War and Peace

Not being insane, I’ve never bought the argument made by Edward Luttwak about the positive effects of war. In short, Luttwak argues that the international community ought to refrain from intervening in armed conflicts because such intervention prevents military victory. According to Luttwak, the only good thing that war brings is peace. International intervention prevents the war from taking its natural course by reducing the incentive of the defeated side to come to the table.

Of course, Luttwak fails to mention that “victory” often brings a whole host of unpleasant side effects, including massacres, pogroms, purges, mass executions, intentional starvation of target populations, and the widespread, systematic violation of human rights. The establishment of a lasting peace can happen in a number of ways, including the political, cultural, or physical annihilation of the loser. Thus, intervention is entirely acceptable in some circumstances. Nonetheless, I do see some merit in Luttwak’s position. Intervention has, in some cases, served to perpetuate conflicts that should have been ended by the superior military force of one side. Indeed, I think that the international community has too often taken a he said/she said approach to ethnic conflicts in particular, and hasn’t spent enough time examining the merits of opposing cases.

All of this makes the activity of UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo very interesting. It looks as if, in this case, the UN has ditched any pretense of neutrality:

United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have killed more than 50 militiamen in a gun battle in the north-east, the UN says. The fierce fighting came during a major offensive against an ethnic militia, accused of killing nine Bangladeshi UN soldiers in Ituri province last week. A UN spokeswoman accused the militia of killing and raping civilians from rival groups, and said they must be stopped. “While on operation we were fired upon, so we immediately responded,” said Col Dominique Demange, a spokesman for UN forces in DR Congo. He said the Pakistani UN troops had used helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles in the operation against the militia.

This is a good thing. Brutal ethnic militias should not be able to expect an even hand from the international community.