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INTERNATIONAL
INTERVENTION
IN THE

POST-COLD WAR
WORLD
(�) Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Croup
http://t.,...,.i<>dff�IS.Com
INTERNATIONAL
INTERVENTION
IN THE

POST-COLD WAR
WORLD
Moral Responsibility
and Power Politics

EDITORS

Michael C. Davis,
Wolfgang Dietrich,
Bettina Scholdan,
and Dieter Sepp

�} Routledge
� � Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK


First published 2004 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge


2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXl4 4RN
711 T hird Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2004 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or


utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to
persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or other wise,
or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas
contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and
knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or
experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should
be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for
whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and


are used only for identif ication and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

International intervention in the post-Cold War world: moral responsibility and power
politics / Michael C. Davis, Wolfgang Dietrich, Bettina Scholdan, and Dieter Sepp, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7656-1244-5 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Humanitarian intervention. 2. World politics-1989- I. Davis, Michael c., 1949-
II. Dietrich, Wolfgang. III. Scholdan, Bettina. IV. Sepp, Dieter.

JZ6369.I58 2003
341 .5'84-dc21
2003042791

ISBN 13: 9780765612441 (hbk)


Contents

About the Editors and Contributors vii


Acknowledgments xii

1. T he Emerging World Order


State Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention
Michael C. Davis 3
Part I. International Legal Foundations

2. "Humanitarian Intervention"
A Misnomer?
Peter R. Baehr 23
3. Legitimacy and Lawfulness of Humanitarian Intervention
Tania Voon 40
4. Human Rights and the Question of International
Criminal Courts and Tribunals
Robert Cryer 60
Part II. The International Politics of Intervention

5. Problematizing Sovereignty
Relative Sovereignty in the Historical Transformation of Interstate
and State-Society Relations
Victoria Tin-bor Hui 83
6. Weak States, State Making, and Humanitarian Intervention
With a View from the People's Republic of China
Mark D. Evans 1 04
7. Humanitarian Intervention
The Interplay of Norms and Politics
Hiroki Kusano 123

v
vi

Part III. The Philosophy of Intervention

8. Redefining Human Beings-Where Politics Meets


Metaphysics
Franca D 'Agostini 145

9. Preceding "Global Responsibility"


Autonomy, Knowledge, and Power
Nathalie Karagiannis 1 60

10. Reflections on the War on Terrorism


Daniela Ingruber 179

Part IV. Regional Dialogues

11. The New NAT O


An Instrument for the Promotion of Democracy and
Human Rights?
Rebe cca R. Moore 201

12. NATO's War over Kosovo


The Debates, Dynamics, and Consequences
Giovanna Bono 222

13. The Reluctant Intervenor


The UN Security Council , China's Worldview, and
Humanitarian Intervention
Michael C. Davis 24 1

14. Human R ights and Intervention in Africa


Rasheed Akinyemi 254

Part V. Topics in Intervention

15. Distributive Justice, Globalization, and International


Intervention
The New Roles of Multilateral Institutions
Alice Sindzingre 275

16. The Power of Responsible Peace


Engendering Reconstruction in Kosova
Chris Corrin 297

Index 319
About the Editors and Contributors

Franca D' Agostini, a native of Turin, Italy, completed her doctorate in phi­
losophy at the University of Turin and teaches contemporary philosophy at
the Faculty of Engineering (Politecnico). She is the author of Analitici e
continentali ( 1 997), Breve storia della filosofia nel Novecento ( 1 999), Logica
del nichilismo (2000), and Disavventure della veritii (2002) and contributes
to the newspapers la Stampa and il Manifesto.

Rasheed Akinyemi is a lecturer in comparative and international politics at


the Institute for Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria, where he
also received his master's and doctorate in political science. His areas of
research include African political systems, Islam and political culture, and
civil society and the state in Africa. His recent publications include the book
chapters "Zivilgesellschaft als Entwicklungspotenzial in Afrika" (2002) and
"Der afrikanische Sozialismus als ein visionares Modell fUr die Identitat und
den Aufbau von Nationen in Afrika"/(2000).

Peter R. Baehr is Emeritus professor of human rights. In his academic career,


he has served as professor of international relations at the University of
Amsterdam; executive secretary and later member of the Scientific Council
for Government Policy, The Hague; professor of human rights and foreign
policy, Leiden University; and professor of human rights and director, Nether­
lands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. Recent books in English
include The United Nations at the End o/the 1990s, 3rd ed. ( 1999), coauthored
with Leon Gordenker; Human Rights: Universality in Practice, 2nd ed. (200 1 );
and Human Rights in the Foreign Policy o/the Netherlands (2002), coauthored
with Monique Castermans-Holleman and Fred Grunfeld. He studied political
science at the University of Amsterdam and Georgetown University.

Giovanna Bono is a senior research fellow in European security at the De­


partment of Peace Studies at Bradford University, England. She has a doc­
torate in international relations from the University of Kent. Her recent

vii
viii ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

publications include the article two book chapters "Implementing the Head­
line Goals: Institutional Aspects and Consequences," in J. Krause, A. Wenger,
and L. Watanbe (eds.), Unraveling the European Security and Defence Co­
nundrum (2003), and "Democratic Accountability of Military and Police
Ooperation in the EU," in Hans Born and Heiner Hangii (ed.) Defining the
Democratic Deficit (2003), and the book NATO 's "Peace-Enforcement" Tasks
and "Policy Communities, " 1990--1999 (2003) and a variety of articles on the
European security and defense theme.

Chris Corrin is professor of feminist politics at the University of Glasgow,


where she teaches feminist theory, politics of protest, and politics of gender
in development. She is the convenor of the International Centre for Gender
and Women's Studies, and since the 1980s her work with women's groups
has supported her research focus on feminist theory and gendered political
perspectives, particularly in central and southeastern Europe. Her current
research is on women's human rights, violence against women, women's
political participation, and gender issues in development studies. Recent
publications include Magyar Women: Hungarian Women 's Lives, 1960s-
1990s ( 1 994), Women in a Violent World: Feminist Analyses and Responses
( 1 996), Feminist Perspectives on Politics ( 1 999), Gender and Identity in Cen­
tral and Eastern Europe ( 1 999), The Gender Audit of Reconstruction
Programmes in South Eastern Europe (2000), and a variety of articles.

Robert Cryer is a lecturer in law at the University of Nottingham, where he


teaches criminal law and international law, including intemational legal theory,
international criminal law, and the law of collective security. He received his
bachelor of laws at Cardiff University, and his master of laws and doctorate
at the University of Nottingham. He was previously a lecturer in law at the
University of Manchester. He has published mainly in the area of interna­
tional law, in particular the law relating to the UN Security Council, interna­
tional courts, the threat or use of force, and international criminal law. He
has also published in the areas of international legal theory and international
economic law. He is a book review editor of, and a regular contributor to, the
Journal of Conflict and Security Law.

Michael C. Davis is a professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong


Kong. He has served as the Schell Senior Fellow at the Orville Schell Jr.
Center for International Human Rights at the Yale Law School, the Frederick
K. Cox Visiting Professor of Human Rights Law at Case Western Reserve
University Law School, and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Law School.
He is the chair of both the Human Rights Research Committee of the Inter­
national Political Science Association and the Pacific Rim Interest Group
of the American Society of International Law and is an editor of the newly
establi shed Journal of Human Rights. He is author of Constitutional
ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS ix

Confrontation in Hong Kong ( 1 990) and editor of Human Rights and Chi­
nese Values ( 1 995). His publications on such topics as the political economy
of human rights, human rights and political culture, humanitarian interven­
tion, constitutionalism, and global order have appeared in a wide range of
journals. He has degrees from the Ohio State University, the University of
California, and the Yale Law School.
Wolfgang Dietrich is a professor of political science at the Institute for Po­
litical Sciences, University of Innsbruck, where he has been a member of the
faculty since 1 986 . He has also served on the faculty of the International
Center for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Castellon in
Spain since 1998. He is the academic director of the Austrian Institute for
Latin America and program director of the Master's Program for Peace, De­
velopment and International Conflict Transformation at the University of
Innsbruck. He is the author of eight books and numerous papers, including
Periphere Integration und Frieden im Weltsystem-Ostafrika, Zentral­
amerikaund Sudostasien im Vergle ich ( 1 998) .
Mark D. Evans is an analyst with the New Zealand Ministry of Defence. He
was previously a lecturer in international relations at the Faculty of Interna­
tional Studies, International Pacific College, Palmerston North, New Zealand,
where he chaired the local branch of the New Zealand Institute of Interna­
tional Affairs. His publications to date have focused on China, India, and the
English School of International Relations. He received his master's degree
from Griffith University, Australia. Under a Claude McCarthy Fellowship
and a University of Waikato Postgraduate Scholarship, he completed his
doctorate with the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. The
views expressed in his chapter are his own and do not represent those of the
New Zealand Ministry of Defence.
Victoria Tin-bor Hui is an assistant professor in political science at the
University of Illinois. She has a forthcoming book, War and State Fonnation
in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. After receiving her doctorate
with distinction from the political science department at Columbia Univer­
sity, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies
at Harvard University and at the Center for International Security and Coop­
eration at Stanford University. In pursuing her graduate studies, she received
dissertation fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and
the Institute for the Study of World Politics.
Daniela Ingruber is a freelance researcher in the field of civic education
and foreign affairs and works as a researcher in the field of mediation and
participation at the Austrian Society for Environment and Technology. Since
2000, she has been teaching at the Institute of Political Science, University
of Innsbruck, Austria, and at various universities and academies in the former
Soviet Union. Her publications incl ude Friedensarbeit in El Salvador
x ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

( 1 999). She has written articles on development cooperation, peace work,


civic education in Austria, the Internet and democracy, cryptography, and
disinfonnation.

Nathalie Karagiannis has recently completed a doctorate on the articula­


tion of the concepts of responsibility and efficiency in the development dis­
course of the European Union from the 1 970s to the end of the 1 990s
(forthcoming, 2004, Pluto Press). She currently lives in Zimbabwe.

Hiroki Kusano is a doctoral candidate in the international relations program


at Sophia University, Japan, where he also received his master's in interna­
tional relations and bachelor's in journalism. He has published the article
"America no Gunji Kainyu no Henyo" ("The Transformation of American
Military Intervention") in The louumal ofInternational Studies, No. 46, 2000.
His doctoral research likewise considers U.S. intervention practice over the
past one hundred years.

Rebecca R. Moore is a NATO Fellow and an associate professor of political


science at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. She is currently work­
ing on a book on the evolution of NATO's political dimension. Her previous
research and publications have focused on democracy promotion and U.S .
human rights policy.

Bettina Scholdan is head of the Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and
Asylum Research and Documentation (ACCORD), which is affiliated with
the Austrian Red Cross. She has published articles on minority rights juris­
prudence and critical race theory, the impact of international administration
on postconflict societies, as well as refugee protection and development aid
in the European Union, and has conducted human rights research and report­
ing on sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, and the fonner Yugoslavia. Since
1 999, she has been the coeditor of the ACCORDIUNHCR European Coun­
try of Origin Infonnation Seminar Series. In 1 997 and 1 998, she was a visit­
ing scholar at Columbia Law School. She is currently completing her doctorate
in political science at the University of Vienna, exploring the impact of U.S .
legal culture on minority politics.

Dieter Sepp is a social scientist in Vienna. After concentrating on compara­


tive studies on democratization in Africa and the concept of liberal democ­
racy during his graduate studies at the University of Vienna, as well as during
his postgraduate program at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, he
has gradually shifted his interests toward the role of infonnation technology
in modem politics and modem society in Europe. He has participated in
several research and publication projects at the Institute for Technology As­
sessment, which is part of the Austrian Academy of Science. After conduct­
ing research projects in France and in Africa, he presented a paper on
ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xi

promoting democracy and human rights in Africa at the 1 999 Human Rights
Research Committee Conference and was instrumental in hosting a workshop
for the present proj ect. Currently, he is doing a documentation project with
an Austrian software firm specializing in securities trade. He has written
several articles on human rights and democratization in Africa.

Alice Sindzingre is a senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recher­


che Scientifique, the national French public agency for research, where she
has worked since 1 983. She has conducted research on development eco­
nomics and political economy, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, has served as a
consultant for international organizations and governments, and has been a
member of the Core Team of the World Development Report 2000/ 1 of the
World Bank, "Attacking Poverty." She is a member of numerous academic
societies in France and abroad, and has published on a large range of topics,
including political economy of development, international cooperation, cor­
ruption, African politics, poverty, and rural economics. She holds a master 's
in business science from the University Pari s IX-Dauphine and a postgradu­
ate diploma in economics from the National Institute of Statistics and Eco­
nomic Administration.

Tania Voon is a WM Tapp Scholar, an Honorary Cambridge Commonwealth


Trust Scholar, and a doctoral candidate in law at Gonville and Caius College,
University of Cambridge. She completed her master of laws at Harvard Uni­
versity and her bachelor of laws and bachelor of science at the University of
Melbourne. She has practiced both public and private law and is currently a
senior fellow of the Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law, University of
Melbourne Law School. Her writing on such topics as the law of armed
conflict, military j ustice, international trade, and state sovereignty has ap­
peared in a variety of academic journals and books.
Acknowledgments

This book grew out of a workshop in Vienna, Austria, in August 200 1 held
under the auspices of the Human Rights Research Committee of the Interna­
tional Political Science Association. This workshop brought together a di­
verse group of scholars specifically interested in the relationship between
morality and power politics in international intervention actions. We sought
to explore often-neglected i ssues in respect of the growing practice of mili­
tary intervention for humanitarian purposes. Subsequent collaborative ef­
forts have enabled us to further develop arguments initiated in the Vienna
workshop. These ongoing discussions have allowed us to sharpen our argu­
ments to present a challenge to the mainstream discourse and tease out the
common theoretical issues and foundations reflected in the chapters of this
book. While our views remain diverse, we are hopeful that we have raised
some serious challenges in respect of state practices in this area.
At this stage, we would like to thank the sponsors and organizers of our
Vienna workshop. At the top of our list in this regard is the Austrian Political
Science Association that, with the great efforts of coeditors Wolfgang Dietrich,
Bettina Scholdan, and Dieter Sepp, hosted the Vienna workshop. Funding
support for the workshop was provided by the Renner-Institut, the Austrian
Federal Ministry for Sciences and Art, the Municipality of Vienna, the Cham­
ber of Labour, the British Council, and the Istituto Italiano Cultura di Vienna.
As the editor responsible for coordinating the preparation of this book, I
would like to thank my two research assistants, Elizabeth Lee and Orianne
Dutka, who have assisted at various stages of the editing process. I would
especially like to thank the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard
University and its director, Professor William Alford, for hosting me for one
year at the conceptualization phase of this effort. Finally, we would all like to
express our appreciation to the many participants in our original workshop,
contributors to various seminars where our ideas have been presented, and
the unknown reviewers of our manuscript.

Michael C. D a vis , Hong Kong

xii
INTERNATIONAL
INTERVENTION
IN THE

POST-COLD WAR
WORLD
(�) Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Croup
http://t.,...,.i<>dff�IS.Com
1

The Emerging World Order


State Sovereignty and
Humanitarian Intervention

Michael C. Davis

There have been at least two distinct kinds of war in the post-Cold War
period, each of which brings its own set of challenges to human rights and
global institutions.l The first, humanitarian intervention, came earlier in the
form of military responses to humanitarian crises. For these crises, the United
Nations' (UN) framework has sometimes proved inadequate. The second,
wars primarily based on claims of national defense-evident in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and the so-called war on terrorism-has grabbed our attention since
September 1 1, 200 1 . Such wars, though claimed to be sanctioned by the
right of self-defense under UN Charter Article 5 1, sometimes in combina­
tion with a UN Security Council initiative under UN Charter Chapter VII,
have spawned expansions of the notion of self-defense in ways that severely
challenge the charter regime.2
The human rights focus of each of these two types of war is somewhat
different. Humanitarian intervention is primarily about protecting entire popu­
lations of people against ethnic cleansing and genocide and holding indi­
vidual elites accountable for such crimes. The current crop of defensive wars
and their offshoots have primarily focused human rights attention on the
changing character of war, expansive notions of self-defense, the applicabil­
ity of international standards for belligerents in the fields of battle, and the
sources and boundaries of terrorism, though humanitarian concerns are also
generally implicated.
In spite of these differences, both cases have common foundations in com­
munal conflicts and both have arisen out of similar circumstances. Among
these two pressing areas of human rights concern, this book focuses prima­
rily on the former, though the interconnectedness between the two will some­
times bring our attention back to the latter.
Humanitarian crises of vast proportions, often brought on by communal
or ethnic conflicts, have been among the defining events of the post-Cold
War world order. The cries of human anguish caused by these events have
3
4 MICHAEL C. DAVIS

captured our global media and our political debate. We have, however, in­
herited an international regime that, in its current state of practice, often
appears inadequate to the task of coping with these events. International re­
sponses to humanitarian crises are often too late or nonexistent, and when
they do occur, they are often inadequate. These kinds of events are sure to
repeat themselves. How this debate will shape the instruments of world peace,
especially the use of intervention to avert humanitarian crises, is a matter of
great concern in the post-Cold War era.
A variety of conceptual questions are involved in the debate over humani­
tarian intervention, including issues of moral responsibility, strategic con­
cerns, appropriate standards for intervention, the nature of the modern state,
and the like.3 Practical factors that shape global attitudes toward these issues
include the prevalence of ethnic domination and the intractability of ethnic
disputes, principles respecting self-determination and rights of seceession,
classic doctrines of sovereignty and nonintervention, the importance of de­
mocracy, individual and collective responsibility in international law, and
the global-strategic implications of intervention actions. A compelling con­
cern is that military intervention only be a last resort after a variety of non­
military forms of intervention, such as sanctions, humanitarian assistance,
legal prosecutions, and so on, have been exhausted. These issues admit no
easy answers. It is not surprising that the UN Security Council often cannot
agree on an adequate response to such emerging crises. Despite that diffi­
culty, crafting a shared understanding of the appropriate standards for global
or regional behavior is vital to alleviating existing humanitarian disasters
and averting new ones in the future.
The post-World War II vision of global security was aimed at the preven­
tion of another World War II. The UN Charter thus saw future conflicts as
interstate in character, leading to the charter 's emphasis on sovereignty and
nonintervention. Contrary to the UN Charter vision, in the post-Cold War
era, conflicts giving rise to humanitarian crises and questions of intervention
often arise out of domestic politics, internal wars, and communal conflicts.
The technology of war and global strategic changes in international politics
have contributed to the escalation of internal ethnic conflicts and humanitar­
ian disasters in ways that call the classic nonintervention principle into ques­
tion. In a global age, humanitarian crises almost always have dramatic external
effects that countries in the region and beyond ignore at their peril.
At the same time, global strategic political differences have often made
cooperation in dealing with humanitarian crises difficult. This has been es­
pecially evident in the frequent immobility of the UN Security Council. These
debates entangle law and morality and confront a rapidly changing political
landscape. So far, the legal side of this equation has generally remained com­
mitted, in some formulation, to a principle of nonintervention. But the moral
side has presented us with arguments to waive this principle when confronted
with humanitarian crises of vast proportions. Efforts to resolve this tension
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 5

have been encumbered by domestic, international, and global strategic poli­


tics . With general inaction against and privileging of great powers and much
quicker responses to crises in sensitive areas, geostrategic considerations
have further confounded the development of consistent practice.
Much of the literature in this field focuses on important legal issues and
historical developments. However, the politics of humanitarian intervention
are often neglected. The aim of this book is to capture some of the voices and
perspectives that have been sidelined in discussions of humanitarian inter­
vention and in designs of intervention regimes. On the ground, some of these
voices are heard only in protests outside various summit meetings. Academi­
cally, these voices are on the challenging end of a variety of mainstream and
critical schools in intellectual thought in law, international relations, politi­
cal science, and philosophy. The included contributions are informed by a
variety of critical schools, including feminism, critical theory, postmodernism,
constructivism, the English School, and development studies.
Critical challenges from legal, political, philosophical, regional , and topi­
cal perspectives are addressed in succeeding parts of this book. While the
primary focus is on the use of military force in response to humanitarian
crises, important nonmilitary interventions and contextual factors are ad­
dressed. Part I shapes the broad debate by articulating the legal foundations
of humanitarian intervention, including both state action and responsibility
and individual action and responsibility. In this part, Peter R. Baehr and Tania
Voon set forth the contours of the contemporary legal regime for humanitar­
ian intervention and provide an assessment of practices in Kosovo and East
Timor. Baehr, in chapter 2, worries that North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) actions in Kosovo were legally dubious and politically controver­
sial, while Voon, in chapter 3, laments the growing gap between legitimacy
and lawfulness in intervention practices. In chapter 4, Robert Cryer closes
part I by charting the remarkable recent expansion of the international re­
gime for individual responsibility for crimes against humanity and related
crimes, culminating in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Cryer traces
the strong pull of international politics in the creation of this legal institution.
The succeeding four parts of this book consider the challenges with which
the legal discourse must ultimately cope, starting with international politics.
While the growing literature on intervention has offered refined analysis
of legal traditions and practices in this area, it has often failed to appreciate
the pull of politics in shaping these legal traditions. Victoria Tin-bor Hui , in
chapter 5, challenges the common understanding of sovereignty as noninter­
vention, which necessarily condemns humanitarian intervention as illegal.
She advances a more historically fluid concept of "relative sovereignty" that
takes into account a state's evolving relations with other states and with soci­
etal actors. Mark D. Evans advances this relativity in a different form in his
chapter, noting that sovereignty may matter in different ways for weak and
strong states. He argues that international authorities could be better served
6 MICHAEL C. DAVIS

by a "softer" form of intervention, aiming to augment the capacity and willing­


ness of authorities at the national level to protect human rights. In chapter 7,
Hiroki Kusano provides a transition argument, contrasting the commands of
political calculations with the rich normative tradition in international politics.
Do politics ultimately win out? Part III takes up the philosophical and
normative challenges in the preceding two parts. Do we need a philosophical
foundation for this debate? Franca D' Agostini's chapter argues that a phi­
losophy that seeks the foundational premises of global responsibility and
human rights should be engaged in this debate, rejecting antifoundational
debates in tHe human rights discourse. Nathalie Karagiannis shifts the focus
to ethics in chapter 9, insisting that we look more carefully at the notion of
responsibility before considering the consequences of global responsibility.
She notes that notions of responsibility, autonomy, and knowledge change
over time. Finally, this philosophical reflection in part III closes with atten­
tion to the contrasting moral concerns of the war on terror. In chapter 1 0,
Daniela Ingruber queries whether the war on terror is an appropriate moral
response to the conditions that have spawned terrorism. While that war falls
into a different category than humanitarian intervention, Ingruber explores
their common foundations, noting in postmodern terms how global discourse
shapes our perceptions of both.
In this debate, some regions are superempowered, while others are barely
heard. If the UN Charter regime presents political and legal hurdles to hu­
manitarian interventions, will regional institutions be required to take up the
slack? In the face of UN immobility, national and regional actors may ulti­
mately shape global practice.
The fourth part of this book addresses the regionalization of this debate
through the competing lenses of NATO, Africa, and Asia. A lot of attention
has been given to NATO and intervention, but much less to Africa, and al­
most none to Asia. On NATO, this part of the book enj oys both optimistic
and skeptical viewpoints. Rebecca R. Moore argues in her chapter that NATO
ultimately has a liberalizing influence and that its expansion has witnessed
expansion of a Euro-American community committed to both democracy
and liberalization. Moore's analysis leads to the question of whether NATO
can provide a foundation for importing democracy and human rights into the
intervention norm. In NATO's operations in Kosovo, Giovanna Bono, in
chapter 1 2, sees a policy community committed to a strategy of "diplomacy
backed by force" that often sought to renovate NATO's strategic capabili­
ties. She worries that these considerations may have overridden humanitar­
ian concerns. The closing two chapters in part IV consider the role of
non-Western countries in shaping our humanitarian intervention practice.
Michael C. Davis notes in his chapter that although China is a major power
and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it has followed such a
hard-line policy on sovereignty and nonintervention that it has virtually ex­
cluded itself from the debate. While most of the contributors to this volume
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 7

focus on military intervention, Rasheed Akinyemi addresses in chapter 14


"soft" or economic intervention in the form of conditionality and structural
adjustments. Using the case of Africa, Akinyemi examines the issue of eco­
nomic development and institutional responses to it.
Part V takes up two topical issues that reflect sharply on those who are
excluded from this debate. As has been teased up in the most recent debate
on the war on terror, Alice Sindzingre, in chapter 1 5 , asks whether global
poverty and its neglect are the real problems that are responsible for humani­
tarian disasters in the first place and whether global developmental struc­
tures are adequate for this challenge. In chapter 1 6, Chris Corrin considers
how women and their nongovernmental organizations are ultimately the ne­
glected participants in both military intervention and reconstruction. Both
chapters remind us that the issues associated with humanitarian intervention
neither begin nor end with the question of military intervention.
Various neoliberal and constructivist theories have asserted that domestic
institutions and political conditions are constructive of global practices in
respect of war and peace.4 This has implications both for current interna­
tional proposals and for long-term norm development. We should bear in
mind that international norms such as sovereignty and nonintervention are
not j ust constraints on actors with a priori interests, but are also constitutive
of the state and other multinational actors that engage this debate.5 As
constructivists in international relations argue, norms and institutions trans­
form actors and actors transform norms and institutions. So, the outcome of
this debate is not j ust about applying moral or legal principles to a given set
of facts, but rather will be shaped as circumstances evolve in dynamic pro­
cesses of change. This outcome will also be shaped in a world where our
capacity to do harm is continuously enhanced by the expansion of our tech­
nological and political capabilities. A moral antidote for extreme and violent
actions against humanity is especially needed in the debate over humanitar­
ian intervention. This debate and its constituents are therefore quite funda­
mental in efforts to understand the emerging post-Cold War world order.
Several later chapters of this book enhance our capacity to sort out these
issues by considering their historical and philosophical rootS.6 A brief intro­
ductory overview of some of the prime arguments that have animated this
debate is therefore a useful starting point for our analysis.

The Historical Humanitarian Intervention Debate

In practice, in recent years varying perspectives on appropriate responses to


humanitarian crises have emerged. Some are impassioned and hopeful about
our capacity to devise new mechanisms and institutions to confront the men­
ace of humanitarian crises, while others have despaired at the incapacity of
our state system to exceed the narrow interests of its constituent states. The
latter realist skepticism has in many ways shaped the current global order
8 MICHAEL C. DAVIS

and related regimes. Among realists in international relations, the primacy of


state sovereignty and nonintervention continues to reign. Realists are skepti­
cal about the plausibility of widely agreed and effective international stan­
dards of intervention. This view might permit the most serious humanitarian
crises to be dealt with, but only when national interests are satisfied and on
an ad hoc basis. Mainstream legal positivist views favor either the realist
position or a limited regime of multilateral agreements where countries could
consent to future interventions.7 Contemporary liberal arguments have called
for reforms to the UN Charter respecting the UN decision process and inter­
national standards for multilateral intervention. Liberals have debated the
moral and legal aspects of the use of military force for humanitarian inter­
vention, some harking back to the "just war" tradition and others noting the
Kantian quality of peace efforts in the UN regime. Others have focused on
the inadequacy of the UN regime to contemporary world issues, noting that
its post-World War II design had failed to contemplate the character of mod­
ern ethnic conflicts.
The debate over sovereignty and nonintervention has early and variable
roots in the liberal philosophical tradition.8 The hard view equating sover­
eignty with nonintervention was largely shaped in the eighteenth and nine­
teenth centuries. John Stuart Mill profoundly shaped the nonintervention
principle, arguing that a country could not intervene to impose self­
determination on others without defeating such self-determination.9 Self-help
was the essence of self-determination and nonintervention was central to this.
More recently, Michael Walzer notes that this notion of sovereignty al­
lowed exceptions for wars of liberation in states with multiple communal
groups and for self-defense in case of invasion.1O Walzer notes that war is a
rule-governed activity with a dual concern with both the reasons for fighting
and the means adopted. This was true of the classic statist model as much as
it is today. Within the "tyranny of war," Walzer notes, "we have carved out a
constitutional regime: even the pawns of war have rights and obligations."l1
Nineteenth-century positivist international legal doctrines on war in many
ways track this Mill-Walzer view, though adding their own glaze in respect
of principles of neutrality in case of civil war (along with further principles
of intervention and counterintervention).12 Under this positivist legal para­
digm, state sovereignty is in many respects the foundation of international
law and unilateral intervention is widely disfavored. Going beyond this posi­
tivist legal paradigm in the direction of allowing humanitarian intervention,
Walzer argues further that an exception to nonintervention should apply in
cases where human rights violations are so extreme as to make talk of self­
determination irrelevant. 13 This would appear to favor humanitarian inter­
vention in extreme cases of genocide or ethnic violence.
Immanuel Kant goes further, challenging the sufficiency of the positivist
legal paradigm by offering a framework to promote a liberal model of per­
petual peace built around a federation of republican states.14 Kant contests
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 9

the emphasis on exclusive sovereignty of the classic legal positivist model .


For Kant, peace, not sovereignty, is the fundamental purpose of international
law. Recently, Michael W. Doyle and others have picked up on this Kantian
notion of liberal or democratic peace, advancing the argument that democra­
cies will not fight one another. 15 More recent scholarship has even added the
notion of a federal democratic peace, noting that the habits of interaction
associated with democratic federalism favor peaceful behavior. 16 These vari­
ous positions may be employed to relate self-determination, and sometimes
democratic governance and human rights protection, to full application of
the nonintervention principle .

The Contemporary Regime and the UN Charter

The twentieth century witnessed the evolution of a global treaty regime for
peace that in many ways tracks the highest hopes for the institutions re­
flected in the previous debate. The rights and obligations of those affected
by war have been specified in numerous agreements that aim to better achieve
a peaceful order. In the mid-twentieth century, the UN Charter appeared to
capture both wings of this debate, simultaneously offering a defense of sov­
ereignty and a federation of free states with a human rights commitment. 17
The UN Charter now serves as the basic constitution of this regime, but there
is considerable debate surrounding its character and requirements. Many
contemporary legal interpretations of the UN Charter appear to track the
classic legal positivist view, upholding sovereignty and restricting the use of
force to self-defense or actions controlled by the UN Security Council. 18 The
current moral debate concerning h umanitarian intervention finds this woe­
fully inadequate.
In its dual commitment to international peace and fundamental human
rights, the UN Charter appears to reflect a contradictory commitment to the
exclusive sovereignty of the state and international protection of human rights.
It appears to leave open the question of sovereignty and nonintervention
versus human rights, as well as the question of the status of the humanitarian
intervention concept. Mainstream legal positivists see maintaining peace under
a regime of exclusive state sovereignty and nonintervention as the UN's pri­
mary purpose. As discussed later in this book, China, a permanent UN Secu­
rity Council member, is a prominent proponent of this· view, weighing in
firmly on the statist side of the debate.19 On the other hand, liberals have
worried that the UN Charter's emphasis on sovereignty is too much a prod­
uct of the World War II-era belief that future conflicts would continue to
be interstate in character. Kofi Annan argues that this has not been the case
and pleads for a regime design under the UN Charter that acknowledges
the serious threats posed by internal conflicts.20 For Annan, the UN Charter
takes up the Kantian mission of a federation of republics committed to
international peace.
10 MICHAEL C. DAVIS

The UN Charter regime faces three primary difficulties in responding to


humanitarian crises: conceptual , political, and resource-based difficulties.
The conceptual difficulties are concerned with whether the many domesti­
cally derived military conflicts qualify as threats to international peace to
which the charter regime applies.21 B ut this difficulty has lately become less
pronounced, as the UN Security Council has increasingly characterized in­
ternal wars as threats to international peace.22 The Security Council has come
to appreciate that so-called internal conflicts may quickly spill over into sur­
rounding territories and will otherwise produce spillover effects such as refu­
gees. Politically, while the charter provides a formal security regime requiring
UN Security Council approval for armed peacekeeping and peace-enforce­
ment missions, the allowance of veto to the five permanent members of the
Security Council often renders the charter paradigm unresponsive to humani­
tarian crises.23 This shifts the debate down to regional or national actors for
whom inaction may not be a sensible option, either morally or politically.24
This may be the most serious challenge facing the UN Charter regime in re­
spect of humanitarian intervention. The resource difficulty is also quite seri­
ous. With countries increasingly unwilling to commit substantial and sustained
resources to peacekeeping efforts and with reluctance to risk the lives of their
soldiers, the UN faces excessive demands and a confidence crisis in its peace
efforts. Actors are then faced with a moral dilemma of the Kosovo variety :
inaction is unacceptable and yet high-altitude, low-risk bombing raises further
moral issues and risks the loss of international support.
This raises the previously noted option of regional action. Given difficul­
ties in obtaining UN Security Council approval, bypassing the Security Coun­
cil has become an important component in the evolving humanitarian crisis
regime.25 Unilateral action is suspect. Regional groupings such as NATO,
the Organization for African Unity (now the African Union), or the Organi­
zation of American States (OAS) may be called on to take military enforce­
ment measures-as occurred in Kosovo-even without the required UN
approva1.26 Some regional arrangements in the Americas and Europe appear
to take the Kantian thesis even more seriously. The OAS and the European
UnionlNATO have to a limited extent sought to enforce commitments to
democracyY In the long term, will the classic sovereignty regime and the
democratic peace be merged in the ways suggested by Annan? If so, partici­
pation in global decision processes regarding the use of force and a state's
right to resist intervention in respect of a humanitarian crisis could become
contingent on its practice of democracy and human rights. This is the move
that China and other authoritarian countries have most resisted, both in the
humanitarian intervention debate and through other UN human rights chan­
nels. This takes place in an environment where there are legitimate questions
about the bona fides of intervention actions. Permanent UN Security Coun­
cil members China, Russia, and the United States have likewise resisted moves
to expand individual responsibility for war crimes and genocide under the
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 11

new ICC, while they have permitted ad hoc tribunals.28 These battles are
sometimes fought over questions of so-called soft or hard interventions short
of military force.
The international practice regarding communal conflicts deserves special
mention here due to its contribution to humanitarian crises. Numerous recent
humanitarian crises have been the outcome of state suppression of commu­
nal groupS.29 The international law and practice in this area, in supporting
both sovereignty and self-determination, offers a contradiction that tends to
encourage the escalation of communal conflicts. International law advances
the values of self-determination and related rights, while discouraging the
exercise of such rights by communal groups within established states-so
sovereignty trumps self-determination and secession is not favored.3D Clas­
sic legal principles regarding intervention on behalf of insurgents in civil
wars bear this out, requiring nonintervention until the insurgents have taken
substantial territory by armed rebellion and thus acquire belligerent status.
Such status affords a right to be treated on more equal terms with the state
side of the conflict. Even at such a stage, neutrality would be required unless
others intervene, which frequently is the case. These principles appear to
signal to resisting communal groups the need to escalate violence to a suffi­
cient level to kick in this international solicitude.3) Overall, this tends to en­
courage armed rebellion since peaceful resistance will gain the insurgents
little international support. And, at the same time, it may encourage violent
state suppression of potential insurgent groups. These twin tendencies have
sometimes produced the very conditions that cause humanitarian crises. Con­
trast Tibet with Kosovo or East Timor. While Tibetan leaders in exile, guided
by their own moral compass, have shown little interest in armed rebellion,
the message from the current international regime would tend to promise
higher international dividends from a more militant approach .32 Further com­
plicating this problem in strategic terms, Tibet is claimed by a maj or power
that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Contemporary Solutions and Further Debates

There have been a variety of international proposals in respect to the current


intervention regime. Some arguments have favored sticking to a hard sover­
eign nonintervention principle with informal exceptional case analysis for
extreme humanitarian crises.33 Among leading theorists, Richard Falk notes
that "the textual level of analysis, upon which legalists rely, cannot give a
satisfactory basis for NATO intervention, nor can it provide a suitable ratio­
nale for rej ecting the humanitarian imperative to rescue the potential victims
of genocidal policies in KoSOVO."34 He appears to favor a nonintervention
principle with very limited exceptions. Thomas M. Franck concurs, seeing
the NATO action in Kosovo as an exceptional case.35 W. Michael Reisman
argues against this view, noting that the UN Charter is not a "suicide pact."36
12 MICHAEL C. DAVIS

Some have tried to give further content to such exceptional case analysis,
arguing that when human rights abuses persist to the point of massive suffer­
ing, the sovereignty of the state and the concomitant right of nonintervention
cease to exist.37 Some in the UN and elsewhere favor a narrow, formal re­
gime for UN crisis avoidance efforts and intervention. Other scholars sup­
port suggestions for Kantian-style alliances of democratic states with a regime
to restore democracy.38 The latter might urge that adequate human rights
protection and democracy be a condition for sovereign protection from in­
tervention. States should not be free to abuse their local citizens and then
hide behind sovereignty. Some advocate that states enter into agreements,
perhaps formally supported by communal groups, agreeing to intervention
on the collapse of democratic governance.39 This idea would employ the
existing legal positivist sovereignty regime to create an alternative consen­
sual order.
There are a variety of arguments that try to dissolve these competing ten­
sions in the mainstream humanitarian intervention debate. Of these, the most
substantial formal effort is the argument for the "responsibility to protect,"
as articulated in the 200 1 report to the UN Security Council submitted by the
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty.40 The move
made in this recommendation is to shift the emphasis in the humanitarian
intervention debate to the responsibilities that attach to principles of sover­
eignty and nonintervention under the UN Charter regime. This is done by
first emphasizing the responsibility of individual states to protect their own
citizens. It is recognized that only when there is a failure in this respect,
either by the state harming its own people or failing to protect them from
violence perpetrated by others, should the international community become
involved in exercising the responsibility to protect. This international collec­
tive responsibility is to be exercised where possible by UN institutions in
accordance with the UN Charter.
It is felt that by elevating the "responsibility to protect" and de-emphasizing
the permi ssibility of intervention, the objectionable quality of humanitarian
intervention may be reduced. But the report does recognize that sometimes
the UN Security Council may be immobilized by the veto power of the five
permanent members. In such cases, the report recommends that the perma­
nent members establish a convention to not go against a majority decision of
the Security Council unless the vital interests of one of the permanent
member's are at stake. If this admonition fails to secure an adequate response
to a pending humanitarian crisis, the report acknowledges that a regional re­
sponse may be legitimate, but only after first seeking and failing to get UN
Security Council approval. In such regard, the report appears to also open the
door to action first and a subsequent request for approval after the regional
actor has initially exercised its responsibility to protect through intervention.
The report articulates a variety of standards in determining the occasions for
such intervention. By shifting the emphasis from intervention to responsibility,
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 13

the report appears to move the argument forward. It is not clear, however, if
this will be enough to satisfy the most ardent objections of countries such as
China and Russia, which seek to defend a strong notion of sovereignty and a
central role for the UN Security Council in this area.
There are other approaches that focus on the possibility of more proactive
regional actions. David Wippman suggests the use of regional treaty-based
intervention that would engage domestic communal groups in agreeing on
principles for outside intervention.41 Accepting a largely legal positivist analy­
sis, he stresses the value of the participation of communal groups in making
such a commitment binding in international law. I foresee a much larger
future role for regional agreements in setting the conditions for intervention
and nonintervention. In the absence of agreed international standards to ad­
dress the full spectrum of intervention concerns, the likely direction appears
to be a more proactive engagement of regional states and institutions. States
in several regions have increasingly agreed in considerable detail on regional
standards of behavior respecting human rights and their enforcement. Such
agreements may eventually set up regional standards for intervention that
relate intervention to domestic practice, especially the maintenance of de­
mocracy and human rights. Soft intervention may more typically be em­
ployed, but such agreements may go further, specifying the possibility of
military intervention in the face of humanitarian crises. One may character­
ize this as a constitutive approach that frames the conditions for addressing
urgent regional concerns and crises. Such an approach can embody the no­
tion of a "responsibility to protect" and specifically address regional standards
for humanitarian intervention when that responsibility is not satisfied. Such
intervention standards may increasingly embody requirements respecting de­
mocracy and human rights, as these norms are the contemporary embodiment
of the more classic notion of self-determination that underlies the noninterven­
tionist principle. Until significant numbers of states are liberal democracies,
however, such standards will not achieve significant global endorsement.
In conceptual terms, such a move toward regi onal alliances in respect to
humanitarian intervention would combine the idea of responsibility to pro­
tect with precommitment strategies that include democracy and human rights.
This combines the Kantian notion of a federation of republics committed to
peace and Mill's commitment to self-determination and nonintervention, with
certain intervention exceptions that j ustice and the j ust war tradition permit.
A community of democratic states will be able to limit principles of nonin­
tervention in respect of states that do not maintain basic freedoms and have
committed or allowed atrocities. The responsibility to prevent such crises
before they occur, as highlighted in the UN report, would certainly be aided
by such precommitment strategies. Democracy and human rights can con­
tribute measurably to conflict avoidance and nonviolent means of resolu­
tion. At the same time, a democratic state with full protection of rights would
be less likely to commit atrocities at home. Local citizens might be deemed
14 MICHAEL C. DAVIS

to want democracy to be restored if it were lost. Where such a foundation has


been laid, members of such democratic regional alliances may be better suited
to take such actions against states that do not maintain democracy and slip
into humanitarian crises. Under this argument, nonintervention would
survive-as would sovereignty-but its full protection within such a com­
munity of states would be contingent on requirements of democratic gover­
nance and human rights protection.

Moral Responsibility Versus Power Politics

As reflected in the literature in both international relations and international


law, the state has long been thought to be the primary addressee of the mod­
ern regime of international human rights. Hidden behind a wall of sover­
eignty, states are thought to view compliance with human rights obligations
as their internal affair, largely barred from outside intervention. Under the
onslaughts of an expanding international treaty regime and growing reliance
on international institutions and globalization, it is now argued that this has
changed, if it ever existed. This assertion of change has gained special cur­
rency in the post-Cold War period as the world seeks to deal with an escalat­
ing number of humanitarian problems.
Moral and political considerations are now thought to justify and shape
interventionist practices. There are certainly a wide range of recent examples
on which a discussion about humanitarian intervention can be drawn: Soma­
lia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, and aspects of the current war on terrorism. With these tragedies in
mind, Annan argues that traditional notions of sovereignty and "internal af­
fairs" must give way in the face of human rights disasters. Is the phenom­
enon of "moral interventionism" a call for the recognition of human rights or
is it little more than a new form of power politics?
Geostrategic considerations clearly shape the global picture, reflecting a
double standard that is troubling for an evolving regime on humanitarian
intervention. Either democracies or great powers appear to be in the best
position to resist outside intervention.42 Great powers are rarely the target of
interventionist actions. Compare Chechnya and Tibet with Kosovo and East
Timor.43 They are also frequently, though not always, the intervenor. Unilat­
eral action by great powers may undermine the credibility of their moral
position, as they at once challenge extreme or even terrorist action by com­
munal groups while engaging in aggressive and occasionally indiscriminate
attacks on their own. Is the moral position of a Kosovo-type bombing cam­
paign further undermined by a political need to engage the enemy from miles
up, combined with an unwillingness to take casualties?44 This hypocritical
aspect brings particular resonance to claims that the attempt to override sov­
ereignty is merely Western imperialism.
Overall, the risks of a slippery slope in the humanitarian intervention area
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 15

are obvious. If self-serving actions are not to be the order of the day, then
coherent guidelines are essential to political constraint. In a normative world
that depreciates states and advances emerging Kantia� global norms, how
would such development affect the least powerful states?45 Would they be
left defenseless in the face of international pressure? Should we hold states
and whole societies responsible for genocide or ethnic cleansing or should
we focus on individual accountability? If both, how should these competing
strategies be deployed? Our response to these questions will be shaped not
only by strategic concerns or our views of sovereignty and intervention, but
also by practical political considerations. It seems apparent that a country
resistant to outside intervention will be little attracted to holding leaders in­
dividually accountable. The United States, a country that has long supported
ad hoc tribunals to hold leaders accountable for humanitarian crimes, has
been reluctant to concede criminal accountability of its own officials under
the Rome Convention on an ICC. How might the possibility of individual
accountability affect state or multilateral intervention strategies?46
It is apparent that if the countries of the world are to further develop norms
allowing intervention in humanitarian crises, they will do so for a variety of
political and moral reasons. Political arguments will consider changing stra­
tegic conditions and domestic perceptions. Moral considerations will be
grounded in the belief that we live in an evolving world where sovereignty is
conceptually changing and where a norm against intervention to prevent
humanitarian crises is no longer morally acceptable. Constrained by global
strategic considerations and power politics, there has been increasing reluc­
tance to stand by while humanitarian crises ensue. This is a world where
shared security concerns such as those revealed in the fight against terrorism
are also of increasing significance. The sovereign landscape is, at the same
time, being shaped by a greater commitment to free trade, democracy, hu­
man rights, and popular sovereign consent. The integrative character of the
emerging world may make the sovereign paradigm of nonintervention un­
tenable in the face of humanitarian crises. This may call us to evaluate the
values that may animate any alternatives or amendments of the traditional
paradigm. Given a growing global consensus around democracy, an attrac­
tive way of resolving the tension between sovereignty and intervention may
be to increasingly tie the nonintervention principle, in the context of hu­
manitarian crises, to democratic governance in an acceptable form. This may
be combined with some mechanism for dealing with extreme crises. As long
as numerous countries fall short of democratic standards , however, we may
be left in the short run to promoting a democracy-based norm only on a
regional level under those conditions where this is feasible.
The Kosovo model . of regional response has in many respects already
been accepted or at least tolerated. But a variety of constraints still limit our
evolving options. Some degree of multilateral response or consensus ap­
proving a single-state response appears important (Australia in East Timor).
16 M ICHAEL C. DAVIS

It is left to determine under what circumstances individual states or regional


blocs should be permitted to act and what should be the required content of
intervention actions. Kantian-style regional agreements may be the best ve­
hicle to develop standards in this regard. An effective international response
to the suppression of domestic communal groups at times short of substan­
tial armed resistance may allow us to head off crises before they ensue. We
will also have to consider what should be done to rebuild states and restore
communities after interventions have occurred. Our perceptions in this de­
bate are also likely to be shaped by the perceived perils of the aggressive
posture respecting the so-called "preemptive self-defense" argued for by the
US coalition in the Iraq War. States may ignore emerging geostrategic con­
siderations at their peril. Any regime we devolve must recognize this reality
and avoid standards that cannot be sustained or that might otherwise under­
mine the effectiveness of international regimes. The chapters in this book
confront both the possibilities and the challenges of the concerns raised in
this debate.

Notes

1 . Both of these types of wars have historical antecedents. See K. J. Holsti, "The
Coming Chaos? Armed Conflict in the World's Periphery," in T. V. Paul and John A.
Hall, eds., International Order and the Future of World Politics (New York: Cam­
bridge University Press, 1 999), pp. 283-3 1 0, 29 1 , 294. The claim here is merely that
they have taken on new characteristics and have become defining phenomena in the
current post-Cold War era.
2. Mike Allen and Barton Gellman, "Preemptive Strikes Part of U.S. Strategic
Doctrine 'All Options' Open for Countering Unconventional Arms," Washington Post,
1 1 December 2002, p. A I .
3 . Jack Donnelly raises a concurring argument regarding the importance of three
factors-law, morality, and politics-in respect to the evolving humanitarian inter­
vention norm. See Jack Donnelly, "Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention," Jour­
nal of Human Rights 1, no. 1 (March 2002): 93-109.
4. Jeffrey T. Checkel, "The Constructivist Tum in International Relations Theory,"
World Politics 50, no. 2 ( 1 998): 324-348; Andrew Moravcsik, "Taking Preferences
Seriously: A Liberal Theory ofInternational Politics;' International Organization 5 1 ,
no. 4 (Autumn 1 997): 5 1 3-55 3 ; Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture ofNational Secu­
rity: Norms and Identity in International Politics (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1 996); Michael W. Doyle and G. John Ikenberry, eds., New Thinking in Inter­
national Relations Theory (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997); Alexander Wendt, "An­
archy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics," Interna­
tional Organization 46, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 3 9 1-425 .
5 . Checkel, "Constructivist Tum in International Relations Theory," pp. 324-
348; Thomas Risse, '''Let's Argue ! ' : Communicative Action in World Politics," In­
ternational Organization 54, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 1-39.
6. See Victoria Tin-bor Hui, chapter 5, in this volume; Franca D' Agostini, chap­
ter 8, in this volume; Nathalie Karagiannis, chapter 9, in this volume.
7. Editorial Comments, "NATO's Kosovo Intervention, Kosovo and the Law of
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 17

'Humanitarian Intervention,'" American Journal ofInternational La w 9 3 ( 1 999): 824-


862 (comments are by Louis Henkin, Ruth Wedgwood, Jonathan Charney, Christine
Chinkin, Richard Falk, Thomas M. Franck, and W. Michael Reisman), 847-857 (Falk),
857-860 (Franck); David Wippman, "Treaty-Based Intervention: Who Can Say No?"
University of Chicago Law Review 62 ( 1 995): 607-687.
8. See Hiroki Kusano, chapter 7, in this volume.
9. John Stuart Mill, "A Few Words on Non-Intervention," in John Stuart Mill,
Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 3 (Lon­
don: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1 867), pp. 153-178.
10. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical
Illustrations (New York: Basic, 1977), pp. 96-108.
1 1 . Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 40.
12. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 96.
13. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 90.
14. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett,
1983); see also Fernando R. Tes6n, "The Kantian Theory of International Law," Co­
lumbia Law Review 92 ( 1 992): 5 3 .
1 5 . Michael W. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Sci­
ence Review 80 (December 1986) : 1 15 1-1 1 69; Spencer R. Weart, Never at War: Why
Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1998); Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., Debating
the Democratic Peace (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1996).
16. Scott A. Silverstone, "Federal Democratic Peace: Domestic Institutions, Inter­
national Conflict, and American Foreign Policy, 1 807- 1 860" (paper presented at the
annual meeting of the International Studies Association Chicago, Illinois, February
2�24, 2001).
17. The UN Charter in key clauses reflects a dual commitment to both peace and
security and to human rights. For this reason, the charter builds in a dual commitment
to state sovereignty and nonintervention and international protection of human rights.
The preamble of the charter highlights several commitments to global peace and se­
curity and seeks to "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights." Article 1, paragraph
3 lists among the purposes of the charter, "To achieve international cooperation in
solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian char­
acter, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamen­
tal freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion." Article
2, paragraph 7 highlights the role of the nonintervention principle in the peace and
security regime, providing, "Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize
the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic
jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settle­
ment under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application
of enforcement measures under Chapter VI!." What is "essentially within the domes­
tic jurisdiction" is not made explicit and opens up interpretive room for intervention­
ist arguments, as does the Chapter VII enforcement regime.
1 8 . Richard Falk, "The Complexities of Humanitarian Intervention: A New World
Order Challenge," Michigan Journal of International Law 17 ( 1 996): 49 1 .
1 9 . See Michael C. Davis, chapter 1 3, in this volume.
20. Kofi Annan, "Secretary-General Presents His Annual Report to the General
Assembly," September 1999. Annan argues that the core challenge is to "forge unity
behind the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights­
wherever they may take place-should not be allowed to stand . . . . If states bent on
18 MICHAEL C. DAVIS

criminal behavior know that frontiers are not the absolute defense; if they know that
the Security Council will take action to halt crimes against humanity, then they will
not embark on such a course of action in expectation of sovereign immunity."
2 1 . UN Charter, Articles 33, 39.
22. Note that this does not allow one to get around the problem of providing ad­
equate standards in the jus in bello (justice in war) branch of this field as provided in
the Geneva Conventions. The higher Geneva Conventions standards regarding the
treatment of noncombatants apply only to international armed conflict, though recent
war crimes trials do indicate that many of these standards are now thought to apply to
internal armed conflict by way of customary international law.
23 . UN Charter, Chapters VI, VII. Note that there is an exception allowing use of
armed force under the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense under UN
Charter, Article 5 1 .
24. UN Charter, Articles 52-54 allow for regional actions, but again explicitly
require prior UN Security Council approval. In the face of UN Security Council im­
mobility, this may increasingly be honored in the breach.
25 . The UN Charter, Article 53 requirement that the UN Security Council autho­
rize regional enforcement actions may be ignored, as it was in respect to Kosovo.
26. See Rebecca R. Moore, chapter 1 1 , in this volume; Giovanna Bono, chapter
1 2, in this volume; Rasheed Akinyemi, chapter 14, in this volume. With little devel­
opment of regional collective actions, Asia has been the weakest actor in respect of
regional commitments, though the Association of Southeast Asian Nations may some­
day join this club of regional actors . See Michael C. Davis, chapter 13 in this volume.
27. See Lori Fisler Damrosch, Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in In­
ternal Conflicts (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993). The Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (now the Commission on Security and Coop­
eration in Europe [CSCED process has likewise sought to enforce this democracy
requirement, declaring democracy and other human dimension concerns to be legiti­
mate matters of international concern, "not belonging too exclusively to the internal
affairs of the state concerned." See "Document of the Moscow Meeting of the Con­
ference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE," October 3, 199 1 , p. 2 .
2 8 . See Robert Cryer, chapter 4 , i n this volume.
29 . See David Wippman, ed., International Law and Ethnic Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y. :
Cornell University Press, 1998).
30. At tire same time, on the other side of the equation, there has evolved a degree
of international solicitude for rights and sometimes autonomy of such groups, espe­
cially for indigenous populations under the rule of dominant groups that control the
state. See Daniel Weinstock, "Constitutionalizing the Right to Secede," Journal of
Political Philosophy 9, no. 2 (200 1 ): 1 82-203.
3 1 . See Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations and
the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 15 1 - 154. Ex­
amples where militant resistance pays have been legion, including the creation of
B angladesh, the breakup of key parts of the former Soviet Union, and the breakup of
the former Yugoslavia.
32. Michael C. Davis, "The Future of Tibet: A Chinese Dilemma," Human Rights
Review 2, no. 2 (200 1 ) : 7- 17.
33. Editorial Comments, "NATO's Kosovo Intervention," pp. 824-862, 847-857
(Falk), 857-860 (Franck).
34. Editorial Comments, "NATO's Kosovo Intervention," p. 853 (Falk).
35. Editorial Comments, "NATO's Kosovo Intervention," p. 859 (Franck).
THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER 19

3 6 . Editorial Comments, "NATO's Kosovo Intervention," p. 862.


37. Falk, "Complexities of Humanitarian Intervention," p. 503; Michael L. Bur­
ton, "Legalizing the Sublegal: A Proposal for Codifying a Doctrine of Unilateral Hu­
manitarian Intervention," Georgetown Law Journal 85 ( 1 996): 4 1 7, 435-436 (offer­
ing a moral forfeiture theory) .
38. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," pp. 1 1 5 1-1 1 69 ; Fernando R. Tes6n,
Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality, 2nd ed. (Irvington-on­
Hudson, N.Y.: Transnational, 1997) ; Louis Fielding, "Taking the Next Step in the
Development of New Human Rights: The Emerging Right of Humanitarian Assis­
tance to Restore Democracy," Duke Journal o/Comparative and International Law 5
( 1 995): 329; Wippman, "Treaty-Based Intervention," pp. 607-687.
39. Wippman, "Treaty-Based Intervention," pp. 607-687.
40. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Respon­
sibility to Protect (Ottaw a: International Development Research Centre, 200 1); see
also Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, "The Responsibility to Protect," Foreign
Affairs 8 1 , no. 6 (2002): 99- 1 1 0.
4 1 . Wippman, "Treaty-Based Intervention."
42. Mark D. Evans, chapter 6, in this volume; Victoria Tin-bor Hui, chapter 5, in
this volume.
43. See Tania Voon, chapter 3, in this volume.
44. See Giovanna Bono, chapter 12, in this volume.
45. See Mark D. Evans, chapter 6; Victoria Tin-bor Hui, chapter 5, in this volume.
46. See Robert Cryer, chapter 4, in this volume.
(�) Taylor & Francis
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Part I

International
Legal Foundations
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2

"Humanitarian Intervention"
A Misnomer?

Peter R. Baehr

"[W]hen a state by its behavior so outrages the conscience of mankind, no


doctrine can be deployed to defend it against intervention. Thus it might be
argued that states had not only a right, but a duty to overrule the principle
of non-intervention in order to defend the Jews against Nazi persecution,
and a parallel is drawn and similar arguments urged in support of interven­
tion against the institution of apartheid in present-day South Africa."!

Are member states obligated to respond positively to a call by the United


Nations (UN) to supply armed forces, for instance, in order to terminate
gross violations of human rights, as recently happened in Sierra Leone, or to
come to the assistance of an attacked state, as in the case of Kuwait? Strictly
speaking, that is only the case if the Security Council makes the call, acting
under Chapter VII of the UN Charter ("Action with Respect to Threats to the
Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression"). Gross and system­
atic violations of human rights may be considered as such a threat. In 1 99 1 ,
the Security Council determined that the consequences of the oppression of
the Kurdish population of Iraq threatened international peace and security.2
The council may respond to such a threat with measures of a nonmilitary
nature that may include complete or partial interruption of economic rela­
tions and rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of com­
munication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.3 To provide military
means, the members of the UN are obliged to make available to the Security
Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements,
armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary
for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.4 No such agree­
ments have, however, ever been reached, and therefore, from a legal point of
view, member states are not obliged to provide troops to the UN.
So far, there is thus an absence of a legal obligation. Another matter is,
however, whether one can speak of some kind of moral obligation. The Dutch
constitution contains an article that obliges the government to promote the
23
24 PETER R. BAEHR

development of an international legal order.5 This may be interpreted as a


moral obligation to strongly support the activities of the UN, which can be
considered the most important initiative toward the institutionalization of an
international legal order, even if the UN does not always work in the way
one would want.
In common parlance, the tenn "international community" is often used,
which is supposed to request certain actions from the member states. It is,
however, unclear what this tenn exactly means. Sometimes it refers to deci­
sions by the Security Council or the General Assembly of the UN, while at
other times (Kosovo) the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has
been referred to by that term. The use of the tenn depends entirely on the
political situation, and it is often used to legitimize any political decision
making, for instance, in the field of collective military action, as occurred in
the case of Kosovo. For the time being, at least, the "international commu­
nity" is nonexistent. Therefore, the tenn should be banned from official ter­
minology, unless it is given a treaty-based, generally accepted interpretation.
Of interest in this context are the military interventions by countries of the
Third World, which at first sight appear to have occurred in reaction to hu­
man rights violations. The first of these was the military intervention by
India in East Pakistan in 1 97 1 , which ended the slaughter of Bengali citizens
by the Pakistani anny and resulted in the proclamation of the independent
state of B angladesh. 6 The second was the invasion by Tanzania in Uganda in
1 979, terminating the murderous rule of dictator Idi Amin.7 Finally, there
was the occupation of Cambodia by Vietnam in 1 979, which overthrew the
even more murderous rule of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. None of the interven­
ing states ' actions were motivated by humanitarian or human rights consid­
erations. India j ustified its attack by alleging that it had first been attacked by
Pakistan.8 Tanzania claimed that its troops had invaded Uganda to punish
Amin for an earlier raid into Tanzania-its invasion allegedly coincided with
a domestic revolt in Uganda against Amin. Vietnam denied at first that its
troops had invaded Cambodia and claimed that Pol Pot had been deposed by
the Cambodians themselves.9 The reason for these denials is obvious: to rec­
ognize the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention would have created a
precedent that at some other point in time could be turned against the inter­
vening state. Thus, Pakistan might have used it to legitimize attacking India
for its treatment of its Muslim subjects or China might invade Vietnam for its
treatment of its Chinese minority population.lO
In articulating the motivation for their actions, the three states-India,
Tanzania, and Vietnam-followed customary practice. In the course of ,his­
tory, the principle of nonintervention has been accepted as being in the inter­
est of all states, as it removes a source of possible conflicts and thus contributes
to the maintenance of international peace and stability, meaning the mainte­
nance of the territorial status quo. This is also reflected in the UN Charter,
which prohibits the use of force by states in their international relations. 11
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION 25

The only exception to this rule is the use of force on the demand of the UN
Security Council or by way of individual or collective self-defense. 12
In recent years, the classic situation described earlier has been undergo­
ing important changes. Often, in the case of gross and systematic violations
of human rights, a call for "humanitarian intervention" is being heard. This
term refers to "coercive action by states involving the use of armed force in
another state without the consent of its government, with or without the con­
sent from the United Nations Security Council, for the purpose of putting to
a halt gross and massive violations of human rights or international humani­
tarian law."13 "Gross and massive violations" are violations, instrumental to
the achievement of governmental policies, perpetrated in such a quantity
and in such a manner as to create a situation in which the rights to life, to
personal integrity, or to personal liberty of the population as a whole or of
one or more sectors of the population of a country are continuously infringed
on or threatened. 14
The most important examples of gross and massive violations are crimes
against humanity, genocide, and war crimes. These include the following
violations as the most important ones: enslavement, arbitrary and summary
executions, torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,
rape, mass deportations, involuntary disappearances, and ethnic cleansing. IS
In such circumstances, it is often argued that humanitarian intervention by
another state or other states is allowed as a last resort, with or even without
prior consent of the UN Security Council. In this chapter, this argument is
examined and an answer is sought as to whether the term "humanitarian
intervention" is properly used or should be rejected as a misnomer.

Permissibility of Humanitarian Intervention

In the past in international law, the doctrine of nonintervention was the rule,
which was based on the maintenance of stability in international relations
and the prevention of states from taking the law into their own hands. When
this did happen, nevertheless, it was called "aggression," which under the
rules of international law was not permitted (and still is not permitted). 16 The
often quoted Article 2, paragraph 7 of the UN Charter reflects this principle,
"Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations
to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction
of any state."17
Meanwhile, however, the idea has been generally accepted that the pro­
motion and protection of human rights is a matter of concern to all states and
that, in reverse, states that violate human rights have no recourse to the doc­
trine of nonintervention. For instance, the 1 993 "Final Declaration of the
World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna" states explicitly, "The pro­
motion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms must
be considered as a priority objective of the United Nations in accordance
26 PETER R. BAEHR

with its purposes and principles, in particular the purpose of international


cooperation. In the framework of these purposes and principles, the promo­
tion and protection of all human rights is a legitimate concern of the interna­
tional community."18
This may have important consequences. In the case of gross violations of
human rights, such as in the past in South Africa, in Rwanda, the former
Yugoslavia, or Sierra Leone, one may argue that states are bound by higher
obligations than merely refraining from interference in domestic affairs, as
the l ate British professor of international relations R. J. Vincent pointed out
more than twenty-five years ago. 19
There exists a broad consensus that such action should preferably take
place under authorization by the UN Security Council, acting under Chapter
VII of the UN Charter, this being the proper legal forum, in view of the
provisions of Article 2, paragraphs 4 and 7 of the charter. The Security Council
has primary responsibility to take as early as possible all necessary measures
to prevent or end grave and massive violations of human rights and interna­
tional humanitarian law that are considered a threat to or a breach of interna­
tional peace and security.20
As is well known, however, the NATO air strikes in Kosovo and Serbia
were never discussed in the UN Security Council, as the Western allies were
afraid that this would lead to a Russian or Chinese veto.21 Their rationale was
to act outside the UN Security Council rather than act in the face of a nega­
tive decision by the counciJ.22 This has led to an outburst of criticism, not
only in political circles, but also in academic arenas. For instance, the Sudanese
human rights specialist, Abdullahi A. An-Na' im, who was by no means sym­
pathetic to the Serbian cause, writes, "But this is simply justifying taking the
law into one's own hand by imposing one's own remedy to a conflict be­
cause the police are expected to be unable or unwilling to enforce it."23 On
the other hand, it would be difficult to think of an effective alternative by
way of reaction to the Serbian oppression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. As
the American human rights expert David P. Forsythe writes, "If ever there
were an essentially humanitarian intervention, at least in motivation and in­
tent, this was it."24
Nevertheless, action authorized by the UN Security Council should be
seen as preferable under all circumstances . If the Security Council is unable
to take the necessary action, however, action without Security Council au­
thorization should not be ruled out entirely. Two Dutch advisory councils
have advised the minister of foreign affairs that in such a situation, the "next
logical step" would be to try to obtain authorization from the General As­
sembly, for example, on the basis of the resolution "Uniting for Peace."25
Under the terms of this resolution, which was adopted by the General As­
sembly in 1 950, any seven (later nine) members of the council or a majority
of the assembly can summon an emergency special session of the General
Assembly, which could meet within twenty-four hours. The procedure makes
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION 27

it possible by a two-thirds majority to label a member state as an aggressor.


From there, the assembly can recommend coercive sanctions against that
aggressor.26 The member states that could provide military forces in such
circumstances were asked to set them aside for possible UN use. The legal
status of that resolution, which at the time had the strong support of the
United States and was used against the People's Republic of China in the
Korean War, has remained uncertain and controversial and in recent years
has only rarely been applied.
The use of violence, if consistent with the purposes of the UN, is not
incompatible with Article 2, paragraph 4 of the charter. One of the purposes
of the UN is, according to Article 1 , paragraph 3 of the charter, "to achieve
international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic,
social, cultural , or humanitarian character and in promoting and encourag­
ing respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without
distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. "27 At least state practices of
recent years suggest that humanitarian intervention without UN Security
Council authorization can be considered morally and politically justifiable
in certain cases. This would mean that humanitarian intervention is in a pro­
cess of becoming part of international customary law.
The international duty to protect and promote the rights of individuals
and groups has developed into a universally valid obligation that is incum­
bent on all states, both individually and collectively. It is desirable that, as
part of the doctrine of state responsibility, efforts be made to further develop
a justification ground for humanitarian intervention without Security Coun­
cil authorization. The remainder of this chapter deals with this more difficult
subject of intervention without Security Council authorization.
Humanitarian intervention should only be undertaken under exceptional
circumstances, if other nonmilitary instruments to improve the situation, such
as diplomatic efforts or economic sanctions, are not available or have failed.
In the foreseeable future, states will not refrain from such interventions if they
are deemed imperative on moral and political grounds. Under these circum­
stances, it would be helpful if criteria were developed for such intervention in
order to help avoid abuse of the concept for purely national ends.
"Humanitarian intervention" may cause the death of armed combatants,
but also of innocent civilians. The NATO air strikes during the action on
Kosovo in 1 999 are a case in point. It should be kept in mind that the crisis
was essentially provoked by a pattern of Serbian violations of human rights
in Kosovo, including numerous atrocities that can be characterized as crimes
against humanity.28 Bartram S. Brown, quoting an article by Jeremy Rabkin,
notes that after the air campaign, Serbian authorities reported at least 2,000
civilian deaths, with thousands more injured.29 Amnesty International has
made the point that "NATO forces did commit serious violations of the laws
of war leading in a number of cases to the unlawful killings of civilians."3o It
has criticized more specifically the air strike on April 12, 1999, on the Grdelica
28 PETER R. BAEHR

railroad bridge, which killed twelve civilians; the attack on April 23, 1 999,
on the headquarters of Serbian State Television and Radio, causing the death
of sixteen civilians; and the missile attack on the Varvarin bridge in May
1 999 that killed eleven civiliansY Its sister human rights organization, Hu­
man Rights Watch, which is based in the United States, also reported a num­
ber of civilian deaths and criticized the use of cluster ammunition by NATO,
commenting on "weapons that are indiscriminate in effect-the equivalent
of using antipersonnel landmines."32 NATO has responded to such criticisms
by referring to unintended but unavoidable "collateral damage" to civilians
and the circumstance that the Serbs themselves had inflicted far more dam­
age to civilians.33

Points for Consideration

Need for Some Manner of Codification

Some kind of guidelines, criteria, or assessment framework would seem to


be needed, if only to avoid actions of an arbitrary nature by any state or
group of states, whenever it suits its or their purposes. If the necessary inter­
national agreement can be reached, it could have the form of legally binding
criteria. As the reaching of such agreement may be difficult at this point,
however, it may be necessary to settle for (political) guidelines.
The "assessment framework" presented in the report by the Netherlands
Advisory Council on International Affairs and the Advisory Committee on
Issues of Public International Law (reported in Table 2. 1 , pg. 1 0) may pro­
vide a useful mechanism in this respect. Such a framework "can clarify the
minimum conditions to be satisfied. It can also help to structure deliberations
within the UN (Security Council or General Assembly) on specific instances
of intervention. At the same time, it can provide the UN community of nations
with a basis for assessing instances of unauthorized humanitarian intervention
that have-already taken place and for tolerating them in appropriate cases."34
Such an assessment framework would be useful to answer the following
questions:
• Which states should be allowed to engage in humanitarian intervention?
• When should states be allowed to engage in humanitarian intervention?
• What conditions should states satisfy during humanitarian intervention?
• When and in what way should states end their humanitarian intervention?

Effects of Existing Lack of Codification

A lack of codification carries the danger that military action for humanitar­
ian purposes is performed on an arbitrary basis whenever it suits the foreign
policy goals of any particular state or group of states. This may lead to the
action itself becoming the object of political controversy, rather than the
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION 29

violation of human rights or international humanitarian law that was the rea­
son for the humanitarian intervention in the first place.

Danger of Increase in Number of Interventions without


Security Council Authorization

There would seem to be no reason to assume that some kind of codification


would increase the number of interventions without Security Council autho­
rization, provided that the situation in question is in the first instance submit­
ted to the Security Council for action and provided that the action is fully
reported to the council. Such reports should cover both plans for humanitar­
ian intervention and its actual progress. It would also be wise to have more
than one state or an international (regional) organization participate in a deci­
sion to intervene for humanitarian reasons.35 This would lessen the chance that
the concept would be invoked purely for reasons of national self-interest. How­
ever, in the case of the NATO actions in Kosovo, it was clearly the United
States and the United Kingdom that dominated the decision making, as they
provided the bulk of the aircraft taking part.

The Need for Codification to Lift a Possible Legal Bar


to Such Actions

It is hard to say whether states at present refrain from intervening to prevent


humanitarian disasters because there is thought to be a legal bar to such
actions. States would rather offer public explanations when they do act than
when they do not. In the end, a decision to act or not to act remains the
political responsibility of the government(s) concerned. They may decide
not to act for a number of reasons, such as uncertainty of international politi­
cal repercussions, political factors of a domestic nature, lack of available
military potential, lack of transport facilities, and so on. Legal arguments are
often put forward to cover political considerations.

Legal or Political Criteria

Newly formulated legal criteria may not be needed.36 The UN Charter pro­
vides such legal criteria, leaving the responsibility to act to the Security Coun­
cil. What are needed at this point are political guidelines to help governments
to make up their minds whether to act or not to act. In the end, decisions on
humanitarian intervention will be taken on a case-by-case basis.
Proposing formalized legal criteria may have a counterproductive effect
on states that are skeptical of the wisdom of engaging in humanitarian inter­
vention to begin with. Humanitarian intervention in the absence of UN Se­
curity Council authorization would be j ustified on moral and political grounds
only, "as an 'emergency exit' from the existing norms of intemational law."37
30 PETER R. BAEHR

Table 2.1

Summary of Main Items of a n Assessment Framework

( 1 ) Which states should be allowed to engage in hu manitarian


action/intervention?

(a) The i ntervening states should not themselves be in any way involved in
the grave violations of fundamental h uman rights or international h u manitarian
law that the action/intervention is designed to combat.

(b) For operational reasons, preference should be given to the involvement


of the countries i n the region.

(c) Preference should be given to human itarian action/intervention by a group


of states acting under the auspices of an international organization.

(2) When should states be allowed to engage in humanitarian intervention?

(a) The situation must be one i n which fundamental human rights are being or
are likely to be seriously violated on a large scale and there is an urgent need
for intervention.

(b) Large-scale violations of fundamental human rights can also be comm itted
by non-state actors and can thus constitute grounds for h umanitarian
intervention.

(c) The legitimate, internationallyrecognized government is unable or


unwilling to provide the victims with appropriate care.

(d) H umanitarian intervention may involve either an internal crisis or an


essentially hum anitarian emergency with i nternational implications.

(e) The humanitarian emergency can be reversed or contained only by


deploying military resources.

(f) The intervening states have exhausted all appropriate nonmilitary


means of action against the state that is violating human rights or
international h umanitarian law.

There would be a high risk that attempts to modify existing rules would
exacerbate differences of view over these highly sensitive matters and have
a destructive rather than a constructive impact on the possibility of averting
victimization of civilian populations.38

Factors for Consideration before Undertaking


a Military Intervention

The following factors should be considered before a decision to undertake a


humanitarian intervention is taken. There should be reliable and objective evi­
dence from different sources of gross and large-scale violations of human rights
or the threat of such violations. Such evidence can be supplied by international
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION 31

(3) What conditions should states satisfy during humanitarian intervention?


(a) Humanitarian intervention must be i n proportion to the gravity of the
situation.

(b) The h umanitarian intervention must not itself constitute an even greater
threat to international peace and security than the situation it is meant to
prevent or to end.

(c) The i mpact of the humanitarian intervention must be li mited to what is


necessary in order to attain the h umanitarian objective.

(d) The states engaging in h umanitarian intervention must report to the


Security Council i mmediately and in detail with the reason for the
operation , its scale, its progress, and its likely duration

(4) When and in what way should states end their humanitarian intervention?

(a) The intervening states must undertake i n advance to suspend the


humanitarian intervention as soon as the state concerned is willing and
able to end the large-scale violations of h uman rights or i nternational
hu manitarian law or the Secu rity Council takes the necessary measures
for the same human itarian purposes.

(b) The intervening states must end thei r intervention when its objective,
namely the cessation of violations of h u man rights or i nternational
humanitarian law, has been attained.

(c) The impact of the humanitarian intervention must be l i mited to what is


necessary i n order to attain the h umanitarian objective.

(d) The states engaging in h u man itarian intervention must report to the
Security Council i mmediately and i n detail with the reason for the
operation , its scale, its progress, and its likely duration.

Source: Advisory Council on International Affairs and Advisory Committee on Issues


of Public International Law, Humanitarian Intervention (The Hague: Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, 20(0), p. 26.

organizations such as the UN; regional organizations like the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organization of American States, or
the Organization of African Unity; nongovernmental organizations such as
Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch; or reliable private sources.
It should be the case that the government of the state concerned is unwill­
ing or unable to take adequate remedial action, or is itself responsible for the
violation(s). As in the case of the International Criminal Court, the primary
responsibility for the maintenance of human rights and international humani­
tarian law rests with the state concerned.39 Only if that state does not meet its
responsibilities is external action of a diplomatic, legal, economic, or mili­
tary nature warranted.40
There should be a clear urgency to act. There must be evidence that hu-
32 PETER R. BAEHR

man lives are at stake or that grave violations of human rights are already
taking place or due to take place in the very near future. Gross violations of
fundamental human rights include not only extermination by means of sum­
mary executions and deliberate armed or police attacks on arbitrary civilian
targets, but also torture, the taking of hostages, rape, involuntary disappear­
ances, and other grave infringements of human dignity, such as humiliating
treatment.
The use of force should be the last resort. Other means of a nonmilitary
kind should be exhausted before military intervention takes place. These
include attempts to end the humanitarian crisis with support from civil soci­
ety in the state concerned, as well as other measures of an international kind.
The late Evan Luard, a British diplomat and scholar, has provided by now a
classical list of such possibilities.41 They include the exertion of pressure
through diplomatic channels, either bilaterally or in multilateral bodies. The
effectiveness of taking economic sanctions has been widely debated.42 They
may be counterproductive or hit the wrong persons or groups. The granting
or withholding of development aid as an instrument of human rights policy
is also of dubious value. The Dutch government has used this instrument in
the case of its former colonies of Suriname and Indonesia, with at best mixed
results. Indonesia, for its part, decided to end the development relationship
with the Netherlands on its own initiative, rejecting "the reckless use of de­
velopment assistance as an instrument of intimidation or as a tool for threat­
ening Indonesia."43 Such nonmilitary measures, however, should be seriously
considered before military action is taken.
The primary purpose of the intervention should be to stop the violations.
This means, of course, that once the violations have been brought to an end,
the intervention should be stopped. The intervening states should suspend their
actions as soon as the state concerned is willing and able to end the large-scale
violations of human rights by itself or the Security Council or a regional orga­
nization acting with Security Council authorization takes enforcement mea­
sures involving the use of force for the same humanitarian purposes.
Preferably, the available evidence suggests that those for whom it is in­
tended support the action. This will not always be easy to establish and may
involve "public relations wars," as took place during the military operations
in Kuwait and the bombing of Iraq by allied forces, and also during the Kosovo
air strikes. If the potential or actual victims of the human rights violations do
not favor the military action, however, one may well ask what is the point of
undertaking it in the first place.44
The action has a reasonable chance of success at acceptable costs. These
costs pertain both to the affected population and to the intervening forces.
"Success" means putting an end to the human rights violations that initiated
the military action.
The action must not in itself constitute an even greater threat to interna­
tional peace and security. This may raise the following dilemma: the use or
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"I hope you can fly vun of these thins," said Dyann, lashing the
secret policeman to a recoil chair.
"I hope so too," said Urushkidan.
Dyann stood over her prisoner. "Vere is Ray Ballantyne?" she asked.
"The Earthman who vas arrested off the liner a few days ago."
"I don't know," he gasped.
Dyann drew her knife, smiling nastily.
"Camp Muellenhoff, you savage! Outside the city, to the north. You'll
never make it. You'll kill us all."
The cradle rumbled forward to the hangar airlock. Urushkidan took
the pilot chair and strapped himself in and relit his pipe with nervous
boneless fingers. Dyann whistled tunelessly between her teeth. It
was dark in the airlock chamber as the pumps evacuated it.
"Why bother wit tis Ballantyne?" asked the Martian. "What claim has
he on us? It will need all our luck and my genius for us to escape
with our own lives."
"We need his luck too, maybe," said Dyann shortly.

The outer valve swung open and they trundled over the rails to the
surface of Ganymede. Behind them, the dome covering the city rose
against a background of saw-toothed mountains and dark, faintly
star-lit sky. A dwarfed sun lit the spaceport field with pale cold
luminance. There were not many vessels in sight, no liner or freighter
was in and the military ports were elsewhere. One lean black patrol
ship stood not far off.
"They vill be out after us soon," said Dyann. "Vat can you do about
that boat there, huh?"
"We will see," said Urushkidan. He touched studs, levers, and
buttons. The engines thuttered and the little vessel shook.
"Let's go!"
The rocket stood on her tail and climbed for the sky. Urushkidan
brought her around, the gyros screaming at his clumsy management,
and lowered her on her jets directly above the patrol ship. An atom-
driven ion-blast is not good for a patrol ship.
"Now," said Dyann as they took off again, "you, my policeman friend,
vill call this Camp Muellenhoff and tell them to release Ballantyne to
us. If you do that, ve vill set you down somevere. If not—vell—" She
tested the edge of her knife on his ear. "You may still be a police, but
you vill not be very alive."
"You can't escape," said the Jovian with a certain hollow lack of
conviction. "You'd better throw yourself on the Leader's mercy."
Dyann knocked a few teeth loose.
"You savage!" he gasped. "You cruel, murdering—"
"I tought you Jobians were always talking about te glories of war and
te rutless superman," snickered Urushkidan. "Also destiny and tings.
Better call te camp as she says."
A few minutes later the ship lowered into the walled enclosure of
Camp Muellenhoff. It was a dreary place, metal barracks lying harsh
under the guns of the watchtowers, spacesuited prisoners clumping
to work through the thin chill air of Ganymede. A detail hurried up
and shoved an unarmed, suited form into the airlock.
Their leader's voice rattled over his helmet radio of the ship's
telereceiver, "Major, sir, are you sure they want this man in the city
now? We just got an alert to look out for a couple of escaped
desperadoes."
Dyann slammed the outer valve in his face by the remote-control
lever and the little ship stood on her tail again and flamed skyward.
A somewhat battered Ray Ballantyne crawled out of his suit and
blinked at them. It had been a rough two or three days, though they
hadn't gone very far with him. The truth drugs must have satisfied
them that he was not an intentional spy, and thereafter they had
simply held him until orders for his execution should come. He
swayed into Dyann's arms.
"Oh, my poor Ray," she murmured. "My poor, poor little Earthlin."
"Hey, wait a minute," he began weakly.
"Just lie still, I will take care of you."
"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Lemme go!"
They sat down again on a remote mountaintop, gave the policeman a
spacesuit, and kicked him out of the ship. He was still wailing about
barbarous and inhuman treatment. He said something too about wild
beasts.
"And now," said Dyann, "let us get back to Earth before the Yovians
find us."
"This crate'll never make Earth," said Ray. "I've flown 'em—let me at
those controls, Urushkidan."
They heard it as well, the ominous sizzling and knocking from the
engine-room shields, and felt the ship tremble with it.
"Is tat te carboning te man was talking about?" asked the Martian
innocently.
"I'm—afraid—so." Ray shook his head. "We'll have to land
somewhere before the rockets quit altogether. Then it'll take a week
for the radioactivity to get low enough so we can go back there and
clean them out."
"And all the Yovian army, navy, police, and fire department out chasin
us by now," said Dyann. Her clear brow wrinkled. "I fear that Ormun
is offended because I left her amon the heathen back there. I am
afraid our luck is runnin' low."
"And," said Ray bleakly, "how!"
IV

They used the last sputter of flame to sit down in the wildest and
remotest valley they could find. Looking out the port, Ray wondered
if they hadn't perhaps overdone it.
Beyond the little ship there was a stretch of seamed and gullied
stone, a rough craggy waste sloping up toward the fang-peaked
razorback ridge of the hills, weird flickering play of shadows between
the looming boulders as the thin wind blew a veil of snow across the
deep greenish-blue sky. Jupiter was an amber scimitar low on the
northern horizon. They were near the south pole with a sprawling
panorama of sharp stars around it fading out near the tiny sun. Snow
lay heaped in drifts beyond the wind-scoured rocks, and the far green
blink of glaciers reflected the pale heatless sunlight from the hills.
Snow—well, yes, thought Ray, it was snow of a sort. All the water on
Ganymede was of course solid ice. So were the carbon dioxide and
ammonia. But the temperature often dropped low enough to
precipitate methane or nitrogen. The moon's atmosphere what there
was of it, consisted mostly of argon, nitrogen, methane, and vapors
of the frozen substances—not especially breathable.
The colonists used the standard green-plant air-renewal system,
obtaining extra oxygen from its compounds and water from the ice-
strata, and heated their dwellings from the central atomic-energy
units. Ray hoped the ship's equipment was in working order.
There was native life out there, a few scrubby gray-leaved thickets, a
frightened leaper bounding kangaroo-like into the hills. The
biochemistry of Ganymede was a weird and wonderful thing which
human scientists were still a long way from understanding, but it
involved substances capable of absorbing heat energy directly and
releasing it as needed. The carnivores lacked the secretions,
obtaining them from their prey, and had given the colonists a lot of
trouble because of their fondness for the generous supply of heat a
human necessarily carried around with him.
"And now what do we do?" asked Ray.
Dyann's eyes lit with a hopeful gleam. "Hunt monsters?" she
suggested.
"Bah!" Urushkidan snaked his way to the small desk bolted to the
cabin floor and extracted paper and pencil from the drawers. "I shall
debelop an interesting aspect of unified field teory. Do not disturb
me."
Ray looked around the ship. Behind the forward cabin, which held
bunks and a little cooking outfit as well as the controls, there was a
larger space cluttered with assorted physical apparatus. Beyond that,
he supposed, were the gyros, airplant, and misbehaving engines. "Is
this a laboratory boat?" he inquired.
"Yes," said the Martian. "I chose it because tey are always kept ready
to go out for gibing field tests to new apparatus. Get me a table of
elliptic integrals, please."
"Look," said Ray, "we've got to do something. The Jovians will be
combing this damned moon for us, and it's not so big that we have
much chance of their not finding us before we can clean out those
tubes. We've got to prepare an escape."
"How?" Urushkidan fixed him with a bespectacled stare.
"Well—uh—well—maybe get ready to flee into the hills."
"How long would we last out tere?" The Martian turned back to his
work and blew a cloud of smoke. "No, I will debote myself to te
beauties of pure matematics."
"But if they catch us, they'll kill us!"
"Tey won't kill me," said Urushkidan smugly. "I am too baluable."
"Come on, Ray," said Dyann. "Let's go monster-huntin."
"Waaah!" The Earthman blew up, jumping with rage. In the low
gravity, his leap cracked his head against the ceiling.
"Oh, my poor Ray!" Dyann folded him in a bear's embrace.
"Let me go! Damn it, I want to live if you don't!"
"Be serene," advised Urushkidan. "Look at it from te aspect of
eternity. You are one of te lower animals and your life is of no
importance."
"You octopus! You conceited windbag! If I needed any proof that
Martians are inferior, you'd be it."
"Temper, temper!" Urushkidan wagged a flexible finger at Ray. "Be
objective, my friend, and if your philosophy is so deficient tat it will
not prove a priori tat Martians are always right—by definition—ten
consider te facts. Martians are beautiful. Martians habe an old and
peaceful cibilisation. Eben physically, we are superior—we can libe
under Earth conditions but I dare you to go out on Mars witout a
spacesuit. I double-dog dare you."
"Martians," gritted Ray, "didn't come to Earth. Earthmen came to
Mars."
"Certainly. We had no reason to bisit Earth, but you, of course, came
to Mars to admire our beauty and wisdom. Now please fetch me tat
table of integrals."
"There is nothin ve can do to help ourselves," said Dyann, "so ve
might as well go huntin. Afterward ve can make love."
"Oh, no!" Ray grunted. "If I had that damn interstellar drive I'd get
out of this hole so fast that—that—that—"
"Yes?" asked Dyann.

"Gods of Pluto!" whispered the man. "That's it. That's it!"


"Get me tat table!" screamed Urushkidan.
"The drive—the faster-than-light drive—" Ray did a jig, bouncing from
floor to wall to ceiling. "We've got a shipful of equipment, we've got
the System's only authority on the subject, we'll build ourselves a
faster-than-light engine!"
Urushkidan grumbled his way back into the lab. "I'll get it myself,
ten," he muttered. "See if I care."
"The engine—the engine—Dyann, we can escape!" Ray grabbed her
by the arms and tried to shake her. "We can go home!"
Her eyes filled with tears. "You vant to leave me," she accused. "You
vant to get rid of me."
"No, no, no, I want to save all our lives. Come on, give me a hand,
we've got some heavy stuff to move around."
Dyann shook her head, pouting. "No," she said. "You don't love me. I
won't help you."
"Oh, Lord! Look, Dyann, I love you, I adore you, I worship at your
feet. But give me a hand."
Dyann brightened considerably, but said only, "Prove it."
Ray kissed her. She kissed back and he yelled as his ribs began to
give way.
"Yowp! Some other time, honey. I want only to save your life, don't
you see?"
"Some other time," said Dyann firmly, "is not now. Come here, you."
"Stop tat noise!" yelled Urushkidan, and slammed the laboratory door.
"Ve will honeymoon on Varann," sighed Dyann happily. "You shall ride
to battle at my side."
Much later the aroma of coffee drew Urushkidan back into the
forward cabin. A disheveled and weary-looking Ray Ballantyne was
puttering around the hotplate while Dyann sat polishing her sword
and humming to herself.
"Now," said Ray, turning with what seemed like relief to the Martian,
"just how does this new drive of yours work?"
"It is not a dribe and it does not work—it is a structure of pure
matematics," said Urushkidan. "Anyway, te teory is beyond te
comprehension of anybody but myself. Gibe me some coffee."
"But you must have an idea how it would work in practice."
"Oh, no doubt if I wanted to take te time I could debise someting.
But I am engaged in debeloping a new teory of cosmic origins."
Urushkidan slurped coffee into himself.
"We've got to build it and escape."
"I told you you are of neiter beauty nor importance. Why should I
take time wit you?"
"But look, if the Jovians capture you they'll force you to build it for
them. They have ways. And then they'll overrun Mars along with all
the other planets. The only thing that's held them back so far is the
difficulty of interplanetary logistics. But when you have ships that can
cross the orbit of Pluto in a matter of hours or minutes that isn't a
problem any longer."
"Tat would be unfortunate, yes. But I am in te midst of a bery new
and important train of tought. It would be more unfortunate if tat
were lost tan if a few ephemeral Jobians conquered te System. Tey
wouldn't last a tousand years, but a genius like me is born once in a
million."
Dyann hefted her sword. "Do as Ray says," she advised.
"You dare not hurt me," said Urushkidan with a smug expression, "or
you will neber get away."
He went over to the desk and began investigating the drawers again.
"Where do tey keep teir tobacco? I cannot work witout my pipe."
"Jovians," said Ray glumly, "don't smoke. They consider it a
degenerate habit."
"What?" The Martian's howl rattled the coffeepot on the hotplate. "No
tobacco?"
"Only your own supply, back in Ganymede City, and I daresay the
Jovians have confiscated and destroyed it by now. That puts the
nearest cigar store somewhere in the Asteroid Belt."
"Oh, no! Te new cosmology ruined by tobacco shortage." Urushkidan
stood thinking a moment, then came to a sudden decision. "Tere is
no help for it. If te nearest tobacco is millions of miles away we must
build te faster-tan-light engine at once."

Ray made no attempt to follow the Martian's long-winded equations


in detail. What he was interested in was making use of them, and he
proceeded with slashing approximations that brought screams of
almost physical agony from Urushkidan.
Essentially, though, he recognized that the scientist's achievement lay
in making what seemed to be a final correlation of relativity and wave
mechanics, something which even the Goldfarb-Olson formulas had
not fully reached.
Relativity deals with solid bodies moving at definite velocities which
cannot exceed that of light, but in wave mechanics the particle
becomes a weird and shadowy psi function and is only probably
where it is. In the latter theory, point-to-point transitions are not
velocities but shifts in the node of a complex wave. It turned out that
the electronic wave velocity—which, unlike the group velocity, is not
limited by the speed of light—could be imparted to matter under the
right conditions, so that the most probable position of the electron
went from point to point at a bewildering rate. The trick was to
create the right conditions.
"A field of nuclear space-strain is set up by the circuit, and the ship,
reacting against the entire mass of the universe, moves without need
of rockets—right?" asked the Earthman.
"Wrong," said Urushkidan.
"Well, we'll build it anyway," said Ray. "Here, Dyann, bring that
generator over this way, will you?"
"I vant to go monster-huntin," she sulked.
"Bring—it—over, you lummox!"
Dyann glared, but stooped over the massive machine and, between
Ganymedean gravity and Varannian muscles, staggered across the
floor with it. Ray was checking circuits on the oscilloscope.
Urushkidan sat grumbling about heat and humidity and fanning
himself with his ears. The lab was a mess of tubes, condensers,
rheostats, and tangled wire.
"I'm stuck," wailed Ray. "I need a resistor having so and so many
ohms along with such-and-such a capacitance. Find me one, quick."
"If you would specify your units more precisely—" began Urushkidan
huffily.
Ray pawed through the litter on the floor, putting one object after
another into his testing circuit, glancing at the meters, and throwing
it across the room. "It's vital," he said.
"Vill this do, maybe?" asked Dyann innocently, holding out the ship's
one and only frying pan.
"Get out!" screamed Ray.
"I go monster-huntin," she pouted.
Absent-mindedly, Ray tested the frying pan. It was nearly right. By
Luna, if he sawed off the handle—
"Hey!" yelped Urushkidan.
"I don't like the thought of eating cold beans, cold canned meat, and
raw eggs any better than you," said Ray. "But damn it, we've got to
get out of here." He soldered the emasculated pan into his circuit.
"Starward the course of human empire," he muttered viciously.
"Martian empire," corrected Urushkidan.
"It'll be Jovian empire if we don't clear out of here. Okay, big brain,
what comes next?"
"How should I know? How can you expect me to tink in tis foul tick
air, and witout tobacco?" Urushkidan turned his back. Dyann clumped
in, spacesuited, sword in one hand and rifle in the other. "I saw
monsters out there," she said. "I'm goin out to kill them."
"Oh, yeah, sure," muttered Ray without looking up from his slide rule.
"Urushkidan, you've got to calculate the resonant psi function for
me."
"Won't," said the Martian.
"By Heaven, you snake-legged bagpipe, I'm the captain here and
you'll do as I say."
"Up your rectifier." Urushkidan was emptying his ash tray in search of
tobacco shreds.
The airlock clanged behind Dyann. "I'll be damned," murmured Ray.
"She really is going out after them."
"It is a good idea," said Urushkidan, a trifle more amiably. "Tey habe
sensed te radiations of our ship and are probably coming to crack it
open."
"Oh, well, if that's all—Huh?" Ray sprang to the nearest port and
looked out.
"Gannydragons," he groaned. "I thought they'd been exterminated."
"Tose two don't seem to know it," said Urushkidan uneasily. "All right,
I'll calculate your function for you."

There were two of the monsters moving toward the boat. They
looked like thirty feet of long-legged alligator, but the claws and
beaks had ripped metal in earlier days of colonization. Dyann lifted
her rifle and fired.
A dragon screamed, thin and faint in the wispy atmosphere, and
turned his head and snapped. Dyann laughed and bounded closer.
Another shot and another....
Something hit her and the gun flew from her hand. The dragon's tail
smote again and Dyann soared skyward. As she hit the ground the
two monsters leaped for her.
"Ha, Ormun!" she yelled, shaking her ringing head till the ruddy hair
flew within the helmet. She crouched low and then sprang.
Up—over the fanged head—striking down with her sword as she went
by. The monster whirled after her, greenish blood streaming from the
cut and freezing.
Dyann backed against a looming rock, spread her feet and lifted the
sword. The first dragon struck at her, mouth agape. Dyann hewed
out again, the sword a leaping blaze of steel, the blow smashing
home and exploding its force back into her own muscles. The
dragon's head sprang from the neck. She rolled under the lashing
claws and tail to get free. The headless body struck the other dragon
which promptly began to fight it.
Dyann circled warily about the struggle, breathing hard. The live
dragon trampled its opponent underfoot, looked around, and charged
her. The ground shuddered under its galloping mass. Dyann turned
and fled.
The dragon roared hollowly as she went up the long slope of the
nearest hill. She saw a high crag and scrambled to its top, the dragon
rampaging below her.
"Nyaaah!" She thumbed her faceplate. "Come and get me."
The monster's dim brain finally decided that the ship was bigger and
easier prey. Turning, it lumbered down the hillside. Dyann launched
herself into the air and landed astride its neck.
The dragon hooted and snapped after her. She climbed higher,
grabbed its horn with one gauntleted hand, and hung on for her life.
The steed began to run.
Hoo, bang, away over the hills with the moonscape blurring in speed.
Wind shrieked thinly about Dyann's helmet. She bounced off her seat
and came down again, a landslide rumbled behind her. The dragon
zoomed up the ridge, leaped from a bluff, and started across the
cratered plain beyond. Dyann dragged at the horn, turning its head,
fighting the monster into a circular stampede. "Ha, Ormun!" she
yelled. "Ha, Kathantuma!"
In an hour or so the dragon stopped and stood gasping. Dyann slid
stiffly to the ground, whirled her sword over her head, and
decapitated the monster. Then she skipped home, laughing.
"Dyann!" cried Ray as she came through the airlock. "Dyann, we
thought you were dead—"
"Oh, it vas fun," she grinned. "Fix me a sandvich." She sat down, got
up rather quickly, and opened her arms to Ray. He retreated
nervously toward the lab. Urushkidan snickered and slammed the
door in his face.

The eighty-six hour day of Ganymede drew to a close. Jupiter was at


the half now, a banded amber giant in a sky of thronging wintry
stars. Ray wiped his grimy hands and sighed.
"Done," he said, looking fondly at the haywired mess filling half the
lab and reaching back toward the engines. "We've done it—we've
conquered the stars."
"My little Earthlin is so clever," simpered Dyann.
"I am horribly afraid," said Urushkidan, "tat tis minor achievement of
mine will eclipse my true accomplishments in te popular mind. Oh,
well." He shrugged. "I can always use te money."
"Umm, yeah, I never thought of that," said Ray. "I'm safe enough
from Vanbrugh now—you don't arrest the man who's given Earth the
Galaxy—but by gosh, there's a fortune in this little gadget too."
"For me, of course, when I have patented it," said Urushkidan.
"What?" yelped Ray. "You—"
"Certainly. I inbented it, didn't I? I shall patent it too. Tell me, should
I charge an exorbitant royalty or would tere be more money in mass
sales at small price?"
"Look here," snarled Ray, "I happen to know how this thing is put
together too."
"Do you?" grinned Urushkidan nastily.
"Uh—" Ray looked at the jungle of apparatus and gulped. He had
only a few fragmentary drawings. By Einstein, he had no idea how
the damned thing worked.
"But we helped you," he protested feebly.
"When you pay your mules and cows, I may consider gibing you a
small percentage," said Urushkidan loftily.
"You've already got more money than you know what to do with, you
bloated capitalist. I happen to know you invested your Nobel Prize in
mortgages and then foreclosed."
"And why not? When te royalties on tis engine start coming in, and I
get my second Nobel Prise, maybe ten I can afford an occasional
cigar. You Earthlings neber reward genius. All tese years I'be had to
smoke tat foul pipe—And tat reminds me, we habe to test tis
machine. Where is te nearest tobaco store?"
Ray sighed and gave up. Martians had replaced Scotchmen in the
lexicon of thrift, but Urushkidan set some kind of new record.
He sat down in the pilot chair and started the atomic generator on
high level conversion. "I hope it works," he muttered nervously. His
fingers moved over the improvised control panel for the star drive.
"Hang on, folks, here goes nothing."
"Nothin," said Dyann after a long silence, "is correct."
"Oh, lord! What's the matter now?" Ray went back to the new
engine. Its circuits were alive, tubes glowed and indicators blinked,
but the boat sat stolidly where it was.
"I told you not to use tose approximations," said Urushkidan.
Ray fiddled with the main-drive settings. "It's like any other gadget,"
he complained. "You sweat yourself dry designing it from theory, and
then you have to tinker till it works."
He began changing the positions of resistors and condensers, cutting
sections out of the circuit to work on them. Urushkidan shredded a
piece of paper, wetted it, and tried to smoke it.
"Ray!" Dyann's voice came sharp and urgent from the forward cabin.
"I saw a rocket flare."
"Oh, no!" He sprang back to her and peered into the night sky. A long
trail of flame arced across it. And another, and another—
"The Jovians," he groaned. "They've found us."
"They may not see us," said Dyann hopefully.
"They have metal detectors. We're done for."
"Vell, ve can only die vunce. Kiss me, sveetheart." Dyann folded Ray
in one arm while the other reached for her sword.
The patrol rockets went over the horizon, braking, and swam back.
Blast-flames spattered off the valley floor and frozen-gas vapors
boiled furiously up toward mighty Jupiter.
The boat telescreen blinked its indicator light. Numbly, Ray tuned it
in. The lean hard face of Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp sprang into its
frame.
"Ah, there you are," said the Jovian.
"If we surrender," said Ray, "will you give us safe conduct back to
Earth?"
"Certainly not. But you may be allowed to live."
Urushkidan spoke from the lab. "Ballantyne, I tink te trouble lies in tis
square-wave generator. If we doubled te boltage—"
The first patrol ship sizzled to a landing. Roshevsky-Feldkamp leaned
forward till his face seemed to project from the screen and Ray had a
wild desire to punch its nose. "So you've been working on our
project." He said, "Well, so much the more labor spared us."
Dyann cut loose with a short-range blaster she had located
somewhere on the lab ship.

"Urushkidan will die before he surrenders to you," said Ray


belligerently.
"I will do noting of te sort," said the Martian. Experimentally, he cut
the square-wave generator back into the circuit and turned a dial.
The boat lifted off the ground.
"Hey, there," roared the colonel. "You can't do that!"
The Jovian soldiers who had been pouring from the grounded ship
looked stupidly upward.
"Shell them!" snapped the colonel.
Ray slammed the main star drive switch clear over.
There was no feeling of acceleration. They were suddenly floating
weightless and Jupiter whizzed past the forward port.
"Stop!" howled the Jovian.
The engine throbbed and sang, energy pulsing in great waves
through its shuddering substance. The stars crawled eerily across the
ports. "Aberration," gasped Ray. "We're approaching the speed of
light."
Space swam and blazed with a million million suns. They bunched
near the forward port, thinning out toward the rear, as the ship
added its fantastic velocity vector to their light-rays. A distorted pale-
green globe grew rapidly before the vessel.
"Vat planet is that up ahead?" pointed Dyann.
"I think—" muttered Ray. He looked out the rearward port. "I think it
was Neptune."
"Triumph!" chortled Urushkidan, rubbing his tentacles together. "My
teory is confirmed. Not tat it needs confirmation, but now even an
Eartman can see tat I am always right. And oh, how tey'll habe to
pay!"
The colors of the stars shifted toward blue in front and red behind.
Doppler effect, thought Ray wildly. He was probably seeing by radio
waves and gamma rays now. How fast were they going, anyway? He
should have thought to install some kind of speed gauge. Several
times the velocity of light at least.
"Ha, this is fun," laughed Dyann.
"Hmmm—we better stop while we can still see the Solar System,"
said Ray, and cut the main drive.
The ship kept on going.
"Hey!" screamed the Earthling. "Stop! Whoa!"
"We can't stop," said Urushkidan coolly. "We're in a certain
pseudobelocity-state now. Te engine merely accelerates us."
"Well, how in hell do you brake?" groaned Ray.
"I don't know. We'll habe to figure tat out. I tought you knew tis
would happen."
"Now I do." Ray floated free of his chair, beating his forehead with his
fists. "I hope to heaven we can do it before the food runs out."
Dyann looked at Urushkidan speculatively. "If vorst comes to vorst,"
she murmured, "roast Martian—"
"Let's get busy," gasped Urushkidan.

It took a week to improvise a braking system. By that time they were


no longer very sure where they were.
"This is all my fault," said Dyann contritely. "If I had brought Ormun
along she vould have looked after us."
"One thing that worries me," said Ray, "is the Jovians. They aren't
fools, and they won't be sitting on their hands waiting for us to come
back and give the star drive to Earth."
"First," said Urushkidan snappishly, "tere is te problem of finding our
sun."
Ray looked out the port. The ship was braked and, in the normal
space-time state of matter, was floating amidst a wilderness of
unfamiliar constellations. "It shouldn't be too hard," he said
thoughtfully. "Look, there are the Magellanic Clouds, I think, and we
should be able to locate Rigel or some other bright star. That way we
can get a fix and locate ourselves relative to Sol."
"Tere are no astronomical tables aboard ship," pointed out
Urushkidan, "and I certainly don't clutter my brain wit mere numerical
data."
"Vich star is Rigel?" asked Dyann.
"Why—uh—well—that one—no, it might be that one over there—or
perhaps—how should I know?" growled Ray.
"We will simply habe to go back te way we came, as nearly as we can
judge it," said Urushkidan.
"Maybe ve can find somevun who knows," suggested Dyann.
Ray thought of landing on a planet and asking a winged, three-
headed monster, "Pardon me, do you know which way Sol is?" To
which the monster would doubtless reply, "Sorry, I'm a stranger here
myself." He chuckled wryly. They'd encountered a difficulty which all
the brave futuristic stories about exploring the Galaxy seemed to
have overlooked.
They had headed out in the ecliptic plane, very nearly on a line
joining the momentary positions of Jupiter and Neptune. That didn't
help much, though, in a boat never meant for interplanetary flight
and thus carrying only the ephemerides of the Jovian System.
Presumably they had gone in a straight line, so that one of the
zodiacal constellations was at their back and should still be
recognizable, but the high-velocity distortions of the outside view had
precluded anyone's noticing which stars had been where.
Ray floated over to the port and looked out at the eerie magnificence
of unknown space. "If I'd been a Boy Scout," he lamented, "I might
know the constellations. The thing to do is to head back toward any
one which looks halfway familiar, since that must be the one which
was at our stern. But I only know Orion and the Big Dipper." He
looked at Urushkidan with accusing eyes. "You're the great
astrophysicist. Can't you tell one star from another?"
"Certainly not," said the Martian huffily. "No astrophysicist eber looks
at de stars if he can help it."
"Oh, you want a con—con—star-picture?" asked Dyann innocently.
Ray said, "I mean one we know, as we see the stars from Sol, or
from Centauri. You're nice to look at, honey, but right now I can't
help wishing you Varannians were a little more intellectual."
"Oh, I know the stars," said Dyann. "Every noble learns them. Let me
see—" She floated around the chamber, from port to port, staring out
and muttering to herself. "Oh, yes. There is Kunatha the Hunter-
threatened-by-woman-devourin-monster. Not changed much."
"Huh?" Ray and Urushkidan pushed themselves over beside her. "By
gosh," said the Earthling, "it does look like Virgo, I think, or one of
'em. Dyann, I love you to pieces."
"Let's get home qvick, then," she beamed. "I vant to be on a planet."
During the outward flight she had been somewhat discomforted by
discovering the erotic importance of gravity.
"You steer us home?" screeched Urushkidan. "How in
Nebukadashatbu do you know te stars?"
"I had to learn them," she said. "Every noble on Varann has to know
—vat you call it?—astroloyee. How else could ve plan our battles
visely?"
"Astrology?" screamed the Martian. "You are an—an—astrologer?"
"Vy, of course. I thought you vere too, but it seems like you Solarians
are more backvard than I supposed. Shall I cast your horoscope?"
"Astrology," groaned Urushkidan. He looked ill.
"Well," said Ray helplessly, "I guess it's up to you to pilot us back,
Dyann."
"Vy, sure." She jumped into the pilot seat. "Anchors aveigh."
"Brought home by an astrologer," groaned Urushkidan. "Te ignominy
of it all."

Ray started the new engine. They could accelerate all the way back
and use the brake to stop almost instantly—it shouldn't take long. "All
set," he called, and the rising note of power thrummed behind his
words.
"Giddap!" yelled Dyann. She swung the ship around and slammed the
main drive switch home.
Ray looked out at the weirdly distorted heavens. "There should be
some way to compensate for that aberration," he murmured. "A
viewplate using photocells, with the electron beam control-fields
hooked into the drive circuit—sure. Simple." He floated back to the
lab and began assembling scattered apparatus. In a few hours he
emerged with a gadget as uncouth as the engine itself but there was
a set of three telescreens which gave clear views in three directions.
Dyann smiled and pointed to one of them. "See, now Avalla—the
Victorious-warrior-returnin-from-battle-vith-captive-man-slung-across-
her-saddle-bow—is taking shape," she said.
"That," said Ray, "is Ursa Major. You Varannians have a fantastic
imagination."
A blue-white giant of a sun flamed ahead, prominences seething
millions of miles into space. Dyann's eyes sparkled and she applied a
sideways vector to the star drive. "Yippee!" she howled.
"Hey!" screamed the Earthman.
They whizzed past the star, playing tag with the reaching flames
while Dyann roared out a Centaurian battle chant. Ray's subconscious
mind spewed forth every prayer he had even known.
"Okay, ve are past it," said Dyann.
"Don't do such things!" he said weakly.
"Darlin," said the girl, "I think we should spend our honeymoon flyin'
through space like this."
The stars blurred past. The Galaxy's conquerors looked at the
splendor of open space and ate cold beans out of a can.
"I think," said Dyann thoughtfully, "ve should go first to Varann."
"Alpha Centauri?" asked Urushkidan. "Nonsense. We are going back
at once to Uttu and cibilised society."
"Ve may need help at Sol," said the girl. "Ve have been gone—how
long—about two veeks? Much could have happened in that time."
"But—but—it's not practical," objected Ray.
Dyann grinned cheerfully. "And how vill you stop me?"
"Varann—oh, well, I've always wanted to see it anyway."
The Centaurian began casting about, steering by the aspect of the
sky. Before many hours, she was slanting in toward a double star
with a dim red dwarf in the background. "This is it," she said. "This is
it."
"Okay," answered Ray. "Now tell me how you find a planet."
"Hmmm—vell—" Dyann scratched her ruddy head.
Ray began to figure it aloud.
"The planets—let me see, now—yeah, they're in the plane of the two
stars. They'd have to be. So if you go out to a point in that plane
where Alpha A, your sun, seems of about the right size, and then
swing in a circle of that radius, you should come pretty close to
Varann. It has a good-sized moon, doesn't it, and its color is
greenish-blue? Yes, we should be able to spot it."
"You are so clever," sighed Dyann.
"Hah!" sneered Urushkidan.
At a mere fraction of the velocity of light—Ray thought of the
consequences of hitting a planet when going faster than light, and
wished he hadn't—the spaceboat moved around Alpha A. It seemed
only minutes before Dyann pointed and cried joyously, "There ve are.
There is home. After many years—home!"
"I would still like to know what we are going to do when we get
there," said Urushkidan.
He was not answered. Dyann and Ray were too busy bringing the
vessel down into the atmosphere and across the wild surface.
"Kathantuma!" cried the girl. "There is my homeland. See, there is
the mountain, old Mother Hastan. There is the city Mayta. Hold on,
ve're goin down!"

VI
Mayta was a huddle of thatch-roofed wooden buildings at the foot of
a fantastically spired gray castle, sitting amid the broad fields and
forests and rivers of Kathantuma with the mountains shining in the
far distance. Dyann set the ship down just outside the town, stood
up, and stretched her tigress body with an exultant laugh.
"Home!" she cried. "Gravity!"
"Uh—yeah." Ray tried to lift his feet. It went slowly, with some strain
—half again the pull of Earth. Urushkidan groaned and wheezed his
painful way to a chair and collapsed all over it.
"Let's go!" Dyann snatched up her sword, set the helmet rakishly on
her bronze curls, and opened the airlock. When Ray hesitated she
reached and yanked him out.
The air was cool and windy, pungent with a million scents of earth
and growing things, tall clouds sailing over a high blue heaven, and
even the engineer was grateful for it after the stuffiness of the boat.
He looked around him. Not far off was a charming rustic cottage. It
was like a scene from some forgotten idyll of Earth's old past.
"Looks good," he said.
A four-foot arrow hummed past his ear and rang like a gong on the
ship's hull.
"Yowp!" Ray dove for shelter. Another arrow zipped in front of him.
He whirled at a storm of contralto curses.
There were half a dozen women pouring from the charming rustic
cottage, a battle-scarred older one and five tall young daughters,
waving swords and axes and spears. A couple of men peered
nervously from the door.
"Ha, Ormun!" yelled Dyann. She lifted her sword and dashed to meet
the onslaught. The oldest woman caught the amazon's blow on a
raised shield and her ax clanged off Dyann's helmet. Dyann
staggered, shook her head, and struck out afresh. The others closed
in, yelling and jabbing.
Dyann's sword met the nearest ax halfway and broke across. She
stooped, picked the woman off her feet, and whirled her over her
head. With a shout, she threw the old she-warrior into two of her
nearest daughters, and the trio went down in a roar of metal.
Centaurian hospitality, thought Ray.
A backhanded blow sent him reeling. He looked up to see a yellow-
haired girl looming over him. Before he could do more than mutter
she had slugged him again and thrown him over one brawny
shoulder.
Hoofs clattered down the narrow dirt road. A squad of armored
women riding animals reminiscent of Percherons, but horned and red
of hide, were charging from the town. They swept into the fight,
wielding clubbed lances with fine impartiality, and it broke up in a
sullen wave of red-splashed femininity. Nobody, Ray saw from his
upside-down position, had been killed, but there were plenty of
slashes and the intent had certainly been there.
The harsh barking language of Kathantuma rose on either side.
Finally an understanding seemed to be reached. One of the riders
pointed a mailed hand at Ray's captor and snapped an order. The girl
protested, was overruled, and tossed him pettishly to the ground. He
recovered consciousness in a minute or two.
Dyann picked him up, tenderly. "Poor Ray," she murmured. "Ve play
too rough for you here, huh?"
"What was it all about?" he mumbled.
"Oh, these people vere mad because ve landed in their field, but the
qveen's riders stopped the fight in time. It is only lawful to kill people
on the regular duellin grounds, inside the city limits. Ve must have
law and order, you know."
"I see," said Ray faintly.

It was a large and turbulent crowd which gathered at sunset to hear


Dyann speak. She and her companions were on a raised stand in the
market square, together with the scarred, arrogant queen and her
troop of pikewomen and cavalry. In the guttering red flare of torches,
Ray looked down on a surging lake of women, the soldier-peasants of
Kathantuma gathered from all the hinterland, brandishing their
weapons and beating clangorous shields in lieu of applause. Here and
there public entertainers circulated, thinly clad men with flowers
twined into their hair and beards, strumming harps and watching
with great liquid eyes.
Ray was still not quite sure what the girl's plan was, and by now
didn't much care. A combination of the dragging Varannian gravity
and the potent Varannian wine made him so sleepy that he could
barely focus on the milling crowd. Urushkidan slept the sleep of the
just, snoring hideously.
Dyann ended her harangue and the racket of metal and voices shook
the surrounding walls. After that there were long-winded arguments
which sometimes degenerated into fist fights, until Ray himself
dropped off to sleep.
He was shaken awake by Dyann and looked blearily around him.
Dawn was streaking the horizon with cold colorless light, and the
mob was slowly and noisily dispersing. He groaned as he stretched
his stiffened body and tried to brush the dew off his clothes.
"The natural life—Hah!" he said miserably, and sneezed.
"It has been decided," cried the girl. She was still as fresh as the
morning, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes ablaze. "They agreed
at last, and now the var-vord goes over the land and envoys are
bound for Almarro and Kurin to get allies. How soon can ve leave,
Ray?"
"Leave?" he asked stupidly. "Leave for where?"
"Vy, for Yupiter, of course!"
"Huh?"
"You are tired, my little bird. Come vith me, and ve shall rest in the
castle."
Ray groaned again.

How do you equip an army of barbarians still in the early Iron Age to
cross four and a third light-years of space?
A preliminary question, perhaps is, Do you want to?
Ray emphatically didn't, but he had very little choice in the matter. He
was soon given forcibly to understand that men kept their place and
did as they were commanded.
He went to Urushkidan and poured out his sorrows. The Martian,
after an abortive attempt to steal the spaceship and sneak home, had
been given a room in one of the castle towers and was covering large
sheets of local parchment with equations. This place, thought Ray,
has octopuses in the belfry.
"They want to go to Jupiter and fight the Jovians," he said.
"What of it?" asked Urushkidan, lighting his pipe. He had found that
dried bark could be smoked. "Tey may eben succeed. Primitibes habe
often obercome more adbanced and better armed hosts. Read te
history of Eart sometime."
"But they'll take us along."
"Oh. Oh-oh! Tat is different." The Martian riffled through his papers.
"Let me see, I tink Equations 549 trough 627 indicate—yes, here we
are. It is possible to project te same type of dribing beam as we use
in te faster-tan-light engine so as to impart a desired belocity bector
to external objects. Toward or away from you. Or—look here,
differentiation of tis equation shows it would be equally simple to
break intranuclear bonds by trowing only a certain type of particle
into te pseudo-condition. Te atom would ten feed on its own energy."
Ray looked at him in awe. "You," he whispered, "have just invented
the tractor beam, the pressor beam, the disintegrator, and the all-
purpose, all-fuel atomic motor."
"I habe? Is tere money in tem?"
Ray went to work.
The three expeditions from Sol had left a good deal of assorted
supplies and equipment behind for the use of later arrivals. Most of
this had been stored in a local temple, and sacrifices were made
yearly to the digital computer. It took an involved theological
argument to obtain the stuff—the point that Ormun had to be
rescued was conceded to be a good one, but it wasn't till the high
priestess suddenly disappeared that the material was forthcoming.
The Ballantyne-Urushkidan circuits were simple things, once you
knew how to make them. With the help of a few tolerably skilled
smiths, Ray hammered out enough of the new-type atomic
generators to lift the fleet off Varann and across to Sol. He built the
drive-circuits carefully, designing them to burn out after landing again
on Varann. The prospect of the amazon planet's people flitting
whither they pleased in the Galaxy was not one any sane man could
cheerfully contemplate.
The spaceships were mere hulks of varnished and greased hardwood,
equipped with airlocks and slapped together by the carpenters of
Mayta in a few weeks. The crossing would be made so rapidly that
heating and air plants wouldn't be needed. Once the haywired star
drives were installed, a pilot sketchily trained for each vessel, and
every hull crammed with a couple of hundred yelling warriors, the
fleet was ready to go.
They poured in, ten times as many as the thirty ships could hold,
riding and hiking from the farthest of the continent's little kingdoms
to be in on the most glorious piracy of their dreams. Only Dyann
cared much about Ormun, who was after all merely her personal
joss, and only Ray gave a good damn about the menace of Jupiter.
The rest came to fight and steal and see new countries. They were
especially eager to kidnap husbands—the polyandrous system of
Varann worked undue hardships on many women, and Dyann
shrewdly gave preference to the unmarried in choosing her followers.
As to the practicability of the whole insane idea—Ray didn't dare
think about it.
Three hectic months after his arrival at Centauri, the barbarian fleet
left for Sol.

Jupiter swam enormously in the forward ports, diademed with the


bitter glory of open space, growing and growing as the ship rushed
closer. Ray pushed his way through the restless crowd of armed
women that jammed the boat. "Dyann," he pleaded, "couldn't I at
least call up Earth and find out what's happened?"
"Vy, I suppose so," she said, not taking her eyes off the swelling giant
before them. "But be qvick, please."
The human fiddled with the telescreen. Three months ago the notion
of calling over nearly half a billion miles with that undersized thing
would have been merely ridiculous. But that was another byproduct
of Urushkidan's theory. You used an electron wave with unlimited
velocity as a carrier beam for your radio photons. It induced a similar
effect in the other transmitter. No distance diminution. No time lag.
Anyway, not within the limits of anything so small as the Solar
System. Ray got the standard wavelength of the U.N. public relations
office, the only one which he could call freely without going through
a lot of red tape.
A blurred face looked out at him. He hadn't refined his circuits to the
point of eliminating distortion, and the U.N. official resembled
something seen through ten feet of rippled water—at least, his image
did. But the voice was clear enough. "Who is this, please?"
"Ray Ballantyne, returning from Alpha Centauri on the first faster-
than-light spaceship. Calling from the vicinity of Jupiter."
"This is no time for joking. Who the devil are you and what do you
want? Please report."
"I want to give the U.N. Patrol the secret of faster-than-light travel.
Stand by to record."
"Hey!" screamed Urushkidan. "I neber said I'd gibe—"

Dyann put her foot on his head and pushed him against the floor.
"Oh, well," he said. "Trough te incredible generosity of myself, ten, te
secret is made freely abailable—"
"Ready to record?" asked Ray tightly.
"I said your humor is in very bad taste," said the official, and
switched off with an ugly scowl.
Ray blinked weakly at the set for a while. Then he tuned in on Earth
broadcasts until he caught a news program. Jupiter had declared war
a month ago, defeated the U.N. navy in a running battle off Mars,
seized bases on Luna, and was threatening atomic bombardment of
Earth unless terms were met. "Oh, gosh," said Ray.
"Such an inbasion could only be launched, on a shoestring," said
Urushkidan. "Te U.N. still has bases closer to home, it can cut Jobian
supply lines—"
"And meanwhile poor old Earth is reduced to radioactive rubbish,"
said Ray gloomily. "And those gruntbrains in charge won't believe I've
got the decisive weapon to save them."
"Would you beliebe such a claim?"
"No, but this is different, damn it."
"Ganymede dead ahead," shouted Dyann. "Stand by for action! Get
ready to make a landing."

VII

The flagship-spaceboat slanted into the moon's atmosphere with a


whoop and a holler, blazed across the ragged surface, and lowered
outside the great dome of Ganymede City. The clumsy hulks behind
her wallowed after at a more leisurely pace.
Lacking spacesuits, the amazons were faced with a certain problem
of entry. Dyann hovered over the spaceport and opened her
disintegrators full blast. The port disappeared in a sudden tornado of
boiling rock and leaping blue fires. When she had sunk a fifty-foot pit,
she went down into it, hung before the side of it facing the city, and
narrowed the dis-beam to a drill. In moments she had cut a tunnel
through to the lower levels of the city.
Air began streaming out, ghost-white with freezing water vapor, but it
would take quite a few minutes for the pressure within to fall
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