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ABSTRACT
This article argues that Liberal Hawks have used a Human Rights-based narrative to legitimise war in the post-Cold War era. Liberal Hawks in the UK and the USA have allied with Neoconservatives to form a powerful coalition to advocate for ‘humanitarian intervention’ to ‘protect human rights’ and ‘prevent genocide’. A particular interpretation of a human rights-based approach has been used to justify war by presenting these rights as natural, absolute, universal and non-political. Those in the human rights movement have advocated this interpretation but it has also become influential on humanitarian NGOs. The impact of this RBA is that humanitarian NGOs has generally become more ambitious and shifted from the provision of needs-based, immediate relief to the advocacy of military intervention to sustain longer-term transformation through democratisation and state-building. The capture of humanitarianism by this ‘rights-based’ narrative has created a powerful Liberal Hawk argument for war as a policy instrument. The arguments of Labour Hawks, Hilary Benn MP and Jo Cox MP, for more extensive British military involvement in Syria in 2015 are used to show how arguments to end human rights abuses and provide humanitarian assistance are effectively arguments to escalate war.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Paul Dixon is Professor of Politics and International Studies at Kingston University. He is the editor of The British Approach to Countersinsurgency: From Malaya and Northern Ireland to Iraq and Afghanistan (Palgrave 2012) and War, Militarisation and British Democracy (forthcoming Forceswatch 2017).
Notes
1 Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War (London: Vintage, 2001), 213.
2 David Rieff, ‘Humanitarianism, the Human Rights Movement and US Foreign Policy - Conversation with David Rieff’, Institute of International Studies, Berkeley, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Rieff/ [online interview]
3 David Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 35.
4 David Rieff, At the Point of a Gun (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond: Human Rights and International Intervention (London: Pluto, 2002); Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism (London: Pluto, 1999); Costas Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (London: Routledge, 2007); Nicolas Guilhot, The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Susan Mertus, Bait and Switch: US Foreign Policy and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2008). Richard Seymour, The Liberal Defence of Murder (London: Verso, 2012); Tony Smith, A Pact with the Devil (London: Routledge, 2007); Justin Vaisse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
5 D. Cooper, Neoconservatism and American Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2012), 69, 56.
6 Piers Robinson et al., Pockets of Resistance: British News Media, War and Theory in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (London: Routledge, 2010), 171.
7 Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2011).
8 John Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie (London: Duckworth, 2011).
9 Robinson et al., Pockets of Resistance, 171, 172.
10 Hannah Miller and Robin Redhead, ‘Beyond Rights-Based Approaches’, International Journal of Human Rights (2017) this issue.
11 Hannah Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches: A Social Constructionist View of Human Rights Practice’, International Journal of Human Rights 14, no. 6 (2010); Hannah Miller, ‘Rejecting “Rights-Based Approaches” to Development: Alternative Engagements with Human Rights’, Journal of Human Rights 16, no. 1 (2017).
12 Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches ’, 917.
13 Miller, ‘Rejecting “Rights-Based Approaches” to Development’, 2.
14 Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 199–200.
15 David Rieff, A Bed For the Night: Humanitarianism in an Age of Genocide (London: Vintage, 1999); David Chandler, ‘The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How the Human Rights NGOs Shaped a New Humanitarian Agenda’, Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2001).
16 Marc DuBois, ‘Protection: The New Humanitarian Fig Leaf’, Humanitarian Aid on the Move (URD Newsletter, April 2009), www.urd.org/newsletter/IMG/pdf/Protection_Fig-Leaf_DuBois.pdf
17 Fiona Fox, ‘New Humanitarianism: Does it Provide a Moral Banner for the 21st Century?’ Disasters, 25, no. 4 (2001): 283.
18 David Rieff quoted in Stuart Gordon and A. Donini, ‘Romancing Principles and Human Rights: Are Humanitarian Principles Salvageable?’ International Review of the Red Cross 97, no. 897/898 (2016): 83, 107, 108.
19 Gordon and Donini, ‘Romancing Principles’.
20 Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 215–16.
21 Anonymous, ‘Human Rights in Peace Negotiations’, Human Rights Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1996): 258.
22 Lars Waldorf, ‘Getting the Gunpowder Out of Their Heads: The Limits of Rights-Based DDR’, Human Rights Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2013).
23 M. Dembour, ‘What are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought’, Human Rights Quarterly 32 (2010).
24 Robin Blackburn, ‘Reclaiming Human Rights’, New Left Review 69 (2011): 134–35; Lynne Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton & Co, 2008); Samuel Moyn, Last Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
25 William Hague, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (London: Harper Perennial, 2008).
26 Rajan Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
27 Tony Evans, ‘Introduction: Power, Hegemony and the Universalisation of Human Rights’ in Human Rights Fifty Years on, ed. Tony Evans (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 9.
28 Barbara Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 3.
29 Vaisse, Neoconservatism.
30 Nicolas Guilhot, The Democracy Makers, 8, 10; Nicolas ‘Limiting Sovereignty or Producing Governmentality? Two Human Rights Regimes in US Political Discourse’, Constellations 15, no. 4 (2008): 508–10.
31 Vaisse, Neoconservatism; Guilhot, ‘Limiting Sovereignty or Producing Governmentality?’
32 Clifford Bob, ‘Rights Promoted and Attacked’, International Studies, Toronto, March 28, 2014.
33 Clifford Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 7, 34, 12.
34 Bob, The Global Right Wing, 196.
35 Smith, A Pact with the Devil, 192.
36 Bob, ‘Rights Promoted and Attacked’.
37 Rieff, At the Point of a Gun, 166.
38 Vaisse, Neoconservatism; John Gray, Black Mass (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008).
39 Ignatieff, Virtual War, 83.
40 Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2015), ix.
41 Ronald Dworkin, ‘Rights as Trumps’, in Theories of Rights, ed. J. Waldron (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
42 Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Idolatry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 20, 22.
43 Paul Dixon, ‘Britain’s “Vietnam Syndrome”? Public Opinion and British Military Intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia’, Review of International Studies, 26, no. 1 (2000); Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.
44 Robinson et al., Pockets of Resistance.
45 Bob, ‘Rights Promoted and Attacked’.
46 Mertus, Bait and Switch.
47 Moyn, Last Utopia, 221; Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 197–98.
48 Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul, 29; Barnett, Empire of Humanity; Eyal Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils (London: Verso, 2012).
49 Mertus, Bait and Switch; Barnett, Empire of Humanity.
50 Robinson, Pockets of Resistance, 104.
51 T.G. Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 37.
52 For a defence of the ICRC see Gordon and Donini, ‘Romancing Principles’.
53 Rony Brauman, ‘Médecins Sans Frontières and the ICRC: Matters of Principle’, International Review of the Red Cross, no. 888 (2012): 4.
54 Chandler, ‘The Road to Military Humanitarianism’, 681.
55 Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils.
56 J. Magone et al., Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed (London: Hurst, 2011); Brauman, ‘Médecins Sans Frontières’, 11, 12; Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils; Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 209.
57 Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul, 28.
58 Hugo Slim, With or Against? Humanitarian Agencies and Coalition Counter-Insurgency (Switzerland: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2004), 11, 12.
59 Fox, ‘New Humanitarianism’, 280; Peter Gill, Today We Drop Bombs, Tomorrow We Build Bridges (London: Zed, 2016); Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 191.
60 Rieff, A Bed for the Night.
61 Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, 225; Joanna Bourke, Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play Invade Our Lives (London: Virago, 2014).
62 Thomas Smith, ‘Can Human Rights Build a Better War?’ Journal of Human Rights, 9 (2010): 39; Smith, A Pact with the Devil.
63 Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils, 136.
64 Craig Berry and Clive Gabay, ‘Transnational Political Action and “Global Civil Society” in Practice: The Case of Oxfam’, Global Networks, 9, no. 3 (2009).
65 Gill, Today We Drop Bombs, 34–35, 3.
66 Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 329; New York Times, March 26, 2010.
67 The Guardian 11 September 2013.
68 The Guardian 25 November 2014.
69 Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue, 21, 25.
70 David Rieff, ‘Save us from the Liberal Hawks’, Foreignpolicy.com, February 13, 2012.
71 New York Times 21 June 2012.
72 Daily Telegraph 4 February 2016.
73 Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarianism; Robinson et al., Pockets of Resistance.
74 Alan J. Kuperman, Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion and Civil War (London: Routledge, 2008); Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarianism.
75 Conor Foley, The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism went to War (London: Verso, 2008); Oxfam, ‘Whose Aid is it Anyway? Politicizing Aid in Conflicts and Crises’ (Oxfam Briefing Paper, February 2011); Peter Marsden, Afghanistan, Aid, Armies and Empires (London: I.B. Taurus, 2010), ch. 9.
76 Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 191; Fox, ‘New Humanitarianism’.
77 Foley, The Thin Blue Line, ch. 7.
78 C. Meyer and Eric Sangar, ‘In Search of the “NGO Effect” on Media Coverage of Conflict’ (paper presented to the International Studies Association, Atlanta, 2016).
79 Charlie Skelton, ‘The Syrian Opposition: Who’s Doing the Talking?’, The Guardian, July 12, 2012.
80 See Musa al-Gharbi, ‘Syria Contextualized: The Numbers Game’, Middle East Policy 20, no. 1 (2013), who also seeks to puncture some other myths about the conflict.
81 J. Martinez and B. Eng, ‘The Unintended Consequences of Emergency Food Aid: Neutrality, Sovereignty and Politics in the Syrian Civil War, 2012–15’, International Affairs 92, no. 1 (2016): 171, 168, 169.
82 Magone, Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed.
83 J. Martinez and B. Eng, ‘Forgetting Food in Syria’ (RUSI Briefing, October 5, 2015).
84 The Guardian 28 June 2007; Jo Cox voted for Liz Kendall in the leadership contest.
85 Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Flamingo, 2002). For a critique see Rieff, At the Point of a Gun; on Libya see Alan J. Kuperman, ‘A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO’s Libya Campaign’, International Security 38, no. 1 (2013).
86 The Guardian 11 October 2015.
87 House of Commons Debates, October 12, 2015, col. 136.
88 Jo Cox ‘We Must Remember that Syria is Not Iraq and Build a Plan for Action’, LabourList, October 12, 2016, http://labourlist.org/2015/10/we-must-remember-that-syria-is-not-iraq-and-build-a-plan-for-action/
89 The Guardian 12 October 2015.
90 House of Commons Debates 12 October 2015 col. 136.
91 The Times 25 May 2016.
92 Cox, ‘We Must Remember’.
93 House of Commons Debates 12 October 2015.
94 House of Commons Debates 12 October 2015, col. 135.
95 House of Commons Debates 12 October 2015 col. 139.
96 See airwars.org for estimates of civilian casualties caused by the West; also see The Independent, March 5, 2016 and the Guardian, July 29, 2016 on civilian deaths in Manbij.
97 House of Commons Debates 12 October 2015 col. 139.
98 Jo Cox, ‘With Regret, I Feel I Have No Other Option But to Abstain on Syria’, Huffington Post blog, December 2, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jo-cox/syria-vote_b_8698242.html
99 The Guardian 12 October 2015.
100 Cox, ‘With Regret’.
101 Clara Connolly, ‘Labouring on Syria: Hilary Benn’s Response to Jo Cox’, leftfootforward.org, October 15, 2015, http://leftfootforward.org/2015/10/labouring-on-syria-hilary-benns-response-to-jo-cox/
102 Cox, ‘With Regret’.
103 House of Commons Debates 12 October 2015 col. 138.
104 The People 31 January 2016.
105 The Times 24 May 2016.
106 Jo Cox and Omid Nouripour, ‘We Must Not Let America Sell Out the Syrian Rebels to Putin and Assad’, The Daily Telegraph, February 4, 2016.
107 See Max Blumenthal, ‘How the White Helmets Became International Heroes While Pushing US Military Intervention and Regime Change in Syria’, AlterNet, October 2, 2016; ‘Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria’, AlterNet, October 3, 2016. On Britain’s propaganda war abroad and at home see Ian Cobain et al., ‘How Britain Funds the ‘Propaganda War’ against Isis in Syria’ and ‘Help for Syria: The ‘Aid Campaign’ Secretly Run by the UK Government’, the Guardian, May 3, 2016.
108 The Guardian 12 October 2015.
109 See his speech: ‘Hilary’s Speech to the Rising 15 Peace Symposium – 11 November 2015’, Hilary Benn MP’s website, http://www.hilarybennmp.com/hilary_s_speech_to_the_rising_15 (accessed April 21, 2016).
110 Hilary Benn, ‘If We Are To Help Syria’s People, We Must Take Action’, the Guardian, October 13, 2015.
111 ‘Corbyn Signals Labour Could Back Military Action in Syria without UN Support’, the Guardian, October 13, 2015.
112 Benn, ‘If We Are To Help Syria’s People’.
113 Jeremy Corbyn, ‘David Cameron has Failed to Show that Bombing Syria Would Work’, the Guardian, December 2, 2015.
114 House of Commons Debates 2 December cols. 483–86.
115 ‘Hilary's Speech to the Rising 15 Peace Symposium’.
116 K. Dodds and S. Elden, ‘Thinking Ahead: David Cameron, the Henry Jackson Society and British Neo-conservatism’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 10, no. 3 (2008).
117 Michael Weiss, ‘Intervention in Syria – A Henry Jackson Society Strategic Briefing’, December 2011, 2–3.
118 M. Weiss and I. Tanir, ‘The Case Against Non-Intervention – A Henry Jackson Society Strategic Briefing’, March (2012): 3, 6, 4, 6.
119 Tom Wilson, ‘The Case for British Intervention’, Commentary Magazine, 30 November 2015; Tom Wilson, ‘Syria Conference: The Humanitarian Crisis Will Grind On for Years if All We Do is Talk About It – And Money Won’t Solve the Problems Either’, CityAM, February 4, 2016.
120 The Spectator 9 July 2016.
121 Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention; Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie.
122 Kuperman, ‘A Model Humanitarian Intervention?’; Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.
123 Michael Codner, ‘Assessing a Ground Intervention in Syria’, in Syria Crisis Briefing (RUSI, July 25, 2012), 16, 19.
124 Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention; Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie.
125 The Guardian 12 October 2015.
126 William Hague, 'Safe Havens for Beleaguered Syrians would be a Dangerous Distraction’, The Daily Telegraph, October 14, 2015.
127 E. Rees, ‘The Case Against a No-Fly Zone’, The Atlantic, February 28, 2011.
128 Nicholas Burns and David Milliband, ‘Syria’s Worsening Refugee Crisis Demands Action from the West’, The Washington Post, July 9, 2015.
129 J. W. Honig and H. Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001).
130 The Guardian 16 September 2015.
131 New York Times 3 September 2015.
132 Kuperman, Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention.
133 Blackburn, ‘Reclaiming Human Rights’.
134 Robinson et al., Pockets of Resistance.
135 Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.