The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention

The post-Cold War period has witnessed a substantial increase in armed humanitarian interventions-the use of military force by one or more states, acting with or without the imprimatur of the United Nations, to stop mass atrocities in another state, generally without its consent and thus without regard to its sovereignty. The increase has three sources: the emergence of the United States as a peerless power; Western states' embrace and propagation of universal human rights norms; and the international human rights movement's dogged and effective lobbying, using national and international forums, in support of the project. The campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya demonstrate the salience humanitarian intervention has now acquired in world politics. In this new era, states' sovereign immunity is being reevaluated and intervention based on universal human rights principles has become common. Rajan Menon's The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention presents a trenchant challenge to the conventional wisdom on this policy. He contends that universalistic principles invoked in support of it tend to be fig leaves and that armed interventions to stop mass killing occur on a highly selective basis. The rationales offered to justify them more often than not derive from national interest and power politics. States, no matter how powerful, are unwilling to intervene (or resort to lesser measures) when the costs are prohibitive, even when killing unfolds on a massive scale, or when the perpetrators happen to be friends or allies . This short work will range broadly, moving from the Balkan intervention of the 1990s to the 2011 intervention in Libya. It also assesses the failed US intervention in Iraq and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan to highlight the problems-ones relevant to humanitarian wars-that interventions encounter, and create, in the post-war phase. Menon is not advocating that we turn a blind eye to mass killing. Rather, he is asking us to look at the world as it rathe