The idea of armed humanitarian intervention has long been attended with warnings that it will be abused by powerful states seeking to justify wars fought not for humanitarian purposes but for self-interest. This problem of abuse has received renewed attention in the wake of NATO's recent intervention in Libya. This chapter represents an attempt to find a way through this problem of abuse. It concludes by briefly contemplating what options, if any, might be available to the society of states for further limiting the problem of abuse without abandoning the idea of armed humanitarian intervention altogether. Arguments about the problem of abuse became particularly prominent from the early 1990s onwards as skeptical states and commentators sought to restrain the emergence of a right of humanitarian intervention in international discourse and interstate relations.

The phrase "armed humanitarian intervention" (AHI) denotes a military intervention into the jurisdiction of a state by outside forces for humanitarian purposes. The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) rationale was implemented in 2011 when the UN Security Council approved military intervention in Libya, and this intervention again spurred debates about AHIs. In more recent times, military interventions have been justified as a way of overthrowing a noxious regime, promoting communism, installing an Islamic theocracy, or supporting a democratic form of government. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became apparent that unlimited sovereignty in the international arena was incompatible with any hope of a world free from the devastations of war. International law began to become more prominent in international relations. Establishing a legal right to militarily intervene in another state must require authorization from some legal authority.

This chapter examines the dramatic transformation of international priorities governing the purpose and principal uses of military force over the past 25 years. It distinguishes the broader historical background of armed humanitarian intervention (AHI) prior to 1989 from two subsequent, distinctive phases: a second wave of humanitarian crises and responses during the 1990s, and a more recent third wave of ethical analysis, dominated by proposals for new political arrangements that would govern collective decision-making by the international community when faced with the question of whether to deploy their military forces for the prevention or cessation of humanitarian crises. The manner in which the history of AHI is narrated is strongly dependent upon the perspectives from which AHI efforts themselves were experienced. All of the military interventions proposed or carried out for humanitarian purposes in the 1990s, however noble their intent violated every single provision of that Weinberger-Powell doctrine.

This chapter sets for itself the goal of constructing general principles to guide decision-makers in the post-intervention moment. It examines different models of post-war justice in general. The chapter then looks at armed humanitarian as a particular kind of war, and sees to what extent one can use the general models of post-war justice to guide our understanding. Many historical cases of armed humanitarian intervention were examined, ranging from World War II to today's Iraq and Afghanistan. The account then looked for inspiration from the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) doctrine, witnessing its development from the ashes of Rwanda to its more recent application in Libya. The chapter concludes by offering 12 substantial principles to guide our sense of post-intervention justice, noting that the RtoP doctrine concurs in general with the author's own endorsement of the post-war paradigm of rehabilitation.

This chapter argues for what the author calls the justification-based account of humanitarian intervention, according to which the permissibility of humanitarian intervention is determined by two central criteria. The first is that there exists a sound justification for intervention, roughly, that there is a threatened or ongoing process of widespread and serious rights violations that can be averted only by military force and such force is proportionate. This criterion can be satisfied ad bellum. The second criterion is that the actions of interveners are reasonably expected to aid. This criterion applies largely to the in bello behavior of the intervening state. One of the difficulties in making sense of the debate about how to identify humanitarian interventions lies in distinguishing the various components of behavior, motives, intentions, actions, ends, and outcomes.

Responsibility to protect (RtoP) seemed to be a more prudent expression, and the principle was adopted by a vote of the UN General Assembly in 2005. It is entirely possible that the initial designers of the doctrine, RtoP, were driven by pure and generous intentions. Whether a doctrine of armed humanitarian intervention (AHI) should become a permanent feature of international law is greatly to be doubted so long as its interpretation and application is entrusted to the UN Security Council. The Libyan war represents the only example where the new doctrine of RtoP has been applied, but it seems to embody its spirit well. The intervention in Libya confirms a messianic plan familiar to Western democracies. Because of their technological, economic, and military successes, they are convinced of their moral and political superiority over the other countries of the globe.

In its 1999 intervention in Kosovo, NATO was criticized heavily for its reliance solely on bombing from high altitude. In this chapter, the author defends with what he calls the Restrictive View for the conduct of armed humanitarian intervention. The Restrictive View has been challenged recently by several leading just-war theorists. An alternative view, which the author calls the Permissive View, seems to have become increasingly popular. On the Permissive View, those conducting armed humanitarian intervention are morally required to take on only some or a small amount of the costs of intervention, if any. The chapter presents the prima facie case for the Restrictive View. It argues that beneficiaries are not required to take on greater costs, in comparison with either rescuers or bystanders. More specifically, the author rejects the Rescuers thesis and the Bystanders thesis in turn.