Rethinking humanitarian intervention

Although the currently dominant concept of humanitarian intervention has a long history, it is also distinctive in several crucial respects. This article analyzes its nature, historical specificity and presuppositions. It argues that the concept of humanitarian intervention is logically unstable in the sense that it both presupposes and seeks to go beyond the statist manner of thinking which has dominated political life for the past three centuries. The article exposes the incoherence of the statist paradigm and concludes by arguing that, although humanitarian intervention is justified under certain circumstances, it is too limited, too late and too superficial to be of lasting value, and needs to be embedded in and undertaken as part of a larger project of creating a just and nonstatist global order.