Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Norm Geras swings for the fences and, as usual, connects:

"This means that, for example, in response to mass atrocities which are ongoing within the territory of a given nation-state but threaten nobody outside it, and where the Security Council remains inert, it would be illegal for a government to intervene unilaterally to put an end to them. I could, as some Marxists used to be in the habit of putting such things, concretize here with topical historical and contemporary examples. But it's probably needless."

Part of what gets me about the whole UN-France-Germany opposition thing is the unwillingness to recognize that any one of those actors (maybe not the UN) would be perfectly willing, under different circumstances, to pitch international consensus and do whatever was in their own best interest. And it further seems to me that this fact hamstrings most people who want to argue for greater international institutions--I would hope that everyone would prefer, in the last analysis, to act on their own conscience and not on someone else's opinion of the situation. For all ideological differences, I'd much rather have Vietnam going into Cambodia (to depose the Khmer Rouge) then have them build consensus behind doing so*. Some things, recall, are sufficiently bad that they demand action now.

UPDATE: I just noticed Chris Lawrence's thoughts on this topic:

"Furthermore, since no responsible American government will ever concede that the Iraq invasion was “illegal” (a charge not even made by Howard Dean), it will further erode official U.S. support for the U.N.‘s pronouncements on the “legality” or “illegality” of actions and for the U.N. process in general."

He also mentions the ongoing crisis in Darfur and the unwillingness of the Security Council to act on it. Unilateral intervention, anyone? Or would stopping a humanitarian catastophe be 'illegal' too?

*I like this example and try to use it in the context of international relations because I think it points out something that occasionally gets ignored: you can act entirely outside the international system, for essentially selfish reasons and yet still produce and objectively improved situation. It's not a case that fits easily into most theories of foreign policy, which is why it's worth bringing up.