From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond - New Edition: Human Rights and International Intervention [Paperback]

David Chandler's book "From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond" tackles a highly topical but difficult subject: the increasingly popular use of human rights as a concept to defend Western warfare in the Third World and 'humanitarian intervention' in general. In doing so, he relies less on the by now familiar arguments about how the human rights talk is really a mask for Western imperialist interests of economic or political kind. Instead, he prefers to take the defenders of the new human rights imperialism paradigm at their word, and to criticize them on their own merits.

Chandler explains the nature of the human rights imperialism idea well, showing that it is an attempt at creating a new moral order legitimizing liberalism both at home and abroad in a time of great popular discontent with it, by claiming for it a unique moral task. Although Chandler does not comment on it as such, the parallels with the White Man's Burden of the 19th Century are remarkable in this regard. He shows also that despite the good intentions of the human rights apologetes, the fact that they put the defense of specific rights over any government concerns often has the effect of delegitimizing and disabling governments altogether, and it matters little to them whether those governments are popular and elected or not. The rhetoric of such prominents as Geoffrey Robertson and Bernard Kouchner in this regard is remarkably strong, in that they seem to have no use for governments at all, which are seen as vehicles for oppression and destruction of minorities, and instead the focus is entirely on the human individual who is a member of a (potential) victim group.

As Chandler also interestingly argues, this way of reasoning has the additional unintended effect of actually weakening the power of individuals in political action, rather than strengthening it. This is because for the human rights paradigm to become dominant, it becomes necessary to see people, particularly minorities of various sorts, as universally weak, incapable of self-defense, victimized, and in need of outside help. Chandler argues convincingly that this, combined with the anti-democratic rhetoric that follows from the promotion of minority rights over elected state power, means that the traditional political concept on the left of the individual as individually weak but collectively capable of political participation, rationality and capable of self-government. Instead, it is argued that the regime of human rights must prevail totally regardless of any group's wishes, and this regime is in turn to be explicitly not in any way part of regular political institutions. As Chandler points out, this means in practice that the regime will be that of Western NGOs; undoubtedly well-intentioned people, but nonetheless overwhelmingly white elites from First World nations, unelected and accountable to entirely nobody. The liberatory effect of this can be doubted to say the least, and this lends significant strength to the otherwise somewhat simplistic left criticism of human rights imperialism as a masked version of the old imperialism.

Chandler further analyzes the effect of the new thinking on international law (which it seeks to supplant) and on the actual political improvement of the nations involved. He points out that Bosnia and Kosovo are still ruled by utterly unaccountable human rights viceroys ruling by decree over an international protectorate, which in fact has the case of completely shutting down any potential for democratic development in these states, since the High Commissioners etc. make all the decisions in reality and see local political groups as suspect and a hindrance. The result is that for lack of a political playing field in which to fight out their issues, people fall back into apathy at best, and at worst rely on the old ethnic and regional networks of support, which actually makes continued strife more likely. Add to this the widespread conviction of the human rights imperialists that "peacemaking involves war" (literal quote) and that it is inappropriate for aid organizations such as the International Committee for the Red Cross to be politically neutral, and one has a recipe for disaster.

David Chandler's book is surely the most subtle and well-argued case against human rights imperialism out now, and goes beyond the obvious stock criticisms of the left (so much so in fact that the book has an approving blurb from the Cato Institute). By directly criticizing the conception of the human rights paradigm, rather than taking it as mystification, he provides a powerful counter-argument to the dictatorship of the liberal elites. Surely nobody doubts their good will - but as the expression goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.