The debate over "humanitarian intervention" is an interesting one, with the subject being worthy of examination from several angles. It is undeniable that cynical wars have, by now, often been justified in the name of such intervention.
However, the author of "human rights have been weaponised to justify wars..." appears to me to have presented, at the same time, a vague and a narrow picture of "humanitarian intervention". The representation is vague because while the author bemoans that "human rights discourse was used to justify war from Yugoslavia to Iraq and from Libya to Afghanistan" and offers a customary criticism of drone strikes, she at no point involves herself with the specifics. Were all "humanitarian interventions" ever just a weaponisation of human rights? Were the circumstances surrounding these "interventions" all the same? Were those at the receiving end of these interventions all victims? Or were there some who were victims of despots who the "interventions" intended to overthrow?
Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan all present distinct cases for examination - of the conditions prevalent in these countries at the time of Western interventions, the reasons given for these interventions, and the varied outcomes in each case. The author's problem is not that she is a pacifist - it seems to be rather than she categorises any Western military action (note italics) as necessarily imperialistic, and she seems to imply that all proponents of "humanitarian intervention" are unscrupulous individuals and entities in the service of American hegemonic interests.
It does not seem to occur to the author that at least some of the proponents of "humanitarian intervention" might be individuals who sincerely believe that war is sometimes necessary to ensure liberty.
It is undeniable that the United States, especially after World War II, has more often being in the wrong than the right with regard to its foreign policy towards poorer and less powerful countries. An honest critic of American foreign policy would find that its claim to promote freedom and democracy around the world is - on the balance - a sham. An honest critic could point to numerous instances where American governments not only acted against freedom and democracy, but in some cases, actually imposed dictatorships upon free peoples. To rattle off just a few - Vietnam, Bangladesh, Chile, Nicaragua. There are numerous other instances of American governments acting only in selfish interests - either for pure economic reasons or due to fear of Communism.
A true human rights defender, however, would also acknowledge that the United States did actually act in the interest of human rights in a few instances - in Bosnia, for example, in 1994, when the US and NATO intervened to end the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by the paranoid Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. (It must be said that Bill Clinton took extremely long to accede to the saner voices on the Left which insisted on intervention - while he had no second thoughts when he rocketed Khartoum a few years later and destroyed a pharmaceuticals factory).
To broad-brush all instances of Western military intervention as imperialism is thus to expose an unfair bias. The author alleges that the West has used human rights to "justify wars and drone attacks in which civilians would be targeted or countries would be bombed out of existence". Once again, this is vague and lacks specifics. In which wars over the last 50 years have Western governments deliberately targeted civilians? Which drones have deliberately targeted civilians? Can some concrete instances be provided, backed up by evidence? Which country has been "bombed out of existence" after World War II?
There have actually been one or two serious attempts to bomb a country out of existence, but these have not come from Western governments. It is actually ludicrous that the author claims that "leftists and communists" have shown since the 1970s how "foreign-funded NGOs" like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have held a brief for Western governments. This is the first point of conflation, between "leftists" and "communists" - but we shall come to that later. The author does not clarify which communists have pointed out the NGOs' biases. Are these the communists who despised the Soviet Union for its invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia (and finally, most devastatingly) Afghanistan? Are they revisionists, anti-Soviet Western/African/Asian communists, or were they speaking from inside or on behalf of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc? If the last, what was the human rights record of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc countries - even before Afghanistan 1979? Within its own power bloc, the USSR was far worse a human rights violator than the United States within its own sphere. This should almost be a tautology, given the absolute absence of democracy and any semblance of free speech or institutions in the communist bloc. I do not therefore, understand what moral high ground the communists, especially of the 1970s, could have taken with regard to the human rights violations committed by Western governments.
These "foreign-funded NGOs", for their part, are assailed by everyone and praised by none. From Western governments to Islamist governments to Hindu nationalists and Leftists, everyone seems to think these organisations hold a brief for their opponents. In my view, while no organisation could be perfectly neutral, both Amnesty and HRW have done a commendable and fairly impartial job in exposing human rights violations around the world. But it is interesting that the Left was on the side of these very "foreign-funded NGOs" when the Narendra Modi government went after them a few years ago. At that time, these NGOs seemed to be beacons of human rights and freedom.
It was the Soviet Union that started the trial of the Afghan people that has gone on for over four decades and continues (with the recapture of the country by the Taliban, whose comeback to power was in fact - unbelievably - celebrated in certain Leftist circles). The USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to keep a deeply unpopular and dictatorial communist regime in power. It then proceeded to conduct a brutal and unwinnable war for a decade. It is both tragic and telling that there has been no serious analysis, let alone criticism, of the Soviets' way of conducting war in Afghanistan - which involved, among other war crimes, the destruction of entire villages and the resulting massacres of entire populations. I would ask the author and those of her mindset to provide a single comparable instance of American brutality in Afghanistan - or even Iraq.
If however, the author stands against ALL "humanitarian interventions", then we might suppose that she would have opposed India's intervention in East Pakistan in 1971. The intervention actually stopped the genocide in East Pakistan being conducted by the Pakistan Army, and brought freedom and democracy to an oppressed people. But if she intends to critically examine each and every such "humanitarian intervention", she will find probably not a single instance of pure humanitarianism on the part of governments, Western or otherwise. It is generally agreed that there were three reasons for India's intervention in 1971 - the endless flow of refugees into India, the desire to reduce Pakistan's power and the possibility of a two-front war by dividing the country, and the genocide. Only the last reason is worthy of humanitarianism.
Opponents of ALL military intervention can be described as pacifists - and I hold their position to be fundamentally immoral. To encourage the avoidance of war against a country that undertakes a genocide and refuses to discontinue it despite warnings, sanctions and other actions short of war - is an immoral position. It is to enable the genocide and to provide opportunities for similar future behaviour. For instance, the mistake of the West during the First Gulf War was not that it went to war - rather that it went to war and yet did not dethrone the mass murdering Saddam Hussein. There would then have been neither cause nor justification for the Second Gulf War.
But our pacifist Leftist friends, who once supported the Kurds, have nothing to say in favour of the necessity of overthrowing a dictator who gassed them while the West remained silent, or of the liberation of Kuwait and its people in 1991. Myopically, though rightly, they point out that the First Gulf War was fought primarily over oil, and therefore the positive outcomes of that conflict could, in their minds, safely be ignored.
Lastly, the author of the original piece claims that "liberals" have been "using the language of human rights" to counter Hindu nationalism. Read with the preceding paragraphs, there seems to be a toxic conflation between "left" and "liberal" here, for which the true liberals of the day are paying dearly. For liberalism, human rights were an end, not a means, because human beings were an end in themselves. Needless to say - the other conflation - between "liberals" and "communists" cannot stand at all. It would be ludicrous to describe those who paint Jadavpur or JNU in red as "liberals".
It is ridiculous to describe those who support or practice "cancel culture" both in India and the West, and who make apologies for religious extremism, as "liberals". There the matter stands. The Leftists who wear the liberal garb have enabled the Hindu nationalists in India and the Christian Right in the West to discredit liberalism itself.
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