United States Foreign Policy and Humanitarian Intervention: Legitimacy, Practice, and Future Prospects

Abstract

The 1990s have been a roller coaster ride for the United Nations, the international community, and the United States in terms of its efforts at peace operations. From the early post-Cold War optimism of United Nations secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali's An Agenda for Peace to the deaths of 18 U.S. Army Rangers in Somalia and the current situation in Kosovo, the international community has struggled to cope with the ever-changing circumstances on the world stage. From the cautious embrace of the United Nations during the latter part of the Bush administration to the assertive multilateralism of the Clinton administration, the United States in particular has labored to define the role of peace operations within its foreign policy framework.Potentially the most troublesome form of peace operations encountered by both the United Nations and the United States has been that of humanitarian intervention. As Professor William J. Durch has noted, humanitarian intervention can difficult for a number of reasons, including problems of consent, restricting the mandate, and the complexity due to the presence of numerous relief organizations. Other key problems which tend to complicate humanitarian intervention operations are the issues of impartiality and neutrality of humanitarian work, the strain that exists between humanitarianism and human rights, and the potential to prolong a conflict. In terms of the United States, policy-makers have wrangled over issues of command and control, criteria to intervene, and the role of military units in humanitarian intervention operations.The goal of this paper is to examine the post-Cold War United States foreign policy concerning involvement in peace operations, specifically those involving humanitarian intervention. I will argue in this paper that the current United States foreign policy concerning involvement in humanitarian intervention lacks a coherent, principled approach for determining participation and level of participation in those operations. To this end, I will first address the prickly issue of defining humanitarian intervention and then the legal issues and legitimacy of intervention. Second, I will be discuss and analyze the development of U.S. policy toward peacekeeping from the Bush administration through Presidential Decision Document 25 (PDD 25). Third, I will address two case studies of humanitarian intervention operations, one in which the United States participated and one in which the United States did not (to any significant degree), examining the coherence and consistency of U.S. policy. Finally, I will attempt to define a new set of criteria for U.S. participation in humanitarian intervention. Inconsistency in both leadership and application leads me to suggest that criteria ought to be more strict and grounded more in interests rather than public opinion and multilateralism.