BiblioVault - Books about Humanitarian intervention

Civil War, Civil Peace

Helen Yanacopulos

Ohio University Press, 2006

More than two hundred wars have been fought in the past half century. Nearly all have been civil wars, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than thirty civil wars were being fought. The “rules” of interstate war do not apply; each atrocity provokes retribution, and civil war takes on a brutal dynamic of its own. Civil War, Civil Peace challenges common but simplistic explanations of war, including greed, gender, and long-standing religious or ethnic hatreds, which ignore that these groups have lived together in peace for centuries.

When a cease-fire is arranged, aid workers, military personnel, diplomats, and others pour in from the United States, Europe, and international agencies. Outside help is essential after a war, but too often, well-intentioned interveners do more harm than good. A half of civil wars have resumed after failed peace agreements.

Each war is different, and there can be no intervention handbook or best practices guide. Aimed at practitioners and policy makers, and essential reading for students of war, humanitarian intervention, peace building, and development, Civil War, Civil Peace provides a comprehensive examination of how interventions can be improved through a better understanding of the roots of war and of the grievances and interests that fueled the war.

[more]

From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond

Human Rights and International Intervention

David Chandler

Pluto Press, 2006

'That the human rights rationale for interventionism is a genuine menace to human rights and to democracy is convincingly demonstrated in this fine book.'
Edward S. Herman

'Chandler deftly unpicks the hypocrisy and double standards behind our "ethical" bombing in the balkans and Asia.'
Independent

'Chandler's book is thorough and relentless in its critique of human rights consensus.'
Spiked

'David Chandler has emerged in recent years as one of Britain's foremost critics of the hypocrisy of human rights.'
The Spectator

This new and updated edition of David Chandler's acclaimed book takes a critical look at the way in which human rights issues have been brought to the fore in international affairs. The UN and Nato's new policy of interventionism--as shown in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor--has been hailed as part of a new 'ethical' approach to foreign policy. David Chandler offers a rigorous critique of this apparently benign shift in international relations to reveal the worrying political implications of a new human rights discourse. He asks why the West can now prioritise the rights of individuals over the traditional rights of state sovereignty, and why this shift has happened so quickly. Charting the development of a human rights-based foreign policy, he considers the theoretical problems of defining human rights and sets this within the changing framework of international law. Meticulous and compelling, From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond offers a disturbing insight into the political implications of a human rights-led foreign policy, and the covert agenda that it conceals.

David Chandler is Professor of International Relations, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. He has written widely on democracy, human rights and international relations and is also the author of Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton (Pluto Press, 1999/ 2000) and Constructing Global Civil Society: (2004), editor of Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics (2002) and Peace without Politics: Ten Years of State-Building in Bosnia (2005), and co-editor of Global Civil Society: Contested Futures (2005).

[more]

Human Rights at Risk

Global Governance, American Power, and the Future of Dignity

Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr. and Irene Hadiprayitno

Rutgers University Press, 2022

Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century. The volume is organized based on three overarching themes that highlight the challenges and risks in international human rights: international institutions and global governance of human rights; thematic blind spots in human rights protection; and the human rights challenges of the United States as a global and domestic actor amidst the contemporary global shifts to authoritarianism and illiberal populism. One of the very few books that offer new perspectives that envision the future of transnational human rights norms and human dignity from a multidisciplinary perspective, Human Rights at Risk comprehensively examines the causes and consequences of the challenges faced by international human rights. Scholars, students, and policy practitioners who are interested in the challenges and reform prospects of the international human rights regime, United States foreign policy, and international institutions will find this multidisciplinary volume an invaluable guide to the state of global politics in the twenty-first century.

[more]

Just Intervention

Anthony F. Lang Jr., Editor

Georgetown University Press, 2003

What obligations do nations have to protect citizens of other nations? As responsibility to our fellow human beings and to the stability of civilization over many years has ripened fully into a concept of a "just war," it follows naturally that the time has come to fill in the outlines of the realities and boundaries of what constitutes "just" humanitarian intervention.

Even before the world changed radically on September 11, policymakers, scholars, and activists were engaging in debates on this nettlesome issue—following that date, sovereignty, human rights, and intervention took on fine new distinctions, and questions arose: Should sovereignty prevent outside agents from interfering in the affairs of a state? What moral weight should we give to sovereignty and national borders? Do humanitarian "emergencies" justify the use of military force? Can the military be used for actions other than waging war? Can "national interest" justify intervention? Should we kill in order to save?

These are profound and troubling questions, and questions that the distinguished contributors of Just Intervention probe in all their complicated dimensions. Sohail Hashmi analyzes how Islamic tradition and Islamic states understand humanitarian intervention; Thomas Weiss strongly advocates the use of military force for humanitarian purposes in Yugoslavia; Martin Cook, Richard Caplan, and Julie Mertus query the use of force in Kosovo; Michael Barnett, drawing on his experience in the United Nations while it debated how best to respond to Rwandan genocide, discusses how international organizations may become hamstrung in the ability to use force due to bureaucratic inertia; and Anthony Lang ably envelopes these—and other complex issues—with a deft hand and contextual insight.

Highlighting some of the most significant issues in regard to humanitarian intervention, Just Intervention braves the treacherous moral landscape that now faces an increasingly unstable world. These contributions will help us make our way.

[more]

Language Contact and Bilingualism

Rene Appel

Amsterdam University Press, 2013

In the late 1990s NATO dropped bombs and supported armed insurgencies in Yugoslavia while insisting that its motives were purely humanitarian and that its only goal was peace. However, George Szamuely argues that NATO interventions actually prolonged conflicts, heightened enmity, increased casualties, and fueled demands for more interventions.

Eschewing the one-sided approach adopted by previous works on the Yugoslavian crisis, Szamuely offers a broad overview of the conflict, its role in the rise of NATO’s authority, and its influence on Western policy on the Balkans. His timely, judicious, and accessible study sheds new light on the roots of the contemporary doctrine of humanitarian intervention.

[more]

Prelude to Genocide

Arusha, Rwanda, and the Failure of Diplomacy

David Rawson

Ohio University Press, 2018

As the initial US observer, David Rawson participated in the 1993 Rwandan peace talks at Arusha, Tanzania. Later, he served as US ambassador to Rwanda during the last months of the doomed effort to make them hold. Despite the intervention of concerned states in establishing a peace process and the presence of an international mission, UNAMIR, the promise of the Arusha Peace Accords could not be realized. Instead, the downing of Rwandan president Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 rekindled the civil war and opened the door to genocide.

In Prelude to Genocide, Rawson draws on declassified documents and his own experiences to seek out what went wrong. How did the course of political negotiations in Arusha and party wrangling in Kigali, Rwanda, bring to naught a concentrated international effort to establish peace? And what lessons are there for other international humanitarian interventions? The result is a commanding blend of diplomatic history and analysis that is a milestone read on the Rwandan crisis and on what happens when conflict resolution and diplomacy fall short.

Published in partnership with the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series.

[more]

Reluctant Interveners

America's Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur

Eyal Mayroz

Rutgers University Press, 2020

2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Featured in the 2020 Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show

Why do we allow our governments to get away with “bystanding” to genocide? How can we, when alerted to the mass slaughter of innocents, still not take a stand? Reluctant Interveners provides the most comprehensive answers yet to these confronting questions, focusing on the complex relationships between the citizenry, the media, the political elites, and institutions in the most powerful nation in the world, the United States of America.

Eyal Mayroz offers a sobering account of the interactions between the governing and the governed, and the dynamics which transformed moral concerns for the lives of faraway “others” into cold political calculations. Exposed are the processes that turned the promise of “never again” to a recurring reality of ever again, the role of the office of the presidency in their advancement, and the resultant image of America as seen by the rest of the world. In a time of ubiquitous social media and populist revival, a greater role for the U.S. citizenry in decision-making on responses to genocide may be in the cards. The question is, in which directions will these trends take American foreign policy?

[more]

Responsibility to Protect

From Principle to Practice

Edited by Julia Hoffmann and André Nollkaemper

Amsterdam University Press, 2012

The tragic events during the 1990s in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Kosovo, as well as the recent crisis in Libya, have triggered a fundamental rethinking of the role and responsibility of the international community in regard to mass atrocities. The principle of the Responsibility to Protect maintains that although individual nations bear the brunt of the responsibility to guard against genocide, ethnic cleaning, and crimes against humanity within their boundaries, the international community must step in when the state is unable or unwilling to provide such protection. This book assesses to what extent the principle is grounded in international law and examines how international institutions, including the United Nations, can contribute to the aim of protecting victims in cases of mass atrocities.

[more]