Ideologia della guerra umanitaria

Abstract

Over the last twenty years, the adjective ‘humanitarian’ has been the subject of unprecedented systematic linguistic abuse. It has been used in relation to the most diverse international political situations, the term has been used in order to define, and even more to justify, events which had little or nothing to do with the true meaning of the word. In this manner, politics has taken possession of a word and completely distorted its concept and its moral value, bending it in accordance with its own interests and shamelessly placing it next to its semantic opposite – war.

With the end of 20th Century ideologies, the national State fell into crisis and as a consequence so did the organisms and institutions which it had founded. To the eyes of international public opinion, it is therefore difficult to justify a return to the use of arms in order to resolve disputes or in order to authorise intervention of a dubious nature beyond a nation’s own borders.

It is in precisely this context that man’s fundamental rights are torn from their sacred throne in order to be subjected to forms of politico-economic logic which, owing to their assumed absolute nature, should not belong to them. The point, therefore, is to understand whether absolute rights which can be shared by everyone do, in fact, exist, and if so, what to do to protect them. In the meantime, the universalism of rights is used as if it were a skeleton key with which to penetrate public opinion (which is, at this point, global).

At the same time, the international institutions which were created and appointed to control and safeguard the inviolable rights of man seem completely to have lost the authority which, however, they should hold. The finding of plausible justifications to delays, the absence of taking a stand and the making of unpopular choices therefore seems to have become the main occupation of an international political class which seems to be walking slowly whilst the rest of the world is running at speed. Are there, however, cases in which a war may be called ‘just’? Is it right to act when we find ourselves face to face with an evident and abominable violation of the fundamental liberties of each and every one of us? And what are these fundamental liberties?