Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives

11. Ethical Uncertainties of Nationalism

11 Ethical Uncertainties of Nationalism dan smith The nature of nationalist movements and how to address them became key issues of world politics with the end of the cold war in the three-year period 1989 to 1991, and have remained so through the 1990s and into the new century. They are important issues both for social science theory and for practical politics. Among the variety of themes encompassed by the term nationalism, one that continues to require discussion is the ethical dimension. The language of nationalism is a language of rights and duties, which is an ethical discourse, yet it is often used to justify and encourage gut-wrenching violence and cruelty. It is a language of freedom and liberty that is all too often associated with intolerance and repression . It is no surprise that nationalism brings forth a range of ambivalent responses among concerned observers of international politics. The rights and wrongs of nationalist movements became intensely relevant in the discussion about humanitarian intervention in armed conflicts in the second half of the 1990s. “Humanitarian intervention” became a central concept in peace and security issues in the same way that deterrence had been during the cold war. Since September 11, 2001, and the destruction of the World Trade Center and attack on the Pentagon by alQaeda , there has been a change of focus in the security agenda. The post9 /11 agenda has highlighted a so-called war on terror and the perception of imminent threat from what have been called “rogue states” (ones that egregiously defy international security norms) armed with weapons of mass destruction. In the Bush administration in the United States, these ∏ 246 issues were taken as justification for a preemptive strategy against what were seen to be direct threats to national security and interest. Because some proponents of military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq used the term humanitarian intervention for both actions, the term itself has lost legitimacy and persuasive power. Yet the core problems of humanitarian catastrophes within sovereign states and how to deal with them have not become any the less important . In the first years of the twenty-first century, Afghanistan and Iraq are both cases in point, as are the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, among others. Forcible humanitarian intervention is only one of a range of means used in response to such catastrophes. Moreover, one part of a more sensible and sensitive approach to the problem of attacks on civilian targets by nonstate armed groups would be to explore the root causes of such actions. In some cases such an enquiry will indicate the need to take a position on the rights and wrongs of demands made by nationalist movements. Thus, the humanitarian intervention debate and the ethical issues connected to nationalism remain central and related concerns. This link, however, has not been reflected in the discussion of the issues . The literature of the 1990s on armed conflicts and humanitarian disasters showed a relatively swift adjustment in the international relations (IR) discipline to the challenge of new concepts. For some time, however , it lacked explicit and systematic attention to ethical problems (Fixdal and Smith, 1998), although the deficiency was somewhat remedied by the high-level report The Responsibility to Protect (ICISS Report, 2001). It was therefore hardly surprising that the literature also lacked close attention to ethical issues raised by nationalism. However, the importance of including an ethical inquiry into nationalism in the discussion on humanitarian intervention did not arise as a matter of abstract theoretical necessity. In principle, it is not merely possible but easy to discuss interventionism in a way that ignores the rights and wrongs of the contending parties in an armed conflict. The focus of attention could fall instead on the suffering of ordinary people or on concepts such as regional security. But while this is straightforward in logic, it is difficult in practice; put differently, it is easy to avoid addressing the rights and wrongs of the parties when discussing intervention as a general concept, but it is next to impossible when discussing specific cases. The term humanitarian cannot disguise the unavoidably political Ethical Uncertainties of Nationalism 247 nature of large-scale interventions, especially those using armed force (Smith, 1997). Once states that are not party to the conflict get involved, and especially when major powers contemplate intervention, it is not possible to avoid considerations of interest and of which side the...