Can humanitarian intervention ever be purely humanitarian?

Résumé du document

"Humanitarian war is an oxymoron which may have become reality"(Slim, 1996, 1). Slim' s quote describes perfectly our contemporary world where interventions in the name of human security have become a common international concern in global politics. In the 20th century, it is estimated that 262 million people were killed by their own government, a number that justifies the growing tendency to intervene in states in difficulty (Williams, 2008, 423). However, humanitarian intervention raises many debates as to its legality and legitimacy. Different schools of thought oppose each other as to the motives, results and consequences of humanitarian intervention.

This essay will first look at why and how humanitarian intervention has become so predominant in international politics, then it will analyze the idealist "purely" humanitarian perception of interventions and finally, we will conclude by focusing on the pessimist approach which underlines the impossibility of pure altruist interventions.

Extraits

[...] From a realist perspective, humanitarian intervention stem from interest. Indeed, from the state centrist perspective, the state focuses on its own interest to stay protected from external threats and there is therefore no reason to intervene if the state will not benefit from this intervention.(Baylis&Smith 427) A key example which illustrates this vision is the fact that the US disapproved of the criteria of the ICISS because it did not want to engage its military forces where it had no national interests and that it would not bind itself to criteria that would constrain its right to decide when and where to use force”(Williams,2008, 433). [...]

[...] The belief that humanitarian intervention results from an altruist feeling is materializing into projects like R2P. However, the idea that R2P will go “from words into deeds” suggested by Ban Ki-Moon (Bellamy 639) seems impossible as realist perspective of international relations remain decisive in global politics and pessimists highlight failures of missions and the “inhumane” characteristic of interventions. UN forces are trying to do much more than they have ever done before (Slim in more difficult circumstances and reality points out that successful missions are highly difficult to achieve. [...]

[...] (Betts 33) Following the realist idea, humanitarian intervention can not be portrayed as purely humanitarian as it risks national soldiers' blood for the lives of strangers. This statist paradigm is widely shared. Following missions, states witness the “bodybag effect” which underlines the disapproval of engaging fully in operations which don't amount to anything for the concerned country (Baylis 323) as well as the disastrous outcomes of such missions. In addition to the problem of engaging troops in an inhuman operation, the problem of moral subjectivism needs to be put forward. [...]

[...] Laitin, “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States”, International Security 28 Spring 2004: pp.5-43 - Sarah Kenyon Lischer, “Collateral Damage: Humanitarian Assistance as a Cause of Conflict,” International Security 28 Summer 2003: pp.79-109 - Edward A. Luttwak, “Give War a Chance”, Foreign Affairs 78 July/August 1999: pp.36-44 - Oliver Ramsbotham, “Humanitarian Intervention 1990-5: a need to reconceptualize?”, Review of International Studies 23 1997: pp.445- 468 - Hugo Slim, “Military Humanitarianism and the New Peacekeeping: An Agenda for IDS Bulletin 27 1996: pp.86-95: - Paul D. Williams, ed. [...]

[...] Since the 1990s, a shift to an idealist approach to the world has made its way into global politics. Traditionally, humanitarian intervention takes non military forms (Baylis 114) as it was always believed that sovereign states were the best guardians of human security (Wiliams 423) therefore interventions respected the right of non interference of the UN charter article under the Westphalian system of sovereignty (ibid). However, as Koffi Annan declared “state sovereignty in its most basic sense, is being redefined by the forces of globalization and international cooperation”(Williams 426) and it is now believed that state centric realism does not address the security of people inside the states from political violence. [...]