This timely book is a wide-ranging assessment of the international response to devastating contemporary conflicts, such as those in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda. As such, it is the first comprehensive account and examination of humanitarian intervention in the post-cold war period. After a thorough survey of the traditional debates, the authors concentrate on an analysis of contemporary conflict, using illustrations from a range of post-cold war examples. Various options, including non-intervention, peacekeeping, and forcible humanitarian intervention, are illustrated and discussed, with profiles of the most destructive contemporary conflicts and the responses to them by the international community. The roles of governments, UN agencies, the Red Cross and non-governmental organizations are carefully examined. From this material, the authors argue for a reconceptualization of humanitarian intervention and develop principles which, they argue, should govern all of its uses. The book ends with detailed accounts of Bosnia and Somalia. In broadening and updating the theory of humanitarian intervention, this book balances clear explanation with detailed examples. It contains recommended further reading, diagrams and tables, and a full bibliography of references, making it an ideal introduction for students of international relations, international conflict and conflict resolution.
A singular development of the post Cold-War era is the use of military force to protect human beings. From Rwanda to Kosovo, Sierra Leone to East Timor, and more recently Libya to Côte d'Ivoire, soldiers have rescued some civilians in some of the world's most notorious war zones. Could more be saved? Drawing on over two decades of research, Thomas G. Weiss answers "yes" and provides a persuasive introduction to the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention in the modern world. He examines political, ethical, legal, strategic, economic, and operational dimensions and uses a wide range of cases to highlight key debates and controversies. The updated and expanded second edition of this succinct and highly accessible survey is neither celebratory nor complacent. The author locates the normative evolution of what is increasingly known as "the responsibility to protect" in the context of the global war on terror, UN debates, and such international actions as Libya. The result is an engaging exploration of the current dilemmas and future challenges for robust international humanitarian action in the twenty-first century.
"Future-oriented questions are woven through the study and practice of international security. The 48 essays collected in this Handbook use such questions to provide a tour of the most innovative and exciting new areas of research as well as major developments in established lines of inquiry. The results of their efforts are: the definitive statement of the state of international security and the academic field of security studies, a comprehensive portrait of expert assessments of expected developments in international security at the onset of the twenty-first century's second decade, and a crucial staging ground for future research agendas." --Descripción del editor.
Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.
The new form of "humanitarian government" emerging from natural disasters and military occupations that reduces people to mere lives to be rescued. From natural disaster areas to zones of political conflict around the world, a new logic of intervention combines military action and humanitarian aid, conflates moral imperatives and political arguments, and confuses the concepts of legitimacy and legality. The mandate to protect human lives--however and wherever endangered--has given rise to a new form of humanitarian government that moves from one crisis to the next, applying the same battery of technical expertise (from military logistics to epidemiological risk management to the latest social scientific tools for "good governance") and reducing people with particular histories and hopes to mere lives to be rescued. This book explores these contemporary states of emergency. Drawing on the critical insights of anthropologists, legal scholars, political scientists, and practitioners from the field, Contemporary States of Emergency examines historical antecedents as well as the moral, juridical, ideological, and economic conditions that have made military and humanitarian interventions common today. It addresses the practical process of intervention in global situations on five continents, describing both differences and similarities, and examines the moral and political consequences of these generalized states of emergency and the new form of government associated with them.
When foreign powers attack civilians, other countries face an impossible dilemma. Two courses of action emerge: either to retaliate against an abusive government on behalf of its victims, or to remain spectators. Either course offers its own perils: the former, lost lives and resources without certainty of restoring peace or preventing worse problems from proliferating; the latter, cold spectatorship that leaves a country at the mercy of corrupt rulers or to revolution. Philosophers Fernando Tesón and Bas van der Vossen offer contrasting views of humanitarian intervention, defining it as either war aimed at ending tyranny, or as violence. The authors employ the tools of impartial modern analytic philosophy, particularly just war theory, to substantiate their claims. According to Tesón, a humanitarian intervention has the same just cause as a justified revolution: ending tyranny. He analyzes the different kinds of just cause and whether or not an intervener may pursue other justified causes. For Tesón, the permissibility of humanitarian intervention is almost exclusively determined by the rules of proportionality. Bas van der Vossen, by contrast, holds that military intervention is morally impermissible in almost all cases. Justified interventions, Van der Vossen argues, must have high ex ante chance of success. Analyzing the history and prospects of intervention shows that they almost never do. Tesón and van der Vossen refer to concrete cases, and weigh the consequences of continued or future intervention in Syria, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Lybia and Egypt. By placing two philosophers in dialogue, Debating Humanitarian Intervention is not constrained by a single, unifying solution to the exclusion of all others. Rather, it considers many conceivable actions as judged by analytic philosophy, leaving the reader equipped to make her own, informed judgments.
A series of humanitarian tragedies in the 1990s (Somalia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Kosovo) demonstrated the international community's failure to protect civilians in the context of complex emergencies. They were the inspiration for two norms of protection, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Protection of Civilians (POC), both deeply rooted in the empathy that human beings have for the suffering of innocent people. Both norms have achieved high-level endorsement: R2P from the 2005 World Summit and its Outcome document (Art. 138-140) and POC from a series of Security Council resolutions. The two norms of protection were instrumental in adopting the Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (Libya) and 1975 (Cote d'Ivoire) in the year 2011. Both norms raise concerns of misinterpretation and misuse. They both are developing--sometimes in parallel, sometimes diverging, and sometimes converging--with varying degrees of institutionalization and acceptance. This process is likely to continue for some time, with successes and failures enhancing or retarding that development. This book engages in a profound comparative analysis of the two norms and aims to serve policymakers at different levels (national, regional, and UN), practitioners with protective roles (force commanders, military trainers, strategists, and humanitarian actors), academics and researchers (in international relations, law, political theory, and ethics), civil society, and R2P and POC advocates.
An examination of the historical narratives surrounding humanitarian intervention, presenting an undogmatic, alternative history of human rights protection.
Why do politicians think that war is the answer to terror when military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Mali, Somalia and elsewhere has made things worse? Why do some conflicts never end? And how is it that practices like beheadings, extra-judicial killings, the bombing of hospitals and schools and sexual slavery are becoming increasingly common? In this book, renowned scholar of war and human security Mary Kaldor introduces the concept of global security cultures in order to explain why we get stuck in particular pathways to security. A global security culture, she explains, involves different combinations of ideas, narratives, rules, people, tools, practices and infrastructure embedded in a specific form of political authority, a set of power relations, that come together to address or engage in large-scale violence. In contrast to the Cold War period, when there was one dominant culture based on military forces and nation-states, nowadays there are competing global security cultures. Defining four main types - geo-politics, new wars, the liberal peace, and the war on terror she investigates how we might identify contradictions, dilemmas and experiments in contemporary security cultures that might ultimately open up new pathways to rescue and safeguard civility in the future.