Iran: The Times They Are A-Changin’
Does American Responsibility and Permissibility Change With It?
In a recent piece published in The New Republic, Senator John McCain writes that now is the time for America to support regime change in Iran. One of the central tenets of his article is that a domestic pro-democracy movement has sprung up over the past year, and it is now obvious that Iranians want American help:
Of course, the United States should never provide its support where it is unrequested and unwanted—but when young Iranian demonstrators choose to write their banners of protest in English, when they chant “Obama, Obama, are you with us, or are you with them?” it is a pretty good indication that we can do more, and should do more, to support their incontrovertibly just cause.
There are two ways to interpret Sen. McCain’s use of “should” here. Perhaps the Americans should help now because the chances of success are much higher when there is domestic support for foreign intervention. This would be a strategic, prudential argument. Alternatively, perhaps the “should” here is a moral “should,” and that only when help is wanted does America have a moral responsibility (or even permission) to interfere with Iranian affairs. I suspect that McCain means to express both these sentiments. This moral position is a common one, with much intuitive appeal – but can it stand up to much scrutiny?
The orthodox argument in support of this view, most famously made by Michael Walzer in his now classic Just and Unjust Wars, is that persons within a political community enjoy a shared “common life” of indispensable value. This common life is a result of “shared experiences and cooperative activity” over many generations. It is valuable because it gives persons a sense of national identity, pride, and history – not to mention a political life to which they take part. Thus, foreigners should assume a certain “fit” between a government and its people in order to respect a community and its internal life. Foreigners should take seriously political sovereignty and territorial integrity – they should not meddle with the internal affairs of another nation except under extenuating circumstances. So even if Iranians know that conditions within their country are unjust, they still might think that justice should be brought about internally by Iranians for Iranian reasons for the sake of preserving their common life. It is only when Iranians obviously want outside help is foreign interference morally permissible.
However, even assuming that this characterization of common life is correct, it is unclear that it is valuable enough to make all interference impermissible. After all, what is at stake in cases like Iran, where political dissidents are imprisoned or executed, are values such as liberty and life itself. Arguably, not only are these values more fundamental than a shared common life, but also logically prior. That is, in order to even appreciate a common life, a person has to first be both alive and free. Thus, if life and liberty are indeed more important than common life, and foreign intervention would save lives, then why not intervene? Even if it does hurt a political community’s common life, that should be outweighed by the lives that are saved.
This problem is not an easy one, mainly because it requires the weighing of seemingly incommensurable values against each other, but it is at the heart of questions about humanitarian intervention and even war.
-Han
Related posts:
- Is Iran a weak competitive authoritarian regime?
- Iran and just revolution
- What to watch for in Iran
- Explaining the diversity of views on Iran
- President Obama and The New York Times must read this blog
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