In John Stuart Mill’s “
A Few Words on Non-Intervention” Mill’s speaks about an interesting topic.
Mills says that whether one country is justified in assisting the people that
are from another country; is based on the “yoke” that the assisted country is
trying to get rid of. By yoke Mill’s states that if the country is trying to
throw off a government that maintains itself by foreign support; then it is
okay for another country to intervene. When the conflict is only between native
rulers along with the native strength those rulers can enlist in their defense,
and the people of that country; legitimate intervention is not okay. John Mill’s
statement and justification for why intervention is not allowed in situations
involving conflict between a native ruling party and its people is the part of
the essay that will the focal point of this discussion.
Mill’s
begins his justification for this position by stating that “ the only test possessing
any real value, of a people’s having become fit for popular institutions, is
that they, or a sufficient portion of them to prevail in the contest, are willing
to brave labour and danger for their liberation”(Mill, Global Justice Reader, pg 482). Mill states
that a people must be willing to go through tough times, experience a large
amount of struggle, and be willing to put their lives on the line; in order to gain
the liberty that they so desperately want. Mill’s goes on to say that if the
people do not have such a unrelenting love for liberty that they are not able
to take their liberty from those that are considered their domestic oppressors;
then the liberty that they have been given by anyone but themselves will not be
permanent in any way.
Mills
states that the people must be the ones that overthrow their domestic
oppressors because if any group of people especially a group whose freedom has
yet to become prescriptive does not seem to value it sufficiently enough to
fight for it, and maintain it against any force which may come together within
the country, even by the people who have command over the countries money, it
is only a question of how long that it will take before the people will be
enslaved whether it be a few years or a few months (Mills,Global Justice Reader, pg 482). Mills in a way states that the people have to
be the ones that fight for their liberty because the moment that the assisting
country pulls out; the country will fall back into turmoil. The ideas that
Mills present which included that people must love liberty enough to be able to
fight off their domestic oppressors is a compelling and convincing argument. Originally
I was unsure whether I felt that
intervention into another country’s civil war or politics would be okay or not,
but Mills has made his argument sufficiently enough to convince me that in
cases that involve a native government and its people; non-intervention is the
best action to take.
I understand your take on non-intervention and how the people must be responsible for the overthrow of a despotic government. But what if there is such a brute abuse of power or indiscriminate use of violence and there is virtually no way the people could succeed?
ReplyDeletethis is a similar question to the one that i had on Stephen's post. I am interested in hearing the non-interventionist view point on how to deal with governments or groups of people that commit atrocities on their own people. This may sound foolishly optimistic but i feel that as long as the people truly want to be rid of their government they will do whatever it takes to win their freedom
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that this is always the case Roy. But it is up for debate. I would also ask why happens when a ruler is in power and committing atrocities because of what YOU do (i.e. the US and Saddam Hussein). If a state is implicated in the atrocities should it intervene to help or should it learn its lesson and just butt out?
ReplyDeleteMill is one of my favorite political thinkers, but at first I found it hard to support the idea that unless someone wins freedom on their own, they wont be able to hold onto or use it for what it is worth. This debate is similar to one involving the question of should man intervene with nature? The context is with wildlife. If there is an endangered species, should we intervene to secure the species prosperity? According to Mill we shouldn't because even if we do, they will eventually become endangered once again. The flaw that saw them into endangerment the first time will put them right back there. According to Mill, unless they figure out how to save their own species, we should just let the species die off, even if we know of a way to help them. In my opinion, we are privileged to be in such a position, whether in the case between two nations, one with freedom and one without, or it be between two separate species, one who is mentally superior to the other. And as a result we have a passive duty to those that are less "privileged".
ReplyDeleteOf course if we are causing the endangered species to go extinct, and for the most part this is the case, then we have a greater duty to that species no?
DeleteMill's dictum seems to work better when the state thinking about intervening plays little or no part in the problem. However, if you believe Butler this is a very unlikely situation.