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Contemporary Humanitarian Intervention

Beyond Rules-Based International Order

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Human Rights in War

Part of the book series: International Human Rights ((IHR))

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Abstract

This chapter traces the international practice of humanitarian intervention from its conceptual and practical inceptions to its current form. After specifying what we mean when we talk about humanitarian intervention, it outlines how ideas around this practice transformed from the late sixteenth century until they supposedly celebrated their heyday after the Cold War in a so-called “rules-based international order.” This chapter proceeds to highlight certain critiques of humanitarian intervention based on notions of state sovereignty, the practical difficulties of “successfully” conducting and/or legitimizing intervention, the relationships between powerful and less powerful states, and the question of humanity. Subsequently, it places these critiques in the context of debates about the supposed “end of the rules-based international order.” While these debates signal a diminishing global enthusiasm for human rights protection through humanitarian intervention, this chapter argues that both this international order and the practice of humanitarian intervention are going through a transition rather than fully coming to an end. While this chapter therefore anticipates an enhanced global emphasis on domestic human rights protection and prudence about foreign intervention, it does not foresee a termination of humanitarian intervention per se.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term “rules-based international order” is often conflated with “liberal international order”; this chapter prefers to use the former. While it will touch upon and critique tenets of humanitarian intervention that may be considered liberal or illiberal, this chapter steers clear from explicitly discussing the variety of possible interpretations of (international) liberalism itself (e.g., see Bell, 2014; Richardson 1997). The extent to which the rules-based international order and/or humanitarian intervention are specifically liberal (or not) warrants a deeper assessment elsewhere.

  2. 2.

    Although this chapter discusses future discourses and practices of humanitarian intervention, it will not delve into its well-established relationship with military technological “progress.” Such technological developments continue to cast fundamental characteristics of humanitarian warfare – notions of distance, precision, proportionality, risk, and noncombatant immunity – in a different light (Zehfuss 2011). Whereas these reconceptualizations may on the one hand serve to represent future humanitarian interventions as “cleaner” and (therefore) more ethical, they might also lead to a blending of everyday humanity with intervention’s violent characteristics on the other hand (Der Derian 2000; Gregory 2014). Simultaneously, as new military technologies increasingly appear to replace warfare’s “human factor,” humanitarian interventions may become more easily justified and more recklessly conducted – more of a technological procedure than an endeavor imbued with human courage or cowardice, self-sacrifice or self-glorification, and compassion or cruelty (Coker 2001, 2013, 2015).

  3. 3.

    For instance, democracy promotion, border security assistance, urban planning, infrastructure development, and health care aid.

  4. 4.

    While prominent interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya present a dubious record, multilateral UN peacekeeping missions have been found to be more successful in places such as Mozambique, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Liberia (Howard 2019).

  5. 5.

    Notably, this impulse is expressed mainly as general values rather than firm international legal principles, using rhetoric such as “encouraging,” “assisting,” and/or “promoting” human rights.

  6. 6.

    For a chronology of humanitarian intervention since the early nineteenth century, see Hehir 2013, pp. 189–191. For a quantitative overview of humanitarian interventions after World War II, see Dembinski et al. 2019.

  7. 7.

    Mary Kaldor, Thomas Weiss, Allen Buchanan, Robert Keohane, and Mervyn Frost were among such thinkers.

  8. 8.

    The 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo, for instance, was (in)famously assessed as “illegal but legitimate” (IICK 2004, p. 4).

  9. 9.

    In a very recent contribution, Catherine Van Offelen and Michael Rainsborough noted “it is striking how rarely the concept of tragedy has been applied to the discourse of humanitarian intervention” (see Van Offelen and Smith 2020).

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  1. University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

    Lucas Knotter

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Correspondence to Lucas Knotter .

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  1. School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Damien Rogers

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Knotter, L. (2022). Contemporary Humanitarian Intervention. In: Rogers, D. (eds) Human Rights in War. International Human Rights. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2116-1_5

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