The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism

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2004] BOOK REVIEWS 155

THE DARK SIDES OF VIRTUE: REASSESSING INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIANISM1

REVIEWED BY DALE STEPHENS2 & ROSALIND DIXON3

In most writings on international law, it seems convenient to portray the military and international humanitarian lawyers as talking different and opposing languages. The military speak the language of Washington, while humanitarians speak the language(s) of Geneva. The military are the "insiders" and international humanitarians the "outsiders." The military use force; humanitarians restrain it. The military represent power and humanitarians try to speak truth to power.

There is, of course, something fundamentally wrong in this picture. The modern humanitarian law project has, in fact, very successfully inculcated military decision-making with a resolute humanitarian vocabulary and sensibility. Organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross have successfully worked in close partnership with many professional militaries to ensure the effective realization of many universally accepted humanitarian goals.

Most writings by international law scholars do not seem to fully appreciate these developments. Not so, David Kennedy's new book, The Dark Sides of Virtue, which provides an extremely novel and important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between international humanitarianism and the military. In contrast to previous scholarship, The Dark Sides of Virtue highlights the successful nature of the military-humanitarian collaboration. In doing so, however, the book also highlights the ambivalence that both sides bring to this collaboration, and it provides real insight into questions about why things can go wrong on the ground, when military and humanitarian projects are joined.

Additionally, the book will be of interest to civilians and to military officers outside the Judge Advocate Generals' Corps, for its portrayal of life aboard the USS Independence. In recounting the week he spent in the Gulf in 1998 aboard the aircraft carrier, Kennedy brings an acute sense of

1. DAVID KENNEDY, THE DARK SIDES OF VIRTUE: REASSESSING INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIANISM (2004).

2. Commander, Royal Australian Navy, BA (Flin.), LL.B. (Hons) (Adel.), GDLP (SAIT), LL.M. (Melb.) LL.M. (Harvard).

3. B.A./LL.B. (UNSW), LL.M. (Harvard), SJD Candidate, Harvard University.

   observation and a wonderful gift for language. In particular, his reflections on the manner in which legal issues are processed in good faith by operators facing a combat situation are particularly uncanny. Indeed, it would be hard to point to a better literary portrait of life aboard a warship than that provided by Kennedy.

   In his arguments for reform, Kennedy's message also speaks in another way to the military as a whole. Throughout the book, he poses some hard questions about how we should think about the manner in which we see ourselves as military and humanitarian professionals, and the relationship between law, military efficiency, and other discourses which are deserving of serious reflection.

   1. Outline

   The book is built around Kennedy's provocative 2001 article, The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?,4 in which he outlined nine potential "dark sides" to the international human rights project.5 In the various chapters of the book, Kennedy goes on to illustrate these dark sides, by drawing on his previous writing about the human rights movement,6 law and development,7 law and European integration,8 and refugee law and protection.9 (Those familiar with his work will note that the book includes revised versions of his extremely well-known previous articles, "Spring Break"10 and "Autumn Weekends."11) Previously unpublished in its entirety, Kennedy illustrates his arguments concerning the dark sides of international humanitarianism by reference to the military context.12 He concludes with reflections on "What Humanitarianism Should Become"―proposing some tentative answers to the provocative questions asked by Kennedy in 2001.13

4. 3 EUR. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 245 (2001), reprinted in 15 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 99 (2002).

5. KENNEDY, supra note 1, at 3.

6. See id. at 37-83 (ch. 2).

7. See id. at 111-46 (ch. 4); 149-67 (ch. 5).

8. See id. at 169-97 (ch. 6).

9. See id. at 199-233 (ch. 7).

10. 63 TEXAS L. REV. 1377 (1985).

11. Autumn Weekends: An Essay on Law and Everyday Life in AUSTIN SARAT &

    THOMAS...