Is Humanitarian Intervention Dead?

Be sure to check out Samantha's review of Gary Bass's latest, Freedom's Battle, posted on Slate this week. An excerpt:

Historically informed caution certainly seems the right antidote to Bush-era recklessness. An ethnic, national, or religious group must be in immediate danger of being massacred on a large scale; a credible multilateral body must support the intervention. The countries intervening must forswear up front the pursuit of commercial or strategic interests in the region. They must commit to remaining for a finite period and in numbers befitting their limited mandates (though, as Bass notes, it's important to be careful not to allow the killers to wait out the intervention and to deploy a force sizable enough to protect civilians). Finally, the countries entering a foreign land must have done so on the basis of the good-faith calculation that the benefits of such action would outweigh the costs—to the victims, the region, and the intervening parties.

While instituting such requirements should reduce the risks of cynical or counterproductive interventions, the conditions are in fact so stringent that it is not obvious how or when, in today's world, such conditions might be met. Countries are hardly rushing to contribute troops to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur. And since China and Russia frown on external interferences that aren't of their own making, multilateral consensus is likely to be elusive. On this score, Henry Kissinger seems increasingly correct that "a doctrine of common intervention can furnish a more useful tool to frustrate action than the doctrine of non-interference."

With a few noteworthy exceptions (e.g. Iraq 2003), the United States has acted with inaction when it comes to so-called humanitarian intervention. Will this change? Can it? Should it? History shows that the answers are complex. We all know, however, that the ramifications are often bloody.

Comments

[jerry]

Hi, I'm so glad to find your website. Your article was so good.
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Jerry
http://www.drug-intervention.com/purpose.html