Tales of Humanitarian Intervention Gone Awry: The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present; The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention

Authors

Richard Falk

Abstract

Ever since manitarianthe fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union there has been an upsurge of international undertakings that have claimed humanitarian justifications for military interventions in foreign societies. A second kind of justification for such interventions all of which are launched by Western countries (especially the United States) was associated in this period with the global “war on terror” initiated during the presidency of George W. Bush in response to the 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In other words, this upsurge in interventions draws partly on a normative rationale drawn from religion, morality, and law and partly from a security rationale premised on stretching the law of self-defense to meet the distinctive challenge of transnational mega-terrorism. The central question raised is whether this contemporary practice of intervention has been beneficial from the perspective of either humanitarianism or security.

Recommended Citation

Falk, Richard (2016) "Tales of Humanitarian Intervention Gone Awry: The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present; The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention," International Dialogue: Vol. 6, Article 5.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32873/uno.dc.ID.6.1.1119
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/id-journal/vol6/iss1/5