<i>Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention</i> (review)

Abstract

FREEDOM'S BATTLE: THE ORIGINS OF HUMANITARIAN INTER VENTION. By Gary J. Bass. New York: Alfred J. Knopf, 2008. Pp. x + 509. ISBN 978 0 307 26648 4. $35.00 / Can $40.00. For Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeath'd by bleeding Sire to Son, Though baffled oft is ever won. (The Giaour, 123-25) The author of this book is an Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and his work addresses one aspect of the rapidly expanding, cross-disciplinary field often broadly described as 'ethnic conflict'. There are many reasons for ethnic conflict - religious, racial, linguistic, cultural and tribal, among others. Since the end of World War II, academics and others have struggled to identify the initial causes and signs of incipient ethnic conflict, the reasons for the indescribable barbarism and savagery that erupts and the manner by which such conflicts may be prevented or, once commenced, ended. Humanitarian intervention is broadly defined as the use of armed force by one or more sovereign nations to prevent the slaughter or suffering of innocents in another sovereign nation. Such intervention is one method of terminating the bloodshed once it has begun. Bass argues that humanitarian intervention in its current form developed in the early nineteenth century, and that 'the diplomats of a century and three quarters ago were negotiating many of the same questions that Bill Clinton faced in Bosnia and Rwanda and that George W. Bush faced in Congo and Darfur'. His book presents Lord Byron in a new light. It is Bass's position that 'Byron did not live long enough to fully realize his abilities either as an artist or as a political leader, but he died as the poetic hero of the first modern humanitarian intervention'. The dust jacket of this work is a reproduction of the famous painting, The Reception of Lord Byron at Missolonghi by Theodoros Vryzakis, now at the National Gallery in Athens. The title comes from Byron's The Giaour and the three lines quoted above stand alone on a preliminary page following the dedication page. The lines are followed by the inscription: 'Posted by a Solidarity activist, in the Lenin Shipyards, Gdansk, Poland, 1980' (Peter Cochran advised me that the Polish translation posted at the shipyard was by Adam Mickiewicz). Byron's efforts on behalf of the Greek patriots seized hold of the European imagination and his acts and legend flow through this book. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Gladstone, in his great Midlothian Campaign that toppled Prime Minister Disraeli, successfully urged intervention to end the 'Bulgarian atrocities'. Gladstone roared that 'Lord Byron brought to this great cause and to the dawn of emancipation [of the East] not only the enthusiasm of a poet, or the reckless daring of a rover' but he also 'treated the subject with the strongest practical good sense, and with a profound insight which has not been shamed by the results'. Gladstone hoped that Byron's deeds and words 'may yet supply a guiding light to some British statesman'. Gladstone's language was aimed directly at Disraeli who, in his youth, had idolised Byron. The book begins with a 50-page introduction in which the author sets out his three basic themes. First, he addresses the question: 'why do we let evil happen?' Second, he argues that 'freedom at home can help promote freedom abroad'. Third, he argues that 'there is something to be learned from the way that diplomats in the nineteenth century managed the practice of humanitarian intervention'. To set the stage for the development of his themes, Bass explores the concepts of fundamental human rights, imperialism or aggression masquerading as humanitarian intervention and, perhaps most interesting, the enormous impact that a free press had and still has in instigating intervention. The introduction is followed by three sections in which the author provides extensive historical and political analyses of three nineteenth-century interventions by European powers into the Ottoman Empire. …