Jon Stenger

Professor Shirk

October 22, 2015

Humanitarian Intervention in Syria

            Looking back on the crisis in Syria and the results that have come from it, it seems fairly clear that more should have been done in terms of intervention into the conflict. Although many will argue that, given the uncertainty and our recent dealings with Iraq, that in the moment we should have not intervened, but in accordance to Ty Solomon’s article, I think intervention should have happened earlier given the severe damages and immense casualties caused by the more “conventional” weapons compared to the small use of WMD’s in Syria.

            In order to warrant intervention by the US based on the casualties caused by the more “conventional” weapons, the divide between the taboo of chemical weapons and normal bombs and guns has to be narrowed. People may argue that the horror attached to chemical weapons and their use is what changes people’s perception of them compared to normal weapons, but in the end the result is that same, even with more casualties being caused by the more normal weapons. In Syria, it has been estimated that around 100,000 people were killed before there was any use of chemical weapons. Compare that to deaths caused by the chemical weapons, and the ratio is 1 death by chemical weapon for every 100 other deaths. Even given the uncertainty about what was really happening in Syria, I think given this information it would have been enough to warrant some intervention earlier on.

            Furthermore, earlier intervention could have helped create stability in an incredibly unstable region. With the US pulling out of Iraq, a power vacuum had opened which opened up opportunities for other groups to rise up. By reestablishing ourselves into the Syrian conflict, we could have potentially shut down or prevented the rise of what has now become ISIS. Keeping a strong military presence in the region could help us secure our interests in the region, while also simultaneously stopping the merciless killing of thousands of civilians in Syria. Not only could it have benefited the US economically, but it could have improved our international image by helping to control some of the crimes against humanity.

            Given the dangers and damage caused by more “conventional” weapons, the US should have intervened earlier in terms of providing humanitarian help to the Syrians, and to help protect our interests in the region. The taboo surrounding chemical weapons, that assesses them as being “worse” than normal weapons is misguided because of the tremendous causalities caused by these normal weapons. Given the conflict that had been occurring for 2 years, and the casualties caused by this, the US should have gone in to prevent more damage to Syria and the region.

Bullies, Victims, and Bystanders - Schechter

Alex Schechter

International Relations

Blog Post #3

10/23/15

Bullies, Victims, and Bystanders

In my last blog post, I wrote about whether or not the armed conflict between the United States and Iraq, which began in 2003, was, “worth it” for the United States or not. We spent $1.1 Trillion during this conflict and did not even find any traces of weapons of mass destruction, which was our reason for being there. Therefore, I believe that this armed conflict was unnecessary and unsuccessful. Let’s take a step back though, and look at this conflict with a different perspective. While Saddam Hussein was in charge of Iraq at the time, Iraq was notorious for its violations of human rights. For example, there were secret police, there was torture, mass murders, rape, and also assassinations. The total number of deaths associated with all of these in Iraq is so high that the actual number is unknown. If the United States invaded Iraq solely with the purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein to protect the Iraqi people, then I think the “humanitarian intervention” of Iraq would therefore have been, “worth it.”

In 2002, the European Union stated that there had been no improvement in Iraq’s human rights crisis since 1979 when Hussein took power. This very statement criticized Saddam Hussein and his government for, “systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.” The resolution that the EU created demanded that Saddam immediately stop this. Citizens in Iraq could not live normal lives. For example, they could assemble together, only if it was to specifically support the Iraqi government. Police checkpoints made it so that they could not even travel across the country. The people of Iraq were being oppressed. Putting the weapons of mass destructions aside, I believe that the United States did have a right to overthrow Saddam Hussein only with the intent of trying to protect the people of Iraq.

Interestingly, the United States is often looked at by other countries when humanitarian intervention is needed somewhere in the world. When is it appropriate for the United States to step in with another nation’s turmoil and when is it not? Many Americans have found themselves asking this question since the failed invasion of Iraq. In regards to humanitarian intervention, there is definitely a dilemma when a decision to act or not is being made. Personally, I believe, with a nation as powerful as ours, we have the responsibility to protect, the responsibility to prevent, and also the responsibility to rebuild. If our country can help protect the population that is in danger, then I think we should do so.

The United States should intervene in some foreign affairs. We should not look at a scenario and believe, “not our people, not our problem.” I think that is selfish especially with the amount of power and potential we have to help others who are in need. Ask yourself what would have happened if the United States did not intervene during the Holocaust. Things could potentially be very different in our world today. I would hate for us to be a bystander in a situation where people are being hurt. In fact, being a bystander in a situation like this is almost as bad as being the, “bully” itself. We have the potential to make the world a better place through humanitarian intervention when human rights are violated.

Amara Rojo

October 22nd, 2015

International Relations 170

On Humanitarian Intervention

            In the case of whether or not to act in Syria, the popular consensus is that the United States and other Western nations should have acted. However, the reality is that in retrospect, anyone can say that more action should have been implemented, but only because of the current problems that escalated from not acting, such as ISIS and the migrant crisis. Because there is rarely any other motivator outside of the self interest of the state, most if not all humanitarian intervention is not for that purpose by definition per se; instead it is to mask and to hide the true intentions of the state offering aid.

The reaction of hindsight intervention is typical of any situation that becomes more of a problem than anticipated. Barriers of national sovereignty and the excuse of “there is a lack of evidence” allow countries that could intervene effectively to use this time to avoid the ongoing human rights violations. It is only once the violations have reached monumental public condemnation that a nation is even remotely inclined to resort to action. More than likely--unfortunately for the afflicted country--the real motivation behind a humanitarian intervention is not for the atrocities being committed, but rather for the interest of the country which is offering it's support. This can be for either economical interests, as was the case that is widely accepted for the US invasion into Iraq-- oil was the main incentive. There are security interests that can be attributed to certain cases as well, such as the way Arab nations are motivated to contain and destroy ISIS as its presence is a threat to more than just the local populations. 

Thus, a humanitarian intervention is hardly ever meant to do just that. If this were the case there would be more instances of active intervention early on. As we saw in Rwanda, the lack of economical interest in the country lead to the deprecating circumstances continuing for a longer period of time than otherwise would have occurred if there had been active interest in what the country had to offer. Given that there was little international coverage of the genocide, what the public did see did not move them enough to promote an active movement or response to garner their nations to aid in Rwanda's dire situation. However, although there was considerable coverage of the Syrian civil war, there were no true calls to action by many states. Furthermore, more countries were in favor of backing militants to resolve the issue rather than send in troops or other forms of intervention. This was a direct result of a poor execution of "humanitarian intervention" in Iraq. Now was a result of the international community avoiding early intervention, the result is undoubtably worse than what it could have been if nations had acted more directly.

A Note To My Annoying Facebook Friends

A Note To My Annoying Facebook Friends

My Facebook feed has become unbelievably annoying with people constantly sharing articles that beg the questions like: Why didn't we intervene in Darfur or why is America intervening in the Middle East? Both of these types of articles often have the conclusion that America is evil for only intervening in countries that have a resources like oil, while it lets other countries without valuable resources fall into chaos. However, the people who post these articles need to (first of all stop) learn that nations do not have friends or try to make friends, they just have interests, and these interests will be the driving factor in their agendas. However, these interests can be applied to situations like failing states for a mutually beneficial outcome that helps both the people of the failed state and the intervening super power.

Super powers will only intervene when it is beneficial for them to do so because it would be impractical to do otherwise. Therefore, the United States has foregone serious intervention in areas like Africa that lack the strategic advantages and/or resources that America needs, while it continually intervenes in the Middle East in failed or failing states to obtain and defend the oil resources and strategic advantages there. This may sound heartless, but it is the reality of humanitarian intervention in the 21st century, and it is not necessarily as bad as people think it to be. 

On the contrary, intervention is a very good thing, because if it is successful, the oppressed people of failed states will receive help, and the super power that helped them will have accomplished something in their foreign policy agenda, while bolstering their ethos in the global community. All parties involved, with the exception of the failed state's oppressive regime, will benefit from this situation.

Because it is impractical for super powers to intervene purely on the basis of humanitarian intervention, situations without incentives for super powers fall under the jurisdiction of the UN. The Rwandan genocide exemplifies this situation. There was no incentive for a powerful state to fix the issue, so the UN was sent in for a peace keeping operation, which failed. During peace keeping operations, the UN forces are extremely restricted, thus diluting their power. As a result of this, UN operations fail the vast majority of the time, making the situation in the failed state worse, in addition to wasting large sums of money. 

Instead of attacking super powers like the US for intervening in failed states to accomplish their agendas, my annoying Facebook friends should share equally annoying articles (if they even exist) about how the UN fails to solve any of the worlds problems due to the absence of any hard power in the organization. In this situation, I would still be annoyed, but at least they would be identifying the real problem in this situation 

-Soder

Humanitarianism in Haiti

           
            Last year in my French 101 class, my professor played a documentary about the awful earthquake that struck Haiti on January 10, 2010. This documentary delved into the complex issues that the aftermath of the earthquake had for the Haitian people. More specifically, the documentary described the problems that the Haitian government was facing when it came to reconstruction efforts in the country. Many countries all around the globe like the United States and organizations such as the United Nations tried to help the Haitians repair their decimated country through humanitarian aid. This included money donations, home and school reconstructions, food donations, and more. While I believe that humanitarian action is incredibly important when a disaster strikes a nation, I also think that the aid that was given to the Haitians has actually had unintended negative effects on the country’s recovery from the natural disaster.

            
             As more and more foreign organizations and countries tried to help the Haitian people, it only created more problems for the nation. One example is that groups of people that were predominantly white were building new housing developments and teaching in schools, however all of those jobs were going to the wealthy white volunteers and not to the people who actually needed those jobs- the Haitians. This was, and continues to be, problematic because if willing and able Haitian citizens couldn’t get jobs because the jobs were going to volunteers instead of them, money wasn’t circulating through the Haitian economy. This means that the economy had no chance of growing because people didn’t have an income that they could buy goods and services with. This ties in with the colonialism aspect or humanitarianism that we talked about in class. A common criticism of humanitarian acts are that it can be seen as colonialism. This could definitely be seen throughout Haiti’s earthquake relief. One example was how after the earthquake, there was a new presidential election in Haiti. However, the election was heavily tampered with, and Bill Clinton and other presidents from other nations were donating money and supporting candidates in Haiti that they wanted to win, instead of letting the Haitian people vote and decide who the best fit for their struggling nation was. Even though the US wasn’t overtly trying to control the Haitians, the money that we donated to the candidates that we wanted to win is an example of how we got involved in an election that we had really no place in. Our attempts to shape Haiti’s government might have come from a place of good intentions, but it really ended up hurting the Haitian people, and it heavily tampered with their new election which has caused a lot of political turmoil in Haiti till this day.

            
            I think humanitarian efforts are extremely important when a natural disaster or a domestic disaster strikes a nation that doesn’t know how to deal with the problems. However, I believe that the people of the nation have to have a say in the restoration of their country and be able to make choices about their politics and their economy by themselves. 

Snyder- Humanitarian Intervention

Caroline Snyder

INST 170

Professor Shirk

22 October 2015

Humanitarian Intervention

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/14/opinion/opinion-syria-intervention-u-s-politics/index.html

            After learning about humanitarian intervention in class, I was curious about why in some cases the United States does intervene and in others it does not. Humanitarian intervention has a very hopeful connotation. We consider anything with the word “humanitarian” in it to be a positive thing. So why wouldn’t we do something that involves being a “humanitarian”, someone who is concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare? In international relations. It is not that simple, unfortunately. In my opinion, the most important factors that go into deciding whether or not the United States should intervene is the amount of true information that a state has about the offending state, the goal of the intervention and public opinion.

            With the most recent case being Syria, why did the United States choose not to help its citizens? According to the above article, the two main factors that the U.S. takes into consideration when making a decision on whether to involve itself or not, are public opinion and Congressional partisanship. Domestic support is huge in all arenas of foreign policy.

Legislators “who push for more humanitarian missions can increase support for such missions by raising public outcry for action” (Hildebrandt). However, the public’s voice is not always enough in these cases. If there is a divided government with one party in control of the executive branch and the other in control of either the House or Senate or both, it is harder to get things accomplished. “Humanitarian intervention is most likely when the U.S. president enjoys a majority in Congress” (Hildebrandt). Presidents have been able to push humanitarian intervention without the approval of Congress though. As American politics turns more and more into a power struggle between the two parties, the less the United States is able to help other countries. Domestic opinion will have to be the leading force in the fight for humanitarian intervention if this occurs.

            I agree with all of the articles points about domestic support. Since democracy is based around the idea of the “voice of the people”, it is imperative that the government take into account what the people want. Information is also important because it can either lead a state in the right direction that is helpful and humanitarian or pointless and only hurts the country more. Facts are a necessity. It is, however, very hard to get a hold of them in situations when “mass atrocity” is occurring, Facts guarantee that a legitimate plan, that will actually be helpful, can be made and with plans, come goals. Having a goal for a humanitarian intervention are, in my opinion, is the most vital thing to take into consideration. Simply, “we want to make sure that this country’s citizens are safe”, is not enough. There is no way to measure safety. Having a laid out plan that includes specific goals for the humanitarian intervention, that can be measured or results can be shown, helps to gain international support. Goals and plans that are used in cases of humanitarian invention can be evaluated to see what did and did not work. This can be used with future events. I think that when the leaders of states have a goal with humanitarian intervention, it helps to put the worries of the public and international community at ease while gaining support from both areas as well. This also shows that there are good intentions involved which should be the main intent.