Fighting the Good Fight02

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    Bosnia. Troops from the 2nd Battalion, Royal 228 Regiment patrolling a section of the Canadian area of responsibility in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

    PAX CIVITAS MAXIMA:FIGHTING THE GOOD

    Neither selfish isolation nor dignified remon-strance is the proper attitude for honorable andself-respecting states. They should intervenevery sparingly and only on the grounds of jus-tice and necessity; but when they do intervene,they should make it clear to all concerned thattheir voice must be attended to and their wishescarried out.

    save humanity from itself, Canadian policy-makers needto weigh the cost, in blood and treasure, against thepotential gain of sundry foreign interventions. Policy-makers must also take care not to become preoccupiedwith what, according to the 1994 White Paper, s a terti-ary role for the Canadian Forces. In order to make aninformed decision, however, there is a pressing require-ment for conceptual clarity.

    T.J. Lawrence, Principles of nternational Law;1'911

    During the last decade, observers have tried to cod-ify certain military operations that have moved beyondthe paradigm of so-called traditional peacekeeping, butwhich fall short of the more extreme military sanctionspermitted by the Charter of the United Nations. In fact,some have gone to great lengths toiexplain why this newactivity is either an extension of peacekeeping (that is,in situations where a m0dicum of c~nsent presumablyexists) or., ailing that, an impartial fqrm of intervention,signified by the expression 'peace enforcement.' 1 WiderPeacekeeping, the British Army's answer to its experi-ence in Bosnia, is, like American and Canadian doc-trine,2 merely another attempt to fit a square peg into theproverbial round hole. Each manual is based on theassumption that the tattered peacekeeping 'principles'

    mid much backslapping over the qualified suc-cess of the NATO-led intervention in Kosovo,

    it is time to pause and reflect upon what it isthat Canadian politicians have sent their

    armed forces abroad to do in this grave new world.Gone are the comparatively halcyon days of peacekeep-ing, and yet Canada's political lexicon clings stubborn-ly to the past. Today, the majority of Canada's 'peace-keepers' have little in common with the buffer-zone cus-todians of yesteryear. Canadians ike to take comfort inthe belief that they invented peacekeeping, but likeeveryone else, they are neophytes in a post-Cold Warsecurity environment dominated by intrastate conflict,and where the anachronistic tenets of peacekeeping areunhelpful. Prior to embarking on a gallant crusade to

    Christopher Doary, who recently completed n MA in War Studies at RoyalMilitary College, now resides n New Zealand.

    Summer 2002 .Canadian Military Journal

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    of consent, impartiality, and what amounts to a policedoctrine on the use of force, apply to operations in thisintermediate zone.3 And each, perpetuates the ficti6nthat 'extended' peacekeeping s not coercion-based.

    nings of the Westphalian system.In April 1991, the UN Security Council authorized

    operations inside northern Iraq with the intention ofprotecting local Kurds from persecution, and, signifi-cantly, without an Iraqi invitation. In recent years,additional UN-sanctioned or sponsored inter~entionshave occurred under the humanitarian banner, despitethe fact that the convention of non-intervention wasreaffirmed in Article 2(7) of the UN Charter after theSecond World War:

    ARGUMENT

    P eacekeeping is essentially non-intrusive, whileenforcement is coercive. The wealth of new territo-

    ry is emphatically not peacekeeping. Nor is it an exten-sion of peacekeeping. It is a discrete enterprise, tenta-tively christened "pseudo-Grotian intervention" (PGI): acoercive, politico-military interference in a state's inter-nal affairs intended to enforce international norms ofbehaviour. PGI is premised loosely on the belief that,aside from self-defence, the legitimate use of force restswith a society of states -the ultimate arbiter of stateconduct. PGI is nevertheless an ideologically impureconcept, a pragmatic marriage of moral values and stateinterest~. }ncshort, PGI is a new class of enforcement.

    Nothing...shall authorize-the United Nations tointervene in matters that are essentially withinthe domestic jurisdi9tion of any state or shallrequire the Members to submit such matters tosettlement under the present Charter; but thisprinciple shall not prejudice the application ofenforcement measures under Chapter VII.6

    And yet, growing acceptance of intrastate missioat least on moral grounds, suggests that the practicalaspects of how to deal with civil strife are equally, if nomore, pressing than efforts to reconcile 'humanitarian'interventions with international law.

    -'.BACKGROUND

    T he Peace of Westphalia (1648) recognized a societyof independent, territorially- sovereign states each

    having jural rights, which all states were bound torespect. In his seminal De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625),Hugo Grotius had posited a right to intervene in theinternal affairs of a sovereign if the crown were to mal-treat its subjects.4 However, by validating a state'sexclusive jurisdiction over domestic matters, Westphaliaeffectively repudiated this early attempt to legitimizeintervention on humanitarian grounds. The doctrine of

    INTERVENTION

    A n understanding of the term intervention is neces-sary for any meaningful study of the interrelation-

    ship between peacekeeping, enforcement and pal. Thedifficulty is that the multifarious nature of interventionrenders a definition broad enough to capture all thenuances of the word imprecise.? Moreover, some con-

    notations are completely at odds withstandard literal interpretations. Areview of the evolution of interventionas a pivotal concept of international

    relations in the 20th century is there-fore instructive.

    At the beginning of the centuryjurists generally agreed that interven-tion was a hostile act, some insistingthat "the presence of force, naked orveiled" was sine qua non.8 Others tooka wider view, embracing diplomaticeconomic and other forms of coercion,while some drew distinctions betweeninternal and external variants.9 In thelate 1960s, J.N. Rosenau and his col-leagues stressed he convention-break-

    ing and authority-oriented aspects ofthe phenonl't';non. Intervention, theyar~ued, was an organized and system-

    tic activity that breached recognizedboundaries and aimed to influence thepolitical authority structures of a targetsociety. The goal was to replace exist-

    ing structures or to shore up those thought to be in dan-ger of collapse; the implication being that a sovereignunit was violated.lo However, the belief that interven-tion constitutes a departure from the norm of non-inter-vention is fast fading as the frequency of interventionrows.

    Kosovo. A 430 Squadron Griffon helicopter servinQ with KFOR in Kosovo, February 2000.

    non-intervention, which holds that domestic policyshould be free from external interference, has remainedan abiding principle of international affairs for 350years.5 Having said that, the alarming increase inintrastate conflict since the end of the Cold War and theconcomitant rise in intrastate interference, has chal-lenged the very philosophical and ideological underpin-

    26 Canadian Military Journal. Summer 2002