NATO, an organisation brought together to function as an anti-communist alliance, faced existential questions after the unexpected collapse of the USSR at the beginning of the 1990s. Intervention in the conflict in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 gave it a renewed sense of purpose and a redefining of its core mission. Abe argues that an impetus for this change was the norm dilemma that the conflict in Bosnia represented. On the one hand a state which oversaw the massacre of its civilians was in breach of international norms, but on the other hand intervention by outside states would breach the norms of sovereign integrity and non-use of force. NATO, as an international governance organisation, thus became a vehicle for avoiding this kind of dilemma. A detailed case study of NATO during the Bosnian war, this book explores how the differing views and preferences among the Western states on the intervention in Bosnia were reconciled as they agreed on the outline of NATO’s reform. It examines detailed decision-making processes in Britain, France, Germany and the USA. In particular Abe analyses why conflicting norms led to an emphasis on conflict prevention capacity, rather than simply on armed intervention capacity.

The question of humanitarian intervention ́s legality remains unanswered to date. This book offers a new approach to the legality issue by combining legal theory and international law. With humanitarian intervention, hard choices still have to be made by the international lawgiver.

The author describes the reasons why humanitarian military interventions succeed or fail, basing his analysis on the interventions carried out in the 1990s in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo, and East Timor.

A series of humanitarian tragedies in the 1990s (Somalia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Kosovo) demonstrated the international community's failure to protect civilians in the context of complex emergencies. They were the inspiration for two norms of protection, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Protection of Civilians (POC), both deeply rooted in the empathy that human beings have for the suffering of innocent people. Both norms have achieved high-level endorsement: R2P from the 2005 World Summit and its Outcome document (Art. 138-140) and POC from a series of Security Council resolutions. The two norms of protection were instrumental in adopting the Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (Libya) and 1975 (Cote d'Ivoire) in the year 2011. Both norms raise concerns of misinterpretation and misuse. They both are developing--sometimes in parallel, sometimes diverging, and sometimes converging--with varying degrees of institutionalization and acceptance. This process is likely to continue for some time, with successes and failures enhancing or retarding that development. This book engages in a profound comparative analysis of the two norms and aims to serve policymakers at different levels (national, regional, and UN), practitioners with protective roles (force commanders, military trainers, strategists, and humanitarian actors), academics and researchers (in international relations, law, political theory, and ethics), civil society, and R2P and POC advocates.

An interdisciplinary approach to humanitarian intervention by experts in law, politics, and ethics.

New essays on philosophical, legal, and moral aspects of armed humanitarian intervention, including discussion of the 2011 bombing in Libya.

The question of when or if a nation should intervene in another country’s affairs is one of the most important concerns in today’s volatile world. Taking John Stuart Mill’s famous 1859 essay “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” as his starting point, international relations scholar Michael W. Doyle addresses the thorny issue of when a state’s sovereignty should be respected and when it should be overridden or disregarded by other states in the name of humanitarian protection, national self-determination, or national security. In this time of complex social and political interplay and increasingly sophisticated and deadly weaponry, Doyle reinvigorates Mill’s principles for a new era while assessing the new United Nations doctrine of responsibility to protect. In the twenty-first century, intervention can take many forms: military and economic, unilateral and multilateral. Doyle’s thought-provoking argument examines essential moral and legal questions underlying significant American foreign policy dilemmas of recent years, including Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Humanitarians are required to be impartial, independent, professionally competent and focused only on preventing and alleviating human suffering. It can be hard living up to these principles when others do not share them, while persuading political and military authorities and non-state actors to let an agency assist on the ground requires savvy ethical skills. Getting first to a conflict or natural catastrophe is only the beginning, as aid workers are usually and immediately presented with practical and moral questions about what to do next. For example, when does working closely with a warring party or an immoral regime move from practical cooperation to complicity in human rights violations? Should one operate in camps for displaced people and refugees if they are effectively places of internment? Do humanitarian agencies inadvertently encourage ethnic cleansing by always being ready to 'mop-up' the consequences of scorched earth warfare? This book has been written to help humanitarians assess and respond to these and other ethical dilemmas.

Humanitarian aid workers increasingly remain present in contexts of violence and are injured, kidnapped, and killed as a result. Since 9/11 and in response to these dangers, aid organizations have fortified themselves to shield their staff and programs from outside threats. In Aid in Danger, Larissa Fast critically examines the causes of violence against aid workers and the consequences of the approaches aid agencies use to protect themselves from attack. Based on more than a decade of research, Aid in Danger explores the assumptions underpinning existing explanations of and responses to violence against aid workers. According to Fast, most explanations of attacks locate the causes externally and maintain an image of aid workers as an exceptional category of civilians. The resulting approaches to security rely on separation and fortification and alienate aid workers from those in need, representing both a symptom and a cause of crisis in the humanitarian system. Missing from most analyses are the internal vulnerabilities, exemplified in the everyday decisions and ordinary human frailties and organizational mistakes that sometimes contribute to the conditions leading to violence. This oversight contributes to the normalization of danger in aid work and undermines the humanitarian ethos. As an alternative, Fast proposes a relational framework that captures both external threats and internal vulnerabilities. By uncovering overlooked causes of violence, Aid in Danger offers a unique perspective on the challenges of providing aid in perilous settings and on the prospects of reforming the system in service of core humanitarian values.

Responsibility to Protect: Research, bibliography, background. Supplementary volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty