ABSTRACT
Has post-Gold War international society developed new legal and political norms of justifiable humanitarian intervention? In what follows it is argued that, at least in the case of genocide, the answer would appear to be yes. The focus of the article, however, is on the complex interactions of the competing demands of law, morality and politics. It is argued that changing conceptions of security and sovereignty, driven in part by the deeper penetration of international human rights norms and values, have produced a political environment where the previously unchallengeable legal norm of non-intervention is beginning to give way. Nonetheless, the principle of non-intervention retains considerable force. In addition, there are serious problems of multilateral institutional (in)capacity that pose unusually difficult problems of unilateral action. As a result, justifying either humanitarian intervention or non-intervention today seems problematic. When faced with massive suffering, both intervening and not intervening often seem both demanded and prohibited.
