Humanitarian Intervention

12 Key excerpts on "Humanitarian Intervention"

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  The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon

  • David Capie, Paul Evans(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Humanitarian Intervention 147 Humanitarian Intervention © 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapor e Humanitarian Intervention Humanitarian Intervention is the idea that in certain cir cumstances it is permissible under international la w for a state or states to use military force to interv ene in another state’ s territory, in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster from taking place, even without the permission of the go vernment of that state. While the idea has developed an extensi ve literature, it is strongly disputed b y some governments. Legal scholars also differ over its scope and substance. According to Peter Malanczuk, “the literature shows that there are numerous and often conflicting definitions of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’, some of w hich appear to be mere de facto ‘working definitions’, and others w hich are meant to be normati ve in the sense that the definition itself purports to establish criteria of legality or illegality.” 1 Legal sc holar Wil Verwey attempts to find w hat he calls an “authentic definition” of humanitarian interv ention as a legal concept, but concludes “one is immediately confronted with a major analytical obstacle: it soon appears from a compar ative analysis of relevant instruments and literature that there may be few concepts in international la w today which are as conceptually obscure and legally contro versial as ‘humanitarian interv ention’.” 2 He attributes this to the lac k of consensus on the legal meaning of both the terms intervention and humanitarian. Bazyler agrees, concluding that “there is little use in defining the doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention.” 3 Ved Nanda describes the doctrine as “controversial” saying it “suffers from normati ve ambiguities” and notes the “absence of general consensus on the definition …, the set of criteria to judge its permissibility or impermissibility under international law, and the safeguards necessary to prevent its abuse”.

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  The United Nations Organization

  (In)Securing Global Peace and Security

  • Tatah Mentan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Langaa RPCIG

    (Publisher)

  Humanitarian Intervention is a problem-solving approach that ignores the “economic statism” that leads to humanitarian crises and simply seeks to restore the international order that gave rise to the conflict in the first place (Pawlowska, 2005). Less radical writers also pay close attention to international context, often with emphasis on power imbalance. They argue that Humanitarian Intervention is a variant of colonial depredation: it is an instrument of strong states’ domination over weak ones. European and North American governments choose the targets of intervention according to their strategic interests. The involvement of the UN Security Council does not help, as the Council is “less than representative” and gives a handful of states inordinate influence through the veto provision (Ayoob 2001). In addition to being patently discriminatory, forcible intervention encourages violence. Any intervention eventually will provoke local opposition (Roberts 1993). Opponents’ third criticism is that military intervention is not appropriate or necessary. Violence was an essential part of the process that established political order in the West. On one hand, we 221 should expect there to be violence as new, weak states struggle to impose their authority. On the other hand, when a state is overly oppressive and abuses its population, the people, through the principle of self-determination, have a right to use violence against the government. That right does not extend to actors outside the state, who are not subject to the abuse. Intrastate violence, even with refugee flows, does not constitute a threat to international peace and security (Walzer 1977; Ayoob 2001). Adam Roberts makes the point that those who are concerned about justice should not underestimate the power of patient promotion of human rights.

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  International Intervention in the Post-Cold War World

  Moral Responsibility and Power Politics

  • Michael C. Davis, Wolfgang Dietrich, Bettina Scholdan(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Under what conditions and with what objectives military force should be exercised are crucial matters in international relations. Thus, questions associated with Humanitarian Intervention have attracted the attention of thinkers and analysts for two millennia. The arguments of theologians, liberals, and international lawyers have been accumulated, and we have acquired the norm of Humanitarian Intervention, which especially legitimizes interventions associated with legal authorization within the UN system. Along these lines, I have briefly traced the development of these norms and set forth the ideal type of Humanitarian Intervention in the context of the contemporary international society.

  On this basis, I clarified that in the process of realizing the norm of Humanitarian Intervention, various political factors or calculus can impede or promote humanitarian action taken by rational egoistic states. Given the very fact that the primary intervening actors are still egoistic states, if we are resolved to settle humanitarian disasters with effective military force, that is, by means of Humanitarian Intervention, we, as global citizens, must influence the structure of state calculations. Otherwise, strategic rational politicians will, without any hesitation, refuse to act according to the logic of norms. In the end, the most important thing is to perceive that the key to promotion of Humanitarian Intervention rests not directly with national leaders enmeshed in egoistic political logics, but with the citizens holding transcendental values, with the power of votes or voices to influence the way of rational political calculation.

  Notes

  I wish to thank David Wessels for his invaluable help and efforts in completing this chapter.

  1 . Michael Akehurst, “Humanitarian Intervention,” in Hedley Bull, ed., Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 95–118; Jack Donnelly, “Human Rights, Humanitarian Intervention and American Foreign Policy: Law, Morality, and Politics,” Journal of International Affairs 36 (1983): 311–328.

  2 . For elaboration of the concept of two logics, see James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics

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  Humanitarian Intervention after Kosovo

  Iraq, Darfur and the Record of Global Civil Society

  • Aidan Hehir(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  1 Introduction: The Humanitarian Intervention Controversy Introduction ‘Humanitarian Intervention’, despite its positive rhetorical connota- tions, has become one of the key causes of contention and controversy in contemporary international relations. Each of the issues inherent in this debate – human rights, sovereignty, order versus justice, the role of the UN – constitutes seminal current concerns in itself; together the issues create almost limitless scope for discussion and dispute. This capacity for dissonance is unsurprising given that the fundamental question raised by this issue – ‘when is it right to use force to protect those suf- fering in other states?’ – interrogates humanity’s moral values, challenges the composition of the international political system and questions the responsibilities and duties of all major international actors. For some the necessity of Humanitarian Intervention is axiomatic; suffering should be stopped by those with the capacity to do so. Others raise concerns that complicate this simple moral imperative. While few are opposed outright to the principle of helping those in distress, many, sceptical that states will ever act without some self-interested motivation, highlight the potential to abuse the malleability of the terms employed in humanitarian discourse. Realists see Humanitarian Intervention as under- mining the basic tenets of sovereignty and thus as posing a danger to international order, while relativists view such action as the unjustifiable imposition of values by the powerful onto the weak. This book’s underlying premise is that debate surrounding this issue has stagnated due to the restrictive theoretical parameters recently embedded in the discourse. The dominant pro-intervention perspective, described here as the ‘normative thesis’, clashes with the dominant counter-perspective articulated by the realist position. Neither perspective 1

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  International Relations

  Perspectives, Controversies and Readings

  • Keith Shimko(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. KEY TERMS Amnesty International, 242 Humanitarian Intervention, 242 multilateral intervention, 243 nongovernmental organi-zations (NGOs), 241 Nuremberg war crimes trials, 240 popular sovereignty, 244 responsibility to protect, 245 rule of law, 246 unilateral intervention, 243 United Nations Charter (UN Charter), 240 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 241 FURTHER READINGS A good place to begin considering the role of morality in international politics is Stanley Hoffman ’ s Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1981); and Lea Brilmayer ’ s American Hegemony: Political Morality in a One-Superpower World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994) is particularly useful for thinking about Humanitarian Intervention in the post – Cold War world. An excellent introduction to the topic of human rights in world politics is David P. Forsythe ’ s Human Rights in International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Nicholas Wheeler provides one of the best discussions of the more specific question of Humanitarian Intervention in Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001). Gary Bass traces the surprisingly long history of humanitarian inter-vention in Freedom ’ s Battle: The History of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Vintage, 2009). This can be usefully read alongside Michael Barnet ’ s Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).

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  Applying Political Theory

  Issues and Debates

  • Katherine Smits(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  228 | A P P LY I N G P O L I T I C A L T H E O RY Iraq by the United States and its allies was publicly justified, at least in part, on the grounds that it would liberate the Iraqi people from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein. Of course, Humanitarian Intervention has also been opposed on the grounds of political interest: in the early twentieth century, Turkish massa-cres of Armenians prompted international calls for Humanitarian Intervention – which United States President Woodrow Wilson ignored, out of concern not to jeopardize diplomatic relations with Turkey. Humanitarian Intervention has become a particularly pressing issue since the 1990s; in fact many commentators argue that whether to intervene to help victims of human-engineered catastrophes was the most important and dif-ficult issue facing the world from the end of the Cold War until September 2001 (ICISS, 2001). Conflicts in this period in Europe and Africa have involved serious violations of human rights, and international media coverage has made these more immediate and visible to the public in Western nations, resulting in increased pressure on governments to act. In the extreme political instability in the Middle East following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, political interven-tion attempting to protect persecuted minorities, and systematic human rights abuses, has been deeply controversial in Western countries. In 2014, military intervention in the form of air strikes began by several states, from the United States to Iran, against the group calling itself Islamic State, which has seized control of parts of Syria, Iraq and Libya. Critics of these and other interventions often allege that they are a form of neo-imperialism on the part of Western states wishing to protect their strategic and economic interests.

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  The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention

  Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

  • Fabian Klose(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  98 See the not entirely unbiased discussion of the various positions in Holzgrefe and Keohane, Humanitarian Intervention. 99 Bruce Cronin and Ian Hurd (eds.), The UN Security Council and the Politics of Inter- national Authority (London and New York: Routledge, 2008). Humanitarianism and human rights 53 old and new great powers (United States, Russia, China, India, Brazil) deserves a lot more attention than it has received. 100 It was a reflection of the ongoing public debate that the reference to Humanitarian Intervention was very detailed in the Millennium Report. 101 It occurs in the section on ‘Freedom from Fear’ and is set in the context of a discussion about new security threats (freshwater scarcities, severe forms of environmental degradation) that points to a new way of thinking about security less in terms of defending territory and more in terms of ‘protecting people’, an idea – ‘human security’ – that had come to capture the attention of civil-society activists and academics. 102 In the Millennium Report, Humanitarian Intervention is carefully placed between the section on ‘prevention’, which addresses the root causes of violence (such as ‘the condition of poverty’), and the section on ‘protection’ of vulnerable populations (‘the brutalization of civilians particularly women and chil- dren’), thus ‘asserting the centrality of international humanitarian and human rights law’. The report’s overriding concern is about measures to strengthen peace operations – ‘post-conflict peace-building’, economic sanctions, and arms reductions. The Secretary-General of the UN thus inserted the issue of Humanitarian Intervention into the ongoing discus- sion about the post–Cold War security environment and developed a programmatic stance on advancing human security, in which forcible Humanitarian Intervention was only one and, indeed, the ultimate means of preventing harm and maintaining peace in an age of globalization.

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  Modern Geopolitics and Security

  Strategies for Unwinnable Conflicts

  • Amos N. Guiora(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Despite an improvement in real numbers of convictions in 2007, the acquittal rate jumped to 26%. INTERVENTION Military intervention can occur for humanitarian purposes: NATO inter-vention (albeit after much tragedy and atrocity) in the former Yugoslavia is a clear example as is U.S. intervention in Haiti after the massive earth-quake in 2010. The philosophy behind Humanitarian Intervention is sim-ple: it stems from the principle that “Intervention for human protection purposes . . . is supportable when major harm to civilians is occurring or imminently apprehended, and the state in question is unable or unwilling to end the harm, or is itself the perpetrator.” * In other words, humanitar-ian intervention is based on the belief that “When a government turns savagely upon its own people . . . it becomes the responsibility of “[a]ny state capable of stopping the slaughter . . . to try to do so.” † The brutally repressive regime of President Assad (the father) was made clear in the 1982 massacre in the Syrian town of Hama: over * See Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The Responsibility to Protect . Accessed May 31, 2013. http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/ ICISS%20Report.pdf † See Walzer, M. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic, 2006. SELF-DEFENSE, Humanitarian Intervention, LEADERSHIP 53 10,000 citizens were massacred when Assad ordered the Syrian army to squash a purported revolt against the regime. Although the brutal nature of the regime (in addition to the Hama massacre) was well known and documented, successive U.S. presidents turned a blind eye in the name of larger interests and goals. In the context of this pragmatic policy, President Assad brutalized his people while negotiating with the United States; sim -ply put, Syrian domestic affairs were an internal matter the United States chose to ignore while focusing on broader geopolitical considerations.

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  Between Cosmopolitan Ideals and State Sovereignty

  Studies in Global Justice

  • R. Tinnevelt, G. Verschraegen, R. Tinnevelt, G. Verschraegen(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  I have attempted here to show how the doc- trine of double effect may aid in that task. While the doctrine of humanitar- ian intervention has gained increased acceptance in the last fifteen years or so, objections to it still rest partly on a confusion between intention and motive. One major worry is the possibility of abuse of the doctrine. Because international society lacks at present a suitable mechanism for addressing humanitarian crises, this chapter proposes the creation of a liberal alliance or council charged with authorizing the use of force for humanitarian pur- poses. More generally, viewing Humanitarian Intervention as appropriate in some cases is part of the larger project of puncturing the sovereignty of states. This move is required by an assumption of liberal political theory: normative individualism – the view that, in the last analysis, only persons are the proper objects of moral concern. Notes 1. This article is adapted from Tesón (2005). 2. For terminological convenience, I use the term ‘intervention’ to refer to forcible action. I refer to other forms of action to protect human rights, ranging from regu- lar diplomacy to economic and other sanctions, as ‘interference’. 3. See Mill (1998: 65). 232 Fernando R. Tesón The Moral Basis of Humanitarian Intervention 233 4. The discussion in the next two paragraphs owes to Ridge (2002: 54). 5. But pacifism is not incoherent. It can simply claim that all wars are immoral, including otherwise justified defensive wars. 6. For an excellent treatment, see Rodin (2002). 7. I follow here an amended version of the classic definition provided by Walzer (2000: 153). 8. I say ‘depending on the circumstances’ because, as Horacio Spector, following Phillippa Foot, shows, it is not the case that there is always a moral difference between causing an undesirable result with direct intention and causing it with oblique intention. See Spector (1992: 104–5), citing Foot (1978: 20). 9.

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  Insurrection and Intervention

  The Two Faces of Sovereignty

  • Ned Dobos(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  30 Of course exceptions may arise in cases where the denial of social and political rights is something for which we are partially respon- sible. The governments that we vote into office sometimes trade with authoritarian regimes, bankrolling the oppression of their subjects. Our companies are permitted to sell arms to these regimes, enabling them to efficiently put down resistance movements. 31 Some developed states have not only legally authorised their firms to bribe corrupt foreign officials, but even allowed them to deduct the bribes from 29 Michael Walzer, ‘Beyond Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights in Global Society’, in David Miller (ed.), Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007, p. 261. 30 Sean D. Murphy, Humanitarian Intervention: The United Nations in an Evolving World Order , Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, pp. 110 and 145. 31 See Thomas W. Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibility and Reforms, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002, p. 142. Humanitarian Intervention and national responsibility 136 their taxable revenue. 32 All of this facilitates the oppression of people beyond our borders, and there may be cases in which we are so deeply implicated that we acquire a duty to shoulder the costs of intervention to undo the damage. Incidentally, this lays bare the wrongheadedness of one surpris- ingly common argument against Humanitarian Intervention. Call it the argument from prior sponsorship. Various critics of the US-led regime change in Iraq pointed out that the United States helped turn Saddam into the brutal and efficient dictator that he was by provid- ing him with technology, intelligence and weapons during the Iran– Iraq War. Critics of earlier interventions similarly drew attention to the intervener’s causal responsibility for the oppression that it was suddenly so eager to put a stop to.

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  Waging Humanitarian War

  The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Humanitarian Intervention

  • Eric A. Heinze(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SUNY Press

    (Publisher)

  By way of summary, however, the (largely settled) debate on this issue has mainly centered on potential exceptions Humanitarian Intervention in International Law 61 to Article 2(4) of the Charter, which generally prohibits the use of force “against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” 11 The argument in favor of the legality of Humanitarian Intervention under Article 2(4) is essentially that it entails using force that is not against the territorial integrity or political independence of states, and such force is therefore perfectly consistent with the purposes of the United Nations to the extent that one of the purposes of the UN is to promote human rights. In other words, Article 2(4) does not forbid all uses of force, just that which is directed against the territorial integrity and political inde- pendence of states, and that which is inconsistent with the purposes of the UN Charter. 12 Therefore, Humanitarian Intervention does not fall within this prohibition. This interpretation of the UN Charter, however, has been largely refuted and prevailing legal opinion is that the language in Article 2(4) was not meant to create loopholes to the general prohibition of the use of force. 13 Even if these terms are intended to be exceptions to the general rule in Article 2(4), it does not follow that Humanitarian Intervention fails to have an effect on a state’s territorial integrity and political indepen- dence. The reality of most Humanitarian Interventions is that they rarely achieve their purposes without the removal or at least disablement of an incumbent regime. Insofar as Humanitarian Intervention takes place within a state’s territory and is aimed at preventing a state’s governing apparatus from carrying out a policy (inflicting human suffering), it is unlawful under a strict interpretation of Article 2(4).

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  Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention

  Legitimizing the Use of Force since the 1970s

  • Norbert Frei, Daniel Stahl, Annette Weinke, Norbert Frei, Daniel Stahl, Annette Weinke(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wallstein Verlag

    (Publisher)

  That is, instead of champi-oning the political impartiality of human rights and humanitarianism as the basis for legitimating interventions, we might alternatively consider how the work of these movements could better inform political respon-sibility and solidarity. One way to pursue this goal might be to recognize that the tension between the two frameworks is productive in important ways. For example, when disentangled from humanitarian law, the much broader human rights framework offers a basis for reinforcing the polit-ical rights needed to protest endless war, but are also routinely violated as a result of the policy of endless war: the right to protest, the rights of whistleblowers, the prohibition of detention without trial. Disentangled from humanitarian law, the human rights framework can be used to chal-38 Arendt, Revolution , 88 . 39 Arendt, Origins, 296 . legitimating interventions 45 lenge militarism by offering criminal justice as an alternative to war – a paradigm for investigation that does not defer to military objectives and therefore offers a much stronger set of protections for civilians. The ethic of care and perspective associated with the humanitarian proximity to suffering might also offer a useful critical response to the limitations of human rights. Finally, we might also ask how their distinctive approaches to establishing political impartiality could be construed differently – in a manner that would facilitate a provisional critical distance from the crises and imperatives of political conflict without denigrating political mobilization and without celebrating destructive innocence. 46 Eleanor Davey The Language of ingérence Interventionist Debates in France, 1970s – 1990s In Rome in December 1992 , Pope John Paul II opened a meeting of world experts on food and nutrition.

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