ABSTRACT
Humanitarian intervention has never had an easy time gaining broad and deep acceptance among international lawyers. As a doctrine justifying the use of force it has consistently invited skepticism because in practice it often seemed more like a self-interested instrument of power than an altruistic undertaking for the sake of others. Humanitarian intervention was often viewed as geopolitics disguised by the language of legal and moral pretension. After all, it was only weak and non-Western countries that could become sites of humanitarian intervention. Strong and Western countries are off-limits no matter how severe the humanitarian crisis. Besides, with realists of varying stripes shaping the foreign policy of leading states, who but a naïve fool could doubt that beneath the mellifluous rhetoric of humanitarianism were lurking strategic motivations relating to power relationships, foreign basing rights, and access to resources or investment opportunities?
