The Pros And Cons Of Humanitarian Intervention

The efficiency of humanitarian intervention is normative because of people having different views on the output and the unlikeliness of every one being pleased by the new regime therefore it is very hard to affirm the real results of the intervention. In 2011, a group of countries intervened during the Libyan civil war, which lead to the abolition of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime. The Operation Unified Protector by NATO was partly successful because they achieved to kill the dictator on 20th October, but partly ineffective because the standards of living in Libya have not increased and the state is facing a lack of government’s ruling. This case study supports the statement that HI could be an abandoned project as it is not always favourable to everyone.

[2] When determining US policy, diplomatic and economic tools of statecraft should be more readily deployed than military intervention for the purpose of genocide prevention and mitigation. As interventionist Samantha Power notes in her book, A Problem From Hell, “[t]he United States should not frame its policy options in terms of doing nothing or unilaterally sending in the marines.” The period of time pre-genocide, which may be characterized by internal unrest or civil war, is a key period of time for U.S. policymakers interested in preserving human life and a nation’s stability. If policymakers fear the development of genocide, they can take steps such as threatening legal consequences, enacting economic sanctions, or “calling on countries aligned with perpetrators to ask them to use their influence.” All of these and similar options are far less risky to the U.S. than a military intervention and can be readily applied in order to prevent violence escalating into genocide or in the case of a suspected, but unconfirmed, genocide.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s violence in Somalia was getting worse as the days went by. This violence allowed warlords from the regions of Somalia and, in turn, go to war with one another. Images of the war showing starving children called for a response from the United States. The United States government sent supplies of food to the needy. However, these warlords got to the food trucks first. This resulted in President George H.W. Bush sending in troops to make sure that the supply lines could reach these desperate people in need of our help. As violence arose in Somalia United States citizens began to question whether or not it was our place to be there.

American involvement in humanitarian intervention is one of the most controversial issues in contemporary US foreign policy. The definition of humanitarian intervention is a military intervention; entering into a country for the purposes of saving lives and protecting citizens from the violation of their human rights. As in all debates, there are always two sides. One side disputes that military force should only be applied when, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Weinberger, ‘a vital national interest is at stake.’ ¹ The opposing side disputes that the US should apply military force to mediate when in the words of former president Clinton, “someone comes after innocent civilians…and it is in our power to stop it, we will stop

A task force of over 400 American special operations Soldiers flew into Somalia with orders to apprehend a warlord. Their mission was part of an international peacekeeping and humanitarian effort to stabilize the areas’ estimated 4.5 million starving population. The seventh attempt by these Soldiers, to capture this warlord, named Muhammed Farah Aydid, is the subject of this paper and known as the Battle of Mogadishu, occurring on October 3 - 4, 1993 (Encyclopedia Britannica, “Somalia Intervention”). The process of time, leadership resolution, and the changing battlefield have produced relevant and elaborative primary and secondary sources on this event. This paper examines a number of those sources, which include actors who were

With a long history of violence, rebellion, and chaos, the African country of Somalia now seeks guidance. The country’s violent past started when military forces overthrew the last democratically elected government in October 1969, about 37 years ago. Military rule undermined, and ultimately destroyed the country. The military regime divided citizens into allies and enemies, and rewarded its allies while it punished whole communities. Life conditions in Somalia became so unbearable that the President Bush, Sr. was forced to act, and ordered thousands of American troops to enter Somalia in order to open the roads so that emergency food aid could be urgently delivered to the citizens.

By November of 1992, conditions were getting worse instead of better. Food was still being stolen and sold off to clan leaders while aid workers were threatened and attacked. Americans were stunned at the lawlessness and starvation. Thousands of troops were ordered into Somalia to assist in the aid by President George H. Bush. Now food was getting to the people that it was intended for but distrust for the American soldiers was growing after they often violated Somalis privacy by bursting into their homes and confiscating the weapons that was the Somalis only defense against the opposing clans.6 In March of 1993 the U.S. withdrew most of its troops leaving the security of the people to the UN. By this time anger was growing towards the outsiders and the UN took most of the fallout for that by being attacked regularly. Hostility grew even more when the UN announced that the clan led by Aidid was the one responsible for the lawlessness in Somalia.7 When the UN took sides against the most powerful warlord in Somalia, the attacks against the aid workers was stepped up. 24 Pakistani peace keepers were killed

The first major point left out by Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down is the initial conditions that lead to the state of civil war, anarchy, and famine that existed in 1992-1993. The first scene of the movie shows many Somalis that are dead or dying from starvation. The audience is told only that “Years of warfare among rival clans causes famine on a biblical scale” and that one of the most powerful warlords, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, is a brutal dictator who is willing to starve his own people. The famine causes the death of 300,000 Somalis, which is enough to prompt a response by the US and UN to restore order to Somalia and to save the population from starvation. The audience is then told that after the withdrawal of the US Marines “Aidid’s militia

Somalia is a small country in the eastern part of Africa, known as “The Horn of Africa”. According to the CIA World Factbook (2016), Somalia has a population of roughly 10.4 million, and 85 percent of people are Somali. Additionally, a significant part of the population is Muslim, (CIA World Factbook, 2016), whom have contributed to the current conflict. In this report, we analyze the recent violent conflict and U.S. intervention in Somalia.

During the 1990’s, Somalia had a famine crisis, which many Westerners labeled as a ‘humanitarian crisis.’ As always, the hegemon, which was the United States, stepped up to the plate and helped in providing food for the starving Somalis. Seeing starving children drew Westerners to sympathize with these individuals and they blamed the inept Somali government for not doing enough to help its citizens. The intervention was meant to deliver food to the Somalia, but later that turned to ‘mission creep’, “the temptation commanders feel to chase success and perhaps glory around the next corner by expanding their mandate and rolling over anyone in their way” (Hoagland, 1: 1993). What was a humanitarian crisis has now turned into a nation-building

With the end of the Cold War Era, humanitarian interventionism became an increasing part of foreign policy in the United States, shaping its interactions with other states; furthermore, it is an issue of controversy and has had mixed results. This paper will examine the way in which the United States responded to two different humanitarian crises in the 1990s, one by intervening and one by ignoring the situation. In the case of Somalia, a country struck by famine, the United States chose to act, due to public opinion, the perceived image of the intervention, and the wishes of then President George H.W. Bush. Contrarily, the genocide in Rwanda failed to receive any intervention from the United States, due to changes in public opinion and

Somalia is a country that has become synonymous with war. The international community continues to spend billions yearly in the fight to stabilize the country even with the persistence of criminal activity and transnational threat groups. The fall of the Somalian Government in 1991 set the conditions for terrorists, pirates, and criminal gangs to use Somalia as a base of operations. (Reed, Thompson, Kfir, 2015) The increase donor spending is accredited to the recent success of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the Somali Armed Forces (SAF) against Al Shabaab.

In early 1991, Somalia fell into a state of civil war, precipitating a catastrophic famine (Baum 188). Almost two years later, in late November 1992, following a year in which the United States first resisted intervening altogether and then did so only relatively modestly, President George H.W. Bush decided to launch a large-scale, American-led military intervention termed Operation Restoration Hope (Baum 188). Less than a year later, amid rapidly deteriorating public and congressional support for the mission, President Bill Clinton announced his intent to end U.S. involvement in Somalia (ibid.). While there were successes under the Bush administration’s limited aims to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, the Clinton

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

In 2014, the emergence of two new entities in the east of Ukraine in the midst of the secessionist conflict, has reawaken the issues surrounding the provision of humanitarian action in non-recognized entities effectively controlling a territory, the so-called de facto states. If humanitarian needs and the effects of wars on civilian population are rarely manageable for the de facto states such as those in Ukraine or in South Caucasus without external assistance, humanitarian action may be subject to instrumentalization of aid, hence creating additional challenges and risks for humanitarian actors. The core idea of this paper is to highlight the interactions between humanitarian actions, its instrumentalization in de facto states and highlight possible patterns.