I think these are both very good answers to a difficult question.

Chris, you draw analogy with personal neighbours as a start, and this is a fair comparison in terms of how one might react in a personal capacity and how intervention may be reviewed in a moral context. Even so, in a personal context, it can be a complex dilemma because a person who is continually suppressed, and perhaps physically abused, can become accepting of the situation they face as part of the status quo. When you hear a neighbour being abused should you ignore it? Listen to Tracy Chapman's "Behind the Wall" lyrics and say that you should ignore these situations. It can become difficult and the victim involved may not always appreciate intervention, but it may well help to stop others getting into the same situation.

I agree it is not easy, and perhaps an arrogant position to take, to point fingers at other societies when there is much wrong with one's own society and where it is, perhaps, not so easy to recognise from the inside. It is very complicated to judge how the stability of a society is maintained, and what will happen if the brutal methods that may be employed are disrupted. But I think there are limits to moral relativism which we have to make judgements about.

The "plea for help" issue is complicated as nearly all international situations will have someone with a plea for help, but whether this is a significant part of the population is another matter. But generally it would be a minimum requirement, if usually easily satisfied.

There should be evidence of abuse of power, and by standards of today, that would mean atrocities. I wonder about Zimbabwe though. I am not sure that Mugabe has directly committed atrocities but there has been abuse of power and mismanagement such that there is suppression of any opposition and people are suffering as a result of serious government errors and corruption.

How do you prove, in advance, that intervention is going to work. It is hard to know for sure and depends on confidence rather than facts. I expect Bush thought intervention in Iraq would work. And use "as a last resort" is also open to interpretation. How long do you try other measures, sanctions for example, before giving up? It can to easily be an excuse to do nothing. I agree with the concept but think it is difficult, and maybe impossible, to implement.

I really don't think any country today wants to get into an "occupation scenario", but they end up this way because it is too easy for even a small opposition force to make it impossible to withdraw. Training the local population can work if there is a general acceptance of the right of the people recruited to take on this role, but often it is easy to turn majority opinion away from such a view, and to see such people as traitors in some way. This is a common situation it seems and should be planned for, if this is at all possible.

Getting UN consensus can be difficult when there are vested interests at stake. Even if this is achieved it can be viewed as a conspiracy by powerful nations to suppress an individual nation. However I agree that this should be strived for and that we should be aiming for a better and more effective UN.

Abdulksaida, you seem to argue that intervention of a state in another state should never be allowed. I find this difficult to accept as a general rule. It is surely not right to stand by and see situations where many thousands of people may be slaughtered or where there is great suffering imposed by one group of people upon another group without trying to intervene to stop this. If you see an injustice do you try to help or do you say "it is not my problem" and walk away? There are cases where it may not be prudent to intervene but surely you should never say that you should never intervene. In Afghanistan I note that Al Qaeda have just killed more than 300 people because they are members of a religious sect of whom they do not approve. Is this the group to whom you would give power? Do you think the Taliban approved this or not? It is hard to see how Al Qaeda can operate in Afghanistan without Taliban approval.

In the case of Afghanistan, intervention was to try to establish a legitimate government. If groups can use the land there to establish training grounds for terrorist attacks on New york and elsewhere then it becomes a legitimate target for invasion. I don't think that any western country really wants to stay in Afghanistan but all would wish that its governing groups would behave in a civilised way and not as a bunch of power seeking medieval war-lords, as seems to be the case.

It would be a nice idea if the majority of a country asking for help was to be the the trigger for intervention but I cannot think that this would ever be the case. "Most" people would not have the ability to register a complaint even where there was such a situation, so this situation would never arise. In any case I simply don't think this is a valid argument. In many cases, it is a valid reson to intervene if atrocities are carried out on a minority group. It is irrelevent that they are not the majority, surely. It is like saying that it was not a case for intervention in Rwanda when 77% of the Tutsi were massacred because the Tutsi were not a majority. In my view such an attitude is immoral, even though that is what happened in this case.

I agree with your third point in principle, but think that it is better that intervention is employed, even if sometimes it is as a result of a mix of justifications where not all of them are strictly for altruistic reasons. Because the USA does not help much to alleviate the injustice to the Palestinians does not mean that it is wrong in helping in other areas of the world. States make decisions to act for many reasons and it often depends on a coming together of groups with various interests not all of which are altruistic. This does not make the resulting actions wrong.

Wars can be avoided, and probably should be more often than they are, but usually there is a cost in any case. There can come a point where it seems that there is no choice. After 9/11 what would you have done if you were president of the USA? Given that there were terrorist groups with training camps inside Afghanistan and that these were allowed to continue their operations, and even supported, by the existing authorities within Afghanistan, how would you deal with this?

Iraq is a different matter and the justifications for war here are dubious, but, on the other hand, Saddam had killed large numbers of his own people and was only in power by rule of his own forces. If you remove the many other reasons for groups in the USA wishing to invade Iraq, is it not right, in principle, to try to get rid of a man like Saddam? In this case it was not politic to do this, as has become apparent, but it could certainly be argued that it was morally right to try even if the results have turned out very badly.

I do not agree that religions say that we should not intervene to help others, though perhaps you could tell me that the Quran says nothing on this, though I doubt that. Christianity certainly does not advocate fighting, but then it is vague on what should be done when faced with the complexities of real situations. It certainly implies you should intervene to help the oppressed, even at the risk to your own life. I rather like the view attributed to Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".

One of the real problems that has emerged in recent years is that the UN simply doesn't have a coherent policy on management of failed states, rogue dictatorships, and - perhaps thorniest - failed portions of functioning states, which may adversely impact security in neighboring areas. The UN evolved out of the second world war, hence its institutionalized priority on sovereignty. Today's world is different, and requires different responses.

So for a start, I'd suggest that the UN needs to take the bull by the horns, acknowledge that the world has changed, and work out a framework for dealing with today's security threats, instead of trying to impose a framework that was designed to meet a different type of situation.

Of course every answer raises more questions... we all know that powerful countries might at times promote intervention for self-serving purposes, but isn't it also true that powerful countries can obstruct intervention for self-serving purposes?

We all agree, I think, that intervention is justifiable in cases of genocide, but what about preventable and politically generated humanitarian crises. If a country is constantly in a state of famine because of horrendously bad policy, should the world just simply send food, and more food, and more food... of should the government responsible be forced to step down as a precondition for aid?

How bad does a government have to be before somebody says "enough"?

None of these questions have easy or simple answers, but ther first step toward developing answers that work is to acknowledge the deficiencies of the assumption of absolute sovereignty, and start facing the problems head on.

The UN has been doing a lot of thinking about this topic, and has come up with the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect. Essentially, if a government is comitting genocide, the UN will intervene militarily.

It is advocated here: http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/ 

I feel strongly that military intervention should always be the very last resort, and that much more should be invested in prevention.  The UN needs an Index of Human Rights, to identify regimes that are in danger of slipping towards gross HR abuses and genocide, so that nonviolent pressure can be exerted at an early stage. http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/Index%20of%20Governance.htm

Saddam invaded and devastated Kuwait, and nobody did a thing to him. His people were punished, his country was punished, but the man who ordered the act faced no adverse consequences whatsoever.

If the UN had half a testicle to its name, Iraq would have been given a choice: replace Saddam's government and turn him over for trial, or have others come in and take him away. If the UN had lived up to its responsibility, there would have been no (mostly) unilateral invasion.

The invasion of Iraq could be described as a lynching, but we'd do well to remember that lynchings happen when those who are supposed to enforce the law refuse their responsibility.

I thought the invasion was stupid, for practical reasons, but I put only half the blame on Bush. It the UN had been taking care of business instead of fondling their collective flounders, the US wouldn't have been out doing the dirty work for them.

Dayahun,

The issue before the UN was the WMD. The action to be taken depended on the reports of the Weapons Inspectors. Since it appeared that Iraq would be given a reasonably clean bill of health on this issue, the recommended action would have been the lifting of sanctions. In order to avoid a peaceful outcome to the benefit of Iraq, the US/UK hurried ahead with their criminal aggression.

I agree that a necessary condition for successful intervention is the consent of the people involved, but how that consent is acquired is an important, probably crucial question.

Do countries wait until authoritarian states and/or death squads hold off on the oppression and torturing long enough for their victims to get a petition together before intervening?

I really cannot believe that it is right to stand by and watch others suffering when we have the means to stop it. It seems to me to be an abdication of the responsibility which comes with being human and it is sad that some should think this way. I don't think there is any fundamental difficulty with the analogy of how one should respond to a violent household dispute at a neighbour's house. Thankfully that is not a situation I have had to face but I would hope I would take whatever difficult decisions that I felt were necessary and not just turn up the TV.

Nobody is saying that it is easy and nobody is saying that it is even always possible or practical. Abdulksaida, you speak with some justification about the problems faced by Palestinians. But this is a problem that cannot be solved without the will of the Palestinians to recognise Israel, and without the marginalisation of the more extreme political views within Israel. The second will not happen without the first and the USA will continue to support Israel, whatever its position. Palestinians have much support throughout the world and a vast majority would like to see an equitable solution, but this is not a case for military intervention, though there seems to be some in Gaza who seem to believe this would be a good thing. There is some financial support from many countries; the EU gave $600M in 2005 for example, although this funding was cut when Hamas refused to recognise Israel. Of course this is tiny compared to the vast funds that the USA puts in to Israel. Overall the funding to the PA (in 2005) from foreign sources was $1.1B ($370M from the USA). It is not because people and governments do not wish to help, it is just that there is no apparent solution.

There may be many cases where a interventionist solution is not practical, maybe a majority, but I would not say to never intervene. Perhaps those who have implied this position would like to moderate their hardline position or are they really so uncaring?

In my book recognition, in this case, has little to do with state diplomacy. You have a large group of people saying they do not recognise the right of Israel to exist and, indeed, many of whom openly espouse the notion that all jews should be sent back to a variety of European states from where their recent ancestors came. If Hamas said that they recognised Israel as a nation and its right to exist, this would be sufficient to enable some progress. There would be many in Israel who would also see this as a step to peace and it would deflate the aim of the extremists within Israel.

If you agree with the idea that Israel should be expunged as a nation, and you may well do, then it is probably the honest thing to say that you do not recognise the state of Israel. But unlike the  actions of states, who use the concept of recognition as a political weapon, I can really see no middle ground here.

Eric

Great, we agree that the Jewish state exists, and that a Palestinian State should also exist.

<i>"as a nuclear armed state with the region's most powerful army, fully supported by the greatest military power in the entire history of the world, it's as secure as any country can be in a troubled world".</i>

Nicely put. though the idea of security through Nuclear deterrence is problematical, to say the least.

The two state solution has to be the one. I would favour the idea of cantonisation in certain areas. Jerusalem might be cantonised. Cantonisation blurs the absolutist, black and white tendencies of the Nation State.

The state problem is complicated by the notion that God promised the whole land, from Dan even unto Beer Sheba, to the Chosen People. It is impossible to reason with fundamentalists, but we can point to other parts of the Book which speak of treating people ethically.

Israel may have military dominance and a powerful ally, but radar is useless against the suicide bomber. Sniffer dogs are useful (the world needs an explosion in the number of explosive detecting sniffer dogs) but the only absolute protection against the suicide bomber is apartheid. The suicide bombers (and the rockets) deny Israelis any sense of security, just as the Israelis deny the Palestinians of any sense of being fairly treated. The principle of "an eye for an eye", doing its usual thing, leaving everybody blind.

But just as each act of violence creates reciprocal hatred, so also each act of confidence building can create trust. Working together on a commmon goal is also a way to overcome conflict. The Israelis and Palestinians have a common goal in building an environment capable of supporting their populations. Water management is key in the Middle East. As soon as a ceasefire makes it safe, the international community should be facilitating a massive programme of ecological renewal, beginning with water management.

IMHO

Richard

 1- Iam totally with mr eric analysis and knowing the real situation and the real problem in occupied terrotieries.

2- solving the problem is with the hand of israel and not palestininas and that is the real truth.

3- If any one of posters who try to find a solution from far away and didnt suffer the aggression of occupation , for sure he or she will not provide a clear image and a good one. even the neutral ones, sometimes give the blame on palestinians which that is not correct. All cards are with the strong part and who occupied and steal other country by force and the other side cant defend only by rocks and other means which no body like to see. They unfortunately defend killing of palestinians as long as they are killed by miscles and rockets using a clean weapon which dont show blood as other old fashon weapons.

4- also mr englishman give execuses for the whole world as they want to solve the issue of jewish scattered all over the world and after Hitler killed them, so why they dont choose other country for them to settle in it instead of choosing palestine, it is not moral of the concerned in the west to choose another country, why it was not e.g in europe or america as they defend them more and hitler killed them and not us. No execuse to help jewish people by doing another hallucaust for palestinains, that is not the correct help and intervention.