Humanitarian war: a new consensus? (original) (raw)
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Humanitarian interventions appear stuck in an extreme dichotomy: they are either self-interested or pinnacles of international morality. For some, the Kosovo Crisis represents a benign precedent for international ethics, and for others, a Western power grab. This article aims to break from the dichotomy by closely examining the motivations, rhetoric, and embedded structures behind the vital Kosovo case, so as to test the relevancy of traditional power assumptions. Realism offers a strong starting point. It interprets the actions of the Western hegemon as propelled by security interests, such as upholding NATO's credibility. Many accounts of the crisis, however, reveal the limitations of a norms-free realist perspective. I conclude that normative dimensions and national interests can co-exist within international calls for humanitarian missions, and such dual interactions may even make it easier for a humanitarian military intervention to occur. These interactions may prove imperative to understanding contemporary military interventions.
Hacettepe Hukuk Fakultesi Dergisi, 2013
Albeit the debate on the use of force for humanitarian purposes (i.e. humanitarian military intervention) is not new, it has been flourishing since the early years of the Cold War as a result of the increasing importance placed on the international protection of human rights. After gaining a prominent place in the international law and politics literatures, with cases of action and inaction/indifference in the 1990s, the question of (and the need for) undertaking intervention to stop mass atrocities took a new turn with the introduction of the “responsibility to protect” (RtoP) understanding. Now also enlisted as a measure within the RtoP framework but only as a last resort and to be undertaken with Security Council authorisation, humanitarian (military) intervention continues to be adopted individually or collectively by states in their international conduct. In this vein, its unilateral or unauthorised practices continue to create controversy in the political and academic platforms. Primarily with the military interventions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, then most recently with the intervention in Libya, the debates on the legitimacy, legality and lawfulness of the controversial doctrine of humanitarian intervention once again gained momentum. In the light of these developments, this article analyses the doctrine of humanitarian intervention in relation to international law with a specific focus on the questions of lawfulness and legality. To this end, it first traces the normative roots of the idea of undertaking military intervention on humanitarian grounds, and then, analyses the current legal framework. Finally, through an overview of cases in the post-Charter era, it tries to reveal how state practice alongside the legal understandings and debates led to the construction of the RtoP norm.
Leveraging the idea of 'Humanitarian War'
In attempting to bring the frame of war more directly into the discussion over humanitarian intervention in the early 1990s, Adam Roberts quipped that '"humanitarian war" is an oxymoron that may yet become a reality'. No longer was humanitarianism only meant to restrain the means of warfare, but the violent and political logic of war was now supposed to serve the caring and universal dictates of humanitarianism. This essay takes the chance to theorize the idea of humanitarian war further to help improve our understanding of the reality that has become of it, where not only humanitarian interventions or coercive enactments of the 'Responsibility to Protect' feature humanitarian casus belli, but even more geopolitically motivated wars often do as well. It notes how scholarship on such phenomena often rests on overly restrictive and sometimes only implicit notions of how a humanitarian justification can and does influence the practice of war. It then offers a deeper and more plausible theorization of humanitarian war, laying out a range of possible forms and a central tendency that ties them together. This essay closes by discussing some of the benefits of grounding future analyses of humanitarian war in the theorization on offer.
Looking for the Impossible: The Futile Search for a Balanced Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention
Mezhdunarodnaya Analitika (International Analytics), 2021
Many in the West, especially in the human rights community, saw the end of the Cold War as a great opportunity for a normative transformation in international relations. They argued that the concept of sovereignty was an anachronism and that a new international regime should be created allowing for easier intervention against states that subject their citizens to violence. It seemed like a relatively straightforward issue of clashing normative principles at fi rst. As the conversation about interventions has evolved, however, it has become increasingly clear that the problem is much more complex. This article examines the set of complex trade-off s between various values and norms related to humanitarian intervention and demonstrates that no interventionist doctrine that balances these values and norms is possible. It empirically examines these tensions in the context of interventions in Kosovo and Libya.
Redefining the dilemmas of humanitarian intervention
Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2002
Rede ning the dilemmas of humanitarian intervention 1 AMITAV ACHARYA Nothing in the UN Charter precludes a recognition that there are rights beyond borders. What the Charter does say is that 'armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest'. But what is that common interest? Who shall de ne it? Who shall defend it? Under whose authority? And with what means of intervention? Ko Annan (1999). The Responsibilit y to Protect: The Report of the Internationa l Commission on Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2 makes a major contributio n towards ful lling the internationa l community's quest for common answers to the questions posed by Ko Annan in 1999. The Commission, announced in September 2000, was partly a response to the controversies surrounding intervention s in Kosovo (not authorised by the UN Security Council and undertaken by NATO) and East Timor (authorised by the Council, but undertaken by a 'coalition of the willing'). These controversies were preceded by debates about post-Cold War intervention s in northern Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia and the failure to intervene in Rwanda. The questions about humanitarian intervention (raised by Ko Annan and aptly summarised by Stanley Hoffmann as 'when, who, what for, and how'), (Hoffmann 1995-6) form the basis of the Report's analysis and recommendations. In addressing them, The Responsibilit y to Protect signi cantly advances the debate over humanitarian intervention and commands a place alongside other path-breaking efforts at shifting the paradigms of global security, such as the Palme Commission on Common Security, and the Bruntland Commission Report on Sustainable Development. It deserves the attention of anyone interested in promoting multilateral approaches to global peace. The Report's primary goal is to establish clear rules, procedures and criteria of humanitarian intervention , especially those related to the decision to intervene, its timing and its modalities. The Report thus aims to make humanitarian intervention not only legitimate, but also more ef cient. Last but not least, the Report seeks to address the root causes of con ict and advance the prospects for long-term peace. Although not short of concrete policy proposals, the Report's most signi cant contribution, in the view of this author, is in the conceptual domain. The Responsibility to Protect rede nes humanitarian intervention as a responsibilit y (rst, of the
Humanitarian Action and Military Intervention: Temptations and Possibilities
Disasters, 2004
Although the war in Liberia in July 2003 claimed hundreds of lives, the international community was reluctant to intervene. In this article, the author debates the question: does international military intervention equal protection of populations? The role of humanitarian organisations in military intervention is considered. Aid organisations cannot call for deployment of a protection force without renouncing their autonomy or appealing to references outside their own practices. Such organisations provide victims with vital assistance and contribute to ensuring that their fate becomes a stake in political debate by exposing the violence that engulfs them, without substituting their own voices for those of the victims. The political content of humanitarian action is also outlined and military intervention in the context of genocide is discussed. The author concludes that the latter is one of the rare situations in which humanitarian actors can consider calling for an armed intervention without renouncing their own logic.
QUESTIONING THE USE OF FORCE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: COMPARING THE CASE OF KOSOVO AND LIBYA
Proceeding INDONESIAN HUMANITARIAN ACTION FORUM 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Institute of International Studies ISSN 2302-74700, 2012
There has been considerable attention within academic communities, by both theorists and practitioners in international relations, concerning the issue of so-called humanitarian intervention over the past decades. It has been argued that intervention related to problems of human security should come to the fore especially when the country has failed to maintain its governance of its people. Furthermore, the use of force in humanitarian intervention is generating a considerable amount of discussion in justifying this kind of action because the use of force in humanitarian intervention inevitably brings coercion and devastation to invaded states and often threatens the principle of state sovereignty. There have been many controversial examples of the notion of humanitarian intervention in places such as in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as opposed to other places such as Rwanda, where in 1994 humanitarian intervention was absent when genocide took place. It follows that before any moral person resort to the use of force he should be questioned by a series of defining moral questions of Just War tradition as the first moral theory which distinguishes between two basic questions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. In attempt to respond, the objective of this essay is to examine arguments for and against just war theory using Kosovo and Libya as a case study.
“Immaculate War”: Constraints on Humanitarian Intervention
Ethics & International Affairs, 2000
In recent years, American military forces have been deployed in an ever-expanding array of humanitarian, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and nation-building operations. In practice American forces have often been reluctantly committed, and almost always with an extreme emphasis on force-protection and the avoidance of American casualties. Often this issue is discussed in the framework of perceived political constraints on American use of the military – in terms of how many casualties the American public will accept in exchange for a given mission. Beneath the level of the political constraints on American leaders, there lies a deeper tension having to do with the implicit moral contract between the United States and its military personnel. Although military personnel are required to follow all legal orders, morally the traditional contract between soldier and state rests on shared assumptions about the purposes for which national militaries will and will not be used.
An analysis of humanitarian intervention in action
2016
This submission examines the doctrine of humanitarian intervention by focusing on the Western involvement in the violent breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990s and the wars that this ignited. It draws on several publications written over the past decade including "Securing Verdicts: The Misuse of Witness Evidence at The Hague", in Herman E.S. (ed), The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics (Szamuely 2011); Herman E.S., Peterson D. & Szamuely G., 2007, "Yugoslavia: Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party" (Szamuely 2007); and Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia (Szamuely, 2014). Academic writers as well as policymakers deem NATO’s bombing of Bosnia in 1994 and 1995 and of Kosovo in 1999 to be exemplars of the successful use of force to secure humanitarian outcomes. This submission examines these claims in light of the standards that the advocates of humanitarian intervention have themselves put...