IN OTHER WORDS...:

'We Can't Just Do Nothing': Can a liberal be both opposed to imperialism and devoted to human rights? (Richard Just, August 27, 2009, New Republic)

If liberals view anti-imperialism as their primary philosophical commitment, then they will be reluctant to meddle in the affairs of other countries, even when they are ruled by authoritarian governments--as in Sudan--that abuse their own people. But if liberalism's primary commitment is to human rights, then liberals will be willing to judge, to oppose, and even to undermine such governments.

The differences between these two strains in left-wing thinking are stark, but they are not always obvious. That is because history has often conspired to paper them over--particularly during the Cold War, when the United States backed a number of awful dictators. Criticizing American support for Pinochet or Mobutu was consistent with both anti-imperialism and a healthy interest in human rights. Such situations temporarily exempted liberals from the trouble of disaggregating their philosophical commitments and establishing how well, or not well, they went together. But history does not always present such convenient circumstances; and since the end of the Cold War, every time the United States has undertaken a humanitarian intervention--or, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, interventions with humanitarian implications--this fundamental split has, in one form or another, returned to the center of the liberal debate.

While this question tends to come to the fore most dramatically in arguments over war, it is not fundamentally a question about war. The military is simply one among many means that can be used to interfere in other countries (though it is certainly the bluntest). The more basic question--is it right to interfere?--is the one that needs to be asked before we talk about invasions or air strikes or sanctions or International Criminal Court indictments or any other means of impeding abusive leaders and promoting human rights. And when you put the question to people on the left--when you ask them whether it is morally and historically correct for liberals to be in the business of promoting liberalism by undermining illiberal governments--you get a wide range of responses, which suggest that the old contest between the anti-imperialist impulse and the human rights impulse is alive and well.

...the answer is, "No." American imperialism is nothing but the imposition of our Judeo-Christian moral standards upon the politics of other nations. Indeed, vindicating human rights abroad requires the Left to reject its putative secularism, Darwinism, and multiculturalism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 2, 2009 8:13 AM