non-humanitarian intervention

Here’s a LENIN’S TOMB post.

The end reads as follows:

“The attempt to envelop this complex field of social and political struggles in the dilapidated ideological frame of ‘humanitarian intervention’ provides just the entry point that the US and its allies have been looking for. The call for ‘humanitarian intervention’ has nothing to do with rescuing Libyans, who are proving quite capable of rescuing themselves. It is the tip of a counter-revolutionary wedge.”

But I think the really interesting question is that of a non-humanitarian intervention. That is to say, the Libyans may be doing a very good job of rescuing themselves, but they haven’t finished the job yet. And what if they decide that what they need to finish the job is… armaments from the West! Wouldn’t it be even more paternalistic to refuse, saying: “You need to learn to fish for yourselves. If we help you, it would merely be imperialism.”

The American Colonies also needed French imperialist military help to gain independence in 1781, for example. The French helped not for “humanitarian” reasons, but simply to mess with the British, perhaps partly to take revenge over having lost Quebec a few decades earlier. Yet the French help was still indispensable. They would have been wrong to intervene singlehandedly, but they were asked for help by the revolutionaries, and they provided it. It seems to me that we should let the Libyans work this question out for themselves, not decide for them whom they should and should not deal with.