CHAPTER 7: AN INVESTIGATION ON THE ROLE OF NATIONAL INTERESTS IN HUMANITARIAN
7.5 National Interest and Humanitarian Military Interventions
122
elite, Western states further support the new regimes by training security as well as administrative personnel. Thus, it seems plausible that the intervention of foreign governments into the internal affairs of another country has a tremendous impact on the sovereignty and autonomy of the receiving state.
123
From the reasons put forward, HMI is undertaken as a smokescreen to cover up for national interest by the intervening countries. As noted by Köchler, (2000) while Britain and France stood on the high moral ground when they intervened in the Ottoman Empire, they were guilty of the same crime in their own colonies. Furthermore, if one is to borrow from Grotius (1625), the authority who can call or allow an intervention to take place should be a correct authority, which may be deduced to mean a leader who is not guilty of the same crimes against humanity given that when Grotius propounded his theory there was no organization that claimed supreme power of nation-states. Hence, the HMIs that were undertaken by Britain and France in the Ottoman Empire cannot be seen as such given that these states failed to uphold human humanitarian rights and laws of the people in their colonies. At best, these interventions should be seen in the light of the pursuit of geo-strategic interests.
In support of the notion that national interests have a bearing on the decision by countries to undertake HMI, Walzer (1977:101) argue that it is difficult to find a ‘HMI’ that is not influenced by national interest, when he states that:
Clear examples of what is called "humanitarian intervention" are very rare. Indeed, I have not found any, but only mixed cases where the humanitarian motive is one among several. States don't send their soldiers into other states, it seems, only in order to save lives. The lives of foreigners don't weigh that heavily in the scales of domestic decision- making.
When a foreign policy is being made, politicians weigh its benefits against the possibility of losing support from the electorate back home. An intervention is therefore undertaken if it is justifiable to the home constituency. Salim Ahmad Salim put forward that national interests will always be a permanent feature of humanitarian military interventions…because western government (which are major interveners) ask if what is happen in a subject country like Syria is affecting their national interests at home or in the region. “If our troops are going to die it must be something profitable for our people at home. If it’s not then we can only give material support.”16The influence of the home constituency in matters of intervention as a foreign policy is captured well by Combs (1986: 360) when he used the example of the creation of the Jewish homeland by supporting the Zionist movement in the Middle East during the presidency of Truman when he notes that, “…since there was no domestic constituency of the Arabs, a pro-Jewish stand seemed pure political gain.”. This was meant to gain votes from the strong Jewish
16 Interview with Salim Ahmad Salim, …….., 23 June 2015
124
constituency in the United States of America (USA) even when it meant taking a policy that would anger Saudi Arabia, which is a USA ally in the Middle East.
The same case can be said for HMI. Major Powers tend to intervene in regions or states where their interests may be threatened if they do not intervene or can be enhanced by the intervention. A number of humanitarian catastrophes and brutality have taken place without intervention. Rwanda17 and Sudan being examples of neglected cases due to lack of important national interests. On the other hand, HMI was undertaken in Libya based, as argued by NATO intervening countries that Gaddafi had promised to conduct an indiscriminate war against innocent civilian and the use of heavy artillery in civilian populated areas (Payandeh, 2012: 376).
However, even after the intervention, the intervening forces failed to contain the warring militias leading to more deaths and suffering in Libya. In contrast, the NATO states with the exception of France did not condemn Israel’s use of heavy weaponry in civilian populated areas in Gaza in its battle to destroy Hamas’ secret tunnels in 2014 (http,//www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4695/hamas-terror-tunnels). It is these contradictions that taint the nature of HMI and give a justification to the conclusion that HMI is a camouflage for the pursuit of national interest by powerful countries mostly in weaker countries.
The case is also similar with HMI as a foreign policy consideration. State leaders look at whether undertaking the mission can be justified to the electorate either in national gains or rallying the nation to support a moral high ground principle. Because of national interest there are cases that warranted intervention yet no country that had the capacity did, due to limited or no threat to interests or anticipated gains for the intervening state, while in some states, resources were committed to intervention based on flimsy grounds as was the case of Iraq. The cost of intervention in financial and military personnel should be justified to the taxpayers back home. For instance, the invasion of Iraq, which initially was justified on the need to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (Bush, 2003: 149-164), but later after the failure to locate such resources was justified in humanitarian terms (Blair, 2010: 382) cost the USA and Britain (the leading countries in the coalition) more than US$802 billion and more than US$14 billion respectively, while the two states lost 4 487 and 179 service personnel respectively (BBC News, 2011).
17 In an interview with Sydney Sekeramayi on 31 May 2015, he argued that while there was a crisis in Rwanda there was no much talk of intervention. “The idea was let them fight and kill each other until they get tired or until one group is defeated. And then you ask were the big powers not concerned with what was happening”. One can conclude that there was no motivation for intervention because the big powers had no interests in Rwanda.
125
Such a justification can be, for powerful nations, the pride of carrying a successful military mission that will enhance the prowess of the country. In cases of failure, the outcry can result in the abortion of the mission or affect the decisions to undertake similar HMIs.