[1] In Her Widely Known Call For American Action In The

In “On the American Indians” Vitoria argues that there are few situations that justify a country to use humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian intervention is defined as a military force, publicly stated to end the violation of human rights, against another state. Vitoria discredits the justification of humanitarian intervention in every case, unless one is intervening for an ally or a friend. In this paper, I will argue that his view is more plausible than it may at first appear.

In 1994, a conflict the US couldn't understand, between clans and tribes it didn't know, in a country where there were no national interests, occurred. The Rwandan War of 1994 did not deserve US intervention. There are four contentions on why the US should not have gotten involved in this Rwandan war. The Black Hawk Down incident, how the UN was there previously there, there being no Possible Gain, and having nothing to do with us. Through the examination of the novel, An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina, it is Obvious that these key points are valid.

Imagine living in a world where your own homeland is under attack and you can’t rely on any other parts of the world to send you help. There are a multitude of reasons as to why we urgently need the interventionism policy in the United States. One of the biggest reasons would be while the Holocaust was occurring in Germany we were well aware about it, but didn’t come to intervene until it was too late. Along with this, another reason would be to maintain the allies that we have. Although the United States needs to consider the financial and human costs, overall it should follow a foreign policy of interventionism when it’s necessary to prevent humanitarian catastrophe and to maintain our allies.

In A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Powers writes that the US is “extremely slow to muster the imagination needed to reckon with evil.” Powers’ comments are particularly relevant to U.S. policy during the turbulent 1990s and more recently in Syria when the U.S. policymakers chose not to deploy military capability to prevent mass atrocities. Since Powers’ seminal work, the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College (CGSC) located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has taken on the challenge to educate military officers with 10 to 12 years of military experience in the prevention of and response to mass atrocities (MARO). My paper will discuss how international agreements such as the Responsibility to Protect, the Genocide

“I believe the only time we call for intervention is when there is an ongoing genocide” – Bianca Jagger. Looking at the world’s response to the persecution of specific groups of people, the past shows us there is something wrong with how the world views genocide. Of course, any viable human conscience gawks at the news of the most recent minority being wiped out by a ruling power, but this tardy response does nothing to combat the atrocities. Currently, the only response the world implements comes after thousands, or even millions of people have already lost their lives. Truly combating genocide is a battle that must be fought before it ever begins. In partnership with the United States Holocaust Museum, the United States Institute for Peace has developed a program called the Genocide Prevention Task Force. This task force works closely with current government officials to develop a type of plan. A plan that has levels of structure that does more than just respond to future genocide. Spreading the word for prevention though the Genocide Prevention Task Force, will do more to combat genocide than any other approach.

Genocide is the killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity or nationality. Many people think genocide hasn’t taken place since WWII, but that is untrue. “When genocide takes place, there is often a general denial by the perpetrators, and those who might be called upon to intervene are reluctant to acknowledge that it is even happening” (Anderson,16). The hesitation to accept these acts as genocide

In 1994, one of the most brutal genocides of all time took place in the small country of Rwanda. Over the span of approximately 100 days, 800,000 Rwandans were killed—an average of 8,000 people per day— with Tutsis being the primary target. The staggering numbers called for international intervention, yet the action taken across the world was slim. Samantha Power’s “Bystanders to Genocide” reveals that the U.S.’s handling of the Rwandan genocide under the Clinton Administration was both minimalistic and ineffective. She discusses how the U.S. made full effort to pull out all Americans and then pulled back completely on aid, put their own interests above the needs of the Rwandans, and used the history of a similar situation in Somalia to validate their reluctance to take action. Power’s article presents a strong case for why the action, or lack of action, taken by the U.S. was a poor handling of the situation, but leaves the reader with little understanding of why these decisions were made. By examining the U.S.’s decisions in relation to the ideas that Dalai Lama discusses in “Beyond Religion”, the question of why can be answered. Through this lens one can see that the true reason behind their decisions is a lack of “genuine compassion”. This lacking becomes the basis of their decisions, and becomes a rational for standing by during the murder of 800,000 people.

The United States, as a leading world power that owes much of their foundation and rise to power to colonization, holds a responsibility to recognize and prevent acts of genocide. Outside countries cannot be excused for and must be held accountable for their actions during times of crisis, for their passive (and direct) endorsement of systematic annihilation as had happened during the Rwanda Genocide. Western countries especially cannot distance themselves from such issues, cannot claim “innocence” when it is their lack of action and indifference that allowed for such atrocities to occur.

     In 1994, unrest swept through the Maryland-sized African nation of Rwanda. Thousands of Hutu extremists launched a massive assault on the Tutsi, who traditionally make up Rwanda's upper class, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people (Night Rider – 'most days';). The United States immediately responded to this slaughter by turning the other way, denying that a problem existed until years after the genocide had ceased. In 1999, ethnic cleansing (hostility between ethnic groups) broke out in Kosovo in a less severe form. This time, instead of being killed, the Kosovars were driven out of their homes and neighborhoods. This time, United

With this conceded class distinction came the fight for reigning ability, and amidst this power vacuum, Rwandans fell victim to conflicting groups and crime, the eventual building blocks that lead to the massacre of 800,000 civilians. The origins of this ethnic loathing and in turn ethnic genocide can be secured to European colonialism, where those who arrived to colonize and yield the wealth of western knowledge, instead carried racist beliefs. Through this haunting event in history, when foreign governments unfittingly place their ideologies in unknown territory, revealed is how uninvited nations can destabilize a state by stimulating ethnic warfare, causing it to collapse and crumble through conflict.

Humanitarian Intervention has been a topic of controversy especially in the last 100 years where the need for intervention has grown. The debate primarily being about whether or not humanitarian intervention is legal and what effect it has on a country’s sovereignty.After much research on this topic a conclusion was drawn that Humanitarian Intervention is legal, not meaning whether it was ethical or the right thing to do, but legally correct IF and only when it follows the guidelines set by the UN security council.

When peaceful means of a nation’s government fails to put a halt to genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass violation or has been proven inadequate, the UN Security Council has the right to collectively take action.

Much recent discourse surrounding humanitarian intervention has focused on the responsibility to protect (R2P). Prevention is a key component for good international relations and few would say it is not important, but as evidence to date would show prevention is very ineffective, the legality of military intervention still needs to be debated, as to date there is no consensus. For any intervention to be legitimate, whether unilateral or multilateral, it must comply with international law. So as not to cause any confusion, any situation in which an “intervention” is done with the permission or by request of the state being intervened, should be considered humanitarian assistance as state sovereignty is not breached. This paper will

Civil war has become the dominant type of war in death tolls and severity. It has caused humanitarian destruction on a vast scale, as well as serious disruption of regional and international peace and security. The author Samuels states that her purpose of this work was that she has written this to collate and analyse a broad range of international community practice with respect to civil conflicts and coup d’ etat, and to investigate how this practice, which has changed in the past 15 years, is shaping international law and policy. (Samuels, 2007). Since the end of the World War II, and especially in the last decade, states, regional organizations, and the UN have become involved in situations of civil conflicts and coups d’ etat. The international community has also formulated a series of rationales for its actions, ranging from rejecting violence against civilians to rejecting the use of force against domestic governments. The author states that for many years, such responses to civil conflicts and coups took place in the cold war context, and they were largely governed by geopolitical ideology and superpower motives rather than international policy or legal norms. This piece of work will focus on the chapter called ‘ The nature and impact of the emerging norms’. I chose this particular chapter as it’s the most relevant to what Samuel’s is trying to address in her book.

In recent years, multilateral institutions and governments have devoted increased attention to the challenges of international conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and post-conflict peace-building. However, conflicts continue to emerge and many of them turn violent. These deadly conflicts have led to widespread devastation and regional instabilities, as well as large numbers of refugees. The international community’s instruments that have been designed in the wake of the genocide and atrocities in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s, to prevent the outbreak of violent conflict or end fighting have remain unwieldy and, at times, ineffective (Cramer 2006).