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Regime Change and Just War

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Regime Change and Just War ARGUMENTS Regime Change and Just War Michael Walzer the consequence, not the cause, of the war fought by the allies. It wasn’t the aim of the wars declared in 1939 by Poland, France, and Britain to transform the German state. Rather, ast year marked the sixtieth anni- these were paradigmatic just wars; their cause versary of the end of the Second was resistance to armed aggression. And ac- World War and the beginning of re- cording to the just-war paradigm, resistance to Lgime change and democratization in Germany. aggression stops with the military defeat of the The allies confirmed their commitment to de- aggressor. After that, presumably, there is a mocratization at Potsdam in July of 1945, negotiated peace, and in the course of the ne- where the British provided an admirable ex- gotiations, the victims of aggression and their ample of what democracy means. Elections allies may legitimately look for material repa- were held in the United Kingdom while the rations and political guarantees against any fu- conference was going on; Winston Churchill, ture attack, but regime change is not part of the great wartime leader of his country, was the paradigm. It is a feature of just-war theory defeated—and immediately replaced at the in its classic formulations that aggression is meetings (Stalin must have been astonished) regarded as the criminal policy of a govern- by Clement Atlee, the leader of the Labour ment, not as the policy of a criminal govern- Party. This was a classic democratic moment: ment—let alone a criminal system of govern- the ability of the opposition to challenge and ment. Individual leaders may be brought to trial possibly defeat a powerful leader is surely the after the war; the governmental system is not crucial test of a democratic constitution. at issue. But if we understand aggression as The political reconstruction of Germany an act that follows from the very character of was an effort, at least in the Western occupa- the system—which is how we came to under- tion zones, to enable the German people to stand Nazi war-making—then regime change enact moments like that. It is important to no- will seem a necessary feature of the postwar tice that what was planned was a restoration settlement. of democracy, not a creation ex nihilo—the Of course, it wasn’t only the aggressive wars Weimar republic lay only twelve years in the fought by the Nazi regime but also the geno- past, and old political parties like the Chris- cidal policies it pursued that justified the de- tian Democrats and the Social Democrats were mand first for unconditional surrender and quickly reconstituted. For that reason (and for then for political reconstruction. A negotiated others too) the German case isn’t a good pre- peace with Hitler or his associates was not a cedent, as is sometimes claimed, for what the morally imaginable outcome of the Second United States has recently been trying to do World War, as it might have been with the kai- in Iraq. Still, this was a restoration-by-force, ser in the first, had his regime not been over- the consequence of military victory and mili- thrown from within. The Nazis had to go, tary occupation. And so it raises the question whether or not their German opponents were of when or whether forcible democratization capable of seeing them out. There is a general can be justified. Or, in the language of con- argument here, which applies most clearly to temporary debates, Is “regime change” a just cases of “humanitarian intervention.” When a cause for war? government is engaged in the mass murder of In the case of Nazism, regime change was its own people, or some subgroup of its own DISSENT / Summer 2006 III 103 ARGUMENTS people, then any foreign state or coalition of to be compromised in one way or another. Even states that sends an army across the border to when a humanitarian crisis has rightly triggered stop the killing is also going to have to replace intervention, we can still hope to minimize the the government or, at least, to begin the pro- coercive imposition of foreign ideas and ide- cess of replacement. It isn’t only aggressive- ologies. The intervening forces have a mandate ness, then, but also murderousness that makes for political, but not for cultural, transforma- a political regime a legitimate candidate for tion. In any case, it isn’t easy to imagine how forcible transformation. Still, the primary cause they might set about changing the customs and of the intervention is to stop the killing; regime beliefs of the people they are (temporarily) rul- change follows from that purpose. An authori- ing. Negotiation and compromise are almost tarian regime that is capable of mass murder certainly better than the coercion that would but not engaged in mass murder is not liable be necessary for a project like that. to military attack and political reconstruction. Nonetheless, just wars and humanitarian Imagine that there had been, as there interventions will often be an occasion for forc- surely should have been, an African or a Euro- ible and justifiable democratization—and that pean or a United Nations intervention in will sometimes require an attack on traditional Rwanda in 1994. The initial purpose of the hierarchies and customary practices. The ex- military action would have been to stop the clusion of women from the political sphere is massacre of Tutsi men and women (and their an obvious example. So consider the other case Hutu sympathizers), but in order to do that and of post–World War II regime change: the to protect the survivors, it would have been American occupation of Japan. The constitu- necessary to overthrow the Hutu Power regime. tion imposed by the occupation authorities pro- And whoever was responsible for that over- vided that all laws governing gender relations throw would also have taken on some degree “shall be enacted from the standpoint of indi- of responsibility for the creation of an alterna- vidual dignity and the essential equality of the tive government. It would have been wise to sexes.” Sixty years later, there is pressure from share that responsibility with local political the right to repeal this article—in defense, it forces and also with international agencies, but is claimed, of traditional Japanese values. But there would have been no just way of shed- one might say that the very possibility of re- ding it entirely. peal vindicates the American imposition. The And once the intervening forces are en- Japanese now have to argue about the struc- gaged in the work of political reconstruction, ture of gender relations in their society, and there are very good reasons why they should they will get whatever structure a majority of aim at democracy or, at least, open the way for them are prepared to support. Even imposed the practice of democracy. The reasons have democracy is defensible in this sense: it is more to do with the legitimacy of democratically open-ended than any other regime change based regimes, which are established through would be. a literal (and ongoing) self-determination, and also with their relative benevolence. Genuine o we have what we might think of as the democracies have not engaged in the mass World War Two occasions for justified murder of their own citizens (even if their Sregime change, and we have the (unreal- record abroad is less satisfactory). But what if ized) Rwandan occasion. Is there, was there, there are other traditions of legitimacy in the an Iraqi occasion? invaded country—involving, for example, a Note that in the first Gulf War of 1991, dominant role for religious leaders? What if the United States and its allies fought in strict there is strong traditionalist opposition to the accordance with the classic just-war paradigm: legal equality that democracy requires—most they stopped fighting once the invasion of Ku- crucially (and commonly), opposition to the wait had been decisively defeated. They did equality of women? I can imagine cases where not march on Baghdad; they did not aim at the democratization might have to be a gradual pro- overthrow and replacement of the Baathist re- cess or where democratic principles might have gime; nor did they do anything to make it pos- 104 III DISSENT / Summer 2006 ARGUMENTS sible for the Iraqi people to turn Saddam for a significant expansion of the doctrine of Hussein out of office. On the contrary, having jus ad bellum. The existence of an aggressive called for rebellions against Saddam’s rule, they and murderous regime, it claimed, was a le- failed to come to the aid or, only a short time gitimate occasion for war, even if the regime later, to the rescue, of the rebels. Though U.S. was not actually engaged in aggression or mass officials compared Saddam to Hitler, the al- murder. In more familiar terms, this was an lies did not act on the comparison; it was pro- argument for preventive war, but the reason for paganda and nothing more. They did seek con- the preventive attack wasn’t the standard per- straints on the future behavior of the Baathist ception of a dangerous shift in the balance of regime, and these constraints were predicated power that would soon leave “us” helpless on a fairly grim view of the regime. Still, what against “them.” It was a radically new percep- we might think of as the constitutional char- tion of an evil regime. acter of the Iraqi state—whether it was auto- No one who has experienced, or reflected cratic or democratic, secular or religious; on, the politics of the twentieth century can whether it recognized or overrode human doubt that there are evil regimes.
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