Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

All this has created real confusion about what constitutes peacekeeping, and whether what is presented as peacekeeping has much to do with peace any more. It also raises questions of whether peacekeeping -- carried out either by the UN or by NATO with UN authorization -- is even a beneficial activity, or is simply a cloak for Western powers to pursue their own agendas with a veneer of international legitimacy.

Let's start by admitting that these are extremely difficult questions. Certainly, the UN has been used to further the interests of Western powers. This can be seen in Haiti, where, as noted earlier, a UN peacekeeping force helped prop up a brutal regime put in place by Washington, immediately after Washington had removed the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. The role of the UN in this blatantly undemocratic "regime change" -- supported by Canada -- raises important questions, partly because Canadian officials seemed to regard these actions as justifiable under the principle of "responsibility to protect," a doctrine promoted by Canada and endorsed by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in 2005.

Under this doctrine, the nations of the world, acting through the UN, are considered to have a responsibility to intervene to protect civilian populations at risk of suffering severe human rights abuses such as genocide or ethnic cleansing at the hands of their own governments. The notion of the world acting collectively to protect helpless people in desperate situations has an obvious appeal. But it is also fraught with problems. It undermines a key UN principle -- the sovereignty of each nation -- by allowing nations to collectively violate the sovereignty of another nation, in the name of preventing it from carrying out severe abuses. But which abuses will be deemed worthy of intervention? What other factors may motivate the interveners? This "responsibility to protect" doctrine, for instance, could have been invoked to justify the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And, indeed, among the key supporters of the doctrine (along with Lloyd Axworthy) has been Michael Ignatieff, who supported the invasion of Iraq as a necessary action to unseat a brutal dictator.

Disturbingly, Canada appears to have relied on the notion of "responsibility to protect" to justify the removal of Aristide's democratically-elected government. [...] "If you've been to Haiti you've seen the poor conditions in which Haitians are living and anyway from what I've seen personally there, I think that if there is one place where the principles of this 'responsibility to protect' would apply around the world, it's Haiti..." [Denis] Paradis told an interviewer in September 2004. "[I]sn't the role of the international community to make sure that the people can survive in a country, can have an economic well-being?"

— Linda McQuaig, Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire

Comments

[sarah-dragon.livejournal.com]

And yet oddly there are places in the world where such a principle would be absolutely appropriate. Indeed some parts of Africa may as well be necropoli for all the killing that goes on there. Yet no one seems to care. Where was this responsibility to protect when Vietnam was invading Cambodia every year before the rainy season? (I wonder if they still do that in fact, have to check.)

I will disagree with one thing though, its not an Empire we have here in the U.S., its Hegemony. A subtle difference perhaps but an important distinction in explaining the disconnect between government and electorate.