'Tyrants should be left free to tyrannise their own people'
Intelligence Squared Debate, London, 14 September 2005

Philip Cunliffe
posted 19 September 2005

The first of the Intelligence Squared debates of the autumn assembled some formidable minds and sharp debaters to discuss a timely and engaging topic, with renowned scholars Edward Luttwak and Lord Robert Skidelsky proposing the motion, against political commentator Ian Buruma and former Clinton administration official James Rubin. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland chaired the proceedings. Superbly organised, the debate drew in a crowd remarkable for both its size and enthusiasm, that launched with admirable alacrity into probing the speaker's positions once the opening arguments had been made.

While eloquent arguments were advanced by both Skidelsky and Buruma, it was evident from early on that theirs were more-or-less flanking arguments - the bulk of the battle was going to take place between Luttwak and Rubin. Although the motion was eventually voted down by 393 to 245, it was nonetheless the pugnacious Luttwak who made the best argument of the evening. Through a neat historical analogy to the stunted political culture of Sicily, Luttwak argued that liberty cannot be handed down to people on a silver platter. Never having participated in their own emancipation during the wars of Italian unification, Sicilians were a politically desultory bunch, condemned to live out their lives under the mafia. The same would hold true for whatever Iraq emerged from the current conflict, claimed Luttwak.

On the opposing side, Rubin cleverly attempted pre-emptively to shift the debate away from where it would naturally gravitate - the disastrous war in Iraq. He did this by taking the semantic route. As the motion stood, claimed Rubin, there was nothing to be debated: it was clear that tyrants could never be 'left free' to tyrannise; we would always be morally compelled to do something, whether it be as little as diplomatic pressure, or as forceful as full-scale invasion. What we did was an entirely different question, and a debatable one. As it stood, the motion was a no-brainer. In effect, Rubin had clearly identified the key political issue by trying to draw the audience's attention away from it - namely, the reality of contemporary intervention, and in particular the Bush administration's war in Iraq. But as Luttwak justifiably pointed out, nobody would have been in the audience had the motion not had any real political resonance, exposing Rubin's semantic dodge for what it was.

But the critical flaw in both Skidelsky and Luttwak's defence of the motion was its anti-democratic cynicism. Skidelsky argued in favour of the UN Charter and the inviolability of state sovereignty. Wars to spread democracy and human rights threatened to knock us back to a strife-torn world dominated by imperialist wars of aggression. The stability of international law, and concomitant tolerance of dictatorships, had to take precedence over the instability of having more democratic states throughout the world, whose foreign policies were hostage to the vicissitudes of atavistic and unpredictable public opinion.

Luttwak made a better argument, the same one made by John Stuart Mill over a century ago - that the only guarantee of self-determination was if it were actualised by the people in question. But given the contempt in which he clearly held the political capabilities of both Iraqis and Sicilians, Luttwak's argument was effectively circular: the Iraqis are not self-determining because they are incapable of self-determination. And if the Iraqis' low level of political culture, their ethnic and religious differences made them incapable of self-determination, then what harm could the Americans possibly do to Iraqi prospects for self-determination, if they were non-existent in the first place? Having effectively given self-determination with one hand to take it away with the other, Luttwak left the audience with no options, effectively ceding the argument to Rubin and Buruma. That aside, by the time Luttwak started comparing Vladimir Putin to Peter the Great, it was clear that his wisdom, stodgy erudition and Transylvanian accent would have to give way to Rubin's blazing smile, self-deprecating wit and perma-tan charms.

Philip Cunliffe is co-convenor of the Sovereignty And Its Discontents working group, and is co-organising the Battle for International Relations at the Battle of Ideas festival in London, 29-30 October.