CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

This discussion of humanitarian intervention was opened with Walzer’s statement of the
legalist paradigm (see p176) so it is to Walzer we turn first for guidance on how
exceptions to the paradigm should be controlled. We have seen that Walzer’s
characterization of the legalist paradigm, which is reflected in the international legal
system by the UN Charter, privileges territorial integrity and political sovereignty of
states above all else. Thus non-intervention is the rule; however, exceptions are to be
allowed. Walzer’s argument is that non-intervention follows, if not immediately
obviously and unambiguously, from the very ‘conceptions of life and liberty that
underlie the (legalist) paradigm and make it plausible. But these same conceptions
seem also to require that we sometimes disregard the principle; and what might be
called the rules of disregard, rather than the principle itself, have been the focus of
moral interest and argument.’ 99 First amongst the ‘rules of disregard’ is the overarching
principle that any intervention must be justified; the burden of proof is with those who
would intervene:
The burden of proof falls on any political leader who tries to shape the domestic
arrangements or alter the conditions of life in a foreign country. And when the
attempt is made with armed force, the burden is especially heavy – not only
because of the coercions and ravages that military intervention inevitably brings,
but also because it is thought that the citizens of a sovereign state have a right,
insofar as they are to be coerced and ravaged at all, to suffer only at one
another’s hands. 100
Now, the final point may seem somewhat strange and contentious – and we shall see
later another related point of Walzer’s with regard to counter-intervention that is equally
non-intuitive. However, there are two key points of absolutely vital importance to be
drawn out here: if the general principle of non-intervention, based as it is on morally
and legally sound conceptions, is to be preserved, then any exceptions to it have to be
fully justified; and we must never forget that any armed intervention, however well-
intentioned and morally justifiable, risks, with a very high likelihood, death and damage
in some measure to the very people on whose behalf it has been launched. This much,
at least, we must take forward from Walzer.
Drawing heavily on interpretations of the arguments of John Stuart Mill, Walzer,
outlines three cases which justify, prima facie, intervention 101 : in a civil war to support
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