Page 59 - The Cormorant Issue 14

OP ELLAMY: Libya and the Just War Tradition
Dr David Whetham, King’s College London
Recent graduates and current students on the ACSC will hopefully remember the syndicate room discussions that took place in term one of the course involving a hypothetical humanitarian catastrophe unfolding on the edge of Europe. The scenario asked the difficult question about whether or not to recommend a deployment by a UK battalion to insert themselves between an aggressor force intent on carrying out a mass atrocity against a civilian population and a vulnerable enclave of unarmed people. On the face of it, it would appear the answer, at least from an ethical position, should have been straightforward. But of course, as is often the way with Staff College, it was a bit more complicated than that. In this particular classroom scenario, other European nations were very keen and supportive, but no-one else was in a position to actually respond militarily for sometime, meaning the UK force would be on its own and heavily outnumbered while it waited for reinforcements. UK allies were sure that they would never dare over-run the British posi- tion – it would be unthinkable. Even if the Brits were attacked, they would, of course, acquit themselves well and perhaps buy time for others to get involved and save the civilians while themselves dying gloriously for their clear just cause. Debating whether or not such a deployment was the right thing to do (and who it was right for!) turned out to be quite complicated. There were obviously a lot of ethical issues at the heart of this question, and most syndicates found their discussions neatly framed by the principles of the Just War Tradition. Was there a just cause? Would the UK be acting with the right intention? Would the deployment have legitimate author- ity? Would such an intervention be proportional to the injury being inflicted or threatened? Was such a deployment the last possible resort or were there other courses of action that might work in time? Was there a reasonable chance of success, and what exactly constituted success anyway – the protection of the civilians? The survival of the UK military force and the protection of the civilians? A clear message to aggressors everywhere that attacks on civilian populations will no longer be ignored and the international commu- nity will act, even at significant cost in blood and treasure?
At the heart of the debate were the questions: what exactly is our military for, if not to protect the innocent? Or does it only really matter if it is ‘our’ innocent people or if there are clear vital national interests at stake? To whom does a military commander (or their soldiers, sailors and airmen for that matter), owe a duty? What duty does the state itself owe its military when putting them in harms way? Perhaps unsurprisingly, different syndicates came up with different answers to these questions. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, the current military operation in Libya has also prompted much discussion and debate although the background of a real world event is far more complex than a syndicate room discussion could possibly allow. Recent events across the Arab world have shocked regimes, destroyed settled and comfortable assumptions, emancipated many and confused even more. Right in the middle of all this we find ourselves in another military expe- dition overseas. But is it just – is it the right thing to be doing? Before 2003 I don’t think such questions would have prompted the same level of concern that they do now, but there is no doubt that this is now one of, if not the biggest question that people want to know in relation to current events (or as the Army Rumour Service (ARRSE) put it, “What the bloody ‘ellamy doing here?”).
While all of the Just War principles are linked in some way, let us start by asking if the humanitarian situation in Libya amounted to a just cause for intervention. We know from recent history the ter- rible cost to be paid by the innocent when we do not act when it was possible to. So was Benghazi potentially another Srebrenica? If one takes Gaddafi’s words at face value, it clearly would have
been. His terrible threats and promises to punish all those who resisted him were extreme. But did he mean them or was this simply the rhetoric of a deranged despot with a bad facelift? Could we wait for the proof one way or the other? Of course, this ques- tion is bound together with the last resort question – the problem with preventing mass atrocities is that once there is enough evi- dence to justify an intervention, it is normally too late to do any- thing useful to protect the civilians. The drip, drip of media reports certainly appeared to support the view that he meant every word. Nearly two months into the campaign, the International Criminal Court has concluded that there is sufficient evidence of attacks against the civilian population to charge members of Gaddafi’s senior leadership. So does this justify getting involved when we did? I would argue that such attacks and threats of further larger scale attacks on a civilian population can create a right for a third party to intervene to protect them. It might possibly even gener- ate a duty for the international community to ‘do something’ but it is rather harder to say that specific state X or Y therefore has to be the one to act. However, just because we might not be the one obliged to act does not mean that we would not bear some moral responsibility if we had chosen not to, after all, who else was going to do anything? The agents doing the killing can be 100% responsible for their actions and yet we can still bear some moral responsibility for not doing something to stop them when we could have done – blame is not a zero sum equation. So, why act here in Libya, and not also in Syria or Bahrain? The lack of moral consistency is a common charge against Western diplomacy in particular. Of course, one could use this argument to never do anything – because I can’t do everything, I should do nothing. Any political decision is bound to have a very pragmatic element to it, but this defence only goes so far in countering the hypocrisy allegations and, as argued above, by not doing more elsewhere, perhaps our relative inaction does imply some moral responsibility.
As far as legitimate authority is concerned, an exchange with an RAF Division syndicate sums this up nicely: “its refreshing to be involved in a military operation with a clear Security Coun- cil Resolution from the start”. Of course, how far that authority extends to cover potential mission creep scenarios may well be tested as events continue to unfold, but as long as the objec- tives remain limited to civilian protection, the broad based politi- cal support that provides the moral underpinning for the legal position also remains intact. Most importantly, that broad base includes representatives (and just as significantly, materiel sup- port and participation) from parts of the Arab world. Whether or not Qatar has undermined the moral authority of its own par- ticular contribution by also providing security forces to quell the uprising in Bahrain at the same time remains to be seen (Qatar’s behaviour appears even more paradoxical when one consid- ers the role that Al Jazeera, the editorially independent but still Qatari government sponsored news agency, had in supporting and consistently transmitting news of the unrest across the Arab world when no other media outlets were interested).
The proportionality question asks us to weigh if the likely harm of us acting is more or less than the likely harm of not acting. So, what if NATO bombs kill the very civilians they are supposed to be protecting? Collateral damage is going to be a reality of any military conflict. There is clearly a duty to minimise it as much as possible. If one is motivated by humanitarian concerns, one must be prepared to accept increased risks for one’s own force where necessary to reduce the risk to non-combatants as far as pos- sible. For me, the most effective mission to date was the brilliantly handled influence operation following the Tornado sortie that never
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