“When Vietnam invaded Cambodia, that was usually considered a good thing . . .”

with the exception, as I recall, of Noam Chomsky.”

Actually, with the exception of the US government, which repeatedly voted to keep the Khmer Rouge representative seated in the UN, assisted the anti-Vietnamese “coalition”, dominated by the Khmer Rouge, and so on.

OK Herr Hitler you’re right. You can have the Sudetenland. Actually have Czechoslovakia too, most of us Brits can’t even spell it.

‘I have a bunch of legal rights which fortunately the government of the country in which I live happens to respect.’

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!

And what country would this be? You are not implying it’s the US are you?…oh please don’t, you crack me up. I have to go out later and my mascara will be all smudged.

While I’m out please feel free to scroll up to the Maher Arar post, and read the comments (and the link). In case you have white skin, in which case you’re right: you probably are safe.

Well, if you consider a surrender document imposed on Germany by a bunch of still-colonial powers at the point of a gun in 1919 to be a valid legal pretext for invasion a quarter-century later, then surely the 1991 Security Council resolutions will do for the Iraq campaign in 2003—right?

What’s wrong? You aren’t one of those crazy liberal communists with an idiosyncratic obsession with not having your territorial integrity (and perhaps much else) violated, are you?

As an individual, I have no “territorial integrity”. I have a bunch of legal rights which fortunately the government of the country in which I live happens to respect. Unfortunately, the governments of most other countries don’t even respect the legal rights of their own citizens, let alone mine. The idea that putting all those governments’ representatives in a room and letting them make decisions about other countries’ behavior will lead to a reasonable notion of “international law”—or anything but unspeakable horror, for that matter—is just fantasy.

The Treaty of Versailles (not to mention the Nuremberg trials) just passed you by didn’t they?

Incidentally, a bloke down the pub told me you were developed nuclear weapons or biological weapons or biological washing powder or something in your house so I’m going to drive a bulldozer through your front wall, empty your bank account, imprison your partner and torture your dog. Then I’m going to run your household the way I want for a couple of years. You might get it back eventually if you’re nice, but I’m not promising anything. And remember this is for your own good.

That’s ok, yeah?

What’s wrong? You aren’t one of those crazy liberal communists with an idiosyncratic obsession with not having your territorial integrity (and perhaps much else) violated, are you?

[Historical note: the fact that you don’t even mention and obviously don’t know about Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, or the Spanish Civil War, or the Japanese invasion of China, all of which, last time I checked, predated the invasion of Poland shows there really is no point in continuing this discussion].

More precisely, too much of Brendan’s idiosyncratic obsession with not militarily violating territorial integrity. That’s why, when Nazi Germany used threats and internal subversion to subjugate its neighbors, the major powers on the continent were reluctant to respond with military force. Remember “peace in our time”?

I thought everybody knew this.

‘what constitutes a “reasonable reason for invasion”?’. Luckily, I dont have to answer that question as international law answers it for me. If you are attacked, or if you have reasonable grounds for thinking you are about to be attacked, or if the security council authorises it.

Precisely—Chamberlain would have been proud of you. Neither of these conditions would have applied in Europe in the 1930’s until the invasion of Poland—and possibly not even then, from the point of view of Britain and France.

If you demand ten million dollars in small unmarked bills, they’re likely to decide you’re a terrorist or something and take drastic action.

But it’s OK to demand world peace. And while you’re at it you could also demand a pony.

Soru, to my way of thinking, ethics is about the treatment of human beings by other human beings. Morality is about attempting to persuade third parties that you are good and the other guy is bad.

When a government leader makes a choice about government, it affects thousands or millions of human beings in unknown ways. He has to guess about that, based on the abstractions he has available. Usually he won’t get much data about the results.

So for example, sometime after D-Day three american soldiers broke into a french farmhouse. They tied up the man and raped his wife and daughters in front of him. This was not directly the fault of the US Army or the US government. The Army would have gladly hanged those soldiers if it could catch them, but it couldn’t. So they gave the wife and daughters free treatment at a US Army medical clinic, and apologised, and that was that.

It was inevitable that there would be a few thousand (or a few tens of thousands of) cases like that. Draft a bunch of young men, give them weapons and put them among unarmed foreign civilians…. It wasn’t the intention of anyone in the government that it happen. We had to figure it was worth it, that getting enough stability that the crops could come in and people generally could get enough to eat was worth a whole lot.

I think ethicly it’s important to take care of people when you can, and also it’s important to let them make their own choices. If they insist on making bad choices for themselves then it’s wrong to force them into good choices. And if they think they’re ready to die then it’s wrong to force them to live. But government is all about forcing people to change their behavior. In practice governments do a lot of things that involve voluntary cooperation, but those are all things that don’t absolutely have to be done by governments. Governments coerce, whether it’s generally with the consent of the governed or not. The existing governments have a sort of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that they won’t invade each other, that they won’t encroach on each other’s spheres of coercion. When a particular government has no friendly governments then the others tend to agree that it’s OK to invade them. (This was true for Idi Amin’s uganda, for example, and turkmenistan is heading there.) When governments do make their young men fight, their spokesmen argue about who is justified and who is not. This is part of morality, they argue about who’s good and who’s bad hoping to impress third parties. These arguments are usually utterly ineffective—other governments intervene according to their own interests with no real concern for morality except that they need something to announce to their people.

People generally aren’t too picky about the excuses for war, unless they have personal reasons to disapprove. Like, we officially invaded panama because Noriega violated US drug laws. (We also had the excuse that panama had already declared war on us, that we recognised an ad hoc government which was too weak to compete with Noriega and which invited us to invade. Also we were “protecting american lives” and guarding the canal.)

In general the citizens of a given nation will accept any excuse for a war that looks like it will be easily won. And third-party foreign nations generally don’t intervene unless their interests are threatened. Why do we argue about morality at all? Mostly, because moralists enjoy talking about it.

So OK, here’s a new moral argument. I say that there’s a fundamental difference between using WMDs (particularly nukes) on your own land to repel a foreign army, versus using WMDs in a foreign country on foreign civilians.

I say people have more right to nuke their own country (and foreign invaders) than they do to nuke other countries.

When we threatened to nuke iraq if the iraqi army used poison gas, we were pretty far in the wrong.

But it was convenient for us. The war would not have been quite as quick and easy if we’d faced poison gas and we didn’t know that the iraqi army wasn’t ready to use the stuff.

soru

States are not human beings, they are legal entities. The equivalent of morality among the states is respect for sovereignty of other states. That’s the most you can demand from the states and you’re lucky if you get that much.

WTF??? Are you on drugs? No, but really? So the reason that Germany was allowed to seize territory that didn’t belong to it (i.e. violate other state’s territorial integrity) was because statesmen of the time had too much concern for territorial integrity?

In any case, Hitler’s seizure of (for example) the Sudetenland was a flagrant breach of the Treaty of Versailles. So it would be much more accurate to say that if statesmen of the day had had a basic concern for international law, then the 20th century would have proceeded differently.

In any case, someone who thinks that invading and seizing large tracts of land (and people) is something OTHER than an issue of basic morality is clearly out to lunch.

Did your Mummy never teach you that taking things that don’t belong to you is wrong?

[incidentally; ‘what constitutes a “reasonable reason for invasion”?’. Luckily, I dont have to answer that question as international law answers it for me. If you are attacked, or if you have reasonable grounds for thinking you are about to be attacked, or if the security council authorises it. Those are the only three reasons that justify war. If at least one of them is not met, your war is unjust and immoral by definition. These principles were all put in place to stop Hitler’s war (or anything like it) happening again. They weren’t put in place for a laugh, or for the good of anyone’s health].

Morality is about the treatment of human beings. What you are describing is either a rule of thumb, which is fair enough, subject to discussion and debate, or dogma, which isn’t.

soru

Statesman’s basic morality is concern and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states.

If I recall correctly, Shawcross claimed that the stories of mass post-invasion starvation were exaggerated by the Vietnamese in order to encourage foreign aid, and that once they were freed of the Khmer Rouge’s starvation-inducing policies and allowed to forage for food as best they could, Cambodians in rural areas were generally able to find enough to eat.

It was purely and solely and only because……

Germany started it.

Precisely. That’s why the Nazis were able to remilitarize the Rhineland, annex the Sudetenland, “merge” with Austria, and absorb the rest of Czechoslovakia, without anyone lifting a finger to stop them. Perhaps if the statesmen of the day had had a bit more concern for basic morality, and a little less of Brendan’s fetish for territorial integrity, the history of the twentieth century might have proceeded differently.

The invader, be it Genghis Khan, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, Nazi Germany, the USSR, China in Tibet or…let us say…more recent examples is ALWAYS morally in the wrong (unless, to repeat, they had a reasonable reason for invasion).

I agree completely. Now, let’s discuss the really interesting question: what constitutes a “reasonable reason for invasion”?