ABSTRACT
An examination of the ethics of armed humanitarian intervention from the perspective of military theory casts doubt on the legitimacy of this use of force. A study of the nature of war shows that force is a chaotic phenomenon, and that its results are almost always uncontrollable and worse than expected. Some commentators suggest that because the nature of war has changed in the modern era this logic no longer applies, and war can now be controlled and limited. This chapter presents an example to show how, as humanitarian wars go on, the stakes increase, and the willingness of participants to make sacrifices and inflict violence on others also increases. Because wars are so difficult to stop, they tend to continue long beyond the point at which they should have been ended according to any rational criteria. Theorists of war termination state that wars are ended not by the winners, but by the losers.
