Humanitarian Politics Research Articles

The Fugitive Slave Circulars, 1875–76

The fugitive slave circular was one of the most prominent issues in British political debate in 1875 and 1876. The agitation over the instructions issued by the Admiralty on returning fugitive slaves to their masters marked the first significant attack on Disraeli's imperialism, setting the agenda for later attacks, including Gladstone's Midlothian campaign. A study of the agitation and the making of policy shows that humanitarianism retained significant popular appeal between the high points identified by historians in the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study of the fugitive slave circular examines the different groups involved in the agitation and shows how humanitarian politics were embedded with other contemporary debates about matters such as international law, geopolitics, party politics, the British constitution and religion.

Review: Freedom's Battle

FREEDOM'S BATTLE The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention Gary Bass New York: Knopf, 2008. 528pp, US $35.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0307266484)The calls to action are familiar. The foreign correspondent's account of bodies pulped and corpses dismembered. The howls of the victims in the recollections of one or two survivors. The plunder of cities and the inevitable epidemic of rape.The pathology of mass violence recurred too frequently in the 20th century. Armenia, Nanking, Auschwitz, Biafra, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Sarajevo. The list is partial, but it conjures that century's special horrors. But what did such nightmares mean for those who observed from afar? What did they owe to victims of whom they, in the infamous phrase of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, knew nothing (19)?Such ethical dilemmas were not original to the 20th century. They can, as Gary Bass argues in his impressive new book, be traced back to at least the 1820s. In a landmark account of the early politics of humanitarian intervention, Bass broadens our historical horizons to encompass atrocities that other authors have overlooked. Scio, Damascus, Batak. These were among the 19th century's worst outrages. They were also the subject of fierce discussion between aroused atrocitarians and conservative non-interveners in London, Paris, and St. Petersburg.Repeatedly, Bass tells us, the 19th-century powers decided for intervention. In his main case studies - Greece in the 1820s, Syria in the 1860s, and Bulgaria in the 1870s - the interventions were successful and constructive. Even more striking, they proceeded with multilateral support and in a non- imperial manner. There is much to learn, the author contends, from this oft-disregarded history.And there is much for readers to learn from the book that Bass has written. Erudite, provocative, and richly researched, Freedom's Battle offers a panorama of the 19th century's complex humanitarian politics. Adeptly relating the domestic politics of the great powers to the spectre of foreign violence, Bass explains why the human dimension of overseas conflict became a concern for governments in the 19th century. And as he traces the story of intervention from Greece to Armenia, he develops a stridently original account of that century's international relations.Readers will not be surprised to find that the idea of national sovereignty is an early victim of Bass's revisionist history. The abusers of human rights, of course, have recurrently cloaked atrocities behind such legalese, while realist theory tends to view humanitarian intervention as either foolish, fake, or irrelevant (511, 16). For Bass, this is all too much hypocrisy. Sovereignty in the 19th century, he points out, was readily broached. Under the Vienna concert, conservatives claimed the right to intervene against revolutionaries in foreign lands. With the advent of humanitarian politics, fuelled by mass media, liberals simply claimed a similar prerogative for their own convictions.By recapturing the fury and the effectiveness of 19th-century humanitarianism, Bass dismisses old stereotypes of the century as a time of callous deference to sovereign norms. At the same time, some readers may object that his argument obfuscates the limits of his evidence. Bass does not, it must be said, satisfactorily answer the concern that each of his major case studies involves an Ottoman province. …

THE HUMANITARIAN POLITICS OF TESTIMONY: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The witness has become a key figure of our time, whether as the survivor testifying to what he has lived through or as the third party telling what he has seen or heard. Publicly bearing witness of suffering and injustice is precisely what departs the first (International Red Cross) and second (Doctors without Borders, Doctors of the World) ages of humanitarianism. Based on an etymological inquiry of the word in Greek and Latin and on an ethnographical investigation into the production of documents on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, this analysis of the politics of testimony shows how the humanitarian agents define the legitimate manner to tell the world the “victims' truth.” In particular, the increasing presence of psychiatrists and psychologists on the field introduces a new vision in which trauma appears less as a clinical category than as a political argument. This process of subjectification of Palestinians but also of Israelis as victims, which institutes their experience and condition as shared, leaves aside both the individual and collective histories of the subjects.

Between Relief and Politics: Refugee Humanitarianism in Occupied Germany 1945—1946

In this article, I argue that international relief operations carried out between 1943 and 1947 under the umbrella of UNRRA went beyond their stated goal of civilian 'rehabilitation': relief efforts also contributed to the rise of a new internationalism in the aftermath of the second world war. I start my discussion with a comparison between relief operations in Europe after the first and second world wars. In contrast to 1918, humanitarian efforts in 1945 pertained to displaced persons and refugees found outside their countries of origin: an unprecedented instance of mass displacement on the European continent. Although narrowly framed in 1943 in terms of 'Relief and Rehabilitation', Western humanitarianism was tied to the broader issues of forced migration and genocide. In a second section I examine how relief operations can be seen as an illustration of the Anglo-Saxon 'human rights talk' during the wartime period. UNRRA and private welfare organizations fed, housed and clothed refugees at a time when Roosevelt's call for 'freedom from want' was translated into a new set of basic human rights. Western humanitarianism was implementing on the ground some of the general principles proclaimed by the 'human rights revolution' of the 1940s. In a third section I focus on some of the political aspects of relief operations. I discuss the place of Jewish refugees in humanitarian politics and argue that relief operations did much to recognize Jewish Holocaust survivors as a specific national entity, with important consequences for their access to self-determination. I also show how relief efforts rapidly evolved into a commitment to protect political asylum: in this way, postwar humanitarianism was part and parcel of the emergence of the 'West' in the context of the Cold War.

‘Delinquent’ States, Guilty Consciences and Humanitarian Politics in the 1990s

Notions such as ‘guilt’ and ‘forgiveness’ can be defined in objective terms, but more normally have an emotional dimension that cannot be experienced by the institutions examined in this collection of articles. Nevertheless, analogs to these emotions can be discerned in the behaviour of states — and exploring these reveals important insights into what are more (and less) effective ways of responding to, and making amends for, institutional failure. In the 1990s the Western powers were engaged in dealing with a sequence of crises which appeared to call for some kind of intervention — Bosnia 1991/95, Somalia 1992/3, Haiti, 1993/4, Rwanda 1994, Kosovo 1998/9 — and this essay explores the extent to which it can be said that action/inaction in one case can be related back to moral judgements of behaviour in earlier cases. What emerges is not a single narrative of guilt and rectificatory action, but two narratives focusing on different referent objects: obligations towards one's own citizens and toward the putative common good. The picture is complex, yet some significant lessons can be drawn from this analysis. One is the counter-intuitive point that a ‘guilty conscience’ may actually be more effective when the guilt in question is not attributable to the individual whose behaviour is affected, but rather is seen to be borne by the institution that he or she represents. Assuming that guilt is generated by ignorance rather than ill-will, another, more general, lesson is that better intelligence in the broadest sense of the term — including intelligence of the past moral failures of institutions — may be of more value than a (probably difficult to achieve) theory of institutional guilt.

Constraining war: Human security and the Human right to peace

The explicit articulation of a cosmopolitan conception of human security and a corresponding right to peace is a positive development in global politics, inasmuch as it decenters the state in our understanding of the human community and delegitimizes organized violence as the generally accepted means for the “continuation” of realist politics. I have argued that just war theory, when defined in suitably narrow fashion, helps to contribute to our thinking on issues of human security in several ways. First, it provides a stringent normative framework for a reasonable humanitarian justification of the resort to force. Second, it enables us to conceptualize significant moral and legal constraints on war and thus on the powers of states to wage war, thereby displacing the use of force from the statist paradigm of security. Third, it contributes to the delegitimation of unjust wars, that is, military actions undertaken for any purposes other than human security. Fourth, insofar as it provides a justificatory basis for the increasing demilitarization of society, it may influence the progressive and just pacification of global politics. As long as the types of human wrongs that present the gravest threats to human security continue to haunt the global community, there remains a need to be able to respond effectively so as to protect the rights and well-being of individuals. This need poses a genuine dilemma for humanitarian morality and politics, insofar as many of the military capabilities required to defend and to aid vulnerable persons can also be the source of threats to human life and welfare. Yet the existence of this dilemma need not lead us either to apathy or to cynicism. The nexus of human security, the right to peace, and just war theory offers a resolution to the traditional security dilemma by challenging the realist rationale for aggressive militarism, and by supporting the emergence of global security structures and processes guided by the humanitarian norms of just peace. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A28BB021 00002

Private Voluntary Aid and Nation Building in South Vietnam: The Humanitarian Politics of CARE, 1954–61

Between 1954 and 1961, American private voluntary organizations (PVOs) endorsed U.S. intervention in Vietnam and offered humanitarian assistance to help save the Vietnamese people from communism. The Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere (CARE) and a prominent group of PVOs solicited the support of American and Saigon governments and willingly supplemented official strategies to build an independent, noncommunist nation in South Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem. Government authorities protected and advised PVOs’ operations, subsidized their distributions, and used their altruistic reputations to boost the psychological impact of America’s role there. As U.S. military involvement escalated, PVOs’ partnership with the government ultimately hampered their aid efforts by politicizing their humanitarian programs and increasing their dependence on government security. CARE’s participation in this failed nation building experiment reveals the pervasiveness of Americans’ cultural and political misjudgments about Vietnam’s struggle for independence. It also shows how private citizens and beneficent institutions helped serve Cold War objectives and implement U.S. foreign policy.

Realpolitik and humanitarian intervention: The case of Somalia

This article examines factors that motivate major powers to participate in humanitarian interventions, with a case study of US intervention in Somalia during the period 1992-93. Two potential explanations are assessed: First, the ar ticle considers the conventional perspective that the Un i ted States interven ti on was guided by hu m a n i t a rian con s i dera ti on s , particularly a desire to attenuate effects of famine,war, and political disorder in Somalia. Second,US intervention may have reflected realpolitik considerations, e.g. maintaining control over traditional spheres of influence for re a s ons of n a ti onal power and pre s ti ge , as well as gaining access to potential oil supplies. While altruistic concerns may have had some influence on US conduct, this study finds that humanitarianism was (at best) mixed with considerations of national interest. Introduction With the termination of the Cold War, it is often asserted that international relati ons no lon ger have a basic logic or com m on thre ad . A con tra ry vi ew holds that m a ny analys t s’ con f u s i on abo ut world po l i tics stems from the irrel eva n ce of re a l i s t p a rad i gm s . In deed , Ch a rles Kegl ey ’s 1993 Pre s i den tial Ad d ress to the In tern a ti on a l Studies Association raised the possibility of realism’s obsolescence for the current era. Kegley argued that recent events could herald a return to Wilsonian idealism.2 The view that we have entered a “neo-Wilsonian” era is widespread. One manifestation of this neo-Wilsonianism is the rise of humanitarian interventi on . It appe a rs that the po s t Cold War era has finally inaugura ted a world order where great powers use their military force not as an expression of realpolitik, as was true earlier, but as a technique to restore democratic governance, overcome famine, or pro tect minori ti e s . Even Jack Don n elly, a skepti c , ack n owl ed ges that “hu m a n rights and issues of humanitarian politics more generally, have achieved an international prominence at least as great as at any other time in modern history.”3 Hu m a n i t a rian interven ti on also has tra n s form ed the ideo l ogical ch a racter of deb a te on intern a ti onal rel a ti on s . L i beral activi s t s , of ten of feminist and/or pac i f i s t orientation, and hostile to foreign intervention, have in recent years become enthusia s tic su pporters of the con cept , provi ded that interven ti on is of the hu m a n i t a ri a n variety. Indeed, in the debate over intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo, many of the strongest advocates of force had previously been staunch opponents of US intervention in Vietnam or Central America during the Cold War.4 This article In tern a tional Pol i ti cs 3 7: 4 1 5 5 , Ma rch 2000 © 2000 Kl uwer Law In tern a ti o n a l . Pri n ted in the Un i ted St a te s

Human Rights, Humanitarian Crisis, and Humanitarian Intervention

invitation to contribute to this volume was the opportunity to reassess these views in light of the profound international changes of the past few years. The new political environment of the post-Cold War world is clearly somewhat less unconducive to humanitarian intervention. In fact, human rights, and issues of humanitarian politics more generally, have achieved an inter national prominence at least as great as at any other time in modern history. Nonetheless, I remain sceptical. Sovereign states and their prerogatives, I will argue, remain central in the post-Cold War world, even in humanitarian issues. We should not expect either hopefully or fearfully the imminent emer gence of an international practice of humanitarian intervention.2

Do International Ethics Matter? Humanitarian Politics in the Sudan

Weiss and Minear explore the problems associated with attempting to operationalize the evolving international humanitarian norm that civilians, regardless of location, are entitled to sustenance and medical assistance. In a host of recent civil wars in Africa, the attention of the international community has been drawn to the use of food deprivation by both governments and insurgents. The use of such deprivation has traditionally been part of the arsenals of warring factions, but the widespread and active mobilization of international public opinion against such tactics is relatively new. The authors argue that, while all historical situations are in some sense unique, Sudan is not so idiosyncratic that the lessons and the precedents cannot be replicated elsewhere to protect civilians caught between warring sides in civil wars.

Humanitarian Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross

Journal Article Humanitarian Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross Get access Humanitarian Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross. By David P. Forsythe. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1978. 298 pp.£12.50. Sydney D. Bailey Sydney D. Bailey Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 55, Issue 2, April 1979, Pages 269–270, https://doi.org/10.2307/2616325 Published: 01 April 1979

Humanitarian Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross

Humanitarian Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross