{"id":15528,"date":"2012-06-17T00:12:52","date_gmt":"2012-06-17T04:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15528"},"modified":"2017-02-07T10:55:53","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T15:55:53","slug":"the-only-justifications-for-armed-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/17\/the-only-justifications-for-armed-intervention\/","title":{"rendered":"The only justifications for armed intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/06\/16\/george-jonas-on-syria-liberal-imperalism-by-any-other-name\/\" target=\"_blank\">George Jonas<\/a> on the arguments being trotted out for military intervention in Syria and other hotspots:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Repeating for the record what I\u2019ve written many times before, I think only three things justify resorting to arms: (A) self-defence, (B) treaty obligations, and (C) defending vital national interests, defined as interests that properly mandated governments on reasonable grounds honestly believe cannot be safeguarded or secured in other ways.<\/p>\n<p>As far as I can see, nothing compels or even excuses belligerency except national defence obligations. Humanitarian components are icing on the cake. \u201cResponsibility to protect\u201d strikes me a slogan of liberal imperialism; the battle cry of post-modern civilization\u2019s missionaries, the <em>casus belli<\/em> of self-appointed knights errant with an unquenchable thirst for running the world. Disguised as academics, adventurers, mercenaries, bureaucrats, <em>bien-pensants<\/em> and do-gooders, these 21st-century Don Quixotes consider themselves the new global aristocracy. They\u2019re the enlightened ones, expecting to become the anointed ones before long, and rule as functionaries of various supranational bodies \u2014 governmental, non-governmental, or merely mental \u2014 in what no doubt many believe is humanity\u2019s best interest.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, my main point was that the West\u2019s moment of going off the rails in foreign policy didn\u2019t come in the turbulent and error-prone 1960s, but in the seemingly level-headed 1950s, under the presidency of the popular wartime commander \u201cIke\u201d Eisenhower. Instead of letting America\u2019s allies, Britain, France and Israel, finish the job Egypt\u2019s military dictator, Colonel Nasser, started when he arbitrarily nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, Eisenhower\u2019s America, aided by Lester B. Pearson\u2019s Canada, rescued the aggressive nationalist. As Westerners, Eisenhower and Pearson may have expected credit; what they got was contempt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWeren\u2019t they allies? Westerners are people whose enmity is preferable to their friendship,\u201d was how a Libyan I interviewed commented some years later. I don\u2019t think we learned much since.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Jonas on the arguments being trotted out for military intervention in Syria and other hotspots: Repeating for the record what I\u2019ve written many times before, I think only three things justify resorting to arms: (A) self-defence, (B) treaty obligations, and (C) defending vital national interests, defined as interests that properly mandated governments on reasonable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,7,5,53],"tags":[432,1092,588,442,694,691],"class_list":["post-15528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-history","category-military","category-politics","tag-diplomacy","tag-dwightdeisenhower","tag-egypt","tag-ngos","tag-syria","tag-unitednations"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-42s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15528"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37193,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15528\/revisions\/37193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}