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Interlib 2014-04 Vi 2014 no.4 £5.00 (free to members) SOMETHING WE’VE ALWAYS SUSPECTED? THE VVD INTERNATIONAL… Inside: Genocide: Rotterdam Report EVENTS CONTENTS 2nd June Egypt Forum. Lawrence Robson Room, Reflections on Genocide. Nigel Dower Pages 3-6 NLC. 7.00pm Scottish Group report Page 6 5th June Tim Garden Memorial Lecture: Sir Menzies LI Congress, Rotterdam report Pages 6-7 Campbell MP will speak on 'Whither Europe?' Chatham House 6.00pm North West Group report Page 8 30th June LIBG AGM, NLC followed by joint International Abstracts Page 8 meeting with Liberal Democrat History Group on 1914. UK China Twinned Cities. Page 9 4th –8th October Liberal Democrats Autumn Conference, Glasgow Elections Euro & Other. Stewart Rayment Page 9 Reviews Pages 10-12 For bookings & other information please contact the Chair below. NLC= National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE Underground: Embankment Lord Garden Memorial Lecture Britain and Europe: A Common Future? Liberal International (British Group) Chair: Wendy Kyrle-Pope, 1 Brook Gardens, Sir Menzies Campbell MP, Barnes,London SW13 0LY email [email protected] Leader, Liberal Democrats (2006-07) Thursday 5 June 2014 18:00 to 19:00 Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4LE Menzies will examine the continuing case for Britain's place in the European Union in light of the results of the 2014 EU Parliamentary elections. As the debate intensifies as to whether the UK should remain in the interLib is published by the Liberal International EU, he will reflect on the advantages of the UK (British Group). Views expressed therein are those of continuing as a member state, as well as the need for the authors and are not necessarily the views of reform. LI(BG), LI or any of its constituent parties. This meeting is held in association with the Liberal International British Group. Comments and articles can be sent to To Register phone Chatham House on +44 (0)20 7314 Lockhart & Hastings, Ltd Creative Media Centre, 3631 or at [email protected] 45 Robertson Street, Hastings TN34 1HL, email [email protected] Dinner is available afterwards at Al Duca restaurant price £55 including wine. Contact Robert Woodthorpe Browne [email protected] to book Reflections on Genocide Nigel Dower This is mainly about the wider framework for thinking morally important, this importance crosses borders. It about international responsibility. What I say reflects matters to everyone in principle, not just to the fact that I am a Quaker philosopher but also a compatriots. In other words our liberalism needs to be social liberal in the tradition of L.T Hobhouse and cosmopolitan: this means that both as global citizens T.H. Green, but also reflecting the more recent we have an individual responsibility across borders but expressions of a social liberal approach in John Rawls also that nation-states in their foreign policy need and Amartya Sen. accept this (and part of our role as global citizens is to Two premises frame what I will say about responding influence our governments in this direction)(Dower to genocide (1): 2007 (3). Liberalism does not have to be internationalist/ cosmopolitan, since one could hold as First, liberalism is about all basic human rights not just a liberal that the promotion and protection of human liberty. Second, our responsibility for human rights rights was the responsibility citizens and governments crosses borders: liberalism should be seen as within each state, but generally modern liberals accept international or, I would prefer to put it, cosmopolitan. an international dimension, including support for the Let me expand these two points. United Nations as a vehicle for promoting these 1. Liberalism and Human Rights things: how far and in what ways is a matter of controversy. First, as liberals we are concerned to protect and promote not just liberty/the right to liberty but also the Henry Shue claims that basic rights (to liberty, right to security, subsistence/welfare, and also, both as security and subsistence) are the 'minimum demand of intrinsically important and as vital means to the first all human on all humanity'(4). The cosmopolitan three values, education, non-discrimination, political perspective is reflected in Thomas Pogge's quite participation and so on. In fact as Rawls notes, the explicit cosmopolitanism (see his definition below (5)) reason why liberty is valuable (the worth of liberty) and his view that the securing of basic threshold largely resides in one's being able to exercise it in a human rights takes moral priority. meaningful way and this require a background of So human rights violations, especially when they are adequate resources and general social conditions, not extensive and systematic as in genocide require a just laws that permit it. trans-boundary response. There are two main Any act that violates these rights is seriously wrong, responses: proactive and reactive. The proactive including acts that violate them because the person responses are about making it less likely that human violated belongs to a group e.g. a white who attack a rights violations will happen; reactive responses are black because he is black, a Christian who attacks a about various measures to try to stop human rights Muslim because she is a Muslim, a Serbian who violations when they are happening (and of course attacks a Kosovan Albanian because he is a Kosovan post conflict justice issues like Truth Albanian. commissions).The proactive aspect is linked to the point made earlier about promoting the general Genocide is this kind of behaviour on a wider scale conditions for rights realisation, and to the specific with an additional intention to destroy or weaken a idea of Henry Shue's that, in addition to the duty to group, or (as in ethnic cleansing) to get it to go away. avoid violating human rights and the duty to come to (A religiously or racially motivated attack need have the aid of those whose rights are violated, there is a nothing to do with this wider goal, but it involves the duty, partly for organisations like the state and partly same human rights violations.) See the UN definition for individuals backing them, to protect people from below for a more precise definition in terms of 'standard threats' of violation'. Whatever one thinks international law (2). about what should be done in response to human rights 2. Cosmopolitanism violations and about military intervention in particular, the challenge is to find ways of making such things Second, if the promotion and protection of these rights less likely to happen in the first place. along with responding to violations of them are all 3. Responsibility to Protect What then should we think about military This is illustrated in the UN commitment in 2005 to humanitarian intervention to try and stop genocide and Responsibility to Protect, commonly referred to as other serious human rights violations? If ever there R2P. R2P arose out of much thinking that had were a 'just cause' this would surely rank as one along occurred particularly after the NATO intervention in with self-defence? However even those who do not Kosovo which was clearly done at least in part to share the doubts I express below will recognise that protect an ethnic group within a state, which clearly other conditions of a just war would apply, such as last went against Article 2.7 of the UN Charter which rules resort, non-combatant immunity, proportionality (the out interference in matters internal to a member-state. good to be achieved in the action is not outweighed by R2P is interesting because it represents a shift in the likely harms) and reasonable hope of success (see e.g. Dower 2009 (7)). 4. Doubts about humanitarian military intervention There are four kinds of doubts: the first one I merely mention but do not discuss, is doubts about the motives behind interventions which may be mixed or other than humanitarian for which the humanitarian argument is a cloak; the second concerns the wider consequences of such actions and the risks of being counter-productive; the third questions the ethical priority of stopping human rights violations over helping to realise human rights realisation; the fourth questions the 'ethics of the means' of military intervention. (The latter three arguments are discussed in more detail in my article – Dower 2014.) The argument about counter-productivity is really an expansion of the traditional proportionality argument, but applied to longer term consequences and wider framework of such actions. First, all too often violence begets violence and a short-term good outcome is overturned by later development (as we have seen in the cases of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, all partly but only partly inspired by humanitarian concerns). Second the resort to war as a way of resolving problems simply perpetuates the cycle/culture of war thinking about the UN in that it make much of the idea in the future. Third, preparations for and the waging of of an international responsibility to deal with human war involve massive use of resources that could be rights violations, in particular genocide, war crimes, used for positive humanitarian work and human rights ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. realisation in development etc. Arguably the thinking is more cosmopolitan here. Second, some may say that intervention is not simply There are three so called 'pillars' to R2P: national justified by looking at consequences, and we simply responsibility, international proactive responsibility have to act. It is wrong to stand by when human rights and international reactive responsibility (see below for are being actively violated by others. But we have to details (6)). The second is of course an expression of be cautious about this argument.
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