Re: Comments on "Kazakhstan, Libya, and the Double Standards of Western 'Humanitarian' Intervention"


This article was originally posted on Policymic on 01/05/12 with the title "Kazakhstan Shows Western Human Rights Interventions Remain Hypocritical"

Recently, I published an article on PolicyMic entitled "Kazakhstan, Libya, and the Double Standards of Western 'Humanitarian' Intervention." It argued that it was hypocritical of the West to use human rights as a reason to intervene in other countries when it is so clearly dismissive of those rights elsewhere in the world. Comments on the piece were largely critical, and as the different commentators mostly raised the same points, I’ve decided to address them together rather than piece-meal in the comments section of the original article.  

The first point raised was “Kazakhstan is much more remote than Libya, and borders Russia, so how can you expect a humanitarian intervention to take place there?”

This is a reasonable question and I can’t say that it never crossed my mind while I was writing the article. However, in response, I would ask readers to take a moment to imagine if Kazakhstan’s recent crimes had taken place 25 or 30 years ago, when Kazakhstan was still a part of the Soviet Union. Intervention, for the reasons mentioned in the comments on my article (and others besides), would still be impossible. However the Western response would likely not be to shrug and gently chide Kazakhstan, as happened last month. The massacre would be publicized as evidence of the immutable Stalinist evil of the Soviet Union, a reason to break off détente, another argument for the boycott of the Moscow Olympics. It would, at the very least, see far more publicity than Kazakhstan has. 

The West, even if it were mostly powerless to affect conditions in Soviet Kazakhstan, would protest vehemently. However, it would do this at the same time it was supporting the repressive regimes of Pakistan, Indonesia, Chile, and Egypt, among many others. It would do this at the same time it funded the Contra death squads of Central America and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. I would think that the hypocrisy in this position is obvious.  

The second criticism raised was that “It is impossible for the West to intervene everywhere all the time, so you should be thankful that they manage to take action when they can.” 

The problem with this argument is that it presupposes several things, first that the West cares about human rights at all, which is sadly not borne out by the record. If human rights were a concern, immeasurable good could be accomplished easily, not through intervention, but merely by ending the support given by the West to dictators around the world. 

However this is politically impossible. The West fears democracy in the third world, since it often leads to people like Hugo Chavez being elected, leaders who have the temerity to announce that the wealth of their countries will be used to help the people of that country, rather than funneled out of the country by foreign banks and other corporations. 

So in practice, the West supports dictators and sponsors coups as a safeguard against this sort of popular democracy. This is obvious if we look at the history of Iran, where a democratically elected leader was deposed after attempting to nationalize foreign oil companies, or if we look at what happened to Allende in Chile, or Arbenz in Guatemala or many, many others, from Pakistan to Guiana.

Secondly, when the West does intervene directly, when it eschews the use of local allies like Pinochet, Suharto, or the Shah, its actions are hardly better than those of its proxies. In the name of humanitarian intervention, the West imposes collective punishment on the civilian population of enemy states. We have seen this in Serbia, Iraq, and recently in Libya. Claims of humanitarian motivation are somewhat undercut by a strategy of war that seems to focus on destroying power plants, sewage treatment centers, and factories. In addition to the methods of Western intervention, even the weapons used sharply undermine any claims of benevolence. In Iraq, subject to nearly two decades of bombardment by the United States, the use of depleted uranium weapons is likely behind the considerable increase in cancers and birth defects found among Iraqis.

My article was not intended to be a feasibility study on regime change in Kazakhstan, it was intended to show the hypocrisy of governments that claim human rights as a priority and as a mandate for intervention in other states while they support egregious violations of human rights elsewhere in the world.

Kazakhstan, Libya, and the Double Standards of Western "Humanitarian" Intervention

This article was originally posted on Policymic 12/30/11

In the past two weeks, an uprising and strikeby workers in Kazakhstan's profitable oil industry has been violently suppressed by the police forces of the country's dictatorial President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The Kazakh government claims that 15 people died, while protestors say the number has reached at least 70. Hundreds more have been injured and arrested.

If this is surprising news to you, don't be embarrassed. The events in Kazakhstan have received relatively little coverage in Western media. No one is calling for an intervention to protect the Kazakh protestors. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has not written on the need to bomb Astana into rubble. This disinterest stands in stark contrast to the barrage of pro-war media that was produced in the run-up to the NATO intervention in Libya.

The reason for that inconsistency is not clear, but examination of when and where the West has intervened (or not intervened) provides the answer: Interventions take place when they will further Western economic and strategic interests, not for altruistic reasons, and the claims of the West that their interventions are "humanitarian" in nature are grotesque hypocrisy.

So what were the interests that brought NATO into Libya but have earned only calls for calm and restraint in Kazakhstan? In a word, oil. Libya and Kazakhstan both have it, but Libya, despite some opening and liberalization in recent years, still placed restraints on foreign companies that were deemed onerous by Washington. The State Department's Investment Climate Statement for 2010 on Libya noted that it "requires that at least 35% of non-Libyan businesses be controlled by Libyan individuals or companies" and complained of Libyan laws that ordered foreign oil companies working in Libya to hire Libyan Branch Managers and Finance Managers, among other things. Similarly, Wikileaks highlighted American concern over the Libyan government's "resource nationalism.”

The oil wealth of Libya was, by and large, kept in Libya. Some of it disappeared into the pockets of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his cronies, but a good deal of it was invested in public works projects, infrastructure, and social services, with the result that Libya was one of themost developed countries in Africa and the Middle East, with social indicators like literacy, nutrition, and life expectancy considerably higher than its neighbors. It is also worth noting that much of the assets of the Libyan state will probably be privatized and sold to foreign investors now that NATO has won.

Kazakhstan, on the other hand, has encouraged foreign investment (not to mention that it has also played host to American military bases) and received praise and support for its efforts. The previous American administration considered it an important strategic ally. As recently as two months before long simmering unrest exploded into conflict on the 16th of this month,Forbes magazine was exulting that increased development of Kazakhstan's oil fields was driving up the price of shares in Chevron.

The coverage of the crises and dissent both regimes have experienced has also been markedly different. During the Libyan uprising, it was reported by sources as different as the New York Times, BBC, and Al-Jazeera that the pro-Gaddafi forces had, variously, used aircraft or heavy machine guns against crowds of protestors, been equipped with Viagra pills to facilitate the use of repeated rapes as a weapon against rebel towns, and hired African mercenaries to repress the rebels. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch did not find any evidence to support these claims. Concerns over the Nazarbayev government's long history of abuses and repression — including torture — by human rights groups have been largely ignored by the media and government. The violence, repression, and murder inflicted upon the protesting workers during their months-long strike by the police before the uprising has been absent from the coverage of the past two weeks. The New York Times in particular has printed more quotes from regime figures than from protestors, and, except for the occasional comment on the dictatorial nature of the Kazakh government, has largely left out the historical context of the uprising and of Kazakhstan in general.

This is by no means an isolated or unique example. The history of Egypt, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Chile, and many other countries testifies to the moral flexibility of the West when it comes to dealing with and supporting human rights abusers. While each instance has its own sordid history, the thread that runs through them all is this: Economic expediency, not human rights, is the guiding factor in the West's foreign policy. The next time we hear the drum of humanitarian war sounded, we might do worse than to think back on the track record of the interventionists.