Joan, your post reminds me of an article by Edward Luttwak, I think, in Harper's a while back. He advocated intervention only after the belligerent parties had exhausted themselves, and were ready to quit fighting. Seems like a throwback to WWI or something. It seems that in a lot of modern ethic conflicts, with the state on one side, exhaustion wouldn't set in until one side is all dead. Hutus in Rwanda, East Timor, the Balkans, once ethnic hatred starts being used as a tool, it's hard to stop.
Sanctity of borders and non-intervention in "internal" conflicts gives the established states way more legitimacy than they deserve, in many cases. Africa is always painful to look at, but there's a lot of history of Western intervention there too. I guess the line would be that it was ok to install Mobutu in Zaire, for geopolitical reasons, but we have no responsibility to try to help pick up the pieces there.
Not that I know what could be done, but it seems maybe we could try harder.
Cheers, Dan. |
