Tom Farer Interview (2007): Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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How much damage to whatever liberal notions of intervention, liberal notions of torture, which were embodied in resolutions and then international law, how much damage has the Bush administration done to what had been achieved?
They've made it harder to intervene for humanitarian purposes, at least for the U.S. (and the U.S. has the most means to intervene), because there's so much cynicism in the world at large about American motives. So, now if we intervened in Darfur, which we're not, we would be intervening, I think, for humanitarian reasons, but would anybody believe we were intervening for humanitarian reasons? I fear not. So, that has hurt the prospects for humanitarian intervention for the time being.
However, you can intervene through the United Nations: the fact that the Security Council didn't endorse the invasion of Iraq is a positive, in the sense that it preserved the integrity of the Security Council. It showed, to the surprise of many on the left, that the Security Council is not totally dominated by the United States, it was able to exercise an independent judgment. Even countries that were fairly sympathetic to the United States, like Mexico and Chile, voted against us, so that the Security Council still has the capacity to legitimate action, to give action an aura of legitimacy.
The trouble, of course, is that neither the Soviets, nor the Chinese, nor sometimes the French, are enthusiastic about humanitarian intervention; but they did at least acquiesce in a number of humanitarian interventions in the late nineties. And with China beginning to, in fact, rapidly redefine itself from a defensive crouch power to a power that is participant in global governance, the possibilities of getting the Chinese to acquiesce or support humanitarian intervention from time to time are probably a little better now than they were a few years ago. You note how they've been moved a little bit in the Darfur case by the pressure of non-governmental groups as the Olympics approaches. Now that's partially tied to the Olympics but I think it's also partially tied to a changing Chinese sense of what's in China's interest, and if they see their interests as being seen as a leader -- and leadership today has to involve values, commitment to values, as well as power, economic and military power -- this can improve, civilize, and cosmopolitanize to some degree Chinese foreign policy.
So, I'm a little more optimistic about the Security Council, looking down the road ten, twenty years, authorizing humanitarian intervention in really extreme cases, genocidal kinds of cases.
Now aside from humanitarian intervention, are you asking about the impact on international law?
Well, let's talk a little about torture, that area.
That aspect of law.
Yes. What do you see as the domestic consequences, not in the sense that they're moved to torture the American people, but rather American soldiers must be very confused now about what they can or cannot do, and then, of course, there's been the whole rendition problem, and so on. What are the consequences of the Bush administration's actions, and then can they be rolled back? Can these policies be rolled back?
This is very hard to say, very hard to predict. You could say that changing attitudes toward torture marked the progress of civilization over the past several hundred years. It may be the number one marker of the decline of barbaric cruelty as an acceptable way of resolving problems or of maintaining power. Just think of how Britain dealt with people who were regarded as treasonous, drawing and quartering, cutting them open while they were alive, taking out their innards, burning them in front of their eyes. Three hundred years ago they were still drawing and quartering, and so we've seen a progressive assault on torture. In fact, torture in some ways is seen as even worse than killing, because after all, the Supreme Court has held that capital punishment is not a cruel and unusual punishment, is not a violation of the Constitution. But they have treated torture, or behavior that shocks the conscience, as unconstitutional, and they've thrown cases out of court, they've overturned convictions, because they were obtained through these means. So, torture is seen to be even worse than summary execution, something calculated, this calculated infliction of pain.
And yet, suddenly you have academics, you have Professor Dershowitz at Harvard, and others -- I don't want to just pick on Dershowitz -- saying, "Well, yes, in extreme cases, maybe it even has to happen under those cases." You have television programs -- this program "24"-- in which torture is commonplace. The hero tortures people because there's always a ticking bomb, he's saving New York or Los Angeles. So when I say it's hard to predict, you could say on the one hand that the effort to make torture respectable again, as "necessary," has raised the issue, sharpened the issue, and the response even of some conservatives like McCain, will strengthen the limitations on torture, will strengthen the repression, the mores, the taboo on torture -- that's the word I'm looking for: strengthen the taboo.
So, it could turn out that this use of torture, and cruel and inhuman treatment, by the administration, directly and by taking people to other countries where they are tortured without inhibition as a matter of course, will actually in the long term strengthen the taboo. That's one possibility. The other is that people are going to have gotten accustomed to talking about it, and thinking, "You know, in extreme cases it may be necessary," and so you give a certain legitimacy to it.
I'm not sure what the psychological -- because ultimately that's the most important element, the psychological element. Does it strengthen the taboo or does it relax the taboo? I'm not sure.
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