Immaculate Intervention: The Wars of Humanitarianism.

AuthorAbrahamson, James L.

With special reference to Libya, George Friedman offers a thorough, thoughtful, and skeptical analysis of what he calls "humanitarian wars", undertaken in response to the notion that the international community has a moral responsibility to protect populations being murderously assaulted by their own governments. That notion--a reaction to the failure to stop the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia--calls for armed interventions that run counter to the founding principles of the UN Charter, even if they have a moral appeal.

In even more problematical cases, like Libya, coalition parties claiming to act on humanitarian principles must necessarily take the weaker (victimized/minority) side in a civil war, whose members, they hope, will prove benevolent if successful.

Another complicating factor: The intervening powers may not be neutral but motivated by national self-interest or eagerness to impose a political ideology as much as a desire to end or prevent a slaughter by the country's legitimate government.

Due to an intervention's legal ambiguity, the civilian casualties its violence might inflict, and a desire to limit costs, the intervening parties tend to escalate gradually, perhaps beginning with no-fly zones and air strikes in an effort to tip the balance in favor of the weaker side and convince the government's...

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