ABSTRACT
Many developments account for the intensity of the recent debate concerning humanitarian intervention: the rise of humanitarian consciousness reinforced by an evolving sense of international accountability of political leaders; a post-Westphalian realization that ideas about territorial sovereignty need to be reconsidered in light of the various dimensions of globalization; suspicions that dominant states, especially the United States and its coalition partners, are using humanitarian pretexts to pursue otherwise unacceptable geopolitical goals and to evade legal prohibitions on the use of international force and the nonintervention norm; a series of high-profile instances (including Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur-Sudan) in which controversy arose about whether the international community was unacceptably doing too little or too much in response to a severe humanitarian emergency; and the post hoc rationalization of the Iraq War as allegedly justified on humanitarian grounds, rescuing the Iraqi people from tyranny, despite the absence of any prior authorization by the UN Security Council, the opposition of world public opinion, and the high levels of violence, strife, suffering, and destruction in Iraq. Additionally, the contextualization of global security in relation to the American-led struggle against megaterrorism has eroded claims of sovereignty on the part of states alleged to be havens of anti-Western political extremism. These developments also give rise to normative justifications of this erosion on the grounds that it produces humanitarian benefits (e.g., liberating women from an oppressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan, ridding Iraq of brutal dictator).
