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Oxford University Press, USA
The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention
The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention
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With the end of the Cold War has come an upsurge in humanitarian interventions-military campaigns aimed at ending mass atrocities. These wars of rescue, waged in the name of ostensibly universal norms of human rights and legal principles, rest on the premise that a genuine international
community has begun to emerge and has reached consensus on a procedure for eradicating mass killings. Rajan Menon argues that, in fact, humanitarian intervention remains deeply divisive as a concept and as a policy, and is flawed besides. The advocates of humanitarian intervention have produced a
mountain of writings to support their claim that human rights precepts now exert an unprecedented influence on states' foreign policies and that we can therefore anticipate a comprehensive solution to mass atrocities. In The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention, Menon shows that this belief, while noble, is naïve. States continue to act principally based on what they regard at any given time as their national interests. Delivering strangers from oppression ranks low on their list of priorities. Indeed, even
democratic states routinely embrace governments that trample the human rights values on which the humanitarian intervention enterprise rests. States' ethical commitment to waging war to end atrocities remains episodic and erratic-more rhetorical than real. And when these missions are undertaken, the strategies and means used invariably produce perverse, even dangerous results. This, in no small measure, stems from the hubris of
leaders-and the acolytes of humanitarian intervention-who have come to believe that they possesses the wisdom and wherewithal to bestow freedom and stability upon societies about which they know little.
Author: Rajan Menon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 03/03/2016
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.70w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780199384877
Review Citation(s):
Choice 08/01/2016
community has begun to emerge and has reached consensus on a procedure for eradicating mass killings. Rajan Menon argues that, in fact, humanitarian intervention remains deeply divisive as a concept and as a policy, and is flawed besides. The advocates of humanitarian intervention have produced a
mountain of writings to support their claim that human rights precepts now exert an unprecedented influence on states' foreign policies and that we can therefore anticipate a comprehensive solution to mass atrocities. In The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention, Menon shows that this belief, while noble, is naïve. States continue to act principally based on what they regard at any given time as their national interests. Delivering strangers from oppression ranks low on their list of priorities. Indeed, even
democratic states routinely embrace governments that trample the human rights values on which the humanitarian intervention enterprise rests. States' ethical commitment to waging war to end atrocities remains episodic and erratic-more rhetorical than real. And when these missions are undertaken, the strategies and means used invariably produce perverse, even dangerous results. This, in no small measure, stems from the hubris of
leaders-and the acolytes of humanitarian intervention-who have come to believe that they possesses the wisdom and wherewithal to bestow freedom and stability upon societies about which they know little.
Author: Rajan Menon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 03/03/2016
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.70w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780199384877
Review Citation(s):
Choice 08/01/2016
About the Author
Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science, City College of New York/City University of New York, and a Senior Research Scholar, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University. His most recent book, co-authored with Eugene B. Rumer, is Conflict in
Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (MIT Press, 2015). His most recent book for Oxford University Press, The End of Alliances, was published in 2007 and was named by the American Library Association as an Outstanding Academic Title for that year.
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