Empire of Humanity

A History of Humanitarianism

Michael Barnett

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780801461095
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Droits de l'homme

Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism's remarkable growth from its humble origins in the early nineteenth century to its current prominence in global life. In contrast to most contemporary accounts of humanitarianism that concentrate on the last two decades, Michael Barnett ties the past to the present, connecting the antislavery and missionary movements of the nineteenth century to today's peacebuilding missions, the Cold War interventions in places like Biafra and Cambodia to post–Cold War humanitarian operations in regions such as the Great Lakes of Africa and the Balkans; and the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 to the emergence of the major international humanitarian organizations of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival work, close encounters with many of today's leading international agencies, and interviews with dozens of aid workers in the field and at headquarters, Empire of Humanity provides a history that is both global and intimate.

Avoiding both romanticism and cynicism, Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism's enduring themes, trends, and, most strikingly, ethical ambiguities. Humanitarianism hopes to change the world, but the world has left its mark on humanitarianism. Humanitarianism has undergone three distinct global ages—imperial, postcolonial, and liberal—each of which has shaped what humanitarianism can do and what it is. The world has produced not one humanitarianism, but instead varieties of humanitarianism. Furthermore, Barnett observes that the world of humanitarianism is divided between an emergency camp that wants to save lives and nothing else and an alchemist camp that wants to remove the causes of suffering. These camps offer different visions of what are the purpose and principles of humanitarianism, and, accordingly respond differently to the same global challenges and humanitarianism emergencies. Humanitarianism has developed a metropolis of global institutions of care, amounting to a global governance of humanity. This humanitarian governance, Barnett observes, is an empire of humanity: it exercises power over the very individuals it hopes to emancipate.

Although many use humanitarianism as a symbol of moral progress, Barnett provocatively argues that humanitarianism has undergone its most impressive gains after moments of radical inhumanity, when the "international community" believes that it must atone for its sins and reduce the breach between what we do and who we think we are. Humanitarianism is not only about the needs of its beneficiaries; it also is about the needs of the compassionate.

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Co-Dependence: Humanitarianism and the World

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, religious, spiritual, and philosophical commitments have inspired acts of compassion. If we equate humanitarianism with compassion, then humanitarianism is as old as history. But if we decide to limit the history of humanitarianism to when individuals started using the concept to characterize their actions and those of others, then humanitarianism is roughly two centuries old. Specifically, around the turn of the nineteenth century humanitarianism slowly entered into everyday vocabulary. Although there is no bright line to distinguish humanitarianism clearly from previous and current forms of charity, compassion, and philanthropy, three characteristics arose in the early nineteenth century, and have been present ever since, that are marks of distinction.

It slowly became associated with compassion across boundaries. In the beginning humanitarianism included both international and domestic action; it could refer to either abolitionists or advocates for child labor reform. Precisely when and why the concept of humanitarianism became reserved for border-busting action is unclear, though the creation of the ICRC in 1863 as the world’s first official international humanitarian organization probably was a tipping point. The specific association of compassion across boundaries is related to the presumption that humanitarianism implies going beyond the call of duty. Who has duties to whom? People, organizations, and governments provide local assistance on a daily basis, and most of the time we describe them as fulfilling their duties and do not call them or their actions “humanitarian.” Parents feed, clothe, and shelter their children, and it would sound odd to describe such actions as humanitarian. A police officer responding to a crime is not a Good Samaritan—she is doing her job. Villages often have a moral economy that materializes when famine, destitution, and hardship strike; members of the community are doing their duty.1 We expect citizens and the government to act when another part of the country is struck by a natural disaster. Few in the United States characterized the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as humanitarian; it was acting (or failing to act) according to its responsibilities. It is only when such assistance crosses a boundary that we tend to call it humanitarian. What duties do we have to each other? It is impossible to identify them in advance precisely because they are formed in and around changing material forces and moral sentiments; are understood differently in different kinds of humanitarianism; and vary with the moral boundaries of the community.

Humanitarianism’s vow to help strangers in distant lands is related to a second defining characteristic: its transcendental significance. Although this is not a feature that is normally associated with humanitarianism, it figures prominently enough in the chapters that follow that I feel compelled to include it as a defining characteristic. By the transcendental I mean, quite simply, the belief that there is something larger than us. It is not unlike what some characterize as religious experience, which John Dewey, following William James, described thus: “The self is always directed toward something beyond itself and so its own unification depends upon the idea of the integration of the shifting scenes of the world into that imaginative totality we call the Universe.”2 In this manner the transcendental can embody a religious form, but not necessarily. Religious beliefs were critical to the origins of humanitarianism and continue to influence its unfolding. Yet humanitarianism tracks, in some ways, with the mythic versions of secularization, in which the secular replaces the religious as a source of authority and meaning. The world, of course, never became secularized, and neither did humanitarianism, which is why the sector maintains the distinction between faith and secular agencies. But secularly driven humanitarianism also has elements of the transcendental, which are especially evident in notions of humanity. For many who staff secular agencies, humanitarianism is a way of both expressing and bringing into existence an international community. In no way am I suggesting that humanitarians are saintly creatures because they are connecting the everyday to the transcendental. As I have already suggested and will soon elaborate, humanitarianism exists to attend to the needs of the giver and not only to those of the receiver. Nor am I suggesting that other forms of compassion are not also connected to some notion of the transcendent. Instead, I want to highlight how humanitarianism’s purpose is intertwined with the desire to demonstrate and create a global spirit.

Although humanitarianism might have this otherworldly quality, it also is very much of this world. Humanitarianism is imprinted by modernity, the Enlightenment, and the belief that it is possible to engineer progress. In this way, humanitarianism is connected to governance, and a stunning development of the last two centuries is the deepening and growing governance of humanitarianism. For much of human history acts of compassion were a largely private affair, the domain of the privileged, the pious, and the philanthropic. When individuals were in need, because of either their everyday circumstances or exigencies, they had to rely on the kindness of others. Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing in the twentieth century, there was a growing zeal for creating institutions and other standing bodies, increasingly and selfconsciously organized around the principles of rationality that are the hallmark of the modern organization. Also, the humanitarian movements of the nineteenth century, including those that were devoutly religious, frequently articulated a confidence in using modern scientific techniques and public interventions to improve the human condition. They largely imagined perfecting society, though, through markets and not with the heavy hand of the state. The nineteenth-century laissez-faire ideology slowly receded in the early twentieth century, as the state accepted more responsibilities for its citizens. Many of the same factors that led to the expansion of the welfare state also contributed to a growing willingness by Western states to expand various kinds of aid and assistance to vulnerable populations. Since World War I the organization of humanitarian action has largely followed the tremendous internationalization, institutionalization, and rationalization of global affairs. Today there exists an international humanitarian order.

What distinguishes humanitarianism from previous acts of compassion is that it is organized and part of governance, connects the immanent to the transcendent, and is directed at those in other lands. But, as discussed in the introduction, I treat humanitarianism not as a coherent whole but rather as a concept in motion that has several enduring tensions—the existence of multiple humanitarianisms; an ethics that are simultaneously universal and circumstantial; a commitment to emancipation that can justify forms of domination; the possibility (or not) of advancing moral progress; and ministration to the needs of both the giver and the recipient. Although these tensions are nearly intrinsic to humanitarianism, a global arena shaped their character, content, and intensity. Specifically, the forces of destruction, production, and compassion combined to generate three discernible ages of humanitarianism—an imperial humanitarianism, a neo-humanitarianism, and a liberal humanitarianism—and these ages shaped the meaning and practices of humanitarianism.

Although these global forces pushed and pulled humanitarianism over the decades, humanitarian organizations have some discretion over its dealings with the world that, at times, appears to leave them with no good choices. The simple recognition that aid agencies are constantly struggling over what to do, that different agencies arrive at different answers, makes this discretion apparent. Although various factors influence these choices, three are particularly important.

Humanitarianism comes in many shapes and forms, but a critical difference is between a humanitarianism that largely limits itself to saving lives at risk—emergency humanitarianism—and a humanitarianism that adds a desire to remove the causes of suffering—alchemical humanitarianism. These different humanitarian identities lean toward different responses to two fundamental problems faced by all humanitarian actors: how to live in a world of states and other actors that are often responsible for the very suffering they want to relieve; and whether and how to take into account the needs of those who are often perceived as being too weak, uninformed, oppressed, or traumatized to help themselves. In response to the first problem, humanitarian agencies have crafted different kinds of principles, and in response to the second they have demonstrated varying sensitivity (though not very much) to the problem of paternalism. Notwithstanding these differences, there is one way in which they are alike: they depend on others for their resources. A longstanding hunch is that the more they depend on states, the more likely they will conform to their wishes, an argument that has some merit but whose extreme claims I find unconvincing. By recognizing the possibility that aid agencies can shape their fate, but not under the conditions of their own choosing, I recover the possibility that they can escape their circumstances to expand the global ethics of care.

The World of Humanitarianism

While humanitarianism has many mothers, and over the ages has been influenced by various bone-chilling events and idiosyncratic developments, critical has been the combination of the forces of destruction, production, and compassion.3 These forces do not operate in isolation but rather interact in various ways to define the age, opening up and closing off opportunities for humanitarian action, heightening and lessening the practical tensions of humanitarianism, and shaping the evolving meaning and practice of humanitarianism. These are not anonymous forces with a singular identity but rather have historical content and, in combination, produce the age of humanitarianism.

The Forces of Humanitarianism

The forces of destruction include acts and patterns of violence that endanger lives and the possibility of safety and security. They also affect how great and lesser powers conceptualize the relationship between state and human security. Violence has been a causeway for benevolence. Massacres, international and civil wars, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and war-induced famines have been a principal “call to alms.”4 Changes in military technology and strategy furthered the desire to expand the laws of war and provide more protections and relief to civilians. Solferino triggered a pattern in which advances in the lethality of military technology led to efforts to ameliorate its destructive potential. The emergence of total war, the obliteration of the very unstable distinction between civilian and soldier, and the willingness of combatants to treat civilians as an object of strategy have led to new forms of protection.

Patterns of war are shaped by the strategic ambitions of great and lesser powers, and these patterns can influence both the opportunities for and the constraints on humanitarian action. If states believe, for whatever reason, that there is a convergence between their security interests and humanitarian action, then aid agencies will find new opportunities in the field and beyond; if otherwise, then they will confront significant barriers. Western states decided to establish the High Commissioner on Refugees following World War I primarily because they feared that mass population displacement in Europe would lead to regional instability. Humanitarian intervention is selective because states are usually willing to put their troops in harm’s only way when their security and economic interests are at stake.

Conceptions of international order and the precise relationship between domestic order and international order also have had a profound impact on the character of humanitarianism. There are two stylized views of international order. One claims that sovereignty and the principle of noninterference, alongside a healthy dose of deterrence, can create stability; the other, that domestic order affects international order. These views have enjoyed different periods of acceptance: during the late colonial period, Western states argued that colonial states required lessons in civility before they could be expected to abide by the rules of international society; during decolonization and the Cold War, great hopes were placed on sovereignty and military power; and in the post–Cold War period there is a prevailing belief that states organized around democracy, markets, and rights make good neighbors.

The forces of production include capitalism and the global economy and ideologies regarding the state’s role in society. The debate over the relationship between capitalism and humanitarianism began the moment that formal organizations first appeared in the early nineteenth century and declared that they were trying to save the world from itself. One view is that capitalism is the structure and humanitarianism is part of the superstructure that aids capitalism’s reproduction and expansion. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx identified “economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind” as operating to smooth over social grievances and help improve bourgeois society.5

An alternative view observes that the dislocations caused by capitalism created the conditions for humanitarianism. Market expansion, industrialization, and urbanization undermined the existing religious and normative order. In response, religious and secular leaders proposed solutions that included new kinds of public interventions that would help restore a moral order, which, not coincidentally, was consistent with capitalism’s requirements. For instance, industrialists saw rampant alcohol consumption as a significant hindrance to a stable and compliant labor force, so they supported emerging temperance movements that treated alcohol as part of the devil’s bag of tricks and encouraged individuals to become sober, self-disciplined, and responsible.6

The expansion of global capitalism, now known as globalization, also has affected humanitarianism’s forms and functions, though how is a matter of controversy. Some, following classical Marxist thought, argue that capitalism’s unquenchable drive to expand means that there will be a constant need to govern and integrate those that are, in Mark Duffield’s phrase, on the borderlands.7 In this view, the discourse of development, while celebrated by humanitarians in the decades following World War II, was the latest chapter in the continuing saga of capitalism’s attempt to incorporate those existing on the margins. Today’s antipoverty campaigns follow in their footsteps. Others argue that humanitarianism does not so much integrate the borderlands as contain them. Not everyone will be able to enjoy capitalism’s benefits, and in order for capitalism to survive it must quell any possibility that frustrations boil over into rebellion. Humanitarianism is a global welfare institution, and aid workers are social workers—appearing to be emancipatory when operating as mechanisms of social control.8 Global capitalism needs humanitarianism.

Ideologies regarding the state’s proper role in society and economy also have shaped the demand for humanitarian assistance. During the nineteenth century’s era of laissez-faire capitalism, individuals fended for themselves, and various charitable and reform-minded organizations stepped in where the state refused or failed to tread. In the United States the combination of a growing urban underclass alongside the rise of oil and manufacturing tycoons led the latter to found various philanthropic and charitable organizations to improve human welfare.9 The rise of the welfare state after the 1920s increased the resources available for various kinds of aid programs.10 The post-1980s ideology of neoliberalism and the limited state created a greater demand for humanitarian organizations; Western governments favored NGOs for delivering services because they were presumed to be more efficient than either bilateral or intergovernmental organizations.11

The forces of destruction and production help to account for the fluctuating demand for different kinds of assistance, the timing of outbursts of activity, and the stepwise internationalization of humanitarianism, but strategic and economic interests d...