Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention

摘要

At the very beginning of the twenty-first century, two concerns ranked high on the military-political agenda of the Western world: humanitarian intervention and terrorism. This is an essay on the ethical issues surrounding the former. The events of September 11, 2001, have understandably increased the concern with terrorism and pushed the problems of humanitarian intervention into the background. But the issue is unlikely to remain offstage for long, if only because the shadows cast by humanitarian disasters such as the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 will continue to darken the conscience of the international community-and there is every prospect that further such shadows will be cast in the future. Moreover, if military interventions in the Middle East against terrorism prove successful, they may bolster the case for the use of military intervention in the cause of humanitarian relief by suggesting that military power can be effective in solving political problems at a distance and in aiding positive social transformation of other societies.