Effects of the economic community of West African States' collective moral responsibility and ethical challenges on the dynamics of the Liberian Civil War and outcome of the military intervention from 1990 to 1997.

Abstract

Although there is a wide range of literature on the ethics of war, which equally applies to military intervention in internal conflicts, an area that has received little attention is the contribution of third parties’ failure to embrace the ethics of military intervention in internal conflicts to prolonged, intractable, and recurrent civil wars in post-Cold War Africa. The main third-party ethical challenges in military intervention, which are a lack of impartiality, a lack of altruism as interests take the centre stage, and a lack of consistency, usually manifest in more harm than good. Furthermore, failure by third parties to take accountability or moral responsibility for undesirable outcomes of military intervention causes resentment among the affected people. This thesis interrogated ethics and moral responsibility in the ECOWAS’ military intervention in Liberia from 1990 to 1997, mainly to establish whether there was any link between ethical flaws in the military intervention and ther factors, contributed to the prolongation and intractability of the civil war. The protracted and unabated civil war resulted in approximately 200,000 deaths, about 2.5 million displacements, and spread to Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast (which changed to a French name, Côte d’Ivoire, in 1986), and Guinea-Bissau, among other manifestations. The thesis recommended shared responsibility for participant states’ contribution to the longevity and intractability of the civil war in Liberia rather than collective moral responsibility on the ECOWAS as a collective. The research further recommended the need to inculcate the ethics of military intervention through regular multi-national training exercises, the maintenance of the Lead-Nation Concept, and that although military intervention must be a last resort, there is a need to balance between the need to save lives as determined by the fluidity of the situation, to intervene even before exhausting all non-violent means. protracted and intractable civil war. The thesis assessed the extent to which the ECOWAS embraced ethics and collective moral responsibility during its military intervention in the Liberian internal conflict from 1990 to 1997. It also examined whether the ECOWAS was morally responsible for the dynamics of the Liberian civil war and the outcome of the intervention and proffered recommendations on how best sub-regional organisations can embrace ethics and collective moral responsibility during military intervention in internal conflicts. A theoretical framework comprising Collective Moral Responsibility, the Just War Theory, and Aquinas’ Theory of Double-Effect guided the thesis. Moral responsibility was conceptualised according to Martha Klein’s two components as; “having a moral obligation to act and the accomplishment of the criteria for deserving blame or praise (punishment or reward) for a morally significant act or omission” (Klein 2005:3). The study was mostly based on Klein’s second component of moral responsibility, which ascribes moral responsibility as blame for a morally undesirable consequence of an action (for this study, military intervention) by an agent (the ECOWAS through its intervention force, the ECOMOG). A qualitative, desk-search, case studyresearch design was adopted to collect, analyse, and interpret data on ethics and moral responsibility in the ECOWAS’ military intervention in Liberia from 1990 to 1997. The study found that the ECOWAS was morally justified to intervene militarily in the civil war inLiberia, and it upheld ethics to a large extent in its decision to intervene. However, although the ECOWAS is credited for restoring peace in Liberia, as a moral good, albeit after about eight years, its ethical flaws, mainly lack of impartiality through its participant states’ alignment and supporting opposing functions and participating in theexploitation of Liberia's lucrative resources, among other factors, contributed to the prolongation and intractability of the civil war. The protracted andunabated civil war resulted in approximately 200,000 deaths, about 2.5 million displacements, and spread to Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast (which changed to a French name, Côte d’Ivoire, in 1986), and Guinea-Bissau, among other manifestations. The thesis recommended shared responsibility for participant states’ contribution to the longevity and intractability of the civil war in Liberia rather than collective moral responsibility on the ECOWAS as a collective. The research further recommended the need to inculcate the ethics of military intervention through regular multi-national training exercises, the maintenance of the Lead-Nation Concept, and that although military intervention must be a last resort, there is a need to balance between the need to save lives as determined by the fluidity of the situation, to intervene even before exhausting all non-violent means.