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An editorial in today's NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/opinion/08sat1.html?_r=1&hp) advocates the US becoming actively involved in helping to ensure the peaceful carrying out of the secession vote that will occur in Darfur tomorrow. The atrocities that have occurred in this region over the past several decades are well documented. The question in my mind is to what extent it is appropriate for other governments to become involved in stopping such atrocities and assisting in overcoming the things that lead to them in the first place? |
There are (at least) two criteria:
(a) when it is both in defence of rights in principle; AND (b) when the interests of the people of the interceding nation would concievably be advanced thereby (eg for national security reasons, or for prospective future trade benefits).
This also requires that the interceding nation be mostly free or better, particularly but not limited to a strictly professional army where conscription is rightly viewed as an abomination.