Buchanan Ethics of Revolution

8/13/2019 Buchanan Ethics of Revolution

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The Ethics of Revolution andIts Implications for the Ethics

of Intervention

ALLEN BUCHANAN

Logically, there should be an elaboratejus ad bellumandjus in bello

for revolutionary war, but development of such a doctrine has never

been seriously attempted.1

We may be entering a new Age of Revolution.2 Revolutions have recently

occurred across North Africa, while the brutal revolutionary conflict in

Syria continues. The recent flowering of just war theory has not yet

explicitly extended its reach to revolutions, perhaps due to a suspicion

that revolutions present ethical issues that are not amenable to a tradi-

tion of theorizing that focuses on conflicts between states, rather than onthose in which (some of) the people of a state seek to overthrow the

government. Of course, one major element of an ethics of revolution has

occupied a central role in Western political thought: Locke, for example,

has a good deal to say about what qualifies as a just cause for revolution,

and the idea of just cause is a key component ofjus ad bellumdoctrine.

The question of whether the other components ofjus ad bellum theories

developed for interstate wars apply to the quite different situation of

I am grateful to Cecile Fabre, Christopher Finlay, Jeff Holzgrefe, Mattias Iser, Robert O.

Keohane, Russell Powell, Uwe Steinhoff, Bas Van der Vossen, Lorenzo Zucca, and

two anonymous reviewers for this journal for their helpful comments on previous drafts

of this article.

. William V. OBrien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger,

), p. .

. I will use the term revolution, in what might be called its broader sense, to mean

the attempt to overthrow an existing regime and replace it with a new one, by violent or at

least unconstitutional means. Sometimes the term is used in a narrower sense, according

to which the aim of those who seek to overthrow the existing regime is to replace itwith a fundamentally different type of political order. What I say in this article applies

to both cases. Furthermore, as will become clear, I am focusing on cases of revolution

that involve violence.

Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Philosophy& Public Affairs, no.


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revolution has not been addressed; nor has a jus in bello theory beendeveloped for revolutionary conflicts.3

Both the humanitarian law of war and contemporary just war theory

do, however, address one issue that a comprehensive ethics of revolu-

tion, in itsjus in bellopart, should include: namely, the ethics of irregu-

lar combatants, fighters who do not wear identifying insignia and who

mingle with the civilian population. But as I shall argue, developing a

plausible doctrine on that issue would comprise only one small part of a

comprehensive ethics of revolution.

Similarly, although recent work on the ethics of terrorism (and coun-

terterrorism) clearly has implications for thejus in bello part of an ethics

of revolutionssince revolutionaries often resort to terrorismit falls

far short of a thoroughgoing investigation of the ethics of revolution. For

one thing, the focus of the literature on the ethics of terrorism has been

acts of violence against noncombatants intended to influence the behav-

ior of those in political power (by causing fear or terror in their constitu-

encies, who will then exert pressure on their leaders to change course).

. Cecile Fabre has begun to develop an account of the ethics of civil wars, a category

that encompasses revolution as I have defined it. Her focus thus far has been on whether

nonstate individuals or groups in civil wars may use modes of fighting that are usually

understood to be prohibited in traditional just war theory. She has briefly discussed the

ethics of conscripting soldiers to fight in cases of humanitarian intervention, but she has

not so far discussed the other kinds of morally problematic actions often undertaken by

revolutionaries who are the focus of this article. Cecile Fabre, Cosmopolitan War(Oxford:

Oxford University Press,), p. . Christopher J. Finlay has explored the question of

whether nonstate actors, including revolutionaries, can satisfy the traditional just war

requirement of competent authority, but he has not engaged the particular moral issues

facing revolutionaries discussed in this article. Christopher J. Finlay, Legitimacy and Non-

State Actors,Journal of Political Philosophy():. Mattias Iser argues that the

violation of civil and political rights can be a just cause for revolution, but does not focus on

the problems of revolutionaryjus in bellothat are the subject of this article. Mattias Iser,

draft paper presented at conference on Justice and Violence, Frankfurt, May, . A

number of other valuable contributions, including the following, explore thejus ad bellum

part of the ethics of revolution or the ethics of intervention in revolution, but do not

consider the subject matter of the present article: Arthur Isak Applbaum, Forcing a People

to Be Free, Philosophy& Public Affairs (): ; Ned Dobos, A State to Call

Their Own: Insurrection, Intervention, and the Communal Integrity Thesis, Journal ofApplied Philosophy():; Katrin Flikshuh, Reason, Right, and Revolution: Kant

and Locke, Philosophy & Public Affairs (): ; Adil Ahmad Haque, The

Revolution and Criminal Law, Criminal Law and Philosophy (): ; and Matthew

Noah Smith, Rethinking Sovereignty, Rethinking Revolution, Philosophy& Public Affairs

(): .

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But revolutionaries frequently use violence and sometimes outright actsof terrorism against other noncombatantsnamely, other oppressed

peoplenot to change the behavior of the regime, but to increase par-

ticipation in the struggle or to eliminate rivals for leadership of the revo-

lution.4 Such acts are morally problematic to say the least, but to my

knowledge they have not been considered in the recent literature on

terrorism. This omission is both a deficiency in theorizing about the

ethics of terrorism and a failure to engage with an important element of

the ethics of revolution.

Writing on the ethics of humanitarian intervention has tended to

focus on interventions to stop genocides or large-scale killings, not on

revolutions. It is true that some supporters of the United Statesled inva-

sion of Iraq in claimed that it was justified as a case of forcible

democratization, a democratic revolution from without, as it were (and

that the absence of weapons of mass destruction was therefore irrelevant

to the justification of the war). But they did not argue, and could not

plausibly have argued, that the invasion was an effort to support a revo-

lution, because no revolution was underway at the time of the invasion.This is not to say that current theorizing about the ethics of humani-

tarian intervention has no implications for revolution. A popular stance

on the ethics of humanitarian intervention (in itsjus ad bellumpart) is

that it is not justified unless there is large-scale violence, and this stric-

ture could be understood to apply to revolutionary conflicts as well as

ethnonational conflicts of the sort that have been the focus of the

humanitarian intervention literature. Nonetheless, neither contempo-

rary just war theories, nor theories of the ethics of terrorism, nor theoriesof the ethics of humanitarian intervention have engaged seriously with

the ethics of revolution considered as a legitimate object of normative

analysis in its own right.

. Revolutionaries often commit violence against suspected informers or others who

betray the revolutionary struggle. In some cases, they also punish members of the

oppressed public who engage in what the revolutionaries consider to be antisocial behav-

ior (such as drug-selling and prostitution), on the grounds that the people must be purifiedif they are to be fit for the revolutionary struggle or the new era it is supposed to bring

about. See, for example, the execution of the pimp in the classic film The Battle of Algiers.

Here, too, the problem of legitimacy looms large. The key question is whether, in spite of

the fact that the revolutionaries do not comprise a legitimate agent or institution, they can

be justified in taking such actions.

The Ethics of Revolution and Its

Implications for the Ethics of

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In this article, I begin a systematic exploration of the ethicsof revolution, focusing first on the ethics of those who typically

initiate revolutions, whom I will refer to as The Aspiring Revolutionary

Leadership (ARL for brevity). Then I will consider the ethics of

intervention in revolutions.

In the first part of the article, I argue that in the cases in which the Just

Cause Requirement is most clearly and fully satisfied, structural features

of the revolutionary situation will often make it extremely difficult or

impossible for revolutionaries to satisfy reasonable jus in bello prin-

ciples, while at the same time satisfying the jus ad bellum Reasonable

Likelihood of Success Requirement. My initial disturbing conclusion in

this first part of the article is that it is seldom morally justifiable to initiate

revolution in the very cases in which the cause for revolting is most

clearly and fully just. Second, I then argue that when the initiation of

revolution is not morally permissible, participation in a revolution that

has already begun can nonetheless be justified. So, a third conclusion

will be that it is unhelpful to ask whether a revolution was justified.

Instead, the moral assessment must be disaggregated, distinguishingbetween two subjects of evaluation: the initiation of the revolution and

its continuance. Paradoxical though it may seem, there is nothing incon-

sistent in acknowledging that the actions by which a revolution is

initiatedand which mustbe performed if the revolution is to have a

significant chance of succeedingare morally unjustifiable, while at the

same time asserting that the revolution is morally justifiable, where this

means that the continuation of the revolutionary struggle is morally

permissible. Next, I argue that on further analysis some of the prima faciemorally impermissible tactics ARLs often employin particular, some

uses of coercion against fellow oppressed people to overcome regime-

imposed obstacles to collective action against the regimeare morally

justifiable, while others are not.

The second part of the article uses the first parts findings concerning

the ethics of revolution to explore the ethics of intervention in revolu-

tion. There I argue for three main conclusions. First, even if the initiation

of a revolution is severely tainted by immoral actions perpetrated by the

ARL, it may nonetheless be morally justifiable for third parties to inter-

vene in support of it.

Second, given a proper understanding of the tactics frequently

employed by the ARLand that they often must use if revolution is to



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have a significant chance of succeedingthe practical value of twoseemingly plausible principles of intervention turns out to be much less

than has been thought. Both the principle that intervention should not

occur until there is widespread support for a revolution (Mills Principle)

and the principle that intervention should not occur without the

consent or approval of the people (the Consent Principle) figure

prominently in the contemporary literature on the ethics of intervention.

Both still enjoy considerable popularity, though both have been criti-

cized. I will advance novel criticisms of them, showing that proponents

of these principles have failed to see that the behavior of the ARL will

frequently undercut the rationale for these principles. I conclude that

Mills Principle and the Consent Principle were designed for a world

quite different from that in which revolutions typically occur, in blissful

ignorance of the grim facts about revolutions in our world. Finally,

I then argue that there is a reason in favor of early intervention that

has not been appreciated: in principle it can avoid the spiral of coercion

that occurs as the regime tries to thwart the ARLs attempt to solve

the collective action problem of mass participation by raising the costsof participation in the revolution and the ARL responds by increasing

coercive pressure on the masses to participate by raising the costs

of not participating.

My methodology in this article is distinctive: I approach the ethics of

revolution by focusing on the problems that the initiators of revolution

typically face, drawing on relevant social-science literature, including

historical work on actual revolutions, and also on the literature on col-

lective action problems. Then, instead of attempting to apply a theory ofintervention developed for other sorts of cases (in particular, interven-

tion to stop massive ethnonational violence), I draw out the implications

of a factually informed investigation of the ethics of revolution for devel-

oping an ethics of intervention in revolutions.

I. PROBLEMS THE ASPIRING REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP MUST SOLVE

A. The Applicability of Just War Principles to Revolutionary Violence

Before identifying the problems the ARL faces, I will assume for purposes

of my argument something that I trust is relatively uncontroversial,

namely, that at least some of the widely recognized principles of just war

theory apply to violence contemplated by the ARL. These include the



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following requirements: (a) that there must be a just cause for initiatingviolent revolution (the Just Cause Requirement); (b) that there must be

some reasonable prospect that the revolution will succeed in its major

aims, at least those referred to in the characterization of the just cause

(the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Requirement); (c) that the vio-

lence used by the revolutionaries must be proportional to the aims they

seek to achieve, especially those referred to in the characterization of the

just cause (the Proportionality Requirement); and (d) that the revolu-

tionaries may not deliberately target noncombatants (the Discrimina-

tion Requirement). I will also limit my discussion to cases in which the

Just Cause Requirement is most clearly and fully satisfied, cases in which

the regime the revolutionaries seek to overthrow is what I shall call a

Resolute Severe Tyranny: a regime that persistently violates some of the

basic human rights of large segments of the population, is extremely

authoritarian (that is, wholly undemocratic), and is utterly impervious to

efforts to reform it.

I assume that the target of the ARL is a Resolute Severe Tyranny in

order to show that when revolution is most morally unproblematic fromthe standpoint of the Just Cause Requirement, the ARL typically faces a

daunting dilemma: they can choose to utilize highly morally problematic

means of pursuing the revolutionary project, taking actions that appear

to involve serious violations of the rights of their fellow victims of

oppression in order to satisfy the Reasonable Likelihood of Success

Requirement, or they can refrain from taking such actions at the cost of

violating the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Requirement. My point

will be that even if the ARL refrains entirely from terrorism as conven-tionally understood, that is, violence that deliberately violates the Dis-

crimination Requirement with the aim of changing regime behavior,

they will often face a stark choice: the use of morally impermissible

coercion against the people they seek to liberate or failure.

Another reason for focusing on cases in which the Just Cause Require-

ment is most clearly and fully satisfied is straightforward. History sug-

gests that the outcome of revolutions is highly uncertain or, perhaps

more accurately, that there is a significant probability that the outcome

will be bad. To put it crudely: revolution is highly risky business, not to be

undertaken except in extreme cases of bad government and strong evi-

dence that the government is not liable to reform. My aim will be to show

that it is generally highly risky not just in the sense that good outcomes



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are not very probable, but also in the sense that those who initiate revo-lutions are at great moral risk regarding the tactics they are likely to use,

if they are committed to the success of the revolution.

Although the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Principle is familiar in

traditional just war theory, it is nonetheless problematic, and not just

because the notion of reasonable likelihood of success is inherently

vague. In cases in which people are resisting an evil aggressor or an

extremely tyrannical government, we may think that their willingness to

fight against steep odds is commendable, indeed heroic, not wrong. My

surmise is that this intuition is strongest in cases in which the costs of

failure will fall mainly on those who elect to fight in spite of the likelihood

that they will fail, rather than on others who have not assumed this risk.

In most cases, those who launch a revolution against a Resolute Severe

Tyranny can expect that innocent people will suffer, and given that this is

the case, they have a strong obligation, other things being equal, to do

what they can to ensure that the struggle is successful. More specifically,

it would be irresponsible to launch a struggle that will predictably harm

innocent people and then proceed to conduct the struggle in a way thatmakes it very unlikely to succeed.

B. Compensating for Inferior Military Capacity

At the beginning of the struggle, at least, revolutionaries in the modern

context often are at a severe disadvantage in terms of military capability

relative to the regime. The sophistication and expense of modern mili-

tary equipment and the training needed to use it effectively have greatlyexacerbated this disparity. The ARL often concludes, quite reasonably,

that it can only hope to mount successful attacks on the regime if it

resorts to nonconventional modes of attack, where this includes attack-

ing soft regime targets such as civilian administrative agencies or non-

military facilities, and doing so without wearing uniforms or insignia so

that the revolutionary fighters can mingle with the general population.

The same recognition of the limitations imposed by the disparity of

military capacity that encourages these sorts of acts may also lead the

ARL to commit outright acts of terrorism against the regime, if terrorism

is defined as the use of lethal violence against noncombatants with the

aim of evoking terror or fear that will cause the regime to change its

behavior to suit the political agenda of those who perpetrate the



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violence. Because the morally problematic character of using terrorismor nonconventional modes of attack to compensate for the disparity of

military capacity has been much discussed in the contemporary litera-

ture on terrorism and the jus in bello part of just war theory, I will say

nothing more about them here. Instead, I will argue that even if the ARL

refrains from terrorism and nonconventional modes of attack, in many

cases it cannot reasonably hope to succeed unless it undertakes other

highly morally problematic actions.

C. Achieving Coordination by Consolidating Leadership

A revolutions prospects for success often depend upon effective leader-

ship, because success requires coordination and coordination requires

leadership. But achieving effective leadership by ethically permissible

means will often be very difficult if not practically impossible, at least

under the highly constraining conditions in which the Just Cause

Requirement is most clearly and fully satisfied, that is, under conditions

of Resolute Severe Tyranny. The regimes behavior will generally not be

compatible with conditions for the peaceful resolution of disputes as to

who should lead the revolution. Freedom of assembly, expression, and

political association will be absent, and no open, free deliberations on

the part of the public as to who should fill revolutionary leadership roles

will be possible. Even worse, the regime may preemptively murder, exile,

or imprison individuals who are likely to be identified by the people

as appropriate leaders.

Under these conditions, it is not surprising that struggles amongrival aspirants to leadership are often characterized by violence,

betrayal, and manipulation of the populations beliefs and emotions.5

My point here is not to condone such ruthless competition for leadership

by pleading necessity but merely to indicate why one should expect it to

occur. Sometimesprobably infrequentlyrevolutions can achieve

some early successes without coalescing around a leadership, but as

. There is a wealth of historical examples, from lethal struggles among the Directorateof the French Revolution and Stalins murder of the Old Bolsheviks, to Ho Chi Minhs

liquidation of rival nationalist groups during the struggle against the French. For a valuable

comparative work that emphasizes the importance of establishing leadership, see Theda

Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).



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events in Syria suggest, lack of leadership may make it difficult or impos-sible for the revolutionaries to prevail against a resolute regime with

an effective leadership.

To summarize: Successful revolution often requires not just wide-

spread participation, but also coordinated participation, and that typi-

cally requires leadership. Yet achieving leadership by ethical means

may be difficult if not impossible, at least under conditions of Resolute

Severe Tyranny, that is, those conditions in which the Just Cause

Requirement is most clearly and fully satisfied. To be sure, ruthless

competition for leadership in actual revolutions is not always driven

solely or even mainly by the need to solve the coordination problem; in

some cases, it is a matter of the pure self-interest in power. But it

is nonetheless important to understand that the typical structure of

the revolutionary situation under Resolute Severe Tyranny (the best

situation from the standpoint of the Just Cause Requirement) creates

strong pressures for morally impermissible solutions to the problem

of coordinated participation.

D. Achieving the Public Good of Widespread Participation

Revolutions are typically small minority affairs at the beginning, but if

they are to succeed they must garner widespread support among the

general population. Active participation by the majoritymay not be nec-

essary (and is probably rarely attained), but if the revolution is to

succeed, significant numbers of people must participate and many must

at least refrain from actively supporting the regime.Even if most of the population endorses the goal of revolution, many

may refrain from participating due to familiar obstacles to collective

action for securing public goods. The difficulty is most readily grasped

if we simplify, for the moment, by assuming that people are motivated

exclusively by self-interest. Each oppressed person may reason as

follows: either enough others will participate to make the revolution

succeed or not, regardless of whether I participate; but my participa-

tion is a cost to me (indeed, in the early stages, the cost may be ones

life); so, regardless of what others may do, the rational thing for me to

do is not to participate.

The collective action problem remains once we jettison the unrealistic

assumption of purely rationally self-interested individuals, for three



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reasons. First, even if people have strong moral motivations, these aretypically constrained by self-interest or interests in the welfare of those

near and dear to them in ways that inhibit participation in the revolu-

tion. Hence, if an individual reasonably doubts whether his personal

contribution to the revolution will be critical but knows that by partici-

pating he greatly endangers himself or his family, he may refrain from

participation. Second, even if an individual does not wish to free ride on

the participation of others, hoping that enough of them will participate

to achieve the goal of revolution, he may not be willing to participate

without assurance that others will do so. He may think (not unreason-

ably) that the costs one is obligated to bear are limited by a requirement

of reciprocity or fairness. Third, an individual may require assurance

of the participation of others as a condition of his own participation

not as a matter of reciprocity or fairness, but because he recognizes

that unless a threshold of participation is met, his participation will be a

dead loss to himself (and his loved ones) and to the cause of the revolu-

tion.6 Where the regime has fomented divisions among the population

(along ethnic or religious grounds), effective mobilization may be allthe more difficult.

My claim is not that there is, strictly speaking, a paradox of rational-

ity here, that is, that it is irrational for individuals to participate volun-

tarily in revolution. Rather, it is that there are often significant obstacles

to achieving voluntarily the collective action needed for revolution, and

that consideration of costs and benefits, broadly understood as to

include undeserved harms to those one cares about, often plays a sig-

nificant role in this being the case.At this point it might be objected that if individuals are rational and do

care about justice or about the general welfare, they will participate in a

revolution against a Resolute Severe Tyranny, because they will reason

as follows: It is true that the chance that my participating will be critical

for the success of the revolution is very small, but the expected benefit of

my participating will nonetheless be large, because if the revolution suc-

ceeds, so many people will benefit. This kind of reasoning is plausible,

. Mancur Olson,The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ); Gordon Tullock, The Rebels

Dilemma,Public Choice:; Allen Buchanan, Revolutionary Motivation and Ratio-

nality,Philosophy& Public Affairs (): .



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and may in fact motivate some people, under circumstances in whichthe costs to the individual of participating are not very high. However, as

I shall explain in more detail shortly, the costs of participation are not

fixed: the regime can raise them by increasing the penalties for partici-

pants and their families and close associates.

There is another factor that weakens the appeal to large-scale ben-

efits: as I have already emphasized, there are many ways a revolution can

go wrong, so the possible outcomes are not limited to continuation of the

status quo of oppression or a successfulrevolution. Consequently, in

considering whether to participate, the individual must take into

account not only the (very small) probability that his participation is a

necessary condition for overthrowing the regime. He must discount that

expected benefit by a sober appreciation of the fact that merely over-

throwing the current regime may not be a significant improvement, if an

improvement at all. So the problem of collective action does not disap-

pear once we take into account the fact that if the revolution succeeds,

many will benefit.

There are two morally problematic strategies for solving the collec-tive action problem that appear to be frequently used by ARLs. First,

the ARL may use coercion to tip the balance of incentives toward par-

ticipation. It is not just states that conscript soldiers: revolutionary

groups do so as well. Without conscription, the ARL may not be able to

solve the collective action problem of widespread participation and the

revolution may consequently fail. The coercive techniques for con-

scription can range from summary executions or mutilations to levying

fines or confiscating property to barring nonparticipants from food andother emergency relief.7

A second strategy that ARLs frequently employ to solve the collective

action problem is to manipulate the emotions of the people. A favorite

technique for doing this is to provoke the regime to violence against

innocent peoplefor example, killing peaceful demonstrators or killing

innocent hostages in reprisal for irregular attacks by the revolutionaries.

. Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,), p.. Weinsteins masterful analysis focuses on explain-

ing the conditions under which excessive violence toward civilians occurs. He argues

that it is the organizational characteristics of revolutionary groups that determine whether

they will engage in violence that is above and beyond what is required to send a signal of

the costs of defection [or nonparticipation] (p. ).



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The expectation is that if the regime engages in such actions, many peoplewill mobilize against it: their extreme emotional response of anger or

indignation will override whatever calculations of costs and benefits

might have hitherto prevented them from participating. Here is one

example among many. In the s, the militant Zionist Irgun engaged in

a campaign of violence. . . . Menachem Begin, the Irguns leader, believed

inflicting sufficient casualties would compel the British to either with-

draw or adopt repressive measures that wouldradicalize theJewishpopu-

lation in Mandate Palestine.8 On the face of it, this widely used technique

of mobilization seems doubly wrong: it not only manipulates peoples

emotions to cause them to undertakerisks of participation they otherwise

would not choose to shoulder, but also does so by encouraging the regime

to engage in indiscriminate violence. The goal of forcing the regime to

reveal just how brutal and unreformable it is, of course, is a laudable one.

But achieving it by provoking the regime to murder innocent people is

deeply problematic.

Another technique for manipulating sentiments of anger and indig-

nation to stimulate participation is for the ARL to circulate false or exag-gerated reports of atrocities committed by the regime. For example,

there is strong evidence that Hamas deliberately exaggerates deaths of

Palestinians due to Israeli military actions.9 Similarly, in an earlier revo-

lution which many Americans think of as wholly admirable, revolution-

aries deliberately fostered false reports that the British were encouraging

their Indian allies to rape and kill white women along the frontier, and

this appears to have played a role in mobilizing the militia that harassed

Burgoyne in his march southward from Lake Champlain and ultimatelydefeated his army near Saratoga.10

Revolutionaries also sometimes use coercion, indeed sometimes out-

right terror tactics, to dissuade people from participating in the regimes

efforts to suppress the revolution. Consider, for example, the notorious

. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Eric S. Dickson, The Propaganda of the Deed:

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization, American Journal of Political Science

(): .. Yaakov Katz, World Duped by Hamas Death Count,Jerusalem Post, February,

,


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massacre of several thousand counterrevolutionaries in the Vendeeduring the French Revolution.11 The surrendered counterrevolution-

aries, many of whom were noncombatants, were put aboard specially

constructed barges which were then sunk. This logistically complex

affair was not a crime of passion committed in the heat of battle; it was

almost certainly an act motivated at least in part by the desire to deter

others from opposing the revolution.

E. Supreme Emergency?

At this point it might be objected that there is no genuine moral

dilemma for the ARL. If the regime they seek to overthrow is a Resolute

Severe Tyranny, then what Walzer calls the Supreme Emergency Excep-

tion tojus in bello constraints applies.12 Jus in belloconstraints are not

absolute; they may be set aside when doing so is necessary for the

defeat of an extremely heinous enemy. With good reason, Walzer is

hesitant about the Emergency Exception, suggesting that perhaps only

the Nazi regime would qualify.There are two reasons why recourse to the Emergency Exception

cannot relieve the tension between the ARLs commitment to achieve

successful revolution and the commitment to widely accepted con-

straints on the conduct of armed struggles, even in the case of Resolute

Severe Tyranny. First, a regime can qualify as a Resolute Severe Tyranny

without reaching the depths of evil of Walzers one illustrative case, the

Third Reich. In other words, there can be a clear and compelling Just

Cause for revolution against regimes that are not that thoroughly evil.

Second, and more importantly, in the case of the Third Reich, the evil

could not be averted by not resisting. The Nazi project was to annihilate

millions of people (not just Jews, but also a projected thirty million

. Reynard Secher,A French Genocide: The Vendee (South Bend, Ind.: University of

Notre Dame Press, ). For other examples of revolutionaries using terror against civil-

ians to deter them from supporting the regime or to cause them to be neutral in the

conflict, see the following: Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, (New

York: New York Review Books,), pp.; Cynthia McClintock,Revolutionary Move-

ments in Latin America: El Salvadors FMLN and Perus Shining Path(Washington, D.C.:United States Institute of Peace Press, ), pp.; and Martha Crenshaw, The Effec-

tiveness of Terrorism in the Algerian War, in Terrorism in Context, ed. Martha Crenshaw

(Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, ), pp. , (which includes

references to terrorism by Viet Cong).

. Michael Walzer,Just and Unjust Wars(New York: Basic Books, ), p. .



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citizens of Poland and the Soviet Union) and to enslave millions more. Incontrast, those who are subject to a Resolute Severe Tyranny typically

can avoid annihilation or slavery simply by not resisting. My conclusion,

then, is that not all cases of Resolute Severe Tyranny plausibly count

as Supreme Emergencies and that consequently the conflict between

the commitment to successful revolution and respect for jus in

belloconstraints persists.

F. Peaceful Alternatives?

The vast social-science and game-theoretic literature indicates that

there is a range of solutions to collective action problems, some of which

do not involve morally problematic actions, and that the solutions that

are available depend upon the particular context in which the collective

action problem arises. No serious student of this literature would assert,

however, that all collective action problems, much less those facing the

ARL in the context of Resolute Severe Tyranny, can be solved in morally

acceptable ways. Further, even when less morally problematic methodsfor solving the widespread participation problem are available, their

likelihood of success may be significantly lower than is the case with the

use of coercion or manipulation of emotions.

My point, however, is not that successful revolution always requires

wrongful manipulation of sentiments or coercion for the sake of achiev-

ing widespread participation, but that there is good reason to believe

that it often will, or at least that it will often not be unreasonable for the

ARL to conclude that if it refrains from coercion or manipulation ofthe people the revolution is likely to fail. The more severe and ruthless

the tyranny, and hence the stronger the just cause, the greater the costs

of participation in the revolution will be and the more likely it will be that

manipulation and coercion will be required to get people to participate

in spite of the costs. The sad truth is that the only thing capable of

canceling out the regimes threat of coercion against revolutionaries and

their families may be a more credible threat of coercion by the ARL.

My suggestion, then, is that the disturbing tendency of ARLs to engage

in immoral actions toward their fellow victims of oppression is best

explained as being a function of the structure of the situation the ARL

finds itself in. My claim is not that all ARLs succumb to the powerful

temptations that structure createsI am not assuming structural



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determinism. Rather, my hypothesis is that, given the paucity of morallypermissible effective solutions to the problems ARLs face under condi-

tions of Severe Tyranny, more scrupulous ARLs are likely to either drop

out of the competition or be weeded out by it or simply fail to be effective

leaders. To borrow an analogy from evolutionary biology, in those very

cases in which the Just Cause Requirement is most patently and fully

satisfied, there will be strong selective pressures for the emergence of an

ARL that is exceptionally ruthless, and willing and able to disregard even

the most basic moral constraints.

There are, of course, a fewI think very fewcases of successful

revolutions with leaders who seem to have had relatively clean hands.

Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi come to mind. However, the

circumstances in which they led are far from typical.13 Gandhis struggle

took place in a world in which colonialism was increasingly widely

condemnedand clearly in declineand his opponents were not ruth-

less dictators like the current leader of Syria or the former leader of Libya,

but the leaders of liberal democracy that for some time had been com-

mitted to eventual Indian independence. Mandela benefited from strongexternal support (especially in terms of the disinvestment campaign) not

only because of the triumph of anticolonialism but also because the

regime he opposed was one of institutionalized racism. He thus had

good reason to believe that the overthrow of Apartheid could be

achieved eventually without recourse to large-scale coercion or manipu-

lation of the non-white majority. In addition, there might, perhaps, be

reasonable disagreement as to whether either the British Raj or Apart-

heid qualified as Severe Tyrannies (they clearly were not Resolute SevereTyrannies). The key point, however, is that many revolutions, perhaps

most, do not benefit from powerful external support or from having

opponents who are unwilling to use the most ruthless means to preserve

their power. None of this is to detract from the tremendous accomplish-

ments of these two leaders; it is only to avoid the fallacy of concluding

that if they could make a successful revolution without using seriously

immoral tactics, others can as well.

Suppose one grants, for now, the conclusion toward which my analy-

sis thus far appears to lead: where the Just Cause Requirement is most

. Whether the African National Congress engaged in wrongful violence toward

members of the Inkatha Freedom Party is another matter.



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clearly and fully satisfied, the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Require-ment will probably not be satisfied unless the ARL commits serious

wrongs against those it hopes to liberate from Resolute Severe Tyranny.

If that conclusion is sound, then, paradoxically, initiating a revolution in

those conditions in which, intuitively, revolution is most justified is very

likely to be morally unjustified. This would be a genuine paradox

indeed, a contradictionif revolutions could only be justified if their

initiations were. But that is not the case. It is perfectly consistent to

acknowledge that the initiation of a revolution was not justified, but then

go on to affirm that its continuation was justified.

Suppose we have a situation in which, for reasons articulated above,

the ARL initiated the revolution by committing wrongs against the

people it seeks to liberate. It perpetrated violence against rivals for the

revolutions leadership for the sake of securing effective coordination

and used a combination of coercion and manipulation of emotions by

provoking massacres of innocents by the regime to secure widespread

participation. Nonetheless, it may be justifiable for others to participate

in the revolution.To see why this is so, consider the case of ordinary people who are

coerced or emotionally manipulated by the ARL into participating in the

revolution. By hypothesis, they have a morally commendable reason to

participate: they will be helping to overthrow a Resolute Severe Tyranny.

If the coercion or manipulation has succeeded in mobilizing large

numbers of people, this will help satisfy the Likelihood of Success

Requirement. The fact that they came to be mobilized because of the

wrongful actions of others is not a good reason for saying that theirparticipation is morally unjustified. Nor does the fact that they may be

basing their decision to participate on false beliefs that the ARL has

fostered by manipulation. The question of justification is whether their

actions are right, not whether they came to undertake them for the right

reasons. Whether people are justified in revolting at time T depends

upon whether the conditions for justified revolution obtain at that time,

not on whether their motivations for acting are based on false beliefs or

whether someone else acted wrongly at time Tn. An act can be right,

even if done for the wrong reasons.

Further, when people continue a revolution that others began by

committing unjustified acts, they are not thereby accomplices in the

initial wrong. To be guilty of complicity, they would have had to have



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voluntarily participated in or at least supported or condoned the initialwrongdoing or culpably failed to prevent it from occurring. Otherwise

they bear no responsibility and hence are not complicit.

It is another question, of course, whether the ARL is justified in con-

tinuing a revolution that it began by committing morally unjustified acts.

Should we conclude that what matters is whether at time T + N the

conditions for justified revolutionary action exist (not whether they

acted wrongly at time T), or that, by acting wrongly in the initial stages of

the revolution, the ARL somehow forfeits its right to do what it would

otherwise be justified in doing. To my knowledge, there is no plausible

theory of the forfeiture of moral rights on offer and what is usually said

about forfeiturefor example, that criminals forfeit their right to liberty

and thus may permissibly be incarcerateddoes not apply in any

obvious way to the case at hand. Some versions of contemporary just war

theory suggest that by acting in ways that wrongly harm or endanger

others, one can forfeit ones right to physical security or, in different

terms, make oneself liable to justified harm or killing. The question at

issue here, however, is not whether by acting wrongly the ARL forfeits theright to physical security (or to not be attacked), but rather whether it has

forfeited the right (in the mere liberty or permission sense of right) to

continue to participate in the revolution after acting wrongly to initiate

it. Because I doubt that any adequate framework for thinking about this

question of rights forfeiture exists at present, I will simply flag this issue

in the ethics of revolution as an important topic for further research. My

intuition, however, is that the ARLs earlier wrongful acts do not result in

forfeiture of the right to participate in the continuation of the revolution,though they may invalidate any claim the ARL might make to be the

rightful leadership of the revolution.

G. Justification and Legitimacy

Thus far, I have argued that an immoral ARL is very likely to be a neces-

sary evil when it comes to successful revolution in the very circum-

stances in which there is the strongest moral case for revolution. But

perhaps there is a way to escape that uncomfortable conclusion, or at

least to mitigate it. After all, the ARL, as I have described it under condi-

tions of Resolute Severe Tyranny, is not gratuitously coercing and

manipulating its fellows. It is constrained to do so by conditions beyond



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its controlconditions that the regime created and is culpable forandit is attempting to satisfy the laudable constraint of the Reasonable Like-

lihood of Success Principle. That is, it is taking seriously the idea that one

should not engage in revolution (or any sort of large-scale violence)

unless one has a reasonable prospect of success. And, remember that by

hypothesis, it is made up of people who are committed to overthrowing

an extremely unjust regime. Recall, also, that by hypothesis we are con-

sidering only cases where the Severe Tyranny is resolute: it has stead-

fastly refused to reform and gives every indication of being willing to use

the harshest means available to stay in power. Finally, suppose that the

ARL has, without success, already exhausted less morally problematic

strategies for solving the widespread participation collective action

problem. Given all of this, perhaps we should conclude that although the

ARL is necessary, it is not really evil. The ARLs peculiar situationthe

severe disadvantages under which it labors due to the unjust acts of

the regimecreates an exception to the usual moral constraints.

Some will no doubt find this special pleading less than convincing. It

might be thought that even if all of these conditions were satisfied, theARL could not be justified in using coercion against its fellow victims of

oppression to conscript them because it lacks legitimacy (political

authority). For a state to be justified in conscripting soldiers, one might

argue, it must be legitimate. But on any reasonable account of legiti-

macy, the ARL is arguably not legitimate. The conditions of oppression

created by the Resolute Severe Tyranny prevent the ARL from gaining

legitimacy, whether through consent, through democratic processes, or

through the lawful transfer of legitimacy from a legitimate entity, aswhen one government succeeds another according to constitutionally

specified procedures. Nor can the ARL, at least in the early stages of the

revolution, satisfy the criteria for legitimacy according to functionalist

accounts. Functionalist accounts hold that an entity becomes legitimate

by performing adequately the justifying functions of states, such as pro-

viding security and basic justice.14 The ARL will not be capable of per-

forming these functions until the revolution has succeeded.

. More plausible versions of functionalist accounts of legitimacy include a

nonusurpation condition: to be legitimate, an entity not only must fulfill the requisite

functions adequately but also must not have come to power by overthrowing a legitimate

political authority. In the case of revolution against a Resolute Severe Tyranny, that

condition is satisfied.



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My aim here is not to resolve the complex debate over what legitimacy(or political authority) is. To motivate this stage of my argument, it is not

necessary to do so. Instead, I want to argue that in the case of the ARL,

legitimacy is not a necessary condition of justified coercion of fellow

victims of oppression on any of the standard views on legitimacy.

I will begin by calling attention to something that I think is relatively

uncontroversial: the use of forceagainst a Resolute Severe Tyrannycan

be justified even if those wielding it lack legitimacy. To reject this asser-

tion is to take a very extreme position on the ethics of revolution: it is to

deny that revolution against a Resolute Severe Tyranny is virtually ever

justifiable, since at the beginnings of such revolutions the conditions of

oppression will have prevented the formation of any legitimate entity

capable of opposing the state.15 The question on which I will focus is

whether the ARL must be legitimate if its use of forceagainst its fellow

victims of oppressionis to be justified. I will also assume, arguendo, that

some uses of force by the ARL, including murdering people and making

it appear that they were killed by the regime, conscripting children, and

summarily shooting a few people in a village to terrorize the rest intoparticipating, are not justifiable. The question is whether some much

. Kant notoriously held that revolution is never morally justified, but to my knowl-

edge no contemporary just war theorist agrees with him. Kant apparently thought that it is

wrong to attack the state, because only the state can supply basic justice (or the condition

of right, in Kantian terms). The difficulty with Kants argumenton its most plausible

construalis that it wrongly assumes that an attack on the regime must result in a condi-

tion in which justice cannot exist. Locke noted that the destruction of the political authority

need not mean the destruction of society, with the implication that nonstate social prac-

tices may do a sufficiently adequate job of securing basic justice, during the transition to a

new, more just state, to be morally acceptable, given the importance of overthrowing an

unjust state. The Lockean view receives empirical support from studies of revolutions. In a

number of cases, revolutionary groups establish parallel institutions prior to their most

serious attacks on the state, institutions that perform some state functions, thus ensuring

that the destruction of the state does not mean the loss of all law and order. When this

strategy succeeds, the interpretation of Kants view that I have sketched loses its bite.

Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that it may be difficult or even impossible to

establish parallel institutions in cases where the Resolute Severe Tyranny exercises effec-

tive control over the locales in which they would have to be established. In general, revo-

lutionary groups seem to be more effective in establishing parallel institutions in remote,rural areas where the regimes military or security forces cannot sustain an effective pres-

ence. In locales that the regime tightly controls, only rather minimal parallel institutions

can be established. See, for example, the wedding ceremony conducted by National Lib-

eration Front officials in the classic film treatment of revolution The Battle of Algiers.

Conducting wedding ceremonies is one thing, providing basic justice is another.



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less extreme, though nonetheless morally questionable uses of coercion,in particular some techniques for conscripting people to fight against the

regime, can be justifiable in the absence of legitimacy.

Why might one think that it is justifiable for the ARL to use force

against a Resolute Severe Tyranny, even though the ARL lacks legitimacy,

but that the ARL must be legitimate if its conscription of fighters is to be

morally justified? The most obvious answer is that the regime and the

people are in quite different moral situations: the regimes unjust actions

have made it liable to be attacked (or have forfeited its right not to be

subject to force), whereas the people the ARL attempts to conscript have

done no such thing. Thus, one might think that only if an agent or

institution is legitimate can the presumption against coercion be over-

come, in the absence of some act that makes one liable to coercion.

Without denying the asymmetry between the moral situations of a

tyrannical regime and the people it oppresses, I want nonetheless

to argue that the ARL, though lacking legitimacy, can justifiably con-

script fighters, if certain conditions are satisfied. To do this, I want

to distinguish two related but importantly different principles concern-ing the relationship between legitimacy and the justification of the

use of coercion.

CL: Coercive imposition of rules (for example, requiring military

service) is justifiable only if the institution or agent wielding coercion

is legitimate.

CL:Coercive imposition of rules typically requires legitimacy in cir-cumstances in which the resources for obtaining legitimacy are avail-

able. In contrast, where the resources for obtaining legitimacy are not

availableand where their lack of availability is not due to the actions

of the entity seeking to wield coercionlegitimacy is not a necessary

condition for the justified wielding of coercion.

My aim is to make the case for CL and against CL. To do this, I will

explore certain morally significant similarities between the case of revo-

lution and that of the creation of a state under conditions of anarchy.

Suppose that a massive natural disaster, an ecological collapse, a

lethal large-scale bioterrorist attack, or a civil war has destroyed all ves-

tiges of law and order. There are various armed factions, many of whom



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are willing to use violence indiscriminately for their own benefit, withoutregard for justice or any other moral constraint. Suppose also that there

is a relatively small group of people who have the resolve and the ability

to impose the order needed to secure everyones most basic rights: call

them the aspiring state-founders, or ASF for brevity. Suppose that the

ASF is firmly committed to establishing basic justice for all and to doing

so by the least morally objectionable means that are feasible. Finally,

suppose also that the prevailing extremely harsh conditions preclude the

possibility of the ASF being a legitimate agent, an agent that has the

authority to use coercion to transform anarchy into minimal justice on

any reasonable conception of legitimacy. The situation is simply too

chaotic and insecure for elections or any less formal democratic autho-

rization of the ASF or consent, and no other institutional resources for

transferring or conferring legitimacy exist or can be created prior to

establishing basic law and order. Finally, suppose also that the ASF has

not yet achieved sufficient control to satisfy the criteria for legitimacy of

functionalist theories of legitimacy: it is not yet adequately performing

the functions of providing order and basic justice that such theories sayconfer legitimacy. As with the case of the ARL, conditions for which it is

not responsible make it impossible for the ASF to satisfy the require-

ments of any of the standard theories of legitimacy.

My intuition is that it would nevertheless be morally justifiable for

such a group to coerce others into joining its effort to achieve security for

all. It would be justifiable, for example, for the ASF to threaten individu-

als with certain penalties if they did not participate in efforts to suppress

lawless groups, for example, fines or the expropriation of property.Needless to say, their use of coercion would be subject to various moral

constraints, including those of proportionality and the requirement that

carrying out a coercive threat would be a last resort.

Suppose your intuition about the case of anarchy accords with mine:

you think that the ASF, even if it lacks legitimacy, would be justified in

using some forms of coercion. If that is your view, then shouldnt you

also conclude that the ARL can also use similar forms of coercion on

fellow victims of tyranny without acting impermissibly, even though

it lacks legitimacy?

It is important to emphasize that the predicaments of the ASF and the

ARL are identical in morally relevant ways: both are committed to rem-

edying severe injustice and both must solve coordination and collective



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action problems in situations in which, through no fault of their own, theconditions for legitimate leadership do not existand cannot be brought

about until after the basic coordination and collective action problems are

solved. So it appears either that both the ASF and the ARL act wrongly or

that neither do. My intuition is that the latter alternative is the correct

one. Hence principle CL, which makes legitimacy an unconditional nec-

essary condition for coercion, ought to be rejected. In contrast, principle

CL, which only requires legitimacy in circumstances in which the

resources for securing legitimacy are available, explains the intuition

that both the ASF and the ARL may justifiably use coercion.

I wish to point out, however, an uncomfortable apparent implication

of opting for the conclusion that, at least under conditions of Resolute

Severe Tyranny, an ARL can use coercion against its fellow victims of

oppression to solve the coordination and participation problems

without acting wrongly. The problem is this: if one opts for that con-

clusion, where can one draw the line as to the permissible use of force

by the ARL? We have assumed, from the outset, that acts of terrorism (as

conventionally defined) are not morally permissible, even under condi-tions of Resolute Severe Tyranny. Can one consistently hold that the

ARL can sometimes use coercion against its own people and yet at the

same time say that using violence against noncombatants to provoke

terror and fear that will change the political behavior of the regime

is never justified?

Of course, one could try to lessen the pain of this query by hypoth-

esizing that while the need to achieve coordination and widespread par-

ticipation are typically crucial for the success of revolutions, terrorism isnot. I find that a less than satisfactory response, to put it mildly. A better

option is to note that when an ARL uses coercion to achieve widespread

participation in the revolutionassuming that the revolution is other-

wise justifiedit is doing precisely what legitimate governments rou-

tinely do and are rightly expected to do: issuing directives, backed with

force as a last resort, to achieve important collective goods (such as

national security or order and basic justice) that could not otherwise be

secured. The same cannot be said, of course, about agents who commit

acts of terrorism. Legitimate governments do not achieve their ends by

indiscriminate violence aimed at terrorizing people in order to shape

political decisions. The morally relevant difference, then, is that when

an ARL uses the threat of force to secure sufficiently widespread



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24/33

be justified, if this were the least coercive effective measure and if it weredone in a nondiscriminatory way and with sufficient advance notice.

Perhaps one of the most important constraints on justified revolu-

tionary conscription is that the burdens it imposes should be distributed

fairly among that portion of the population who are competent to serve

as soldiers.16 To the extent that revolutionary conscription satisfies this

fairness constraint and approximates the other constraints observed in

the least morally problematic instances of conscription by a legitimate

state, it becomes more plausible to maintain that it is justified, especially

when the regime, through wrongful acts, has erected formidable

obstacles to voluntary participation.

In the next section, I will argue that my analysis of the moral

predicament of the ARL has important implications for the ethics of

intervening in revolutions.

II. INTERVENTION

I argued above that it can be morally justifiable for people to participatein a revolution whose initiation by an ARL involved seriously immoral

acts. The same conclusion holds for intervention in support of a revolu-

tion with tainted origins. The fact that the revolution began with

immoral manipulation of popular sentiments by the ARL or committed

wrongful acts of violence against rivals for leadership does not itself

entail that intervention in support of the revolution would be wrong.

That fact may be relevant, of course, to the decision whether to inter-

vene. For one thing, immoral behavior by the ARL may increase the

probability that the revolution will not turn out well or that the inter-

vener will become an accomplice in future immoral acts. The key point,

however, is that intervening in support of a revolution, like participating

in it, can be morally justifiable even if the acts by which the revolution

was initiated were not.

Suppose that the ARL, by dint of morally impermissible acts, has

achieved sufficient coordination and participation so that the revolution

has a high likelihood of success if there is intervention in support of it.

And also assume, as before, that the Just Cause is patent and compelling:the regime is a Resolute Severe Tyranny. Suppose also that all the other

. Christopher J. Finlay, Fairness and Liability in the Just War: Combatants, Non-

Combatants, and Lawful Irregulars,Political Studies (): .



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appropriate conditions for justified intervention are present. Surely,the justifiability of intervention depends upon what the current situation

is, not upon whether at some earlier point, in quite different circum-

stances, the ARL committed morally impermissible acts to create

the current situation.

Even if tainted origins do not preclude justified intervention, there

are other well-known reasons to regard intervention in support of revo-

lutions, like interventions for other purposes, with extreme caution.17

Two principles designed to reduce the risk of mistaken interventions

have been advanced and have garnered considerable support. The

second, in fact, seems to be the dominant view in the literature. The

first, Mills Principle, states that intervention in support of a revolution

should not occur until and unless there is widespread domestic partici-

pation in the revolution.18 The second, the Consent Principle, states that

intervention in support of a revolution should not occur without the

consent (or approval) of the people who are the intended beneficiaries

of the intervention.

Both principles are afflicted by vagueness. Without knowing whatcounts as widespread participation, one cannot know when the sup-

posed necessary condition for intervention has been met. Similarly, one

needs to know not only what counts as consent or approval, but also how

widespread the consent or approval must be. I will simply set aside these

daunting problems, which are familiar enough, in order to focus on

problems with both principles that have not been noticed, due to lack of

attention to the (rather grim) facts about revolutions, and in particular

about the formidable incentives for immoral behavior that the ARL facesand their consequences for efforts to apply the two principles.

A. Mills Principle

On its most plausible construal, Mills Principle recommends wide-

spread participation as an epistemic proxy for broad, deep, and stable

commitment to revolution. According to this interpretation, Mill was

. For a good example of the many works that explore what can go wrong in

interventions, see Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus, Can Intervention Work? (New

York: Norton,).

. J. S. Mill, A Few Words on Intervention, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol.

, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,).



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concerned to take seriously the Reasonable Likelihood of SuccessRequirement and surmised that a successful intervention in support of a

revolution could not be reliably predicted in the absence of a broad,

deep, and stable commitment to revolution on the part of a substantial

portion of the population. Widespread participation, he thought, was a

reliable marker for such commitment.

The most obvious problem with Mills Principle is that it underesti-

mates the obstacles to widespread participation in the modern context,

especially in the case of Resolute Severe Tyrannies. In Mills day, the

disparity of firepower between the regime and would-be revolutionaries

was not as great as it generally is today. It is one thing for people to pick

up their muskets, head for the barricades, and take their chances against

comparably equipped regime forces; but it is quite another for people

with a collection of hunting rifles and AK-s to go up against fighter

bombers and long-range, laser-guided artillery. The point is that, given

this disparity of firepower, the risks of participation are correspondingly

greater and, at least in the early stages of revolution, the decision to

participate may require not just a deep and stable commitment to revo-lution, but also a zealous motivation bordering on the sacrificial.19 So,

Mills Principle is highly problematic, because the epistemic proxy it

recommends is much less reliable in our day than it was in Mills.20

There is another fact about the contemporary revolutionary context

that further impugns Mills Principle: participation, for some, perhaps

many, people, may be the result of coercion and manipulation of emo-

tions by the ARL, and where this is the case, participation will not be a

reliable proxy for a deep and stable commitment to the revolution. Par-ticipating because one fears the ARL more than the regimes forces is no

evidence at all of commitment to the revolution. Nor is participating

because ones emotions have been manipulated in response to an

episode of harsh behavior by the regime or because one has been fed

stories about atrocities that never occurred a reliable proxy for a stable

commitment to the revolution. Mills Principle is flawed, then, not only

because it underestimates the disincentives to participation created by

. Bas Van der Vossen also makes this point in The Morality of Humanitarian Inter-

vention, Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, ed. Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher H.

Wellman (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming).

. I thank Jeff Holzgrefe for making this point clear to me and for assisting me in

researching this article.



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the disparity of firepower in the modern revolutionary context, but alsobecause it overlooks the possibility that participation for some people

may be an artifact of coercion and manipulation by the ARL rather than

a sign of deep and stable commitment to the revolution. Both flaws are

the result of failure to attend to the facts about revolution.

B. The Consent Principle

Given what I have just said about Mills Principle, it will not be hard to

predict my complaint about the Consent Principle. But, first, let us beclear about why many find this principle plausible. The attraction of

the Consent Principle is that it expresses a commitment to avoiding

unjustified paternalism. The idea is that it would be unjustifiably

paternalisticdisrespectful to people regarded as autonomous agents

with their own values and reasons for actingto impose on them the

risks that intervention entails without consulting their own judgment as

to whether those risks are worth bearing.21 To intervene without consent

or approval is to substitute the interveners judgment for the peoplesjudgment as to whether the expected benefits of the intervention exceed

the expected costs.

The most obvious difficulty with the Consent Principle is that if one

takes its underlying rationale seriously, it is hard to see how intervention

could be justified withoutunanimousconsent. How could the fact that

others consent make the intervention any less disrespectful toward those

who do not consent? Unanimous consent, of course, is a requirement

that will virtually never be satisfied, in which case the Consent Principle

would never allow intervention. Even if we set that obvious problem

aside, there is another, equally familiar difficulty: the very conditions

that make the moral case for revolution strongestthe situation of Reso-

lute Severe Tyrannyimpose formidable epistemic barriers to knowing

whether people consent or not. A Resolute Severe Tyranny does not

allow referenda on revolution, surveys on approval of intervention, or

. For two examples among many of theorists of intervention who endorse the

Consent (or approval) Principle, see Fernando Teson, Ending Tyranny in Iraq, Ethics &International Affairs (): ; and Jeff McMahan, Humanitarian Intervention, Consent,

and Proportionality, in Ethics and Humanity: Reflections on the Philosophy of Jonathan

Glover, ed. N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen, and Jeff McMahan (New York: NYU Press, ).

McMahan argues that the Consent Principle is best understood as grounded in a rejection

of unjustified paternalism (personal communication, April , ).



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even expressions of political views that are reliably ascertainable bypotential interveners. Moreover, expressions of animosity against the

regime cannot be regarded as endorsements of intervention, much less

of intervention by any particular agent. For example, it may have been

that prior to March of there was a widespread desire among

Iraqis to be rid of Saddam Hussein (though how widespread was hard

to ascertain given the ubiquitous repression), but from that one could

not infer that there was widespread approval of foreign intervention

to topple him, much less widespread approval of intervention led by

the United States.

Apart from these epistemic worries about the Consent Principle, there

is another, at least equally serious problem that comes to light only when

one takes seriously the facts about revolutions and in particular the fact

that the ARL, in situations where the moral case for revolution is stron-

gest, is under formidable pressure to utilize coercion and manipulation

to mobilize the masses. Even if one can overcome the formidable

obstacles to ascertaining whether people consent or approve of inter-

vention, their consent or approval will not be normatively potent if it isthe product of coercion or manipulation of sentiments by the ARL.

Consent or approval that is the product of coercion or manipulation is

not valid consent or authentic approval. So the objection to the Consent

Principle is not just that under conditions of tyranny it will be hard to

know whether people consent or approve, but that under those same

conditions it is likely that consent or approval in some cases will not be

morally potent enough to block the allegation of unjustified paternalism.

C. Two New Reasons to Intervene Early

So far, I have shown that two well-known principles intended to regulate

the decision to intervene are much less plausible once one attends to the

predictable behavior of the aspiring revolutionary leadership toward

their fellow victims of oppression. Now I want to argue that the same

facts about the behavior of the ARL count in favor of early intervention.

The most familiar reason in favor of early intervention in support of

a revolution is that it may reduce the casualties that the revolutionaries

and regime forces will inflict on each other if the struggle continues.

But my analysis shows that there is another, less obvious reason: early

intervention can, in principle, prevent wrongdoing perpetrated by the



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ARL against its fellow victims of tyranny. Such wrongdoing is not onlysomething to be prevented on its own account; it is also undesirable

because it can contribute to the corruption of the ARL and thereby of

the revolution itself. If it becomes accustomed to wrongdoing toward

its fellow victims of oppression during the revolutionary struggle, this

may increase the probability that the ARL will mistreat citizens once it

comes to power. Even worse, the ARLs wrongdoing during the revolu-

tion may foster a more general culture of brutality in the postrevolu-

tionary society.

Social scientists analyzing revolution have made a strong case that

much of what occurs can be explained as the result of the fact that

revolutions typically feature a struggle over the conditions under which

the ARL attempts to solve the widespread participation collective

action problem.22 In other words, the ARLs collective action problem is

the locus of strategic interactions between the ARL and the regime. The

regime attempts to exacerbate the obstacles to successful collective

action and the ARL in turn takes countermeasures to overcome the

obstacles the regime erects, and so on. For example, the initial collec-tive action problem the ARL faces is how to get large numbers of

people to participate in the revolution in spite of the fact that revolu-

tion has the familiar features of a public good, with the usual incentives

for individuals not to participate. In particular, as I noted above, the

individual is likely to reason that his own participation will involve a

cost and will not be critical for the outcome, and that he will be able to

enjoy the benefits of revolution regardless of whether he participates or

not. To overcome this obstacle to participation, the ARL may respondby increasing the costs of nonparticipation: either by now credibly

threatening nonparticipants with violence or other penalties if they do

not participate or by credibly pledging to punish them when the revo-

lution succeeds. The regime, in turn, in order to shift the balance of

incentives back toward the rationality of nonparticipation, may then

increase the costs of participation by taking harsher measures, not only

against participants, but also against their families. The cycle then may

continue, with the ARL using increasingly coercive measures and more

. See, for example, Mark I. Lichbach, Rethinking Rationality and Rebellion:

Theories of Collective Action and Problems of Collective Dissent, Rationality and Society

(): .



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egregious manipulation of sentiments in order to counteract theregimes escalation of the costs of participation.

When this familiar spiral of coercion occurs, refraining from early

interventionwaiting until the death toll is very high or until there is

evidence of widespread commitment to the revolution or until it

becomes clear who is really in charge of the revolutionwill come at a

very high moral cost. The point is that the moral cost of refraining from

early intervention is not restricted to the additional casualties in battles

between revolutionaries and regime forces; it also includes the costs of

the additional wrongs that occur as a result of a continuing strategic

conflict over the participation collective action problem. If interveners

can act so as to stop the escalation, they will reduce these costs.

One way they can do this is to reduce the regimes threat advantage,

to make it less able to issue credible threats against those who are con-

templating whether to participate in the revolution. This might be done,

for example, by effecting a cyber attack on the regimes military com-

munications network or by disabling its fighter jet and attack helicopter

forces or by establishing a no-fly zone or by imposing an arms embargoagainst the regime. The rationale for such measures would not be to

help the revolutionaries succeed, but rather to reduce the risk of a spiral

of coercion and thereby reduce the risk that the revolutionary leader-

ship will become corrupted by habituating itself to brutal measures

against the people.

Another way to avoid the spiral of coercion, of course, is to reduce the

ARLs ability to coerce the people. This might be done by injecting

observers to monitor the ARLs behavior, with the threat that support forthe revolution by external parties will not be forthcoming if they engage

in excessive coercion against the people. Alternatively or in addition,

measures might be taken to limit the ARLs access to arms. In some

cases, early intervention of these sorts could stop the spiral of coercion.

Of course, the same measures (for example, arms embargoes) that

serve to reduce the ARLs ability to coerce the people into participating in

the revolution may also reduce the likelihood that the revolution will

succeed. If outside agents are to act responsibly in such cases, they must

weigh the value of preventing a spiral of coercion against the value of

supporting, or at least not undermining, the revolutionary effort.

In cases where the revolution is strongly justified, the presumption

should be that efforts to prevent a spiral of coercion should focus



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primarily on reducing the regimes ability to impose costs on participa-tion. If the ARLs use of coercion against the people is chiefly

reactivean attempt to overcome the obstacles to widespread partici-

pation created by the wrongful use of force by the regimethen the

result of such interventions should be a lessening of the use of coercion

against the people by the ARL. In some cases, the justice of the revolu-

tionaries cause is dubious because of the kind of regime they hope to

establish, yet the current regime is undoubtedly unjust. Here a more

evenhanded approach might be called for, that is, measures to reduce

the coercive capacity of both parties, again for the sake of preventing a

spiral of coercion.

Attention to the way revolutions actually occur also suggests a second

reason in favor of early intervention: in principle, intervention could

help establish the conditions under which outsiders could have reliable

evidence about whether there is widespread valid consent to or authen-

tic approval of intervention aimed at helping the revolution to succeed.

This could occur, for example, if the intervener could impose a cease-

fire, physically separate the two sides, and then investigate the attitudesof the population toward the revolutionary struggle under conditions in

which they can be freely expressed.

Recall that the difficulty with applying the principle that intervention

in support of a revolution should not occur without consent or approval

on the part of the public is that under the very conditions under which

revolution and hence intervention in support of revolution are most

clearly morally justified, it is likely that coercion and manipulation of

emotions by the ARL will undermine the conditions for valid consent orauthentic approval. If that is the case, then there is something to be said

for intervening early enough to prevent the ARL from needing to resort to

behavior that will undermine the conditions for valid consent to or

authentic approval of intervention in support of the revolution. Notice

that if a third party intervened for this reasonto help establish the

conditions under which valid consent or authentic approval could occur

and be reliably identified as suchit would not be correct to say that it

was guilty of unjustified paternalism. In intervening for this reason, it

would notbe substituting its own judgment about the ratio of benefits to

costs of revolution for that of the people directly affected. It would not be

intervening to support the revolution, but rather to help create condi-

tions under which it could determinewhether to support the revolution.



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Such action would not qualify as paternalistic, because its objectivewould not be to promote the good of the people but instead to determine

whether to act to promote it or to support the regime or to remain

neutral in the struggle.

Once we attend to the strategic interaction of the ARL and the regime

and appreciate the strong incentives for coercion and manipulation this

creates for the ARL, the costs of delaying intervention are seen to be

greater than they are usually thought to be. This is not, of course, a

conclusive argument for early intervention. Intervention at any stage is

fraught with risks of error and abuse, and early intervention has its own

peculiar perils. For one thing, a known policy of early intervention

would create incentives for unscrupulous agents to manufacture the

conditions that are known to trigger early intervention, in the absence

of either a solid moral case for revolution or any real prospect that there

would ever be sufficient deep and stable commitment to it on the part

of significant portions of the population. Another risk is that the inter-

veners might, deliberately or unwittingly, encourage unwarranted

expectations that they will provide long-term, effective support for therevolution and thereby encourage people to participate in a struggle

that will endanger them without having a reasonable prospect of

success. My point, however, is not to provide a conclusive novel argu-

ment for early intervention but rather to show that important consid-

erations relevant to making an all-things-considered judgment on early

intervention have been neglected due to inattention to the actual

dynamics of revolutions.23

III. CONCLUSION

The main results of this investigation can now be summarized, without

recapitulating the arguments for them. First, revolutions typically begin

with the actions of an Aspiring Revolutionary Leadership that faces

severe problems whose solution is necessary if the revolution is to

succeed; yet in conditions under which the moral case for revolution is

str

Documents

Buchanan Ethics of Revolution