Vol. 14 No.10 (October 2004), pp.757-759

THE DARK SIDES OF VIRTUE: REASSESSING INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIANISM, by David Kennedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.  400pp. Cloth $29.95 / £18.95. ISBN 0-691-11686-5.

Reviewed by Donald W. Jackson, Department of Political Science, Texas Christian University. Email: d.w.jackson@tcu.edu

David Kennedy’s new book reflects on the misunderstandings and mistakes that sometimes lurk amidst the work and results of well-intentioned people who are trying to make the world a better place.  It has a place on a bookshelf next to Thomas Carothers, AIDING DEMOCRACY ABROAD: THE LEARNING CURVE (1999).  Carothers took a hard look at the pitfalls in efforts to build democratic institutions in countries with little experience with democracy.  Kennedy examines two major departures from pragmatism in international humanitarian interventions.  One departure involves a near idolatry of certain institutions or processes or certain human rights formulations.  These may be placed on pillars of honor, even when they may have little practical effect or are infrequently respected or observed.  Thus they are sometimes valued as virtuous per se, rather than as means to humanitarian ends.  The second departure is quite different.  It involves the ruthless recognition of realities that may sometimes legitimate violence, rather than restrain it.   His example is that efforts to define what are acceptable practices in warfare, rooted in efforts to create reasonable restraints that may be honored by combatants, may permit practices that ought to be restrained.

Kennedy fears that international humanitarians rarely examine the darker sides of their endeavors.   When they fail to be wary, well-intentioned people can unwittingly contribute to the very ends that they have denounced.   Thus, good intentions are far from sufficient.   Instead, Kennedy would have humanitarians examine their motivations and be constantly alert to the consequences of their actions:  “Bombing Belgrade to save Kosovo can seem like a humanitarian triumph or a catastrophe, depending on where you sit” (p.xv).  So, he proposes a “Pragmatism of Intentions” that “encourages a clear-eyed focus on the purposes of our work and a relentless effort to avoid being blown off course as we seek to make our humanitarian impulses real” (p.xx) and a “Pragmatism of Consequences” that would focus on  “good outcomes rather than good intentions” (p.xxii).

His most vivid writing is in Chapter 2: Spring Break: The Activist Individual, which describes his participation in interviews with political prisoners held in Uruguay in 1984, while he was on a spring break from Harvard Law School.  His reflections on how different a reality it was to be in Punta Rieles prison in Uruguay, rather than dealing with academic abstractions in Cambridge, raised for him issues of personal legitimacy.  He felt that he was an “intermeddler.”   “Why should the Punta Rieles prison open its files to us?  The [*758] issue of standing—the question of our right to intervene in Uruguayan affairs—seemed to trouble the Uruguayans less than it bothered me” (p.62).   In the end: “What seemed noble comes to seem tawdry and voyeuristic” (p.83).  And he also felt guilty.  Even though his work, with others, might produce an occasional victory, he could pack his bags and return to his classes at Harvard while most of the political prisoners remained in place.

I suspect that Kennedy’s reactions are common ones, at least to those of us who are functionally self-aware.  As Carothers points out in AIDING DEMOCRACY ABROAD, sometimes those seeking to help by introducing reforms in troubled countries have no solid knowledge as to what will work.   One easy temptation is simply to transplant our familiar institutions and processes into places for which they may be ill suited.  Often these are not working all that well back at home.  Close study of criminal justice systems in the United States, and especially of state and local prisons and jails, reveals our own shortcomings.  So sometimes we expect more of others than we are capable of ourselves.

Kennedy’s other chapters include as topics the utility of the rule of law as a cornerstone for economic development, efforts to bring “market democracy” to Eastern and Central Europe, the international protection of refugees, and the use of force for humanitarian purposes.  Of these the last is the most compelling.

In 1996 Kennedy went to Senegal as a civilian instructor to train members of the Senegalese armed forces in the laws of war and human rights.  His work was part of the Naval Justice School Detachment for International Training that was then active in fifty-three countries.   He saw the objectives of the training for the Senegalese soldiers to be learning “a set of restrictions on the use of force” so that their conduct could withstand the transparency even of a CNN webcam, yet he realized that their motivations might be quite different.   They included the prospect of both French and US military assistance, the possibility of peacekeeping assignments with the Organization of African States, or with the UN, and the pursuit of their own political and career objectives.  Kennedy writes that, “We had no idea, of course, what it meant in their culture for violence to be legitimate, effective, something one could stand behind proudly.  But they had learned something of what that meant in the culture of global humanitarianism and military professionalism” (p.295).

As described in this book, ambiguity in the use of legitimate force seems inescapable.   How can humanitarians be certain that the use of force will have only minimal consequences for civilians or that it will produce less harm than good?  For example, during the first Gulf War the decision of coalition forces to bomb electric generators to take down the Iraqi electricity grid may have had immediate effect of eliminating power to surface-to-air missile sites, but the longer term post-war consequences to the economy and to public safety and health were incalculable (p.299). And according to Kennedy we learned after the war that there were other ways to shut down electricity with less problematic long-term consequences. [*759]

Because international law concerning warfare sets standards and boundary lines, probably there always will be those who will test the boundaries and move them whenever possible.    Kennedy points out that the United States has “stretched” self-defense and the proactive use of force beyond “all reason” and certainly beyond the boundaries originally intended by the UN Charter.  This is but one example.  He fears that, “We no longer share a professional culture of interpretation which could sustain confidence that we could differentiate a creative from an abusive reading of terms like “self defense” or “just war.”   As he says, we have come to rely on process—on open policy conversation—perhaps most notably on decisions of the UN Security Council, which these days seems fragile at best.  We may well lack a culture of interpretation, but we also lack a language in which the meanings or words are consistently respected.  Kennedy notes that, “Statesmen now routinely promote their policies in the language of virtue, while idealists and humanitarians have abandoned dogmatism for the language of pragmatism and practicality” (p.335).

This is a disheartening but essential book.  Kennedy writes that his objective has been to “hasten awareness” that good work may have dark sides, to give expression to the disillusionment that is the consequence of such awareness, and to move toward the emergence of a new attitude to humanitarian intervention.   It should be a surprise to no one that he has been more successful in the diagnosis than in the remedy.  He offers a list of suggestions that seem pallid, but the broad message is that humanitarians must be aware of their place and impact on the exercise of power.  They must accept responsibility for the power that they themselves represent.  They must be self-aware and self-critical.  He encourages greater attention to the prospects for political choices and for political change rather than for still more international law.  And the focus he urges must be on outcomes, not on structures or processes alone.

REFERENCES:

Thomas Carothers, AIDING DEMOCRACY ABROAD: THE LEARNING CURVE.  Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999.

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© Copyright 2004 by the author, Donald W. Jackson.