Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: The Circle Closes

Abstract

T HE CONCEPT OF ‘HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION’ first appeared in the literature of international law in the mid-19th century, following in the wake of interventions by European nations in the Ottoman Empire. Here, interventions were sought justified in terms of a state’s international liability for acts committed within its own borders. In 1945, the UN Charter fundamentally altered the notion of humanitarian intervention by setting out the conditions under which intervention might take place and, consequently, specifying what types of intervention might not be allowed. Twentieth-century military interventions can be classed into two groups: those preceding the end of the Cold War (roughly 1990) and those following it. The degree to which the military interventions of the Cold War may be considered to have resulted in humanitarian consequences is contested. In conformity with the rise of the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention, those following the Cold War have been more explicitly humanitarian in purpose. To the first group belong the Belgian and US interventions in Congo (1960, 1964), the intervention by the USA in the Dominican Republic (1965), by India in East Pakistan (1971), France and Belgium in the Shaba province of Zaire (1978), Vietnam in Cambodia (1978), Tanzania in Uganda (1979), France in Central Africa (1979), and the USA in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). Post-Cold War humanitarian interventions include Liberia (1990–97), northern Iraq (1991– ), former Yugoslavia (1992– ), Somalia (1992–93), Rwanda (1994–96), Haiti (1994–97), Sierra Leone (1997– ), Kosovo (1999– ), and East Timor (1999– ).1 While the degree of intervention and of humanitarian purpose can be disputed in virtually all of these cases, they share one common criterion: they constitute non-consensual military intervention conducted for alleged humanitarian purposes. The difference between preand post-Cold War intervention revolves around the grounds on which intervention was considered justified, in other words, the source of the legitimacy of the intervention. In the pre-1990 cases, the right to intervene on humanitarian grounds was claimed and exercised by one and the same agent, the intervener. The post-1990 cases distinguish themselves by the fact that they are legitimated either by a United Nations no