There is an important ethical point at issue here, one that often leads to misguided objections to arguments about when it is right to intervene in the domestic affairs of another state. The objection runs: if it was justifiable to intervene against Serbia in Kosovo, then it must also be justifiable to intervene against Russia in Chechnya, or against China in Tibet. What this objection overlooks is that it is one thing for there to be a legal basis, and even a just cause, for intervening, and a totally different thing for intervention to be justified, all things considered. This distinction shows that the reason why NATO would have been wrong to intervene against Russia in Chechnya or against China in Tibet is not that (at least on one version of what the larger state is doing to the smaller one) there was no legal basis or just cause to intervene, but that the predictable human costs of the resulting war made it wrong to intervene. This should not be thought of as a case of "double standards." There is only one standard, that it is right to do what will have the best consequences, and that standard tells us not to intervene when the costs of doing so are likely to be greater than the benefits achieved.
(Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization, The Terry Lectures [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002], 138-9)
Note from KBJ: Either Peter Singer doesn't understand his own normative ethical theory (utilitarianism) or he's being dishonest. He says that "it is right to do what will have the best consequences." This is the consequentialist core of utilitarianism. He then writes: "[T]hat standard tells us not to intervene when the costs of doing so are likely to be greater than the benefits achieved." This is emphatically not what utilitarianism dictates. Utilitarianism compares the net utilities of the various acts available to the agent and mandates that the act with the highest net utility be performed, even if that net utility is negative. The acts in question are (1) intervene and (2) don't intervene. Each has both costs and benefits. Consider the following example. If we intervene, we produce 50 units of benefit and 100 units of cost, for a net utility of -50. If we don't intervene, we produce 50 units of benefit and 150 units of cost, for a net utility of -100. The right thing to do, according to utilitarianism, is to intervene, since -50 is better than -100. But notice what happens when we apply Singer's standard. Since the costs of intervention (100) are greater than the benefits achieved by it (50), we should not intervene. I hate to ascribe dishonesty to Singer, but the alternative is to saddle him with a misunderstanding of his own theory.
The reason I think there is dishonesty here, rather than misunderstanding, is that Singer's formulation makes it harder to justify war—and I think that, as a progressive, he wants that result. But utilitarians such as Singer hold that one is as responsible for what one allows to happen as for what one does. Morally speaking, letting someone die is as bad as killing him or her. Not intervening when one can prevent genocide can have devastating consequences. Utilitarians should have no presumption against military intervention. Whether intervention is justified in a given case depends solely on the comparative consequences of (1) intervening and (2) not intervening. Sometimes there is no way to produce a net benefit. In these tragic cases, a utilitarian requires that harm be minimized. Intervening militarily is sometimes, or perhaps often, the way to minimize harm.
