A Science of Humanitarian Action?

Abstract

Sword and Salve: Confronting New Wars and Humanitarian Crises. By Peter J. Hoffman, Thomas G. Weiss Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006. 272 pp., $75.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-7425-3977-6), $28.95 paper (ISBN: 0-7425-3978-4). Sword and Salve , by Peter Hoffman and Thomas Weiss, traces how the recent responses to “new wars” have led to a “humanitarianism in crisis” (de Waal 1997; Rieff 2002; Terry 2002; Kennedy 2004) and sketches the actions needed to salvage the humanitarian enterprise as a whole. The book's core argument is that humanitarian organizations must respond to global changes in violence by increasing their analytical capabilities and by adopting a more consequentialist approach to humanitarian crises. According to Hoffman and Weiss, the traditional humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and consent are “unlikely to provide satisfactory guidance in contemporary armed conflicts” (p. 210). As a result, they should be put into a context of explicit strategic thinking as organizations choose goals and commit resources. In short, humanitarianism today will “be judged not by intentions, but by consequences” (p. 210). Hoffman and Weiss advance this core argument with a historical discussion of the emergence of humanitarianism within the state system. Even though principles of neutrality and impartiality were largely appropriate to past conflicts, which were dominated by interstate wars, they have become increasingly dysfunctional in a world of “new wars” that are marked by fragmented political authority, the proliferation of nonstate actors, and the shift toward internal violent conflict (Chapter 3). These new forms of violent conflict have turned humanitarian aid …