Doing Bad by Doing Good

Why Humanitarian Action Fails

Christopher J. Coyne

• Publisher: Stanford Economics and Finance
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780804786119
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

In 2010, Haiti was ravaged by a brutal earthquake that affected the lives of millions. The call to assist those in need was heard around the globe. Yet two years later humanitarian efforts led by governments and NGOs have largely failed. Resources are not reaching the needy due to bureaucratic red tape, and many assets have been squandered. How can efforts intended to help the suffering fail so badly? In this timely and provocative book, Christopher J. Coyne uses the economic way of thinking to explain why this and other humanitarian efforts that intend to do good end up doing nothing or causing harm.

In addition to Haiti, Coyne considers a wide range of interventions. He explains why the U.S. government was ineffective following Hurricane Katrina, why the international humanitarian push to remove Muammar Gaddafi in Libya may very well end up causing more problems than prosperity, and why decades of efforts to respond to crises and foster development around the world have resulted in repeated failures.

In place of the dominant approach to state-led humanitarian action, this book offers a bold alternative, focused on establishing an environment of economic freedom. If we are willing to experiment with aid—asking questions about how to foster development as a process of societal discovery, or how else we might engage the private sector, for instance—we increase the range of alternatives to help people and empower them to improve their communities. Anyone concerned with and dedicated to alleviating human suffering in the short term or for the long haul, from policymakers and activists to scholars, will find this book to be an insightful and provocative reframing of humanitarian action.

PART ONE

The Here and Now

CHAPTER 1

The Man of the Humanitarian System

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) released a report in 2001 titled The Responsibility to Protect. The origin of this report was a question posed by then secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Annan in his Millennium Report. Within the context of ongoing debates regarding the moral responsibilities of governments to protect the citizens of other sovereign states, Annan asked, “[I]f humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica—to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity?”¹ The debate over the responsibility of government to undertake humanitarian action had been raging for years, with plenty of examples of both intervention and non-intervention to fuel the discussion: for example, intervention in Somalia, Haiti, East Timor, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia, and non-intervention in Darfur, Sri Lanka, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In response to Annan’s question, the Canadian government established ICISS, which introduced the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) concept in their report of the same title. R2P is a set of normative principles based on the idea that state sovereignty is a responsibility and not a right. It begins with the premise that sovereign states have a duty to protect their citizens from serious harms, and if a government is unable to provide this protection, it is the moral responsibility of other governments to fill the gap. In such cases, state sovereignty yields to the international responsibility to intervene to protect those who are suffering. Under the R2P principles, action by external governments can vary depending on the context and might include mediation, diplomacy, military intervention, or building state and security capacity in the country where citizens are suffering.

In 2005, the R2P concept was embraced at the United Nations’ World Summit meeting, where member states included the doctrine in the 2005 World Summit Outcome document and indicated the applicability of the R2P principles in the case of four crimes: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.² The Outcome document also noted, however, that international intervention should be the last resort for dealing with these crimes. Although R2P has been the official doctrine of the United Nations since the release of this document, R2P’s usefulness was questioned, as it had rarely been invoked in any meaningful way.

However, this changed when the R2P norm found new life in 2011 following the intervention by a U.S.-led coalition in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone.³ In his speech justifying the intervention, U.S. president Barack Obama invoked the spirit of the R2P norm when he said,

In this particular country—Libya; at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground. To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and—more profoundly—our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.⁴

In line with the spirit of the R2P doctrine, what Obama was indicating was that state sovereignty was not a license for government leaders to harm their citizens. No matter where one stands on the issue of international humanitarian action, one thing is clear: the debate over the issue will not end any time soon. Indeed, it is safe to say that, in the post-9/11 world, state-led humanitarian action will be one of the most important policy issues, if not the most important, in international affairs.

The purpose of this book is to shift the discussion of humanitarian action from the normative perspective—how should people behave?—to a positive analysis—how do people actually behave? As the R2P doctrine illustrates, much of the discussion surrounding humanitarian action is normative, focusing on what government coalitions and organizations ought to do either when a government is incapable of protecting its citizens or when the representatives of said government commit crimes against the country’s own citizens. Instead of focusing on whether there is a responsibility for outside state actors to protect and assist in order to remove suffering, my focus is on the ability of outsiders to effectively engage in humanitarian action whether or not there is a moral imperative to do so. I seek to understand the various incentives and knowledge constraints facing the array of people involved in the humanitarian enterprise, with the goal of understanding what can realistically be expected from state-led humanitarian action in the face of crisis and suffering. Understanding these elements of humanitarian action is crucial to resolving the puzzle presented in the opening pages of this book.

My analysis focuses on the broad category of “humanitarian action,” which encompasses not only the potential actions listed in the R2P declaration but also a broader array of actions, such as the delivery of short-term emergency relief and long-term assistance intended for development purposes in order to alleviate existing human suffering and to protect vulnerable people from suffering in the future. Although analysts and scholars often make categorical distinctions between these activities—such as short-term humanitarian aid versus long-term development aid—the reality is that these more specific categories fall under the general category of “humanitarianism” in that these acts are focused on alleviating human suffering. Clearly the response to an earthquake is different from a military intervention to end genocide, just as the delivery of immediate healthcare is different from construction of permanent infrastructure. However, all of these actions are motivated by humanitarian concerns, indicating that a general understanding of the limits of state-led humanitarian action is necessary. Given my broad focus on humanitarian action, my analysis is applicable to a variety of contexts, ranging from the interventions in Afghanistan and Libya to the post-earthquake situations in Chile, Haiti, and Japan to ongoing efforts in Africa to remove extreme poverty. All of these cases involve efforts by domestic and foreign governments to alleviate or prevent human suffering, and therefore all of these cases fall under the broad category I term state-led humanitarian action.

A FAILURE OF WILL?

Unfortunately, the focus on the emotionally charged normative aspects of humanitarian action often results in neglect of the critically important positive aspects. Consequently, instead of focusing on the limits of humanitarian efforts, it has become commonplace to attribute humanitarian failures to factors such as a lack of political or popular “will.” Consider just a few examples:

• Writing in 2001, the authors of the Millennium Development Goals, which are driven by a variety of humanitarian concerns, indicated, “Today, we not only have the financial resources to end extreme poverty once and for all, but we have the technological knowledge and know-how to realize the Goals. . . . The way forward is marked, it is only the political will to achieve the Goals that is in question.”⁵

• The 2004 report of the secretary-general on the situation in Rwanda concluded, “Our readiness and capacity for action has been demonstrated to be inadequate at best, and deplorable at worst, owing to the absence of the collective political will.”⁶

• In a 2008 statement to mark World Water Day, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon discussed the failure to improve sanitation on a global level—one of the aforementioned Millennium Development Goals—concluding, “While there have been advances, progress is hampered by population growth, widespread poverty, insufficient investments to address the problem and the biggest culprit: a lack of political will.”⁷

• In a 2009 talk recognizing sixty years of the Geneva conventions, Dr. Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, noted that “the contrast between the success stories and the failures in so many other areas of humanitarian law shows us another thing: that where there is a will, there is a way. And the single most important reason for ongoing, unpunished violations in so many conflicts is lack of political will on the part of States.”⁸

• In 2010 remarks at a NATO summit meeting on Afghanistan, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasized that “[w]ith effectively used resources, political will and mutual cooperation, we can succeed in helping Afghanistan to build back better.”⁹

Gareth Evans sums up the general state of affairs when he notes that a “lack of political will” is “the loudest and most oft-repeated lamentation” for why state-led efforts to relieve humanitarian suffering fail to accomplish their desired ends.¹⁰

Of course it is possible that when policymakers and humanitarians use the term political will, they are actually referring to the importance of establishing the appropriate incentives for success. If this is indeed the case, however, it is unclear why they would sugarcoat the reality of the situation in the terminology of political will, which has been described as “the slipperiest concept in the policy lexicon” and “the sine qua non of policy success which is never defined except by its absence.”¹¹ In other words, political will and its close variants refer to everything and therefore nothing. By using such nonlanguage, even the most well-intended proponents of humanitarian action are obfuscating the problems at the heart of the situation, which are twofold: (1) those carrying out humanitarian actions often lack the relevant knowledge to accomplish the desired goals, and (2) humanitarian action is often not compatible with the incentives of those in political power, both those in power in the nation or in a coalition of nations carrying out the action and those in power in the country where action is taking place. The interaction of these two factors implies that, no matter what level of resources or will is invested or expended, there are clear limits to what state-led humanitarian action can accomplish in practice.

This, of course, is a charitable interpretation of the understanding of those involved in state-led humanitarianism. Policymakers are often quite clear that they believe that there are no constraints on what can be achieved. Consider, for instance, the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who delivered the following remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations: “Americans have always risen to the challenges we have faced. That is who we are. It is in our DNA. We do believe there are no limits on what is possible or what can be achieved.”¹²

The idea that success in international affairs and humanitarian endeavors is largely a matter of will implies that anything can be accomplished in the humanitarian realm as long as people want it badly enough. Consequently, when humanitarian action fails, those who hold this position find fault not in their vision for improving the world but in a lack of resources and the weakness of others, those who lack the necessary will and determination to implement the plan. At its core, this unconstrained vision of humanitarianism assumes that the social world and human nature can be shaped according to human wishes and desires if only the right people are in charge and the right amount of resources are dedicated to the task at hand.¹³ The problem with this unconstrained vision of humanitarianism is that it attracts and encourages what Adam Smith referred to in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments as the “man of the system.” According to Smith, the “man of the system” is

apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them. . . .¹⁴

As the bulleted quotes earlier from world political leaders and humanitarian practitioners indicate, the man of the system dominates humanitarian action.

THE MAN-OF-THE-HUMANITARIAN-SYSTEM MENTALITY

The man of the humanitarian system does not refer to a specific person but rather to a mentality that permeates modern state-led humanitarian action. The term is way of framing and thinking about the role of the state in humanitarian action. This mentality holds that human suffering can be removed or prevented, that human welfare can be improved as desired, provided that the right people are in charge with the right level of resources and the right amount of will power, as stated above; but moreover, that improving the human condition is a purely technological problem akin to sending a man to the moon. The man of the humanitarian system neglects or downplays the complex economic, legal, and political systems underpinning the effectiveness of designed organizations and institutions. In reality, these underlying systems are largely the result of emergent rules and orders that are not designed by anyone but rather result from the actions of millions of dispersed individuals each pursuing their own ends.¹⁵ Instead of appreciating these complexities, the man of the humanitarian system views the world as a grand science project that can be improved upon as he wishes. As on Adam Smith’s chessboard, however, the “pieces” of human society are not passive pawns that can be mani...