ABSTRACT

Traditionally, international law is imaged as a decentralized legal order between sovereign states, based on state consent and a prohibition of intervention. World order or 'Empire' is imagined as a complete, global, self-sufficient, naturally evolving order, located at, or beyond, the end of history. This chapter examines the recent development of two forms of intervention: self-defence against terrorism and intervention for humanitarian purposes. Violations of human rights are then viewed as a disruption of normalcy, carried out by locals who shock the 'consciousness of mankind' by brutalizing acts against powerless victims. In the former Yugoslavia as elsewhere, the project of economic restructuring and liberalization which remains central to the new world order contributed to creating the conditions in which such hatreds were inflamed. In the context of humanitarian intervention, where states and international organizations use force in the name of humanity, the savage-victim-savior imagery takes a specific form.