Arguments Against Armed Humanitarian Intervention

Creating relations between races and ethnicity's has always been vital to the success of the world. The United States and the international community have been, more often than not, late to stop violent acts against humanity. It took decades after the United Nations was created, and after a horrendous genocide in Rwanda, for the International Criminal Court to be created. Despite these two establishments created for international peace and security, crimes against humans rights are still occurring.When human rights are being violated, it is necessary for the U.S. and its allies to intervene in ethnic conflicts. While others may say humanitarian intervention goes against a state’s sovereign authority,it is necessary to protect

Currently, the world is in disagreement over tensions in the Middle East. A divided country of the Syrian government and rebels has caused horrific acts. Acts that the president of the United States deemed necessary for military retaliation. That has sparked the debate on if it was not only justified but ethical to launch tomahawk missiles into war-torn parts of Syria. In an article on the Huffington Post, Dr. Helen Ouyang argues that it was justified and that military intervention is needed. She uses different forms of arguments to draw comparisons of Syria to other countries around the world, dissociate the scenario with the past military struggles and offers many reasons why the benefit will outweigh the cost.

If a war is to be just then the third condition that must be satisfied is that it must be done with the right intentions. If a nation’s real reason for war is only to further its own interests, or to get back at an enemy, then that war is not considered just. With the just war theory, the only true was to have right intentions is for peace to be the desired outcome. The purpose of humanitarian intervention is to save and protect inferior foreign people, showing that the intentions are right.

Section one deals with the debates that surround the issues of humanitarian intervention and just war theory on the basis of international scale. One article by Holzgrefe is completely focused on the debate, stating the many ethical theories of many different theorists: from "utilitarianism; natural law; social contractrianism; communitarianism; and legal postivism" (7). Holzgrefe goes on to define what each ethical theorist is and their understanding of the debate on humanitarian intervention. However, there is the idea of when it is right to intervene and when intervention is unfavorable. The most interesting part was the third section of the article.

The debate of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect have been discussed in international relations discourse more seriously within the last 60 years. The major historical developments which have led to an increase in the intensity of these debates have had beneficial and detrimental effects on Earth within the last 20 years. Several factors have contributed to this including; globalization, the rise in international accountability, an increase humanitarian consciousness to prevent major atrocities from occurring, the expansion of territorial to global responsibility of the western world, and the realization of the western world that regional sovereignty no longer accounts for national security. To develop an opinion

Humanitarian effort is an interesting topic to me. While reading about these efforts it is clear that people are at the heart of such efforts. Humanitarian efforts should be guided by goals such as; humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality. These important principles should be at the core to humanitarian work. It is critical to distinguish humanitarian action from other forms of activities. Humanitarian Laws, International Human Rights Law, and International Refugee Laws provides the frame work for fundamental legal standards relating to the protection of groups and individuals, as well as to the nature of the assistance being provided. In thinking about this topic along with the first of two questions needed to complete this assignment, I researched International Law as a Basis for Humanitarian Intervention. I discovered that there is no state right to humanitarian interventions. Furthermore, I learned that no government has the right to violate the territorial integrity and political independence of another country, locality or state under any circumstance. In my own opinion basic human rights have to be met no matter the circumstance.

But as these conflicts have shown, laws of war do not “restrain” conflict, but rather prioritize military necessity over human life. War law has facilitated violence, through the use of the law, violence circumvents humanism and becomes legitmized. As each decade and century goes on, we see optimistic signs of states unifying to condemn violence and signing pacts and conventions which at face value appear to be a sign of the decrease in the ever- increasing savagery of warfare. Jochnick and Norman again explain this paradox very well, in that in lie in the ulterior motives of those who formulate and practice the laws of war versus the idealistic individuals who simply call for it. Governments, lawyer, diplomats and soldiers who often oversee these conventions and pacts again prioritize their sovereign authority during laws creation. No state, regardless of their ambitions is willing to agree to restrictions to deploy the necessary military power to defend their national interests. The vital point here is national interests, not simply defending the state or its boundaries. The Geneva Conventions are often characterized as strict and non-negotiable, the Hague laws are vague and weak, enabling easy loopholes and abuses to be justified under its oversight by states. The United States, United Kingdom, and France were one of the original 26 creators of the Hague Conventions, again it is no surprise that many of the global powers of the 19th and 20th century sought create a legal jurisprudence that enabled certain concessions by other states, but also created easy loopholes that could be exploited by their hegemonic power and global influence. This also has the falls into what I had previously noted. was the Westernized notion of law and legal practices. An act

As breaking news is more easily communicated across the globe, the U.N. and other states led forces are more inclined to intervene more then ever before but sometimes they are faced with the problem of protecting a states sovereignty. There is a growing skepticism that is facing humanitarian intervention when a sovereign state fails to protect it’s own population. The question arises when humanitarian intervention supersedes the sovereignty of a state. Does the state remain sovereign or does it lose authority when an outside party intervenes? Respecting a states sovereignty is a high priority between the United Nations and other state led forces, but when a sovereign state fails the responsibility protect it’s own citizens there is an unclear line that confuses the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention and it’s principles of military action. The United Nation’s humanitarian intervention, and the principles of its military action, has shown time after time of its failures and successes in combating or escalating wide spread violence. In this study I will weigh the pros and cons of several conflicts where humanitarian intervention was deployed and decide if humanitarian intervention was a successful or unsuccessful procedure. By focusing on what is causing these complications in enforcing humanitarian intervention within failed states will prove if this practice is just or not. But before I discuss these issues of

In this essay’s scope, the Syrian war has been analyzed using the just war theory. The just war theory highlights situations where waging a war can be justifiable and also provides guidelines on how a war should be fought. In as much as the theory recognizes the need to protect innocent human life even when it involves the use of force, the theory puts in place several principles that need to be met to qualify a war as being just. As for the Syrian situation, the bone of contention is whether the proposed US military intervention is justifiable or not. Those who are for a US military intervention observe that the enormity of the massacre in Syria justifies an external intervention. They point out that an intervention would protect further loss of innocent human life. Those against such a move point out some guidelines that have not been met to merit such an intervention as a just

An understanding of where the Syrian healthcare system stood before the civil war, the toll of the fighting and intentional targeting of medical personnel/infrastructure, ongoing humanitarian efforts, and America’s actions to date enable an informed evaluation of whether or not to use American military forces in a humanitarian assistance role in Syria. This context allows for an examination of the limitations of humanitarian aid, the advantages/disadvantages of plausible courses of action involving the military and the threat of mission creep. Before evaluating the merits of available courses of action the military can take to address Syria’s medical crisis, it is important to identify and understand the limitations of humanitarian assistance in general. Taylor Seybolt, Associate Professor in International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh an expert on military and humanitarian intervention, cites the following inherent limitations of humanitarian intervention: it does not provide a lasting solution to conflict; it has the potential to prolong wars; it can foster economic dependence; and it inhibits strong state development.19 When these limitations are considered in regard to Syria, military intervention for the sole purpose of providing medical humanitarian support does not make sense.

Humanitarian Military Intervention in the recent years has been creating a lot of controversies and debates all over the world. It has become one of the most debated concepts in the field of international relations. To be able to justify the so-called HMIs is a highly problematic issue at hand. Before we go any further into the debate of HMI, let us first try and understand what the concept actually means. One very interesting and exhaustive view (in my personal regard) about the concept of HMI that I came across is found in the book ‘Encyclopedia of Global Justice’. “Humanitarian Military Intervention is the violation of the strict sovereignty of a state, defined as humanitarian by its aim of remedying or preventing human rights violations. The humanitarian aim is necessary for distinguishing the intervention from other various acts of military aggression that are strictly prohibited by international law and convention. Humanitarian military intervention is often understood to constitute a noteworthy application of Just War Theory, and, on many accounts represents an exception to the prohibition on the use of military force in international relations. Within the Just War tradition, humanitarian intervention is distinguished from wars of conquest by its humanitarian aims, and from humanitarian assistance by virtue of forcefully violating state sovereignty.” This definition, in my view, demonstrates the complexity of

In this essay, my arguments are not entirely against the use of military force rather how the force actually is applied. Based on numbers of issues where international community has failed to address genuine humanitarian crisis and how some states have manipulated the norm and used other tools to promote and justify their interest related interventions defying the law and limiting UN as just an institution without any significant power.

However, it can be argued that the motives behind intervention are not as important as the interventions themselves – the moral function of humanitarian intervention is to save lives and this can be achieved with or without altruistic motives. To this a possible reply is that seemingly unjust intervention may aggravate the receiving state, more so perhaps in military interventions than economic, political or social. A threatened state is arguably more likely to initiate a backlash. However, such an argument cannot be made against a UN-sanctioned intervention, where it can be agreed that the intervention is legitimate and in the interests of the global community. The issue of marginalising state sovereignty completely ignores the fact that sovereignty is granted by the international community , . The arguments that states such as China may put forward, that state sovereignty is absolute and deserving of unadulterated respect, rests on the idea that states grant themselves sovereignty, which upon reflection, one finds to be untrue. State sovereignty can only be realised if it is acknowledged by the global society of states. To this a realist might argue that theoretical sovereignty is separate from actual sovereignty, and that states will defend their sovereignty regardless of its

One reason for this may be, as M. Dixon[4] points out, that idealism is misplaced precisely because international law does not provide an adequate, effective and compulsory enforcement machinery for the peaceful resolution of disputes. Hence, atrocities of war will perpetuate and will remain to make headline news Traditionally, there has always been a distinction made between the law relating to the resort to war, technically known as jus ad bellum and the law governing conduct of war, jus in bello. Under International law there are a set of procedures for States to follow[5] in order to settle their disputes.[6] Notwithstanding this, there still remains an element of stigma that States are not prepared to concede entirely in a system where disputes are settled in accordance with legal principles.

For humanitarian intervention, use of military force is a central feature, though it has fundamental values that support it such as justice, state sovereignty, world order and politics. Moreover, the principles that govern humanitarian intervention are just cause, proportionality, last resort, good over harm, right intention and reasonable prospect.