ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the default policy setting of non-intervention that seemed firmly set in the 1990s. It discusses the policy challenge posed both by no action and unilateral action when faced with mass atrocities in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s. The chapter also discusses the policy controversies provoked by the claim of an emerging new norm of humanitarian intervention to justify the military action in Kosovo in 1999. The discomfort highlighted a critical gap between the needs and distress felt in the real world and the codified instruments and modalities for managing world order. The chapter concludes with the successful effort of International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty to reconcile the humanitarian imperative to protect civilians from atrocities with the normative prohibition on the use of force inside sovereign jurisdictions without, or even against, the consent of national governments.
