The ultimate sacrifice and the ethics of humanitarian intervention

Abstract

AbstractThe discourse about the morality of humanitarian intervention – though undeniably well- (over-?) trodden in recent years – has two critical gaps. First, despite its central moral concern with the rights and lives of individuals living under massively oppressive states or terrible conditions, and despite its powerful attacks on traditional notions of state sovereignty, the discourse remains statist. Humanitarian intervention understood as something that states do, and if there is a right or responsibility to intervene it is a right or responsibility held by states. The second gap in the discourse follows from the first: because we think of humanitarian intervention as something that states do, the role of the individual soldiers who make up the intervening force – their rights and responsibilities – has been undertheorised.This article argues that a reconsideration of the role of individuals in the context of humanitarian intervention not only helps us to ensure that interventions are carried out in a manner consistent with their own justice claims, but also to recapture the moral heroism of those individuals who willingly sacrifice for the rights and lives of others. Although the moral issues raised here may demand a more constrained politics of humanitarian intervention, they also ultimately have an emancipating effect.