Mitigating the moral hazard of humanitarian intervention: Lessons from economics

The emerging norm of humanitarian intervention, or the Responsibility to Protect, resembles a social insurance policy to protect ethnic groups against genocide and ethnic cleansing. if a state perpetrates such genocidal violence, the norm calls for a payout-up to and including military intervention-to protect the group and ensure its security, often by enhancing its autonomy from the state. Unfortunately, this leads to a common pathology of insurance-moral, hazard-whereby the expected payout for a loss unintentionally encourages excessively risky or fraudulent behavior. Thus, some militants may rebel despite the risk of provoking state retaliation, because they expect any resulting atrocities to attract intervention that facilitates their rebellion. This article summarizes recently published evidence for this dynamic, explores the feasibility of adapting insurance strategies that mitigate moral hazard, and then proposes a reform. of humanitarian intervention based on the most feasible of these adapted strategies.