The Ethics of Revolution and

Its Implications for the Ethics

of Intervention
ALLEN BUCHANAN
Logically, there should be an elaborate jus ad bellum and jus in bello
for revolutionary war, but development of such a doctrine has never
been seriously attempted.
1
We may be entering a new Age of Revolution.
2
Revolutions have recently
occurred across North Africa, while the brutal revolutionary conict in
Syria continues. The recent owering of just war theory has not yet
explicitly extended its reach to revolutions, perhaps due to a suspicion
that revolutions present ethical issues that are not amenable to a tradi-
tion of theorizing that focuses on conicts between states, rather than on
those in which (some of) the people of a state seek to overthrow the
government. Of course, one major element of an ethics of revolution has
occupied a central role in Western political thought: Locke, for example,
has a good deal to say about what qualies as a just cause for revolution,
and the idea of just cause is a key component of jus ad bellum doctrine.
The question of whether the other components of jus ad bellumtheories
developed for interstate wars apply to the quite different situation of
I am grateful to Cecile Fabre, Christopher Finlay, Jeff Holzgrefe, Mattias Iser, Robert O.
Keohane, Russell Powell, Uwe Steinhoff, Bas Van der Vossen, Lorenzo Zucca, and
two anonymous reviewers for this journal for their helpful comments on previous drafts
of this article.
I. William V. OBrien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger,
I8I), p. z.
z. I will use the term revolution, in what might be called its broader sense, to mean
the attempt to overthrow an existing regime and replace it with a new one, by violent or at
least unconstitutional means. Sometimes the term is used in a narrower sense, according
to which the aim of those who seek to overthrow the existing regime is to replace it
with a fundamentally different type of political order. What I say in this article applies
to both cases. Furthermore, as will become clear, I am focusing on cases of revolution
that involve violence.
zoI Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Philosophy & Public Affairs (I, no. (
revolution has not been addressed; nor has a jus in bello theory been
developed for revolutionary conicts.
3
Both the humanitarian law of war and contemporary just war theory
do, however, address one issue that a comprehensive ethics of revolu-
tion, in its jus in bello part, should include: namely, the ethics of irregu-
lar combatants, ghters who do not wear identifying insignia and who
mingle with the civilian population. But as I shall argue, developing a
plausible doctrine on that issue would comprise only one small part of a
comprehensive ethics of revolution.
Similarly, although recent work on the ethics of terrorism (and coun-
terterrorism) clearly has implications for the jus in bello part of an ethics
of revolutionssince revolutionaries often resort to terrorismit falls
far short of a thoroughgoing investigation of the ethics of revolution. For
one thing, the focus of the literature on the ethics of terrorism has been
acts of violence against noncombatants intended to inuence the behav-
ior of those in political power (by causing fear or terror in their constitu-
encies, who will then exert pressure on their leaders to change course).
. Cecile Fabre has begun to develop an account of the ethics of civil wars, a category
that encompasses revolution as I have dened it. Her focus thus far has been on whether
nonstate individuals or groups in civil wars may use modes of ghting that are usually
understood to be prohibited in traditional just war theory. She has briey discussed the
ethics of conscripting soldiers to ght in cases of humanitarian intervention, but she has
not so far discussed the other kinds of morally problematic actions often undertaken by
revolutionaries who are the focus of this article. Cecile Fabre, Cosmopolitan War (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, zoII), p. I8. Christopher J. Finlay has explored the question of
whether nonstate actors, including revolutionaries, can satisfy the traditional just war
requirement of competent authority, but he has not engaged the particular moral issues
facing revolutionaries discussed in this article. Christopher J. Finlay, Legitimacy and Non-
State Actors, Journal of Political Philosophy I8 (zoo): z8,Iz. Mattias Iser argues that the
violation of civil and political rights can be a just cause for revolution, but does not focus on
the problems of revolutionary jus in bello that are the subject of this article. Mattias Iser,
draft paper presented at conference on Justice and Violence, Frankfurt, May I6, zoI. A
number of other valuable contributions, including the following, explore the jus ad bellum
part of the ethics of revolution or the ethics of intervention in revolution, but do not
consider the subject matter of the present article: Arthur Isak Applbaum, Forcing a People
to Be Free, Philosophy & Public Affairs (zoo,): (oo; Ned Dobos, A State to Call
Their Own: Insurrection, Intervention, and the Communal Integrity Thesis, Journal of
Applied Philosophy z, (zoIo): z68; Katrin Flikshuh, Reason, Right, and Revolution: Kant
and Locke, Philosophy & Public Affairs 6 (zoo8): ,6(o(; Adil Ahmad Haque, The
Revolution and Criminal Law, Criminal Lawand Philosophy , (zoI): zI; and Matthew
Noah Smith, Rethinking Sovereignty, Rethinking Revolution, Philosophy &Public Affairs
6 (zoo8): (o(o.
zz Philosophy & Public Affairs
But revolutionaries frequently use violence and sometimes outright acts
of terrorism against other noncombatantsnamely, other oppressed
peoplenot to change the behavior of the regime, but to increase par-
ticipation in the struggle or to eliminate rivals for leadership of the revo-
lution.
4
Such acts are morally problematic to say the least, but to my
knowledge they have not been considered in the recent literature on
terrorism. This omission is both a deciency in theorizing about the
ethics of terrorism and a failure to engage with an important element of
the ethics of revolution.
Writing on the ethics of humanitarian intervention has tended to
focus on interventions to stop genocides or large-scale killings, not on
revolutions. It is true that some supporters of the United Statesled inva-
sion of Iraq in zoo claimed that it was justied as a case of forcible
democratization, a democratic revolution from without, as it were (and
that the absence of weapons of mass destruction was therefore irrelevant
to the justication of the war). But they did not argue, and could not
plausibly have argued, that the invasion was an effort to support a revo-
lution, because no revolution was underway at the time of the invasion.
This is not to say that current theorizing about the ethics of humani-
tarian intervention has no implications for revolution. A popular stance
on the ethics of humanitarian intervention (in its jus ad bellum part) is
that it is not justied unless there is large-scale violence, and this stric-
ture could be understood to apply to revolutionary conicts as well as
ethnonational conicts of the sort that have been the focus of the
humanitarian intervention literature. Nonetheless, neither contempo-
rary just war theories, nor theories of the ethics of terrorism, nor theories
of the ethics of humanitarian intervention have engaged seriously with
the ethics of revolution considered as a legitimate object of normative
analysis in its own right.
(. Revolutionaries often commit violence against suspected informers or others who
betray the revolutionary struggle. In some cases, they also punish members of the
oppressed public who engage in what the revolutionaries consider to be antisocial behav-
ior (such as drug-selling and prostitution), on the grounds that the people must be puried
if they are to be t for the revolutionary struggle or the new era it is supposed to bring
about. See, for example, the execution of the pimp in the classic lmThe Battle of Algiers.
Here, too, the problem of legitimacy looms large. The key question is whether, in spite of
the fact that the revolutionaries do not comprise a legitimate agent or institution, they can
be justied in taking such actions.
z The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
In this article, I begin a systematic exploration of the ethics
of revolution, focusing rst on the ethics of those who typically
initiate revolutions, whom I will refer to as The Aspiring Revolutionary
Leadership (ARL for brevity). Then I will consider the ethics of
intervention in revolutions.
In the rst part of the article, I argue that in the cases in which the Just
Cause Requirement is most clearly and fully satised, structural features
of the revolutionary situation will often make it extremely difcult or
impossible for revolutionaries to satisfy reasonable jus in bello prin-
ciples, while at the same time satisfying the jus ad bellum Reasonable
Likelihood of Success Requirement. My initial disturbing conclusion in
this rst part of the article is that it is seldommorally justiable to initiate
revolution in the very cases in which the cause for revolting is most
clearly and fully just. Second, I then argue that when the initiation of
revolution is not morally permissible, participation in a revolution that
has already begun can nonetheless be justied. So, a third conclusion
will be that it is unhelpful to ask whether a revolution was justied.
Instead, the moral assessment must be disaggregated, distinguishing
between two subjects of evaluation: the initiation of the revolution and
its continuance. Paradoxical though it may seem, there is nothing incon-
sistent in acknowledging that the actions by which a revolution is
initiatedand which must be performed if the revolution is to have a
signicant chance of succeedingare morally unjustiable, while at the
same time asserting that the revolution is morally justiable, where this
means that the continuation of the revolutionary struggle is morally
permissible. Next, I argue that onfurther analysis some of the prima facie
morally impermissible tactics ARLs often employin particular, some
uses of coercion against fellow oppressed people to overcome regime-
imposed obstacles to collective action against the regimeare morally
justiable, while others are not.
The second part of the article uses the rst parts ndings concerning
the ethics of revolution to explore the ethics of intervention in revolu-
tion. There I argue for three main conclusions. First, even if the initiation
of a revolution is severely tainted by immoral actions perpetrated by the
ARL, it may nonetheless be morally justiable for third parties to inter-
vene in support of it.
Second, given a proper understanding of the tactics frequently
employed by the ARLand that they often must use if revolution is to
z( Philosophy & Public Affairs
have a signicant chance of succeedingthe practical value of two
seemingly plausible principles of intervention turns out to be much less
than has been thought. Both the principle that intervention should not
occur until there is widespread support for a revolution (Mills Principle)
and the principle that intervention should not occur without the
consent or approval of the people (the Consent Principle) gure
prominently inthe contemporary literature onthe ethics of intervention.
Both still enjoy considerable popularity, though both have been criti-
cized. I will advance novel criticisms of them, showing that proponents
of these principles have failed to see that the behavior of the ARL will
frequently undercut the rationale for these principles. I conclude that
Mills Principle and the Consent Principle were designed for a world
quite different from that in which revolutions typically occur, in blissful
ignorance of the grim facts about revolutions in our world. Finally,
I then argue that there is a reason in favor of early intervention that
has not been appreciated: in principle it can avoid the spiral of coercion
that occurs as the regime tries to thwart the ARLs attempt to solve
the collective action problem of mass participation by raising the costs
of participation in the revolution and the ARL responds by increasing
coercive pressure on the masses to participate by raising the costs
of not participating.
My methodology in this article is distinctive: I approach the ethics of
revolution by focusing on the problems that the initiators of revolution
typically face, drawing on relevant social-science literature, including
historical work on actual revolutions, and also on the literature on col-
lective action problems. Then, instead of attempting to apply a theory of
intervention developed for other sorts of cases (in particular, interven-
tion to stop massive ethnonational violence), I drawout the implications
of a factually informed investigation of the ethics of revolution for devel-
oping an ethics of intervention in revolutions.
I. PROBLEMS THE ASPIRING REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP MUST SOLVE
A. The Applicability of Just War Principles to Revolutionary Violence
Before identifying the problems the ARL faces, I will assume for purposes
of my argument something that I trust is relatively uncontroversial,
namely, that at least some of the widely recognized principles of just war
theory apply to violence contemplated by the ARL. These include the
z The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
following requirements: (a) that there must be a just cause for initiating
violent revolution (the Just Cause Requirement); (b) that there must be
some reasonable prospect that the revolution will succeed in its major
aims, at least those referred to in the characterization of the just cause
(the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Requirement); (c) that the vio-
lence used by the revolutionaries must be proportional to the aims they
seek to achieve, especially those referred to in the characterization of the
just cause (the Proportionality Requirement); and (d) that the revolu-
tionaries may not deliberately target noncombatants (the Discrimina-
tion Requirement). I will also limit my discussion to cases in which the
Just Cause Requirement is most clearly and fully satised, cases in which
the regime the revolutionaries seek to overthrow is what I shall call a
Resolute Severe Tyranny: a regime that persistently violates some of the
basic human rights of large segments of the population, is extremely
authoritarian (that is, wholly undemocratic), and is utterly impervious to
efforts to reform it.
I assume that the target of the ARL is a Resolute Severe Tyranny in
order to show that when revolution is most morally unproblematic from
the standpoint of the Just Cause Requirement, the ARL typically faces a
daunting dilemma: they can choose to utilize highly morally problematic
means of pursuing the revolutionary project, taking actions that appear
to involve serious violations of the rights of their fellow victims of
oppression in order to satisfy the Reasonable Likelihood of Success
Requirement, or they can refrain from taking such actions at the cost of
violating the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Requirement. My point
will be that even if the ARL refrains entirely from terrorism as conven-
tionally understood, that is, violence that deliberately violates the Dis-
crimination Requirement with the aim of changing regime behavior,
they will often face a stark choice: the use of morally impermissible
coercion against the people they seek to liberate or failure.
Another reason for focusing on cases in which the Just Cause Require-
ment is most clearly and fully satised is straightforward. History sug-
gests that the outcome of revolutions is highly uncertain or, perhaps
more accurately, that there is a signicant probability that the outcome
will be bad. To put it crudely: revolutionis highly risky business, not to be
undertaken except in extreme cases of bad government and strong evi-
dence that the government is not liable to reform. My aimwill be to show
that it is generally highly risky not just in the sense that good outcomes
z6 Philosophy & Public Affairs
are not very probable, but also in the sense that those who initiate revo-
lutions are at great moral risk regarding the tactics they are likely to use,
if they are committed to the success of the revolution.
Although the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Principle is familiar in
traditional just war theory, it is nonetheless problematic, and not just
because the notion of reasonable likelihood of success is inherently
vague. In cases in which people are resisting an evil aggressor or an
extremely tyrannical government, we may think that their willingness to
ght against steep odds is commendable, indeed heroic, not wrong. My
surmise is that this intuition is strongest in cases in which the costs of
failure will fall mainly on those who elect to ght in spite of the likelihood
that they will fail, rather than on others who have not assumed this risk.
In most cases, those who launch a revolution against a Resolute Severe
Tyranny can expect that innocent people will suffer, and given that this is
the case, they have a strong obligation, other things being equal, to do
what they can to ensure that the struggle is successful. More specically,
it would be irresponsible to launch a struggle that will predictably harm
innocent people and then proceed to conduct the struggle in a way that
makes it very unlikely to succeed.
B. Compensating for Inferior Military Capacity
At the beginning of the struggle, at least, revolutionaries in the modern
context often are at a severe disadvantage in terms of military capability
relative to the regime. The sophistication and expense of modern mili-
tary equipment and the training needed to use it effectively have greatly
exacerbated this disparity. The ARL often concludes, quite reasonably,
that it can only hope to mount successful attacks on the regime if it
resorts to nonconventional modes of attack, where this includes attack-
ing soft regime targets such as civilian administrative agencies or non-
military facilities, and doing so without wearing uniforms or insignia so
that the revolutionary ghters can mingle with the general population.
The same recognition of the limitations imposed by the disparity of
military capacity that encourages these sorts of acts may also lead the
ARL to commit outright acts of terrorismagainst the regime, if terrorism
is dened as the use of lethal violence against noncombatants with the
aim of evoking terror or fear that will cause the regime to change its
behavior to suit the political agenda of those who perpetrate the
z, The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
violence. Because the morally problematic character of using terrorism
or nonconventional modes of attack to compensate for the disparity of
military capacity has been much discussed in the contemporary litera-
ture on terrorism and the jus in bello part of just war theory, I will say
nothing more about them here. Instead, I will argue that even if the ARL
refrains from terrorism and nonconventional modes of attack, in many
cases it cannot reasonably hope to succeed unless it undertakes other
highly morally problematic actions.
C. Achieving Coordination by Consolidating Leadership
A revolutions prospects for success often depend upon effective leader-
ship, because success requires coordination and coordination requires
leadership. But achieving effective leadership by ethically permissible
means will often be very difcult if not practically impossible, at least
under the highly constraining conditions in which the Just Cause
Requirement is most clearly and fully satised, that is, under conditions
of Resolute Severe Tyranny. The regimes behavior will generally not be
compatible with conditions for the peaceful resolution of disputes as to
who should lead the revolution. Freedom of assembly, expression, and
political association will be absent, and no open, free deliberations on
the part of the public as to who should ll revolutionary leadership roles
will be possible. Even worse, the regime may preemptively murder, exile,
or imprison individuals who are likely to be identied by the people
as appropriate leaders.
Under these conditions, it is not surprising that struggles among
rival aspirants to leadership are often characterized by violence,
betrayal, and manipulation of the populations beliefs and emotions.
5
My point here is not to condone suchruthless competitionfor leadership
by pleading necessity but merely to indicate why one should expect it to
occur. Sometimesprobably infrequentlyrevolutions can achieve
some early successes without coalescing around a leadership, but as
. There is a wealth of historical examples, from lethal struggles among the Directorate
of the French Revolution and Stalins murder of the Old Bolsheviks, to Ho Chi Minhs
liquidation of rival nationalist groups during the struggle against the French. For a valuable
comparative work that emphasizes the importance of establishing leadership, see Theda
Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I,).
z8 Philosophy & Public Affairs
events in Syria suggest, lack of leadership may make it difcult or impos-
sible for the revolutionaries to prevail against a resolute regime with
an effective leadership.
To summarize: Successful revolution often requires not just wide-
spread participation, but also coordinated participation, and that typi-
cally requires leadership. Yet achieving leadership by ethical means
may be difcult if not impossible, at least under conditions of Resolute
Severe Tyranny, that is, those conditions in which the Just Cause
Requirement is most clearly and fully satised. To be sure, ruthless
competition for leadership in actual revolutions is not always driven
solely or even mainly by the need to solve the coordination problem; in
some cases, it is a matter of the pure self-interest in power. But it
is nonetheless important to understand that the typical structure of
the revolutionary situation under Resolute Severe Tyranny (the best
situation from the standpoint of the Just Cause Requirement) creates
strong pressures for morally impermissible solutions to the problem
of coordinated participation.
D. Achieving the Public Good of Widespread Participation
Revolutions are typically small minority affairs at the beginning, but if
they are to succeed they must garner widespread support among the
general population. Active participation by the majority may not be nec-
essary (and is probably rarely attained), but if the revolution is to
succeed, signicant numbers of people must participate and many must
at least refrain from actively supporting the regime.
Even if most of the population endorses the goal of revolution, many
may refrain from participating due to familiar obstacles to collective
action for securing public goods. The difculty is most readily grasped
if we simplify, for the moment, by assuming that people are motivated
exclusively by self-interest. Each oppressed person may reason as
follows: either enough others will participate to make the revolution
succeed or not, regardless of whether I participate; but my participa-
tion is a cost to me (indeed, in the early stages, the cost may be ones
life); so, regardless of what others may do, the rational thing for me to
do is not to participate.
The collective actionproblemremains once we jettisonthe unrealistic
assumption of purely rationally self-interested individuals, for three
z The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
reasons. First, even if people have strong moral motivations, these are
typically constrained by self-interest or interests in the welfare of those
near and dear to them in ways that inhibit participation in the revolu-
tion. Hence, if an individual reasonably doubts whether his personal
contribution to the revolution will be critical but knows that by partici-
pating he greatly endangers himself or his family, he may refrain from
participation. Second, even if an individual does not wish to free ride on
the participation of others, hoping that enough of them will participate
to achieve the goal of revolution, he may not be willing to participate
without assurance that others will do so. He may think (not unreason-
ably) that the costs one is obligated to bear are limited by a requirement
of reciprocity or fairness. Third, an individual may require assurance
of the participation of others as a condition of his own participation
not as a matter of reciprocity or fairness, but because he recognizes
that unless a threshold of participation is met, his participation will be a
dead loss to himself (and his loved ones) and to the cause of the revolu-
tion.
6
Where the regime has fomented divisions among the population
(along ethnic or religious grounds), effective mobilization may be all
the more difcult.
My claim is not that there is, strictly speaking, a paradox of rational-
ity here, that is, that it is irrational for individuals to participate volun-
tarily in revolution. Rather, it is that there are often signicant obstacles
to achieving voluntarily the collective action needed for revolution, and
that consideration of costs and benets, broadly understood as to
include undeserved harms to those one cares about, often plays a sig-
nicant role in this being the case.
At this point it might be objected that if individuals are rational and do
care about justice or about the general welfare, they will participate in a
revolution against a Resolute Severe Tyranny, because they will reason
as follows: It is true that the chance that my participating will be critical
for the success of the revolution is very small, but the expected benet of
my participating will nonetheless be large, because if the revolution suc-
ceeds, so many people will benet. This kind of reasoning is plausible,
6. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I,I); Gordon Tullock, The Rebels
Dilemma, Public Choice II:8; Allen Buchanan, Revolutionary Motivation and Ratio-
nality, Philosophy & Public Affairs (I,): 8z.
oo Philosophy & Public Affairs
and may in fact motivate some people, under circumstances in which
the costs to the individual of participating are not very high. However, as
I shall explain in more detail shortly, the costs of participation are not
xed: the regime can raise them by increasing the penalties for partici-
pants and their families and close associates.
There is another factor that weakens the appeal to large-scale ben-
ets: as I have already emphasized, there are many ways a revolution can
go wrong, so the possible outcomes are not limited to continuationof the
status quo of oppression or a successful revolution. Consequently, in
considering whether to participate, the individual must take into
account not only the (very small) probability that his participation is a
necessary condition for overthrowing the regime. He must discount that
expected benet by a sober appreciation of the fact that merely over-
throwing the current regime may not be a signicant improvement, if an
improvement at all. So the problem of collective action does not disap-
pear once we take into account the fact that if the revolution succeeds,
many will benet.
There are two morally problematic strategies for solving the collec-
tive action problem that appear to be frequently used by ARLs. First,
the ARL may use coercion to tip the balance of incentives toward par-
ticipation. It is not just states that conscript soldiers: revolutionary
groups do so as well. Without conscription, the ARL may not be able to
solve the collective action problem of widespread participation and the
revolution may consequently fail. The coercive techniques for con-
scription can range from summary executions or mutilations to levying
nes or conscating property to barring nonparticipants from food and
other emergency relief.
7
A second strategy that ARLs frequently employ to solve the collective
action problem is to manipulate the emotions of the people. A favorite
technique for doing this is to provoke the regime to violence against
innocent peoplefor example, killing peaceful demonstrators or killing
innocent hostages inreprisal for irregular attacks by the revolutionaries.
,. Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, zoo,), p. . Weinsteins masterful analysis focuses on explain-
ing the conditions under which excessive violence toward civilians occurs. He argues
that it is the organizational characteristics of revolutionary groups that determine whether
they will engage in violence that is above and beyond what is required to send a signal of
the costs of defection [or nonparticipation] (p. I8).
oI The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
Theexpectationis that if theregimeengages insuchactions, manypeople
will mobilize against it: their extreme emotional response of anger or
indignation will override whatever calculations of costs and benets
might have hitherto prevented them from participating. Here is one
exampleamongmany. IntheI(os, themilitant Zionist Irgunengagedin
a campaignof violence. . . . MenachemBegin, the Irguns leader, believed
inicting sufcient casualties would compel the British to either with-
drawor adopt repressivemeasures that wouldradicalizetheJewishpopu-
lationinMandate Palestine.
8
Onthe face of it, this widely usedtechnique
of mobilization seems doubly wrong: it not only manipulates peoples
emotions tocausethemtoundertakerisks of participationtheyotherwise
wouldnot choosetoshoulder, but alsodoes sobyencouragingtheregime
to engage in indiscriminate violence. The goal of forcing the regime to
reveal just howbrutal and unreformable it is, of course, is a laudable one.
But achieving it by provoking the regime to murder innocent people is
deeply problematic.
Another technique for manipulating sentiments of anger and indig-
nation to stimulate participation is for the ARL to circulate false or exag-
gerated reports of atrocities committed by the regime. For example,
there is strong evidence that Hamas deliberately exaggerates deaths of
Palestinians due to Israeli military actions.
9
Similarly, in an earlier revo-
lution which many Americans think of as wholly admirable, revolution-
aries deliberately fostered false reports that the British were encouraging
their Indian allies to rape and kill white women along the frontier, and
this appears to have played a role in mobilizing the militia that harassed
Burgoyne in his march southward from Lake Champlain and ultimately
defeated his army near Saratoga.
10
Revolutionaries also sometimes use coercion, indeed sometimes out-
right terror tactics, to dissuade people from participating in the regimes
efforts to suppress the revolution. Consider, for example, the notorious
8. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Eric S. Dickson, The Propaganda of the Deed:
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization, American Journal of Political Science I
(zoo,): 6.
. Yaakov Katz, World Duped by Hamas Death Count, Jerusalem Post, February I,
zoo, <http://www.webcitation.org/rQLjEh8w&gt;. See also Azriel Peskowitz, IO on the
Counterinsurgency Battleeld: Three Case Studies, Global Security Studies (zoIo): IooII(.
Io. John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, zoo,), pp. zz6z,.
oz Philosophy & Public Affairs
massacre of several thousand counterrevolutionaries in the Vendee
during the French Revolution.
11
The surrendered counterrevolution-
aries, many of whom were noncombatants, were put aboard specially
constructed barges which were then sunk. This logistically complex
affair was not a crime of passion committed in the heat of battle; it was
almost certainly an act motivated at least in part by the desire to deter
others from opposing the revolution.
E. Supreme Emergency?
At this point it might be objected that there is no genuine moral
dilemma for the ARL. If the regime they seek to overthrow is a Resolute
Severe Tyranny, then what Walzer calls the Supreme Emergency Excep-
tion to jus in bello constraints applies.
12
Jus in bello constraints are not
absolute; they may be set aside when doing so is necessary for the
defeat of an extremely heinous enemy. With good reason, Walzer is
hesitant about the Emergency Exception, suggesting that perhaps only
the Nazi regime would qualify.
There are two reasons why recourse to the Emergency Exception
cannot relieve the tension between the ARLs commitment to achieve
successful revolution and the commitment to widely accepted con-
straints on the conduct of armed struggles, even in the case of Resolute
Severe Tyranny. First, a regime can qualify as a Resolute Severe Tyranny
without reaching the depths of evil of Walzers one illustrative case, the
Third Reich. In other words, there can be a clear and compelling Just
Cause for revolution against regimes that are not that thoroughly evil.
Second, and more importantly, in the case of the Third Reich, the evil
could not be averted by not resisting. The Nazi project was to annihilate
millions of people (not just Jews, but also a projected thirty million
II. Reynard Secher, A French Genocide: The Vendee (South Bend, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, zoo). For other examples of revolutionaries using terror against civil-
ians to deter them from supporting the regime or to cause them to be neutral in the
conict, see the following: Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, (New
York: New York Review Books, I,,), pp. I; Cynthia McClintock, Revolutionary Move-
ments in Latin America: El Salvadors FMLN and Perus Shining Path (Washington, D.C.:
United States Institute of Peace Press, I8), pp. 6,68; and Martha Crenshaw, The Effec-
tiveness of Terrorism in the Algerian War, in Terrorism in Context, ed. Martha Crenshaw
(Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, I), pp. (,,, (88( (which includes
references to terrorism by Viet Cong).
Iz. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, I,,), p. z(.
o The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
citizens of Poland and the Soviet Union) and to enslave millions more. In
contrast, those who are subject to a Resolute Severe Tyranny typically
can avoid annihilation or slavery simply by not resisting. My conclusion,
then, is that not all cases of Resolute Severe Tyranny plausibly count
as Supreme Emergencies and that consequently the conict between
the commitment to successful revolution and respect for jus in
bello constraints persists.
F. Peaceful Alternatives?
The vast social-science and game-theoretic literature indicates that
there is a range of solutions to collective action problems, some of which
do not involve morally problematic actions, and that the solutions that
are available depend upon the particular context in which the collective
action problem arises. No serious student of this literature would assert,
however, that all collective action problems, much less those facing the
ARL in the context of Resolute Severe Tyranny, can be solved in morally
acceptable ways. Further, even when less morally problematic methods
for solving the widespread participation problem are available, their
likelihood of success may be signicantly lower than is the case with the
use of coercion or manipulation of emotions.
My point, however, is not that successful revolution always requires
wrongful manipulation of sentiments or coercion for the sake of achiev-
ing widespread participation, but that there is good reason to believe
that it often will, or at least that it will often not be unreasonable for the
ARL to conclude that if it refrains from coercion or manipulation of
the people the revolution is likely to fail. The more severe and ruthless
the tyranny, and hence the stronger the just cause, the greater the costs
of participation in the revolution will be and the more likely it will be that
manipulation and coercion will be required to get people to participate
in spite of the costs. The sad truth is that the only thing capable of
canceling out the regimes threat of coercion against revolutionaries and
their families may be a more credible threat of coercion by the ARL.
My suggestion, then, is that the disturbing tendency of ARLs to engage
in immoral actions toward their fellow victims of oppression is best
explained as being a function of the structure of the situation the ARL
nds itself in. My claim is not that all ARLs succumb to the powerful
temptations that structure createsI am not assuming structural
o( Philosophy & Public Affairs
determinism. Rather, my hypothesis is that, given the paucity of morally
permissible effective solutions to the problems ARLs face under condi-
tions of Severe Tyranny, more scrupulous ARLs are likely to either drop
out of the competition or be weeded out by it or simply fail to be effective
leaders. To borrow an analogy from evolutionary biology, in those very
cases in which the Just Cause Requirement is most patently and fully
satised, there will be strong selective pressures for the emergence of an
ARL that is exceptionally ruthless, and willing and able to disregard even
the most basic moral constraints.
There are, of course, a fewI think very fewcases of successful
revolutions with leaders who seem to have had relatively clean hands.
Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi come to mind. However, the
circumstances in which they led are far from typical.
13
Gandhis struggle
took place in a world in which colonialism was increasingly widely
condemnedand clearly in declineand his opponents were not ruth-
less dictators like the current leader of Syria or the former leader of Libya,
but the leaders of liberal democracy that for some time had been com-
mitted to eventual Indianindependence. Mandela beneted fromstrong
external support (especially in terms of the disinvestment campaign) not
only because of the triumph of anticolonialism but also because the
regime he opposed was one of institutionalized racism. He thus had
good reason to believe that the overthrow of Apartheid could be
achieved eventually without recourse to large-scale coercion or manipu-
lation of the non-white majority. In addition, there might, perhaps, be
reasonable disagreement as to whether either the British Raj or Apart-
heid qualied as Severe Tyrannies (they clearly were not Resolute Severe
Tyrannies). The key point, however, is that many revolutions, perhaps
most, do not benet from powerful external support or from having
opponents who are unwilling to use the most ruthless means to preserve
their power. None of this is to detract from the tremendous accomplish-
ments of these two leaders; it is only to avoid the fallacy of concluding
that if they could make a successful revolution without using seriously
immoral tactics, others can as well.
Suppose one grants, for now, the conclusion toward which my analy-
sis thus far appears to lead: where the Just Cause Requirement is most
I. Whether the African National Congress engaged in wrongful violence toward
members of the Inkatha Freedom Party is another matter.
o The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
clearly and fully satised, the Reasonable Likelihood of Success Require-
ment will probably not be satised unless the ARL commits serious
wrongs against those it hopes to liberate from Resolute Severe Tyranny.
If that conclusion is sound, then, paradoxically, initiating a revolution in
those conditions in which, intuitively, revolution is most justied is very
likely to be morally unjustied. This would be a genuine paradox
indeed, a contradictionif revolutions could only be justied if their
initiations were. But that is not the case. It is perfectly consistent to
acknowledge that the initiation of a revolution was not justied, but then
go on to afrm that its continuation was justied.
Suppose we have a situation in which, for reasons articulated above,
the ARL initiated the revolution by committing wrongs against the
people it seeks to liberate. It perpetrated violence against rivals for the
revolutions leadership for the sake of securing effective coordination
and used a combination of coercion and manipulation of emotions by
provoking massacres of innocents by the regime to secure widespread
participation. Nonetheless, it may be justiable for others to participate
in the revolution.
To see why this is so, consider the case of ordinary people who are
coerced or emotionally manipulated by the ARL into participating in the
revolution. By hypothesis, they have a morally commendable reason to
participate: they will be helping to overthrowa Resolute Severe Tyranny.
If the coercion or manipulation has succeeded in mobilizing large
numbers of people, this will help satisfy the Likelihood of Success
Requirement. The fact that they came to be mobilized because of the
wrongful actions of others is not a good reason for saying that their
participation is morally unjustied. Nor does the fact that they may be
basing their decision to participate on false beliefs that the ARL has
fostered by manipulation. The question of justication is whether their
actions are right, not whether they came to undertake them for the right
reasons. Whether people are justied in revolting at time T depends
upon whether the conditions for justied revolution obtain at that time,
not on whether their motivations for acting are based on false beliefs or
whether someone else acted wrongly at time Tn. An act can be right,
even if done for the wrong reasons.
Further, when people continue a revolution that others began by
committing unjustied acts, they are not thereby accomplices in the
initial wrong. To be guilty of complicity, they would have had to have
o6 Philosophy & Public Affairs
voluntarily participated in or at least supported or condoned the initial
wrongdoing or culpably failed to prevent it from occurring. Otherwise
they bear no responsibility and hence are not complicit.
It is another question, of course, whether the ARL is justied in con-
tinuing a revolution that it began by committing morally unjustied acts.
Should we conclude that what matters is whether at time T + N the
conditions for justied revolutionary action exist (not whether they
acted wrongly at time T), or that, by acting wrongly in the initial stages of
the revolution, the ARL somehow forfeits its right to do what it would
otherwise be justied in doing. To my knowledge, there is no plausible
theory of the forfeiture of moral rights on offer and what is usually said
about forfeiturefor example, that criminals forfeit their right to liberty
and thus may permissibly be incarcerateddoes not apply in any
obvious way to the case at hand. Some versions of contemporary just war
theory suggest that by acting in ways that wrongly harm or endanger
others, one can forfeit ones right to physical security or, in different
terms, make oneself liable to justied harm or killing. The question at
issue here, however, is not whether by acting wrongly the ARL forfeits the
right to physical security (or to not be attacked), but rather whether it has
forfeited the right (in the mere liberty or permission sense of right) to
continue to participate in the revolution after acting wrongly to initiate
it. Because I doubt that any adequate framework for thinking about this
question of rights forfeiture exists at present, I will simply ag this issue
in the ethics of revolution as an important topic for further research. My
intuition, however, is that the ARLs earlier wrongful acts do not result in
forfeiture of the right to participate in the continuation of the revolution,
though they may invalidate any claim the ARL might make to be the
rightful leadership of the revolution.
G. Justication and Legitimacy
Thus far, I have argued that an immoral ARL is very likely to be a neces-
sary evil when it comes to successful revolution in the very circum-
stances in which there is the strongest moral case for revolution. But
perhaps there is a way to escape that uncomfortable conclusion, or at
least to mitigate it. After all, the ARL, as I have described it under condi-
tions of Resolute Severe Tyranny, is not gratuitously coercing and
manipulating its fellows. It is constrained to do so by conditions beyond
o, The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
its controlconditions that the regime created and is culpable forand
it is attempting to satisfy the laudable constraint of the Reasonable Like-
lihood of Success Principle. That is, it is taking seriously the idea that one
should not engage in revolution (or any sort of large-scale violence)
unless one has a reasonable prospect of success. And, remember that by
hypothesis, it is made up of people who are committed to overthrowing
an extremely unjust regime. Recall, also, that by hypothesis we are con-
sidering only cases where the Severe Tyranny is resolute: it has stead-
fastly refused to reform and gives every indication of being willing to use
the harshest means available to stay in power. Finally, suppose that the
ARL has, without success, already exhausted less morally problematic
strategies for solving the widespread participation collective action
problem. Given all of this, perhaps we should conclude that although the
ARL is necessary, it is not really evil. The ARLs peculiar situationthe
severe disadvantages under which it labors due to the unjust acts of
the regimecreates an exception to the usual moral constraints.
Some will no doubt nd this special pleading less than convincing. It
might be thought that even if all of these conditions were satised, the
ARL could not be justied in using coercion against its fellow victims of
oppression to conscript them because it lacks legitimacy (political
authority). For a state to be justied in conscripting soldiers, one might
argue, it must be legitimate. But on any reasonable account of legiti-
macy, the ARL is arguably not legitimate. The conditions of oppression
created by the Resolute Severe Tyranny prevent the ARL from gaining
legitimacy, whether through consent, through democratic processes, or
through the lawful transfer of legitimacy from a legitimate entity, as
when one government succeeds another according to constitutionally
specied procedures. Nor can the ARL, at least in the early stages of the
revolution, satisfy the criteria for legitimacy according to functionalist
accounts. Functionalist accounts hold that an entity becomes legitimate
by performing adequately the justifying functions of states, such as pro-
viding security and basic justice.
14
The ARL will not be capable of per-
forming these functions until the revolution has succeeded.
I(. More plausible versions of functionalist accounts of legitimacy include a
nonusurpation condition: to be legitimate, an entity not only must fulll the requisite
functions adequately but also must not have come to power by overthrowing a legitimate
political authority. In the case of revolution against a Resolute Severe Tyranny, that
condition is satised.
o8 Philosophy & Public Affairs
My aimhere is not to resolve the complex debate over what legitimacy
(or political authority) is. To motivate this stage of my argument, it is not
necessary to do so. Instead, I want to argue that in the case of the ARL,
legitimacy is not a necessary condition of justied coercion of fellow
victims of oppression on any of the standard views on legitimacy.
I will begin by calling attention to something that I think is relatively
uncontroversial: the use of force against a Resolute Severe Tyranny can
be justied even if those wielding it lack legitimacy. To reject this asser-
tion is to take a very extreme position on the ethics of revolution: it is to
deny that revolution against a Resolute Severe Tyranny is virtually ever
justiable, since at the beginnings of such revolutions the conditions of
oppression will have prevented the formation of any legitimate entity
capable of opposing the state.
15
The question on which I will focus is
whether the ARL must be legitimate if its use of force against its fellow
victims of oppression is to be justied. I will also assume, arguendo, that
some uses of force by the ARL, including murdering people and making
it appear that they were killed by the regime, conscripting children, and
summarily shooting a few people in a village to terrorize the rest into
participating, are not justiable. The question is whether some much
I. Kant notoriously held that revolution is never morally justied, but to my knowl-
edge no contemporary just war theorist agrees with him. Kant apparently thought that it is
wrong to attack the state, because only the state can supply basic justice (or the condition
of right, in Kantian terms). The difculty with Kants argumenton its most plausible
construalis that it wrongly assumes that an attack on the regime must result in a condi-
tioninwhich justice cannot exist. Locke noted that the destructionof the political authority
need not mean the destruction of society, with the implication that nonstate social prac-
tices may do a sufciently adequate job of securing basic justice, during the transition to a
new, more just state, to be morally acceptable, given the importance of overthrowing an
unjust state. The Lockean view receives empirical support from studies of revolutions. In a
number of cases, revolutionary groups establish parallel institutions prior to their most
serious attacks on the state, institutions that perform some state functions, thus ensuring
that the destruction of the state does not mean the loss of all law and order. When this
strategy succeeds, the interpretation of Kants view that I have sketched loses its bite.
Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that it may be difcult or even impossible to
establish parallel institutions in cases where the Resolute Severe Tyranny exercises effec-
tive control over the locales in which they would have to be established. In general, revo-
lutionary groups seemto be more effective in establishing parallel institutions in remote,
rural areas where the regimes military or security forces cannot sustain an effective pres-
ence. In locales that the regime tightly controls, only rather minimal parallel institutions
can be established. See, for example, the wedding ceremony conducted by National Lib-
eration Front ofcials in the classic lm treatment of revolution The Battle of Algiers.
Conducting wedding ceremonies is one thing, providing basic justice is another.
o The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
less extreme, though nonetheless morally questionable uses of coercion,
in particular some techniques for conscripting people to ght against the
regime, can be justiable in the absence of legitimacy.
Why might one think that it is justiable for the ARL to use force
against a Resolute Severe Tyranny, eventhough the ARL lacks legitimacy,
but that the ARL must be legitimate if its conscription of ghters is to be
morally justied? The most obvious answer is that the regime and the
people are in quite different moral situations: the regimes unjust actions
have made it liable to be attacked (or have forfeited its right not to be
subject to force), whereas the people the ARL attempts to conscript have
done no such thing. Thus, one might think that only if an agent or
institution is legitimate can the presumption against coercion be over-
come, in the absence of some act that makes one liable to coercion.
Without denying the asymmetry between the moral situations of a
tyrannical regime and the people it oppresses, I want nonetheless
to argue that the ARL, though lacking legitimacy, can justiably con-
script ghters, if certain conditions are satised. To do this, I want
to distinguish two related but importantly different principles concern-
ing the relationship between legitimacy and the justication of the
use of coercion.
CL: Coercive imposition of rules (for example, requiring military
service) is justiable only if the institution or agent wielding coercion
is legitimate.
CL: Coercive imposition of rules typically requires legitimacy in cir-
cumstances in which the resources for obtaining legitimacy are avail-
able. In contrast, where the resources for obtaining legitimacy are not
availableand where their lack of availability is not due to the actions
of the entity seeking to wield coercionlegitimacy is not a necessary
condition for the justied wielding of coercion.
My aim is to make the case for CLI and against CL. To do this, I will
explore certain morally signicant similarities between the case of revo-
lution and that of the creation of a state under conditions of anarchy.
Suppose that a massive natural disaster, an ecological collapse, a
lethal large-scale bioterrorist attack, or a civil war has destroyed all ves-
tiges of law and order. There are various armed factions, many of whom
Io Philosophy & Public Affairs
are willing to use violence indiscriminately for their own benet, without
regard for justice or any other moral constraint. Suppose also that there
is a relatively small group of people who have the resolve and the ability
to impose the order needed to secure everyones most basic rights: call
them the aspiring state-founders, or ASF for brevity. Suppose that the
ASF is rmly committed to establishing basic justice for all and to doing
so by the least morally objectionable means that are feasible. Finally,
suppose also that the prevailing extremely harsh conditions preclude the
possibility of the ASF being a legitimate agent, an agent that has the
authority to use coercion to transform anarchy into minimal justice on
any reasonable conception of legitimacy. The situation is simply too
chaotic and insecure for elections or any less formal democratic autho-
rization of the ASF or consent, and no other institutional resources for
transferring or conferring legitimacy exist or can be created prior to
establishing basic law and order. Finally, suppose also that the ASF has
not yet achieved sufcient control to satisfy the criteria for legitimacy of
functionalist theories of legitimacy: it is not yet adequately performing
the functions of providing order and basic justice that such theories say
confer legitimacy. As with the case of the ARL, conditions for which it is
not responsible make it impossible for the ASF to satisfy the require-
ments of any of the standard theories of legitimacy.
My intuition is that it would nevertheless be morally justiable for
such a group to coerce others into joining its effort to achieve security for
all. It would be justiable, for example, for the ASF to threaten individu-
als with certain penalties if they did not participate in efforts to suppress
lawless groups, for example, nes or the expropriation of property.
Needless to say, their use of coercion would be subject to various moral
constraints, including those of proportionality and the requirement that
carrying out a coercive threat would be a last resort.
Suppose your intuition about the case of anarchy accords with mine:
you think that the ASF, even if it lacks legitimacy, would be justied in
using some forms of coercion. If that is your view, then shouldnt you
also conclude that the ARL can also use similar forms of coercion on
fellow victims of tyranny without acting impermissibly, even though
it lacks legitimacy?
It is important to emphasize that the predicaments of the ASF and the
ARL are identical in morally relevant ways: both are committed to rem-
edying severe injustice and both must solve coordination and collective
II The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
action problems in situations in which, through no fault of their own, the
conditions for legitimate leadership do not exist and cannot be brought
about until after the basic coordination and collective action problems are
solved. So it appears either that both the ASF and the ARL act wrongly or
that neither do. My intuition is that the latter alternative is the correct
one. Hence principle CL, which makes legitimacy an unconditional nec-
essary condition for coercion, ought to be rejected. In contrast, principle
CLI, which only requires legitimacy in circumstances in which the
resources for securing legitimacy are available, explains the intuition
that both the ASF and the ARL may justiably use coercion.
I wish to point out, however, an uncomfortable apparent implication
of opting for the conclusion that, at least under conditions of Resolute
Severe Tyranny, an ARL can use coercion against its fellow victims of
oppression to solve the coordination and participation problems
without acting wrongly. The problem is this: if one opts for that con-
clusion, where can one draw the line as to the permissible use of force
by the ARL? We have assumed, from the outset, that acts of terrorism (as
conventionally dened) are not morally permissible, even under condi-
tions of Resolute Severe Tyranny. Can one consistently hold that the
ARL can sometimes use coercion against its own people and yet at the
same time say that using violence against noncombatants to provoke
terror and fear that will change the political behavior of the regime
is never justied?
Of course, one could try to lessen the pain of this query by hypoth-
esizing that while the need to achieve coordination and widespread par-
ticipation are typically crucial for the success of revolutions, terrorism is
not. I nd that a less than satisfactory response, to put it mildly. A better
option is to note that when an ARL uses coercion to achieve widespread
participation in the revolutionassuming that the revolution is other-
wise justiedit is doing precisely what legitimate governments rou-
tinely do and are rightly expected to do: issuing directives, backed with
force as a last resort, to achieve important collective goods (such as
national security or order and basic justice) that could not otherwise be
secured. The same cannot be said, of course, about agents who commit
acts of terrorism. Legitimate governments do not achieve their ends by
indiscriminate violence aimed at terrorizing people in order to shape
political decisions. The morally relevant difference, then, is that when
an ARL uses the threat of force to secure sufciently widespread
Iz Philosophy & Public Affairs
participation, it is acting as a legitimate government may act, but in
circumstances in which it cannot (yet) achieve legitimacy, due to griev-
ous injustices committed by the entity that it is trying to overthrow.
I am reasonably condent that this is an adequate account of how
one can consistently hold that terrorism by an ARL is always wrong
while at the same time asserting that coercion by an ARL against the
population to conscript participants is sometimes justied. I think it is
doubtful, however, that a convincing case can be made that the two
other kinds of morally problematic actions by ARLs I have identied
the use of violence against rivals for leadership in order to achieve
coordinated revolutionary action and manipulating popular emotions
to mobilize the masses by provoking the regime to indiscriminate acts
of violencecan also be justied. In the case of manipulation, one
cannot say that the ARL is doing something that legitimate govern-
ments are permitted to do. When a government, even a fully legitimate
one, provokes another country to indiscriminate violence or falsely
says that the country has committed an atrocity in order to rally public
support for its decision to go to war, this is morally impermissible. Nor
do we think that legitimate governments may rightly use violence as a
last resort to neutralize rivals for political leadership, unless the rival
has rst resorted to violence or in some other way acted contrary to
peaceful, constitutional procedures for change of regime. Thus, at most
it would be justiable for an ARL to use violence against a rival ARL if
the latter resorted to it rst. So, the assertion that in some cases the
ARL may use coercion to achieve widespread participation does not
commit one to the view that in revolution anything goes, including
terrorism and the murder of rivals for leadership. The rst step toward
developing an ethics of revolution, then, is to recognize that while
several types of actions frequently taken by ARLs are prima facie
morally problematic, on further investigation, some of them, in par-
ticular using some forms of coercion to solve collective action prob-
lems, can be morally justied, while others, including manipulation of
popular sentiment by provoking harsh measure by the regime and the
rst use of force against rivals for leadership, cannot.
Consider the case in which the ARL conscripts ghters. How it uses
coercion to do this matters. Using terrorismto compel people to join the
revolutionary army would clearly be wrong, but credibly threatening
penaltiesfor example, levying stiff nes or conscating goodsmight
I The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
be justied, if this were the least coercive effective measure and if it were
done in a nondiscriminatory way and with sufcient advance notice.
Perhaps one of the most important constraints on justied revolu-
tionary conscription is that the burdens it imposes should be distributed
fairly among that portion of the population who are competent to serve
as soldiers.
16
To the extent that revolutionary conscription satises this
fairness constraint and approximates the other constraints observed in
the least morally problematic instances of conscription by a legitimate
state, it becomes more plausible to maintain that it is justied, especially
when the regime, through wrongful acts, has erected formidable
obstacles to voluntary participation.
In the next section, I will argue that my analysis of the moral
predicament of the ARL has important implications for the ethics of
intervening in revolutions.
II. INTERVENTION
I argued above that it can be morally justiable for people to participate
in a revolution whose initiation by an ARL involved seriously immoral
acts. The same conclusion holds for intervention in support of a revolu-
tion with tainted origins. The fact that the revolution began with
immoral manipulation of popular sentiments by the ARL or committed
wrongful acts of violence against rivals for leadership does not itself
entail that intervention in support of the revolution would be wrong.
That fact may be relevant, of course, to the decision whether to inter-
vene. For one thing, immoral behavior by the ARL may increase the
probability that the revolution will not turn out well or that the inter-
vener will become an accomplice in future immoral acts. The key point,
however, is that intervening in support of a revolution, like participating
in it, can be morally justiable even if the acts by which the revolution
was initiated were not.
Suppose that the ARL, by dint of morally impermissible acts, has
achieved sufcient coordination and participation so that the revolution
has a high likelihood of success if there is intervention in support of it.
And also assume, as before, that the Just Cause is patent and compelling:
the regime is a Resolute Severe Tyranny. Suppose also that all the other
I6. Christopher J. Finlay, Fairness and Liability in the Just War: Combatants, Non-
Combatants, and Lawful Irregulars, Political Studies 6I (zoI): I(z6o.
I( Philosophy & Public Affairs
appropriate conditions for justied intervention are present. Surely,
the justiability of intervention depends upon what the current situation
is, not upon whether at some earlier point, in quite different circum-
stances, the ARL committed morally impermissible acts to create
the current situation.
Even if tainted origins do not preclude justied intervention, there
are other well-known reasons to regard intervention in support of revo-
lutions, like interventions for other purposes, with extreme caution.
17
Two principles designed to reduce the risk of mistaken interventions
have been advanced and have garnered considerable support. The
second, in fact, seems to be the dominant view in the literature. The
rst, Mills Principle, states that intervention in support of a revolution
should not occur until and unless there is widespread domestic partici-
pation in the revolution.
18
The second, the Consent Principle, states that
intervention in support of a revolution should not occur without the
consent (or approval) of the people who are the intended beneciaries
of the intervention.
Both principles are aficted by vagueness. Without knowing what
counts as widespread participation, one cannot know when the sup-
posed necessary condition for intervention has been met. Similarly, one
needs to knownot only what counts as consent or approval, but also how
widespread the consent or approval must be. I will simply set aside these
daunting problems, which are familiar enough, in order to focus on
problems with both principles that have not been noticed, due to lack of
attention to the (rather grim) facts about revolutions, and in particular
about the formidable incentives for immoral behavior that the ARL faces
and their consequences for efforts to apply the two principles.
A. Mills Principle
On its most plausible construal, Mills Principle recommends wide-
spread participation as an epistemic proxy for broad, deep, and stable
commitment to revolution. According to this interpretation, Mill was
I,. For a good example of the many works that explore what can go wrong in
interventions, see Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus, Can Intervention Work? (New
York: Norton, zoII).
I8. J. S. Mill, A FewWords on Intervention, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol.
zI, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, I8().
I The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
concerned to take seriously the Reasonable Likelihood of Success
Requirement and surmised that a successful intervention in support of a
revolution could not be reliably predicted in the absence of a broad,
deep, and stable commitment to revolution on the part of a substantial
portion of the population. Widespread participation, he thought, was a
reliable marker for such commitment.
The most obvious problem with Mills Principle is that it underesti-
mates the obstacles to widespread participation in the modern context,
especially in the case of Resolute Severe Tyrannies. In Mills day, the
disparity of repower between the regime and would-be revolutionaries
was not as great as it generally is today. It is one thing for people to pick
up their muskets, head for the barricades, and take their chances against
comparably equipped regime forces; but it is quite another for people
with a collection of hunting ries and AK-(,s to go up against ghter
bombers and long-range, laser-guided artillery. The point is that, given
this disparity of repower, the risks of participation are correspondingly
greater and, at least in the early stages of revolution, the decision to
participate may require not just a deep and stable commitment to revo-
lution, but also a zealous motivation bordering on the sacricial.
19
So,
Mills Principle is highly problematic, because the epistemic proxy it
recommends is much less reliable in our day than it was in Mills.
20
There is another fact about the contemporary revolutionary context
that further impugns Mills Principle: participation, for some, perhaps
many, people, may be the result of coercion and manipulation of emo-
tions by the ARL, and where this is the case, participation will not be a
reliable proxy for a deep and stable commitment to the revolution. Par-
ticipating because one fears the ARL more than the regimes forces is no
evidence at all of commitment to the revolution. Nor is participating
because ones emotions have been manipulated in response to an
episode of harsh behavior by the regime or because one has been fed
stories about atrocities that never occurred a reliable proxy for a stable
commitment to the revolution. Mills Principle is awed, then, not only
because it underestimates the disincentives to participation created by
I. Bas Van der Vossen also makes this point in The Morality of Humanitarian Inter-
vention, Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, ed. AndrewI. Cohen and Christopher H.
Wellman (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming).
zo. I thank Jeff Holzgrefe for making this point clear to me and for assisting me in
researching this article.
I6 Philosophy & Public Affairs
the disparity of repower in the modern revolutionary context, but also
because it overlooks the possibility that participation for some people
may be an artifact of coercion and manipulation by the ARL rather than
a sign of deep and stable commitment to the revolution. Both aws are
the result of failure to attend to the facts about revolution.
B. The Consent Principle
Given what I have just said about Mills Principle, it will not be hard to
predict my complaint about the Consent Principle. But, rst, let us be
clear about why many nd this principle plausible. The attraction of
the Consent Principle is that it expresses a commitment to avoiding
unjustied paternalism. The idea is that it would be unjustiably
paternalisticdisrespectful to people regarded as autonomous agents
with their own values and reasons for actingto impose on them the
risks that intervention entails without consulting their own judgment as
to whether those risks are worth bearing.
21
To intervene without consent
or approval is to substitute the interveners judgment for the peoples
judgment as to whether the expected benets of the intervention exceed
the expected costs.
The most obvious difculty with the Consent Principle is that if one
takes its underlying rationale seriously, it is hard to see how intervention
could be justied without unanimous consent. How could the fact that
others consent make the interventionany less disrespectful toward those
who do not consent? Unanimous consent, of course, is a requirement
that will virtually never be satised, in which case the Consent Principle
would never allow intervention. Even if we set that obvious problem
aside, there is another, equally familiar difculty: the very conditions
that make the moral case for revolution strongestthe situation of Reso-
lute Severe Tyrannyimpose formidable epistemic barriers to knowing
whether people consent or not. A Resolute Severe Tyranny does not
allow referenda on revolution, surveys on approval of intervention, or
zI. For two examples among many of theorists of intervention who endorse the
Consent (or approval) Principle, see Fernando Teson, Ending Tyranny in Iraq, Ethics &
International Affairs I (zoo6): ; and Jeff McMahan, Humanitarian Intervention, Consent,
and Proportionality, in Ethics and Humanity: Reections on the Philosophy of Jonathan
Glover, ed. N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen, and Jeff McMahan (New York: NYU Press, zoIo).
McMahan argues that the Consent Principle is best understood as grounded in a rejection
of unjustied paternalism (personal communication, April I, zoI).
I, The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
even expressions of political views that are reliably ascertainable by
potential interveners. Moreover, expressions of animosity against the
regime cannot be regarded as endorsements of intervention, much less
of intervention by any particular agent. For example, it may have been
that prior to March of zoo there was a widespread desire among
Iraqis to be rid of Saddam Hussein (though how widespread was hard
to ascertain given the ubiquitous repression), but from that one could
not infer that there was widespread approval of foreign intervention
to topple him, much less widespread approval of intervention led by
the United States.
Apart fromthese epistemic worries about the Consent Principle, there
is another, at least equally serious problemthat comes to light only when
one takes seriously the facts about revolutions and in particular the fact
that the ARL, in situations where the moral case for revolution is stron-
gest, is under formidable pressure to utilize coercion and manipulation
to mobilize the masses. Even if one can overcome the formidable
obstacles to ascertaining whether people consent or approve of inter-
vention, their consent or approval will not be normatively potent if it is
the product of coercion or manipulation of sentiments by the ARL.
Consent or approval that is the product of coercion or manipulation is
not valid consent or authentic approval. So the objection to the Consent
Principle is not just that under conditions of tyranny it will be hard to
know whether people consent or approve, but that under those same
conditions it is likely that consent or approval in some cases will not be
morally potent enough to block the allegation of unjustied paternalism.
C. Two New Reasons to Intervene Early
So far, I have shown that two well-known principles intended to regulate
the decision to intervene are much less plausible once one attends to the
predictable behavior of the aspiring revolutionary leadership toward
their fellow victims of oppression. Now I want to argue that the same
facts about the behavior of the ARL count in favor of early intervention.
The most familiar reason in favor of early intervention in support of
a revolution is that it may reduce the casualties that the revolutionaries
and regime forces will inict on each other if the struggle continues.
But my analysis shows that there is another, less obvious reason: early
intervention can, in principle, prevent wrongdoing perpetrated by the
I8 Philosophy & Public Affairs
ARL against its fellow victims of tyranny. Such wrongdoing is not only
something to be prevented on its own account; it is also undesirable
because it can contribute to the corruption of the ARL and thereby of
the revolution itself. If it becomes accustomed to wrongdoing toward
its fellow victims of oppression during the revolutionary struggle, this
may increase the probability that the ARL will mistreat citizens once it
comes to power. Even worse, the ARLs wrongdoing during the revolu-
tion may foster a more general culture of brutality in the postrevolu-
tionary society.
Social scientists analyzing revolution have made a strong case that
much of what occurs can be explained as the result of the fact that
revolutions typically feature a struggle over the conditions under which
the ARL attempts to solve the widespread participation collective
action problem.
22
In other words, the ARLs collective action problem is
the locus of strategic interactions between the ARL and the regime. The
regime attempts to exacerbate the obstacles to successful collective
action and the ARL in turn takes countermeasures to overcome the
obstacles the regime erects, and so on. For example, the initial collec-
tive action problem the ARL faces is how to get large numbers of
people to participate in the revolution in spite of the fact that revolu-
tion has the familiar features of a public good, with the usual incentives
for individuals not to participate. In particular, as I noted above, the
individual is likely to reason that his own participation will involve a
cost and will not be critical for the outcome, and that he will be able to
enjoy the benets of revolution regardless of whether he participates or
not. To overcome this obstacle to participation, the ARL may respond
by increasing the costs of nonparticipation: either by now credibly
threatening nonparticipants with violence or other penalties if they do
not participate or by credibly pledging to punish them when the revo-
lution succeeds. The regime, in turn, in order to shift the balance of
incentives back toward the rationality of nonparticipation, may then
increase the costs of participation by taking harsher measures, not only
against participants, but also against their families. The cycle then may
continue, with the ARL using increasingly coercive measures and more
zz. See, for example, Mark I. Lichbach, Rethinking Rationality and Rebellion:
Theories of Collective Action and Problems of Collective Dissent, Rationality and Society
6 (I(): 8.
I The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
egregious manipulation of sentiments in order to counteract the
regimes escalation of the costs of participation.
When this familiar spiral of coercion occurs, refraining from early
interventionwaiting until the death toll is very high or until there is
evidence of widespread commitment to the revolution or until it
becomes clear who is really in charge of the revolutionwill come at a
very high moral cost. The point is that the moral cost of refraining from
early intervention is not restricted to the additional casualties in battles
between revolutionaries and regime forces; it also includes the costs of
the additional wrongs that occur as a result of a continuing strategic
conict over the participation collective action problem. If interveners
can act so as to stop the escalation, they will reduce these costs.
One way they can do this is to reduce the regimes threat advantage,
to make it less able to issue credible threats against those who are con-
templating whether to participate in the revolution. This might be done,
for example, by effecting a cyber attack on the regimes military com-
munications network or by disabling its ghter jet and attack helicopter
forces or by establishing a no-y zone or by imposing an arms embargo
against the regime. The rationale for such measures would not be to
help the revolutionaries succeed, but rather to reduce the risk of a spiral
of coercion and thereby reduce the risk that the revolutionary leader-
ship will become corrupted by habituating itself to brutal measures
against the people.
Another way to avoid the spiral of coercion, of course, is to reduce the
ARLs ability to coerce the people. This might be done by injecting
observers to monitor the ARLs behavior, with the threat that support for
the revolution by external parties will not be forthcoming if they engage
in excessive coercion against the people. Alternatively or in addition,
measures might be taken to limit the ARLs access to arms. In some
cases, early intervention of these sorts could stop the spiral of coercion.
Of course, the same measures (for example, arms embargoes) that
serve to reduce the ARLs ability to coerce the people into participating in
the revolution may also reduce the likelihood that the revolution will
succeed. If outside agents are to act responsibly in such cases, they must
weigh the value of preventing a spiral of coercion against the value of
supporting, or at least not undermining, the revolutionary effort.
In cases where the revolution is strongly justied, the presumption
should be that efforts to prevent a spiral of coercion should focus
zo Philosophy & Public Affairs
primarily on reducing the regimes ability to impose costs on participa-
tion. If the ARLs use of coercion against the people is chiey
reactivean attempt to overcome the obstacles to widespread partici-
pation created by the wrongful use of force by the regimethen the
result of such interventions should be a lessening of the use of coercion
against the people by the ARL. In some cases, the justice of the revolu-
tionaries cause is dubious because of the kind of regime they hope to
establish, yet the current regime is undoubtedly unjust. Here a more
evenhanded approach might be called for, that is, measures to reduce
the coercive capacity of both parties, again for the sake of preventing a
spiral of coercion.
Attention to the way revolutions actually occur also suggests a second
reason in favor of early intervention: in principle, intervention could
help establish the conditions under which outsiders could have reliable
evidence about whether there is widespread valid consent to or authen-
tic approval of intervention aimed at helping the revolution to succeed.
This could occur, for example, if the intervener could impose a cease-
re, physically separate the two sides, and then investigate the attitudes
of the population toward the revolutionary struggle under conditions in
which they can be freely expressed.
Recall that the difculty with applying the principle that intervention
in support of a revolution should not occur without consent or approval
on the part of the public is that under the very conditions under which
revolution and hence intervention in support of revolution are most
clearly morally justied, it is likely that coercion and manipulation of
emotions by the ARL will undermine the conditions for valid consent or
authentic approval. If that is the case, then there is something to be said
for intervening early enough to prevent the ARL fromneeding to resort to
behavior that will undermine the conditions for valid consent to or
authentic approval of intervention in support of the revolution. Notice
that if a third party intervened for this reasonto help establish the
conditions under which valid consent or authentic approval could occur
and be reliably identied as suchit would not be correct to say that it
was guilty of unjustied paternalism. In intervening for this reason, it
would not be substituting its own judgment about the ratio of benets to
costs of revolution for that of the people directly affected. It would not be
intervening to support the revolution, but rather to help create condi-
tions under which it could determine whether to support the revolution.
zI The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention
Such action would not qualify as paternalistic, because its objective
would not be to promote the good of the people but instead to determine
whether to act to promote it or to support the regime or to remain
neutral in the struggle.
Once we attend to the strategic interaction of the ARL and the regime
and appreciate the strong incentives for coercion and manipulation this
creates for the ARL, the costs of delaying intervention are seen to be
greater than they are usually thought to be. This is not, of course, a
conclusive argument for early intervention. Intervention at any stage is
fraught with risks of error and abuse, and early intervention has its own
peculiar perils. For one thing, a known policy of early intervention
would create incentives for unscrupulous agents to manufacture the
conditions that are known to trigger early intervention, in the absence
of either a solid moral case for revolution or any real prospect that there
would ever be sufcient deep and stable commitment to it on the part
of signicant portions of the population. Another risk is that the inter-
veners might, deliberately or unwittingly, encourage unwarranted
expectations that they will provide long-term, effective support for the
revolution and thereby encourage people to participate in a struggle
that will endanger them without having a reasonable prospect of
success. My point, however, is not to provide a conclusive novel argu-
ment for early intervention but rather to show that important consid-
erations relevant to making an all-things-considered judgment on early
intervention have been neglected due to inattention to the actual
dynamics of revolutions.
23
III. CONCLUSION
The main results of this investigation can now be summarized, without
recapitulating the arguments for them. First, revolutions typically begin
with the actions of an Aspiring Revolutionary Leadership that faces
severe problems whose solution is necessary if the revolution is to
succeed; yet in conditions under which the moral case for revolution is
strongest, the ARL will nd it very difcult if not impossible to solve these
problems in morally permissible ways. Second, factually informed
z. This article has been exclusively concerned with the morality of revolution and
intervention in revolution. In a future work, I hope to draw its implications for a critical
evaluation of the ways in which current international law deals with revolutions.
zz Philosophy & Public Affairs
studies of revolution indicate that ARLs frequently succumb to the
strong structural pressures for immoral behavior, not just toward the
regime, but toward their fellow victims of oppression. Third, even
though it lacks legitimacy, an ARL can be morally justied in using coer-
cion against its fellow victims of oppression to solve the collective action
problem of widespread participation, especially if the regime has
increased the costs of participation by wrongful coercive acts. Fourth, a
principled account can be given of why some uses of coercion to solve
the collective action problem are consistent with condemning revolu-
tionary terrorism, the ARLs rst use of force against rivals for the revo-
lutionary leadership, and its manipulation of sentiments to stimulate
participation through provoking the regime to harsh measures against
innocent people. Fifth, once the facts about the predicament of the ARL
are understood, two familiar principles for governing interventions in
revolutions are seen to be seriously defective: widespread participation
in the revolution is not a reliable indicator of deep and stable popular
support for it when participation is the result of coercion or manipula-
tion of sentiments by the ARL; and actions by the ARL can also under-
mine the conditions for valid consent to or authentic approval of
intervention. Sixth, attention to the behavior of the ARL points toward
two hitherto unrecognized considerations in favor of early intervention
in revolutions: the possibility of preventing wrongful action by the ARL
toward the oppressed people and the possibility of avoiding a spiral of
coercion as the ARL and the regime engage in a strategic struggle to
determine the terms of the revolutionaries collective action problem.
The chief result of the investigation might also be put, more modestly, in
the formof a dilemma: either revolutions can be justied in spite of their
tainted origins and an Aspiring Revolutionary Leadership can in some
instances use coercion against its fellow victims of oppression justiably
while lacking legitimacy, or revolutions in which the justice of the cause
is most patent and compelling are rarely if ever justied.
The aimof this article has not been to advance a theory of the ethics of
revolution. Instead, I have attempted to make the case for a factually
informed approach to that ambitious project and to take the rst steps
toward executing it.
z The Ethics of Revolution and Its
Implications for the Ethics of
Intervention