Basic Principles of Law as Normative Foundations of, and Limits to, Military Enforcement of Human Rights Across State Boundaries

摘要

NATO's military campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the summer of 1999, and more so the military responses of the United States in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, have considerably intensified discussion of the legal, that is to say enforceable, limits of internal state power. Humanitarian intervention violating state sovereignty for the sake of individuals under threat increasingly seems to be justifiable, even without a UN Security Council mandate. However, humanitarian intervention as a war of assistance in an emergency is only justifiable under two conditions. First, if a state threatens the life and physical integrity of its citizens on a large scale. Intervention in favour of positive rights, like the right to vote, would not be tolerable. And second, if no equally or higher ranked goods or interests of innocent third persons are sacrificed in the name of assisting threatened persons in an emergency caused by illegal attacks from their own state authorities. Intervention by an air bombing campaign favoured as a means to protect the lives of third-party soldiers would not be a legitimate means of warfare; and neither would large scale but avoidable 'collateral killings' of innocent civilians. The latter would be a 'war of coercion', not a humanitarian intervention.