Applbaum, Arthur. "Forcing a People to Be Free". Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol.35, No.4 (2007): 359-400.

Applbaum, Arthur. "Forcing a People to Be Free". Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol.35, No.4 (2007): 359-400.

• The author explores the morality and possibility of 'forcing a people to be free' using the Second Persian Gulf War, which was conducted with the explicit purpose to 'free the Iraqi people'. This paper deals with the rightness of intervention, and under what circumstances -- if any -- such an intervention can be justly conducted, and what actors may justly conduct such an intervention (359-361).
• This paper will not be taking the rules of international law into account when discussing issues of intervention. The author believes that morality and legal matters may influence each other, but that morality cannot be bound by legality, nor laws based purely off of morals (361).
• A poll conducted in February 2004, right before the beginning of the organized Shia insurgency against the coalition forces, showed huge disparities within Iraq, with the population roughly split between supporting and opposing the occupation, and between feeling liberated or humiliated. This serves to show the difficulties of establishing empirically the justness of any real intervention (363).
• Mill's framework of reasons for intervention against barbarian peoples in On Liberty provides a basis for discussing the issues of the Invasion of Iraq. Since the original document is extremely racist, the author recommends replacing the outdated terms 'barbarian' and 'civilized', with 'tyrannical' and 'democratic', respectively (365).
• This adjustment is useful in creating a theory, but it does not reflect Mill's viewpoint. Mill believed that barbarians were such because of cultural inferiority that made them incapable of living under non-tyrannical governments (366). At this point, the author disagrees with Mill and rejects the idea that individual capacities are changed by living under a democracy or tyranny (367).
• Although the meaning has likely been significantly changed than the genuinely racist view he intended to present, the point is made that intervention becomes acceptable against tyrannies, to the point that tyrannies have no rights as nations, that claim to sovereignty being superseded by the duty to support universal human morality and aid the oppressed people through intervention (366).
• Before continuing on in the analysis of the rightness or morality of intervention, Dr. Applbaum presents three ways in which the concept of 'forcing someone to be free' is impossible and ridiculous, and rebuts them:
• The notion is firstly impossible because freedom and force are opposing terms. By definition someone who is forced cannot be free, because part of their independence in being removed, and someone who is free cannot be operating under coercive force (367).
• However, the logic of the above statement does not imply that intervention cannot achieve political freedom. Although the simultaneous exercise of freedom and force is impossible, there is nothing that says people cannot be forced into a conditions where they can later exercise freedom (368).
• Forcing a people is become free is also an empirical impossibility; it centuries of foreign interventions and invasions, there has yet to be a case where the simple presence of foreign rule has resulted in a free people. Rather, freedom has to be developed internally (368).
• Mill makes a similar point when he notes that domestic conditions within the character of the people need to be in place for freedom or democracy to occur. He also based his claims about intervention on this belief, claiming that want of freedom needs to be desired by the population to be liberated; meaning that the only people deserving of freedom are those willing to kill and be killed to achieve it (369).
• Yet, there are a very few number of cases when states have rebuilt free societies out of tyrannical or despotic ones following invasion and occupation by foreign powers. The most prominent among these cases are Germany and Japan, both of which were rebuilt after the war and developed into strong democratic states, showing that at least some conditions can create freedom for a previously oppressed people (370).
• Some would claim that a 'people', that is a free society based on voluntary association, cannot exist when under force, meaning that if forced into some pattern of association, a group stops being a 'people'. Although such an argument is ridiculous, since it implies that identity simply ceases during an occupation, it does raise a point that societies, or 'peoples', are different from groups of individuals and thus the morality of both forcing individuals to be free and forcing peoples to be free must be considered (371).
• Paternalism is defined as prevent someone's action because it will do harm to themselves, and is based in the assumption that the person being interfered with is incapable of setting their path in accordance with morality or common sense. The application of paternalism is thus humiliating because it treats someone with less than fully rational status -- not implies that this cannot be sometimes justified in cases of children, the mentally ill, or retards (372). Paternalism is only justified and less humiliating if the person being acted upon is not capable of making the proper moral decisions (373).
• While several definitions of 'people' exist, the author believes the one most relevant to the question in this paper is a 'normative people', or a society of individuals which can act as a single, organized, political entity (375). Dr. Applbaum then considers that a normative people may be held accountable for its actions and be subject to actions: whether than be patronage or forcible freedom (376).
• The full conditions for a group of individuals being considered a 'normative people' are a composition of individuals who all possess the capacity to act and to make decisions about how to act. Under these conditions, when the actions of a normative people may be considered reasonable and self-governing, then they should be entitled to non-interference, and any paternalist intervention would be humiliating and unjust (377).
• However, included with the conditions required for a group to be a 'normative people', there must exist certain freedoms that allow for the exercise of action and decision-making by that normative people (377). While the common identity defines a 'normative people',  only under certain circumstances can they become a free people (379).
• The shared agency required for a group of individuals to be considered a normative people can stem from three different possible sources: interconnected planned action (381), appointment of representatives for a group of individuals (382), and action within predefined organizational and procedural structures (383). This shared agency can only be acquired through voluntary action (384).
• Political action in particular requires special levels of coordination and representative structure to be considered a political people. The cases under which this can occur are when the restrictions proposed by the political authority either limit freedom to protect other freedoms and prevent anarchy (385), and where the subjects of laws have equal ability to act as authors of other laws (386).
• Because the 'normative people' may be considered a rational entity apart from its constituent individuals, it is possible to be paternalistic towards a people without being paternalistic towards the individuals. If one acts to constraint the collective action of a 'normative people' and ignores the will of the people then the action is paternalistic, but the constraints placed on each individual are not because they are unfit, but because it is for the 'good' of the group (379).
• The previous discussions outlining the definition of a normative people also provides a basis for the characteristics of a legitimate government. To be legitimate there needs to be a procedural connection between the government and the governed, and there needs to be an institutionalized protection of some basic freedoms and human rights, which will preserve the voluntary nature of the normative people. The thresholds are not especially important -- it does not need to be a perfect democracy -- by some minimum standards of accountability and freedom are required (388).
• A normative people includes all members which are voluntarily part of it by the rules outlined above, and any individuals not voluntarily and legitimately subject to those laws are not part of the normative people. A normative people cannot legitimately enforce laws on those outside of the people, so a nation-state does need to meet the above criteria for all citizens to be legitimate, not just for a privileged group (389).
• Under some conditions the objects to paternalism within Mill's theory can be satisfied in favor of intervention. Because an oppressed population does not meet the criteria for a normative people, there is not a people to be paternalistic towards in that case. In this scenario, the only guideline for intervention is basic human morality, without respect to the nation-state. Another possible case is where the will of a normative people is severely impaired, and in this case foreign intervention for paternalist reasons is legitimate (391).
• The fact that paternalist intervention on behalf of a people can be just in some situations, however, does not mean that it is just from the perspective of individuals. Invasion and occupation imposes significant costs on individuals, and the above arguments alone do not justify forcing these costs onto foreign individuals (392).
• Since subjecting a rational and reasonable adult to paternalism is unjust, any act which did so would be unjust. However, the author believes that a paternalist intervention on behalf of a people would not be paternalist to individuals, because they would not forced to be free for their own benefit, but for the collective benefit, because society as a whole would benefit from them taking part in the new conditions of freedom (392).
• The author backs up this point with a very complex reference to Kant's beliefs about the state of nature, and the responsible to enforce duties (392-393). They summarize in the following point: " individuals may sometimes be forced to do their duty, and when that is so, they are not forced for their own sake, but for the sake of those to whom the duty is owed" (393). 
• Although Kant very explicitly rejects colonialism and any pretense that the previous point would justify the invasion and subjugation of an 'uncivilized people' in order to bring them into accordance with the duties expected by the West. However, he might allow for use of coercion to bring individuals into accordance with their duties to others in their own community, such as their fellow countrymen (393-394).
• Kant provides very strict criteria for the inclusion of individuals in the citizen body, including freedom within the law, civil equality, and independence from other private citizens. Those without these rights are considered to still be in the state of nature, and thus could reasonably be forced into such a free state in order to fulfill the rights which he should normatively bear to his fellow countrymen (395). 
• Some concerns have been raised about when a state which has intervened may leave the country, and at what point intervention is no longer justified. The condition of the occupation firstly does not need to be representative of the occupied people, it simply needs to better their situation through the institutions in creates. However, this means that any practical solution does need to account for the opinions of the occupied population, as it needs to become a functioning native government at some point (398).
• Since the Invasion of Iraq during the Second Gulf War was the starting point for this article, some have raised questions about what states are allowed to intervene. This must be on a purely case by case basis, but the nation must be able to do more harm than good by its intervention, or else it has been unjustified and illegitimate (397).
• A country may there leave only when a minimally supportive government has been created which satisfies minimal human rights and is minimally accountable. However, that same country has a duty to provide these minimum guarantees before the new government is constituted, and may hold out some time until the best possible solution has been reached (399).