In his column over at the Guardian, Laughland has taken a very interesting concept for an article – as demonstrated by his subtitle: “It is no accident that those who advocate war for humanitarian reasons end up justifying torture” – and neglected to explore the subject. Laughland instead has chosen to muddy the moral issues at stake. Described by Wikipedia as a “a British eurosceptic conservative journalist, academic and author”, he manages to take moral relativism to Chomskian levels. Right here is a glimmer of the article he might have written:
It is therefore no coincidence that the US administration that justifies its wars in the name of claims about humanity and its right to liberty also advocates the use of torture to protect these.
He then goes on to implicitly question the genocides of the post-World War II era and to mock the fact that people think someone should have intervened. Apparently, Laughland, whom the Guardian called the “PR man for Europe’s nastiest regimes” – and then apparently gave him a column – took some lessons from World War II that few others did. Neither Neville Chamberlain’s trip to Munich nor the Holocaust seems to have made much impression on Laughland; apparently the lesson he has taken is that we must avoid war at any price. This is a position Gandhi took as well – in the midst of Hitler’s crimes – and I can certainly imagine someone making a strong case for it.
Laughland is not that person: he seems to understand the weakness of his position, and rather than forthrightly stating that we should allow genocide because state sovereignty is the most important virtue, he tries to deny that these crimes take place. He says that he is opposed to humanitarian interventions, and then explains that the interventions were not all that humanitarian. These are two distinct points. The problem is that he declares his opinion if Position A and tries to justify it by citing a support of Position B.
Laughland concludes his article using a familiar phrase from the pre-World War II period:
We need instead to renew the deep conviction that seized the collective conscience of mankind in 1945 that the international system, and the ideas that underpin it, should be structured so as to ensure peace at any price. [my italics]
Unfortunately, I think those currently promoting this most recent article are realizing what Laughland is saying. Laughland believes the only principle that should be used to organize international affairs is state sovereignty. I don’t know many liberals who would support that. And I personally believe there are greater principles that are often at stake.