(05c) Commonsense Morality and The Consequentialist Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention

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Commonsense Morality and the Consequentialist Ethics
of Humanitarian Intervention
Eric A. Heinze a
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Commonsense Morality and the

Consequentialist Ethics of
Humanitarian Intervention
ERIC A. HEINZE
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
ABSTRACT Finding a moral justification for humanitarian intervention has been the objective of
a great deal of academic inquiry in recent years. Most of these treatments, however, make certain
arguments or assumptions about the morality of humanitarian intervention without fully exploring
their precise philosophical underpinnings, which has led to an increasingly disjointed body of
literature. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to suggest that the conventional arguments and
assumptions made about the morality of humanitarian intervention can be encompassed in what is
essentially a consequentialist framework. After a brief examination of consequentialist ethics, this
essay reveals a number of morally relevant factors concerning humanitarian intervention, wherein
I suggest that the general consensus in the literature on these factors constitutes ‘commonsense
morality’. In doing so, I argue that consequentialism as a theory of the right provides the best fit
with commonsense morality on humanitarian intervention. This is important not only to reveal the
precise philosophical underpinnings of the debate, but also to bring ethical, prudential and
political considerations together in a coherent ethical discourse.
KEY WORDS: Humanitarian intervention, moral theory, consequentialism, commonsense

morality
Introduction
The term ‘humanitarian intervention’ is commonly understood as the use of
military force by a state or group of states, in the territory of another state, in
order to halt or avert the large-scale and severe abuse of human beings, which
is usually being committed or sanctioned by the de facto authorities of that
state (see Wheeler 2000; International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty [ICISS] 2001; Keohane 2003). Such mistreatment of human
beings* as well as contemplating the use of force as a means to avert it* has
/ /
an undeniable ethical component. As such, the ethical basis for humanitarian

intervention has been the subject of a great deal of academic inquiry in
recent years, drawing from numerous broadly defined theoretical traditions
such as realism, liberalism, the English School, Just War theory, and myriad
approaches from applied ethics (e.g., Mason & Wheeler 1996; Hoffman 1997;
Correspondence Address: Eric A. Heinze, University of Oklahoma, 729 Elm Ave., Room 116, University of
Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA. Tel: 1 405 325 1584. Fax: 1 405 325 7402. E-mail: eheinze@ou.edu
1502-7570 Print/1502-7589 Online/05/03000168 /15 # 2005 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/15027570500306641
Commonsense Morality and the Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention 169
Fixdal & Smith 1998; Walzer 2000; Wheeler 2000; Nardin 2002; Moseley &
Norman 2002; Holzgrefe & Keohane 2003; Tesón 2003; Jokic & Wilkins
2003).
Few of these treatments, however, have sought to justify humanitarian
intervention* or provide a framework for its moral appraisal* within a
/ /
single coherent normative ethical theory. Some of the earlier treatments of the
subject recognize the need to provide a philosophical analysis of this subject
on the basis of either deontological or consequentialist moral reasoning
(e.g., Schachter 1984; Tesón 1988), but virtually none of the subsequent
literature has sought to reveal the precise philosophical underpinnings of the
argument for humanitarian intervention beyond an appeal to simple moral
intuition.1 In other words, most scholars and analysts of this subject have
been content to treat the assertion that humanitarian intervention is only
permissible under ‘extreme’ conditions as an assumption. While this has not
necessarily been a dangerous or incorrect assumption to make, it is one that
has lacked the empirical and philosophical scrutiny to which our assumptions
must be subjected if they are to be accepted as reasonable and valid. The
result has been a disjointed literature that makes a common assumption, but
that fails to fully appreciate what this assumption entails. The purpose of this
essay is to fill this pronounced gap in the literature on humanitarian
intervention by providing an ethical justification for it on the basis of a
coherent and consistent ethical discourse. I shall argue that the ethics of
humanitarian intervention is essentially consequentialist in nature and that it
is this mode of moral reasoning that provides the best ethical justification of
humanitarian intervention that is consistent with commonsense moral
intuition.
This essay will follow a narrative format, wherein I begin by providing an
account of consequentialist moral theory and contrast it to its main rival,
deontological reasoning. Drawing from the normative ethics of Shelly Kagan
(1989, 1998), I then identify the different morally relevant factors that must
be considered when contemplating or appraising humanitarian intervention.
For example, few would contest that a morally relevant factor when
appraising an act such as humanitarian intervention is that there is an
opportunity to save people from violent death and gross physical abuse* that /
is, to do good. However, the fact that engaging in such an act is likely to result
in at least some harm to innocent bystanders is also morally relevant. The
fundamental concern of this inquiry is with the ethical dilemma of harming
or killing some people to save others, which itself raises numerous morally
relevant factors, as reflected in the voluminous literature on humanitarian
intervention. The task of this essay will therefore be to articulate these factors
and discover how they interact in order to determine the moral status of
humanitarian intervention and how it can be morally justified.
One way a person can seek to morally justify acts like humanitarian
intervention is by reference to widely shared moral intuitions, or common-
sense morality (see Kagan 1989: ch. 2; Hooker 2000; Portmore 2000).
Commonsense morality can be understood as a common moral outlook
drawn from reasoned arguments that, although people may differ about the
170 E. A. Heinze
details, maintain broad features that are familiar and widely (and often
unreflectively) accepted (Kagan 1998: 9, 25; see also Harbour 1995).2 Even
people who reject commonsense morality are at least likely to be familiar with
it as a general outlook that most people accept. The basis for many
arguments about humanitarian intervention in the extant literature has
indeed been essentially a commonsense moral outlook (e.g., Adelman 1992;
Pogge 1992; Moore 1998; Smith 1998; Cook 2000; Lango 2001; Nardin 2002;
Bellamy 2003; Buchanan 2003). This is for very good reasons, as our shared
moral intuitions are difficult to ignore in dramatic situations, such as the
prospect of torturing a child to death, wherein we immediately seek to
condemn such acts as morally wrong. We thus expect an adequate moral
theory to provide a good fit with our moral intuitions and reject it if it does
not. My account of commonsense morality concerning humanitarian
intervention is derived from the various common assumptions, arguments
and views in the prevailing literature on the subject. This essay, therefore,
articulates the various morally relevant factors of humanitarian intervention
from the point of view of commonsense morality and argues that a
consequentialist ethical framework provides the best fit with moral intuition
on this subject (see Kagan 1998: 17 22). After making this argument, I will
/
conclude by addressing some remaining objections to consequentialist moral

reasoning as it applies to humanitarian intervention.
Before proceeding, it should be mentioned that the coherence of my
argument necessarily depends on the readers’ familiarity with commonsense
morality. I am fully aware that by relying on commonsense morality I risk
slipping into the realm of opinions, judgments and beliefs. However, I would
submit that even if it is not always entirely obvious, there is a sort of
‘conventional ethical wisdom’ concerning the present matter on humanitarian
intervention that is very much prevalent in ethical arguments in the
literature* as well as in the practice of humanitarian intervention* and
/ /
that relies almost exclusively on shared moral intuition. For example, even
though we scoff at double standards and selective indignation, there are
sound moral (as well as strategic) reasons why NATO engaged in a military
intervention against Serbia over ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999, but
would not even consider taking such action against Russia over its gross
human rights violations in Chechnya. Therefore, the task of the present essay
is to accommodate such moral intuition within a coherent ethical discourse* /
which I argue is consequentialism* in order to provide a coherent evaluative

/
framework for humanitarian intervention.
Consequentialism and its Critics

Fully determinate ethical theories generally have two components: a ‘theory
of the good’ and a ‘theory of the right’. A theory of the good can be described
as a view about which values or properties we should to want to be reflected in
our actions or in the world more generally. In other words, a theory of the
good is a view about what properties are desirable or valuable. Classic
utilitarians, for example, hold that ‘happiness’ or ‘welfare’ is the most
valuable attribute (Bentham [1789] 1982; Mill [1861] 1998). A theory of the
right, by contrast, does not purport a view about what properties are good or
valuable. Rather, it is a view about what agents should do by way of
responding to properties held to be good or valuable, such as happiness or
welfare. Consequentialism is the theory of the right that asserts that whatever
values an individual or institutional agent adopts (that is, whatever theory of
the good one adopts), the proper response to these values is to promote them
(Pettit 1988: 46; Pettit 1991: 231; Kagan 1998: 59 69). One promotes these
/
values by acting so as to always bring about the best possible consequences in

terms of the stated good. Thus, a consequentialist asserts that certain acts are
only morally permissible if they produce the most possible amount of good
that the situation allows.
Promoting a good and honoring it, however, are two different things, as
one’s actions can be seen to promote a good though still intuitively fail to
honor it. Take utilitarianism, for example. If my goal is to promote overall
welfare, utilitarianism permits me to violate one person’s well-being for the
sake of promoting that of five others (Hooker 1990: 69; Sosa 1993: 102). In
doing so, I fail to honor one person’s well-being, though I am still promoting it
overall since my actions have lead to the greatest total amount of welfare.
Deontology is the theory of the right that asserts that the proper response to
goods or values (theories of the good) is to honor them, regardless of what
overall consequences this brings about in terms of the good (Pettit 1991: 231;
Davis 1991). In the example above, a deontologist would assert that my
failure to honor that one person’s well-being is morally forbidden, even
though it resulted in enhancing the welfare of five others, therefore resulting
in the most amount of welfare overall. The paradigmatic example of a
deontological maxim comes from the ethics of Immanuel Kant (1797),
wherein he asserts that we should never tell a lie because we must always
honor the value of honesty, even if this obliges us to tell the truth to an
enraged murderer looking for someone who is hiding in our house. For Kant,
we should act as if our behavior were to become universal law. According to
the first formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, by not ever lying we
are contributing to a world where always telling the truth is universalized
behavior (Kant 1791). My argument will be that such a deontological
approach to humanitarian intervention is inadequate because it leads to a
morally counterintuitive outcome.
Commonsense Morality, Consequentialism and Humanitarian Intervention

Broadly speaking, the conditions that provoke consideration of humanitarian
intervention are necessarily those under which innocent human beings are
being wrongly harmed by some power-holder. Such broadly defined situa-
tions are, of course, quite common, as at any given time one could point to
abuses committed by governments against their people in virtually every state
in the world. So the task is to identify what factors in such situations make it
morally permissible to intervene militarily. To proceed, then, we must assume
that a situation exists where a power-holder (government) is abusing innocent
172 E. A. Heinze
people in a manner that could plausibly be halted or averted by a military

intervention by an outside actor that has the ability and the will to do so.
Drawn from the literature on humanitarian intervention, the factors outlined
below constitute the core ethical concerns of using military force as a means
to alleviate such human suffering.
Scale and Severity of the Abuse

The first morally relevant factors in a situation where people are in grave
danger is how many people are being harmed or are at risk of being harmed,
and in what manner they are being harmed. Here, we should think that
commonsense morality would tell us* and indeed the literature on the
/
subject is in agreement on this point* that humanitarian intervention is only

/
permissible when there are sufficiently large-scale abuses and if these abuses
are resulting in deaths or physical suffering* that is, if suffering is sufficiently
/
severe. Virtually all writers are in agreement that humanitarian intervention

ought to only take place in ‘extreme cases’* that is, when people are
/
threatened with ‘massacre, genocide or ethnic cleansing on a large scale’

(ICISS 2001: 31). Other writers even assume this to be the case, positing a
threshold of ‘conscious-shocking crimes’ (Walzer 2000: 106; Vincent 1986:
126 127), ‘supreme humanitarian emergencies’ (Wheeler 2000: 34), or
/
‘massive human rights problems’ (Pogge 2003: 93). This is morally intuitive
because most people will agree that humanitarian intervention, being
tantamount to making war, will inevitably harm and even kill some innocent
people.3 As such, we do not want to risk killing and maiming innocent people
unless it is likely that we will rescue more people than we kill or otherwise
harm. In other words, we want our actions to result in ‘more good than
harm’. This is why humanitarian intervention does not (and should not) take
place against regimes that engage in smaller-scale or less severe abuses such as
political repression and intimidation. One could reasonably say that an un-
elected government is harming its citizens by forbidding them from
participating in the political process. But unless that illegitimate government
is engaging in large-scale, systematic and gross physical abuse of its people,
then the costs of deposing such a regime via military invasion is likely to only
bring about severe harm that would have otherwise not occurred. Since
interveners risk killing people, maiming them, and otherwise physically
harming them in the conduct of intervention, then intervention must only
take place to avert this same type and severity of harm.
Talk of ‘more good than harm’ is very much akin to the Just War criterion
of ‘proportionality’ and is inherently consequentialist (Fixdal & Smith 1998:
304). In the Just War tradition, proportionality is characterized as avoiding
doing more harm than is required to achieve the military objective (Smith
1997: 27). This criterion would prohibit the wanton destruction of people or
property that itself does not materially contribute to achieving military
victory. In applying this criterion to humanitarian intervention, Fixdal and
Smith (1998: 303 305) readily admit its consequentialist undertones. A
/
military intervention should not bring about more damage than caused by the
situation it intends to correct (Hopkinson 1993: 9). As Guenter Levy (1993:

624) put it, ‘even a good cause is not worth any price’. However, if causing the
deaths of some individuals in the conduct of a humanitarian intervention
serves to rescue countless other individuals from a similar or worse fate, then
that action can be seen to promote the good overall, even though it is to fail to
honor it. Nevertheless, since the act is bringing about the most possible
amount of good overall, the act has the best overall consequences and is
therefore the correct action to take morally speaking. Whether or not the use
of military force can be expected to avert more harm than it brings about thus
depends crucially on how large-scale or severe the situation to be corrected is.
On this factor, then, consequentialism fits almost perfectly with common-
sense moral intuition. Humanitarian intervention is only morally justified
when the harm done to the imperiled population or other proximate
innocents is not greater than the good that is achieved.
Military Capabilities of the Belligerents

Another assumption that must be made for the purposes of the argument is
that there must be an actor that is willing (and able) to intervene with military
force. This raises another morally relevant factor: that the agent(s) engaging
in the intervention maintain a sufficient capability to provide reasonable
assurance that they can decisively prevail militarily and achieve the goal of
rescuing those (in danger of) being harmed. If this is not the case, there is a
strong chance that the interveners might be defeated, leaving the at-risk
population in the hands of their abusers. Even if the interveners prevail
against an equally powerful adversary, the conflict would likely be more
prolonged much costlier in terms of human life and civilian suffering,
therefore eclipsing the good that it brought about (depending on the scale and
severity of the harm that was averted). Just War theory encompasses this
morally relevant concern in the principle of ‘reasonable prospect for success’,
which has subsequently been adopted by many who have theorized about
humanitarian intervention (Himes 1994; Hoffman 1995 1996; see also ICISS
/
2001: 37). It thus seems as though this precautionary factor would only
permit militarily strong states to engage in humanitarian intervention against
states or actors over whom they maintain an overwhelming power advantage,
and would also preclude military action against any of the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council or other states with modern and
powerful militaries. This is why I mentioned before that NATO states would
not even consider a military intervention against Russia to rescue Chechen
civilians. Even the ICISS (2001: 37) has conceded the point that ‘some human
beings simply cannot be saved except at an unacceptable cost. . .’.
This again brings us back into the consequentialist realm of choosing the
course of action that is likely to promote the most good, or that which is likely
to have the best overall consequences. Consequentialism would have it such
that a NATO military intervention against Russia would be morally
impermissible* even if Russia were engaging in ethnic cleansing or some
/
other large-scale atrocity* precisely because the human costs of such a

/
174 E. A. Heinze
conflict would likely far outweigh any possible benefit accrued by saving
innocent lives. A deontologist would, of course, take issue with such selective
indignation, not unlike how Kant would prefer that people always be
truthful, even if this means being truthful to a murderer whose next victim is
hiding in your house. While nobody seriously endorses the idea of war with
Russia over Chechnya, fealty to some deontological maxim that requires
consistency of response to similar atrocities* regardless of the power realities
/
of the agents involved* runs contrary to commonsense morality and is thus

/
reasonable grounds for rejecting such a view in favor of the consequentialist

approach.
Doing Harm: Thresholds and Intent

While the morally relevant factors have thus far been fairly easy to account
for with a consequentialist approach (the scale and severity of the harm to be
averted and the power realities of the interveners versus the target), a more
difficult reality to reconcile with commonsense morality is the fact that the
interveners are choosing a course of action that essentially requires that they
harm people, even though they are bringing about more good overall. In
other words, how do we morally justify killing some people to save others, be
they combatants or innocent civilians? A well-known analogy that I borrow
from Shelly Kagan (1998: 71) should clarify this moral dilemma. Imagine
there are five patients, each of whom will die unless they receive an organ
transplant. But due to tissue incompatibilities, none of the five can act as a
donor for the others. Rick, however, is in the same hospital for some fairly
routine tests and it is revealed that his tissue is compatible with all of the
other five patients. It occurs to the surgeon that he could chop up Rick and
use his organs to save the five others.
In this situation, a pure consequentialist would seek to promote the overall
good and proceed to chop up Rick, thereby killing him, but saving the lives of
five other people and bringing about the greatest amount of good overall that
the situation permits. But this surely cannot be correct. Many people would
plausibly argue that it is morally impermissible to kill an innocent person in
such a fashion. Even if this is the only way to save five other innocent people
from death, one might argue, there are some things that are simply morally
forbidden. This is essentially a deontological position. Therefore, another
morally relevant factor is that saving peoples’ lives in a humanitarian
intervention involves doing harm to others. Deontology thus seems to better
be able to capture commonsense morality than the consequentialist on this
point since there is nothing in a strict consequentialist approach that would
forbid the killing of innocents as a means of achieving a greater good.
Fortunately for the consequentialist, the above analogy does not entirely
capture the realities of humanitarian intervention. First is the issue of
thresholds. What if, for example, that instead of killing one person in order to
save five peoples’ lives we could save a hundred people, or even a million
(Kagan 1998: 79)? In this scenario, our understanding of commonsense
morality suggests that we might be increasingly inclined to permit the killing
of one person in order to, say, prevent genocide. Again, then, consequenti-
alism seems a better fit with moral intuition, since now the amount of good to
be brought about radically outweighs the moral prohibition of doing harm to
innocents. But this still does not seem to capture the reality of humanitarian
intervention, since there could probably not realistically be a case where we
can save a million people by killing only one or two.
A more relevant distinction between the organ transplant example and that
of humanitarian intervention is that in the above example, a consequentialist
surgeon would be deliberately or intentionally killing Rick as a means to
saving five other people. Whereas if a humanitarian intervention is prosecuted
in accordance with the rules of war, it is impermissible to deliberately target
innocent civilians. We now have another morally relevant factor: whether
the harm brought about was intended as a means or as an end, or whether
it was (merely) foreseen as an unintended side-effect (Kagan 1998: 2, 86;
Kagan 1989: 86). While no ethically minded person wants to see civilians
killed in armed conflict, most literature on humanitarian intervention agrees
that armed conflict can still be morally permissible, even if it kills innocent
people, if every precaution necessary it taken to ensure that ‘collateral
damage’ is minimized and that innocent civilians are not wantonly killed or
otherwise used as a disposable means to achieving the goal (see Montaldi
1985: 127; Tesón 1988; Heinze 2004).
Such was the case in the 1999 Kosovo intervention when NATO bombs
killed innocent Serbs. The bombs were not intended to kill civilians, nor were
civilian deaths instrumental to achieving a goal. NATO did not allow itself to
pursue its end unconditionally without regard for civilian casualties. Thus, a
consequentialist approach to humanitarian intervention only coheres with
commonsense morality if a limit is imposed upon the pursuit of the good that
forbids the deliberate, instrumental killing of innocent civilians (Montaldi
1985: 127, 139; Tesón 1988: 97). In essence, this approach permits the
unintentional, though foreseeable, killing of innocents in the conduct of
promoting a greater good, though still requires that interveners honor the
right of innocents to not be treated as disposable means to an end (Tesón
1988: 100). While an element of Kantian ethics has undeniably slipped in, the
approach is nevertheless still a fundamentally consequentialist one in the
sense that promoting the good is still the most important moral concern,
although now it is not the only moral concern.
But this is not to say that all harm that is deliberately brought about is
impermissible from the point of view of commonsense morality. Completely
forbidding the doing of harm as a means to achieving a greater good would
be to impose such stringent limits upon the promotion of the good that it
would be outweighed by the duty to honor the good, rendering humanitarian
intervention entirely impermissible. While under certain circumstances it is
indeed morally preferable to order one’s actions to avoid doing harm to
others (as a deontologist would have it), when doing harm is the only way to
avoid a much greater harm then the deontological argument loses much of its
force. As suggested above, adhering to a deontological maxim that forbids
doing harm places potential interveners in a morally precarious position that
176 E. A. Heinze
would have them stand idly by and allow atrocities like genocide to occur so
they could take comfort that their actions did not cause harm, even though
their inaction allowed a much greater harm. The widely recognized moral
failure of the international community in Rwanda for standing by while
genocide was planned, incited and executed* despite calls for forceful
/
intervention by the UN commander on the ground* evidences moral

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intuition on this point (Dallaire 2005).
Other Morally Relevant Concerns

The factors articulated thus far constitute the core ethical concerns over
humanitarian intervention in the prevailing literature. There are, however, at
least three other morally relevant concerns that also have a certain prudential
value and that can be encompassed by a consequentialist framework. The
first two of these factors are temporal concerns, the third is a factor based on
certain empirical considerations.
Temporal Factors
Most of the literature agrees that if humanitarian intervention is to be
permitted at all, it must be conducted in a way that serves to halt or avert an
atrocity of the aforementioned scale and severity that is underway or
imminent. There are two related concerns here. The first is with military
interventions that take place well after a large-scale atrocity is committed, the
second is with humanitarian interventions taking place at a time when such
atrocities are a possibility in the future, but are not underway or imminent at
the time intervention is being considered. With respect to the first concern, if
a military intervention takes place well after an atrocity has been committed,
the question arises as to what good was brought about or what harm was
prevented, even if perpetrators of the atrocity are being justly punished for
past wrongs. Unless the intervention served to halt or avert an imminent or
ongoing atrocity, then the most immediate consequence of such an interven-
tion would be the death and destruction that accompanies military invasion,
while no harm was forseeably prevented (Roth 2004). That is, innocent people
would be killed and harmed who otherwise would not have been, while no
counterbalancing harm was averted.
The consequentialist can easily accommodate this factor based on the
‘more good than harm’ proposition suggested above. A consequentialist
would argue that while post facto punishment of criminals for their past
wrongs may be desirable, this is not the case when the price of such
punishment is the imminent killing and harming of innocents and the
disruption that accompanies armed conflict. It is better to tolerate the
presence of a criminal, the argument goes, than to risk causing widespread
death and destruction for the peace of mind that the criminal has been
brought to justice. Such reasoning has been a powerful argument for why the
US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not justified on humanitarian grounds
(Roth 2004). Even though Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and had committed
atrocities in the past, at the time of the invasion the Iraqi government was not
engaged in atrocities of the scale that had been perpetrated in the past, such
as those against Kurds in 1988 and Shiites in 1991. Nevertheless, a
consequentialist might alternatively argue that the benefits of such post facto
intervention outweigh the costs in the sense that such punishment will act as a
deterrent to others, or prevent this criminal from committing such atrocities
in the future. This is the second related temporal factor.
All humanitarian interventions are at some level anticipatory (see Charney
1999). The question is whether they are preemptive * that is, in response to an
/
immediate threat that has more or less already become visible* or /
preventive * which means that it is in anticipation of a long-term threat

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that may or may not materialize at some point in the future (Drumbl 2003).
To err on the side of caution, one would not risk a military intervention unless
one was very certain of the imminence of the threat* in this case, the threat
/
of large-scale and severe atrocities being committed. War is not something to

be entered into lightly and so it would seem intuitive enough not to do so
unless one it is certain that an atrocity will take place unless a military
intervention is undertaken. This intuitive moral position is partially
articulated by the Just War criterion of ‘war as a last resort’, which seeks
to only permit war once there are reasonable grounds for believing that all
peaceful means to avert the threat are likely to fail (Miller 1991; Childress
1992: 358 359). The ICISS (2001: 36 37) has applied this criterion to
/ /
humanitarian intervention, whereby it asserts that only when ‘. . .full-scale

violence is in prospect or in occurrence can a military option by outside
powers be considered’. Similarly, Fixdal and Smith (1998: 302) argue that
because the use of force will have harmful consequences regardless, states
have a moral obligation not to engage in war unless there is no other option
and no time for deliberation. As framed here, the concern about anticipatory
humanitarian intervention is less for consequentialist prescription than it is a
concern of an agent who wants to enhance the certainty that his actions will
have overall good consequences. This is, of course, a problem with all a priori
appraisals of military force, which I address below.
The Prevalence of ‘Small-Scale’ Abuses

There nevertheless seem to be sound moral reasons to want to only engage in
a humanitarian intervention when atrocities are underway or imminent. In
these hypothetical instances, a consequentialist framework can accommodate
such moral intuition fairly well. But there is another arguably more
persuasive moral reason* based largely on present-day empirical rea-
/
lities* for wanting to reserve humanitarian intervention for those situations

/
of imminent or ongoing abuse. This concern is also accommodated very well

by consequentialism. It basically has to do with the sheer number of
governments today that routinely abuse their citizens on a small scale or
deny them certain political rights, though fall short of committing large-scale
atrocities. Let us say that an actor decides to use military force against a
routinely abusive regime, where no large-scale atrocity is occurring, but at
178 E. A. Heinze
some point in the future a large-scale atrocity might occur, and that this use of
force is being justified on humanitarian grounds. In other words, this actor
adheres to a preventive doctrine of humanitarian intervention. The problem
with this is that there are any number of such situations in the world today,
which would, in effect, dangerously lower the bar for what is considered the
legitimate use of military force (see Kegley & Raymond 2003). One could
realistically argue that a humanitarian catastrophe of relevant scale and
severity might take place anywhere where there is political instability, political
corruption, poor or negligent governance, ethnic tensions, or illegitimate rule.
This does not mean, however, that it is wise to try and avert such
unforeseeable catastrophes by using preventive military force.
In addition to it being quite far from certain that such a catastrophe will, in
fact, take place, another important concern is with the international
precedent that may be derived from a humanitarian intervention that is
undertaken in order to prevent a future unforeseeable atrocity, or that is in
response to small-scale or isolated abuses. Particularly if this behavior is
repeated by states over time and begins to crystallize into customary
international law (see Drumbl 2003; Byers & Chesterman 2003), such a
precedent would create a prescription for what Michael Walzer (1980)
referred to as ‘endless war in the society of states’. The sad reality is that
to permit humanitarian intervention as a panacea for minor or small-scale
human rights violations, or as a means to depose non-democratic or abusive
governments, is to sanction war virtually anywhere in the world at any time* /
a veritable carte blanche. Numerous authors have made this argument as a

reason for why humanitarian intervention should be reserved for the ‘extreme
cases’ that I outlined above (e.g., Smith 1998: 78; Hehir 1998: 44; Brown 2003:
35). None of these authors, however, articulate this moral calculus using a
consequentialist discourse.
A consequentialist could plausibly argue that the outcome of permitting
humanitarian intervention as a means to rectify situations that are so
prevalent throughout the world would be for numerous states to invoke such a
justification to cloak what are essentially wars of aggression, thus resulting in
an overwhelming disruption of international peace and security. A world that
resembles Walzer’s ‘endless war’ scenario is undoubtedly a harmful con-
sequence that far outweighs any potential good that could come from such
wars. Thus again, consequentialist concerns render a morally commonsensi-
cal justification for why humanitarian intervention should be reserved for the
exceptional situations that involve only the most severe and large-scale
atrocities that are imminent or ongoing.
Concluding Remarks
It is understandable why many who wish to morally justify humanitarian
intervention are reluctant to make an explicitly consequentialist argument.
Invoking consequentialist considerations is to invoke ‘cold and callous
utilitarian calculations’ that only take into consideration aggregate human
suffering and that justify committing great evils for the sake of promoting the
overall good (see Frost 1986: 137 44). Theorists who want to argue that
/
humanitarian intervention can be legitimate under certain exceptional

circumstances thus exploit fundamental consequentialist insights, though
they themselves do not adopt this framework, either to avoid exposing
themselves to such criticisms or to avoid other damaging challenges to
consequentialism more generally (see, for example, Beitz 1979; Tesón 1988;
Walzer 2000). One of these challenges, as I implied above, is that it is
impossible to know the future. Since consequentialism is essentially a theory
that appraises the ethical desirability of actions by reference to its
consequences, a prescriptive consequentialist framework* that is, a frame-
/
work that seeks to make a moral assessment of an act before it actually takes
place* relies on having knowledge of events that are essentially unknowable
/
(Kagan 1998: 64 65). As I suggested above, it is impossible to know for

/
certain whether an atrocity will take place or not, or if the consequences of a

humanitarian intervention will be bad or good. Evidence is always
incomplete, and a situation might arise where all the evidence suggests that
a humanitarian intervention would lead to a good outcome, but something
unforeseeable happens and renders it a disaster.
Life is, of course, full of uncertainties. This objection is not unique to
consequentialism, but applies to all plausible ethical theories that give any
moral weight at all to outcomes. Furthermore, uncertainty need not lead to
gridlock. We may not know exactly what the future holds, but neither are we
completely in the dark about it. With respect to the use of military force, of
course, we do not know for sure that it will kill and harm people, but we are
pretty certain that it will based largely past human experience in war-making
and in undertaking humanitarian intervention. We can also be fairly certain,
for example, of the extreme unlikelihood that a NATO humanitarian
intervention against Russia or China over Chechnya or Tibet, respectively,
will have fantastic results. Counterfactual reasoning is often illuminating,
thus the lack of a crystal ball need not be incapacitating to a consequentialist
approach.
Finally, it is also the case that there is nothing inherent in a pure
consequentialist approach that would prohibit the deliberate killing of
civilians in the conduct of a humanitarian intervention as an instrumental
means to achieving the strategic objective. This charge is usually framed in
terms of consequentialism permitting too much, making nothing unthink-
able, not even the killing of innocent civilians (Pettit 1991: 234). In the above
narrative I imposed a constraint on the unconditional pursuit of an end by
essentially prohibiting the deliberate targeting of civilians, though still
allowing for unintentional deaths if they are minimized to the extent possible.
This, as I concede, injects an element of deontology into what is otherwise a
mostly consequentialist ethical framework. If we take this constraint on
consequentialism as required in order for our ethical justification to reflect
commonsense morality concerning humanitarian intervention, then we see
that the ethics of humanitarian intervention is not exclusively consequenti-
alist. So while the consequences of the act are not the only moral concern in
the conduct of humanitarian intervention, they are nevertheless the factor
180 E. A. Heinze
with which we are primarily concerned, and they remain the fundamental
basis for morally judging, justifying or condemning it (see Pettit 1988).
Ultimately, then, the reason for insisting on the fundamental importance of
consequentialism to the discourse on humanitarian intervention is because of
its general fit with important ethical arguments for humanitarian intervention
in the current literature* including arguments from the Just War tradition
/
and other ethical approaches* which I maintain constitute commonsense

/
morality. Consequentialism thus represents a very plausible normative

framework for addressing the dilemmas involved in humanitarian interven-
tion that serves to bring ethical, prudential and political considerations
together in a coherent ethical discourse. Such an approach may or may not be
adopted by policy-makers, but it does provide a way to bring the highly
emotive, controversial and politically/ideologically charged subject of the use
of military force into an evaluative framework, the aim of which is simply to
bring about the most amount of good overall.
Notes
1
A handful of theorists have implied that the ethics of humanitarian intervention involve a certain type
of moral reasoning, but few have pursued these insights in an applied or systematic fashion. See,
e.g., Laberge 1995; Fixdal & Smith 1998: 287; Doyle 2001; Holzgrefe 2003: 18 /36; Philips 2003: 78 /
90; Heinze 2004.
2
In this essay, I use the terms ‘commonsense morality’ and ‘moral intuition’ interchangeably, though the
latter should be construed as widely shared moral intuitions.
3
In NATO’s 1999 intervention against Serbia over Kosovo */considered one of the ‘cleaner’ humanitarian
interventions */the bombing campaign directly caused anywhere between 500 and 2000 Serbian
civilian deaths (Human Rights Watch 2000).
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Biography
Eric A. Heinze is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Interna-
tional and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Subjects of interest
include international law and organization, human rights, military interven-
tion, and moral theory. His articles have recently appeared in the International
Journal of Human Rights and the Journal of Conflict Studies, Polity, and
Politics.

(05c) Commonsense Morality and The Consequentialist Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention

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Journal of Military Ethics

Online Publication Date: 01 November 2005

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Vol. 4, No. 3, 168 182, 2005

Commonsense Morality and the

KEY WORDS: Humanitarian intervention, moral theory, consequentialism, commonsense

an undeniable ethical component. As such, the ethical basis for humanitarian

1502-7570 Print/1502-7589 Online/05/03000168 /15 # 2005 Taylor & Francis

conclude by addressing some remaining objections to consequentialist moral

which I argue is consequentialism* in order to provide a coherent evaluative

framework for humanitarian intervention.

Consequentialism and its Critics

values by acting so as to always bring about the best possible consequences in

Commonsense Morality, Consequentialism and Humanitarian Intervention

people in a manner that could plausibly be halted or averted by a military

Scale and Severity of the Abuse

subject is in agreement on this point* that humanitarian intervention is only

severe. Virtually all writers are in agreement that humanitarian intervention

threatened with ‘massacre, genocide or ethnic cleansing on a large scale’

situation it intends to correct (Hopkinson 1993: 9). As Guenter Levy (1993:

Military Capabilities of the Belligerents

other large-scale atrocity* precisely because the human costs of such a

of the agents involved* runs contrary to commonsense morality and is thus

reasonable grounds for rejecting such a view in favor of the consequentialist

Doing Harm: Thresholds and Intent

intervention by the UN commander on the ground* evidences moral

intuition on this point (Dallaire 2005).

Other Morally Relevant Concerns

immediate threat that has more or less already become visible* or /

preventive * which means that it is in anticipation of a long-term threat

of large-scale and severe atrocities being committed. War is not something to

humanitarian intervention, whereby it asserts that only when ‘. . .full-scale

The Prevalence of ‘Small-Scale’ Abuses

lities* for wanting to reserve humanitarian intervention for those situations

of imminent or ongoing abuse. This concern is also accommodated very well

a veritable carte blanche. Numerous authors have made this argument as a

humanitarian intervention can be legitimate under certain exceptional

(Kagan 1998: 64 65). As I suggested above, it is impossible to know for

certain whether an atrocity will take place or not, or if the consequences of a

and other ethical approaches* which I maintain constitute commonsense

morality. Consequentialism thus represents a very plausible normative

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