Thinking About: Intervention

I believe that help should be offered to those who need it and given to those who request it. I don’t believe, however, that we should intervene in people’s lives if they neither need nor request that intervention. People should be allowed (and expected) to be masters of their own destiny as much as they are able.

The same applies to countries. No matter what system of government they are under and no matter what internal policies they use we should not intervene in their destinies unless we are asked to do so. This is one of the major reasons why I opposed and still oppose the Iraq war. Iraq was patently no threat to us – immediate or otherwise – and little threat to its neighbours (despite the war with Iran or the invasion of Kuwait) and its internal politics, no matter how objectionable, were none of our concern. Of course I found the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein repugnant but that repulsion is not, and should not, be enough to warrant any kind of direct intervention – and especially not military intervention – in that countries destiny. It is for the people of Iraq (or Tibet or elsewhere) to decide their own fate and it is not for the West to decide what governments are legitimate and what governments must be toppled.

The debacle that is Iraq should be a salutary lesson in what not to do in international politics. Even if the situation eventually calms down enough to be called some kind of success (whatever that means) we have to ask ourselves if it will be worth the price in lives, suffering and not least in monetary terms, because if Iraq is anything to go by it will take millennia and more money than is rationally conceivable to save the world from itself.

The idea that the misguided intervention in Iraq was for humanitarian reasons is both laughable and offensive. If we are there for those reasons then why aren’t we also in Darfur or Zimbabwe? Was the humanitarian need in Iraq more pressing than elsewhere or was it that Iraq had huge oil supplies that the West (in particular America) wanted to secure for the future? Of course the issue of intervention is in the news again with the situation in Burma. The military junta there is preventing much needed aid reaching its people because of a paranoid fear of western influence. There has even been talk of forcing aid into the country without the co-operation of the junta – basically helping them whether they want it or not. This is of course understandable when we see people dying who could otherwise have been saved. It is however wrong to do so. We could topple the Burmese regime fairly easily no doubt but should we be in the business of going to war with every nation which does not behave in a civilised (in other words Western) manner? I think that the answer is clearly no. Countries should be allowed (and expected) to look after themselves unless they ask for help – and their peoples should be given the responsibility to topple their own governments when they become too oppressive. It is not and should not be the responsibility of Western powers to impose Western values on the rest of the world. This can only lead to disaster and endless war. We cannot and should not be in the business of reshaping the world in our image regardless of our humanitarian sensibilities.