Nicoline van Harskamp - DeLVe | Institute for Duration, Location and ...

ously most often about the suffering of somebody else.
Ignatieff’s conception of the “lesser evil” is problematic even according to the utilitarian
principles invoked. The very economy of violence assumes the possibility of less violent
means and the risk of more violence, but questions of violence are forever unpredictable
and undetermined. The supposed “lesser evil” may always be more violent than the
violence it opposes, and there can be no end to the challenges that stem from the impossibility
of calculation. 10 A less brutal measure is also one that can easily be naturalized,
accepted and tolerated. 11 When exceptional means are normalised, they can be more
frequently applied. The purported military ability to perform ‘controlled’, ‘elegant’, ‘pinpoint
accurate’, ‘discriminate’ killing could bring about more destruction and death than
‘traditional’ strategies did because these methods, combined with the manipulative and
euphoric rhetoric used to promulgate them, induce decision makers to authorize their
frequent and extended use. The illusion of precision, part of the state’s rhetoric of restraint,
gives the military-political apparatus the necessary justification to use explosives
in civilian environments where they cannot be used without injuring or killing civilians.
This process, recalling Herbert Marcuse’s analysis of “repressive tolerance” may explain
the way western democratic societies can maintain regimes of brutal military domination
without this brutality affecting their self-perception as enlightened liberals. Elevating,
for example, targeted assassinations (Ignatieff considers targeted assassination to
fall “within the effective moral-political framework of the lesser evil”) 12 to a legally and
morally acceptable standard makes them part of the state’s legal options, part of a list of
counterterrorism techniques, with the result that all sense of horror at the act of murder
is now lost. The lower the threshold of violence attributed to a certain means and the
lower the threshold of horror implied in its use, the more frequent its application could
become. Because they help normalise low-intensity conflict, the overall duration of this
conflict could be extended and finally more “lesser evils” could be committed, with the
result of the greater evil reached cumulatively. 13
The Humanitarian Paradox of the “Lesser Evil”
From this perspective it is possible to see that the discourse and practice of humanitarianism
and human rights might paradoxically turn against the people it claims to help.
When every soldier in what George W. Bush has called “the armies of compassion” becomes
a proxy expert in humanitarianism, humanitarian concerns could easily become
a pretext to justify ‘neutrality’ with respect to a brutal conflict (as in Sarajevo) or an alibi
for a political decision to mount a ‘military intervention’ against a sovereign state (as in
Iraq).
Beyond state agents, the “perpetrators of lesser evil” must also include non-state organizations.
Putting an end to human rights violations has become, increasingly since the
1990s, the platform that allows for the possibility of collaboration between NGO activists
and Western militaries. Beyond the fact that the moralization of politics through the
terms “freedom”, “human rights” and “liberal democracy” has led to a general depolitization,
the paradox is that human rights and humanitarian action can in fact aggravate
the situation of the very people it purportedly comes to aid.
The paradox of the “lesser evil” impacts most independent non-governmental organiza-
GDJE SE SVE TEK TREBA DOGODITI / WHERE EVERYTHING IS YET TO HAPPEN