Conflicts Without Borders

On Tuesday President Bush and Secretary Rice discussed the US-France draft ceasefire resolution. The first reporter to speak questioned Bush and Rice about the fact that neither party to the conflict has spoken out in support of the draft, and Lebanon in particular has rejected it. Rice responded by saying “obviously, the parties have views on how to stop this. Their views are not going to necessarily be consonant about how to stop it. The international community has a view.” We may all note that the international community’s “view” appears to be equated with, if not superior to, the “view” of Lebanon, the country that has been invaded.

Humanitarian advocates have long been pushing for the international community to recognize the rights and actions of subgroups or individuals within states. On this site, we have repeatedly defended a robust vision of state sovereignty and warned of the negative consequences that result from its deconstruction (more on sovereignty here).

Israel’s present attack on Lebanon is an excellent example of just such negative consequences. The military activity is everywhere described as a war between Hezbollah and Israel or an attack on Hezbollah. To Lebanese, and those who support them, these characterizations seem to represent media bias. After all, Israel’s actions have affected the entire nation; they are rightly described as attacks on Lebanon as a whole, and cannot meaningfully be understood as isolated incidents aimed at Hezbollah. But the problem is not one of deception, or partial reporting. It is representative of the current international order, in which state sovereignty has been severely eroded. In this age of anti-sovereignty it is perfectly within Israel’s province to take aim at a non-state actor if that actor is deemed dangerous, destabilizing (or best of all, a terrorist)—the rest of the country be damned. The erosion of sovereignty has in this way made it easier to act militarily, without the difficulties that would have attended state-to-state negotiations and diplomacy, or the political clarity required of declaring war.

It is not simple pro-Israeli bias or mere coincidence that has led to the almost-shocking acceptance of Israel’s bombardment of another country in the name of weakening a subgroup within that state. It is instead the logical conclusion of today’s humanitarian interventionism and the various attempts to disaggregate individuals from the states in which they reside. Within this international order, there is deemed to be no problem with one country or international force invading a sovereign nation in the name of opposing a group or movement deemed “rogue” by the international community. The only question that remains, within such a framework, is whether the action is proportionate. The result, in this case, is that Israel gets to “to settle internal Lebanese dialogue by Israeli force of arms,” just as international interventions have long worked to override domestic political dynamics for the benefit of other nations or regions. This is the single most significant reason why the principle of national sovereignty was crucial to the possibility of third world independence and self-determination, and why today it remains the case that we should, and must, defend it.

Not even the Lebanese government defends its territory on sovereign grounds today. The bizarre upshot of the humanitarian international order is that Lebanon will almost surely be required to cede control over its southern territory to some purportedly benevolent international force, further weakening efforts within Lebanon to strike a domestic agreement (English version). According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Michel Aoun, his party and Hezbollah have been proposing to end Lebanon’s disastrous six-decades’ old confessional system—a gift left to the country by the departing French occupiers at the end of World War II. Among their plans have been to bring an end to the allocation of political representation along sectarian lines, as well as to strengten Lebanon’s central government in preparation for its ability to truly take control of the entire country. These two proposals would take perhaps the most important steps in assuring a strong, stable, and democratic Lebanon. But now the Lebanese domestic process has been short-circuited. While various parties within Lebanon had been working toward political agreements that would benefit Lebanon, any UN resolutions will be concerned only with the interests of the US, Israel, and Europe.