notion of authority and means.
Does the Somali case pass these tests? I believe it has. Does intervention in Bosnia pass? I am sure just cause exists; I believe proper authority resides in both the European community and the United Nations. I do not believe the means test has been convincingly met if the objective is to retake territory by force. If the task is to enforce the negotiated settlement envisioned by the Vance-Owen plan, I think the means test can be met.
J. Bryan Hehir was professor of the practice of religion and society at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts when this article appeared.
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