Humanitarian Responsibilities and Interventionist Claims in International Society

Author(s): Alex J. Bellamy

Source: Review of International Studies , Jul., 2003, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Jul., 2003), pp. 321-
340
Published by: Cambridge University Press

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Review of International Studies (2003), 29, 321-340 Copyright ? British International Studies Association
DOI: 10.1017IS0260210503003218

Humanitarian responsibilities and

interventionist claims in international society
ALEX J. BELLAMY

Abstract. This article calls for a widening of the debate about humanitarian intervention to
incorporate insights from constructivism, 'Welsh School' Critical Security Studies, and critical
approaches to Third World International Relations. After identifying a series of problems
with the contemporary debate, which is dominated by the English School, it calls for a
broadening of the concept of intervention and suggests a need to rethink the meaning of
humanitarianism and terms such as the 'supreme humanitarian emergency'.

What is the relationship between humanitarianism and interventionist acts in

international society? Does failure to prevent violent conflict and ambivalence to the
silent suffering of millions through malnutrition and poverty call the humanitarian
credentials of the so-called 'new humanitarian interventionism' into question?
Should we think instead of an insidious 'new military humanism' that employs the
rhetoric of human solidarity to legitimise the violent pursuit of the interests of the
rich?1 In recent years, debates about the legitimacy and efficacy of humanitarian
intervention have predominantly been the domain of the English School or 'Inter
national Society' approach to International Relations. Their concern with the relation
ship between principles of order and justice and the questions of legitimacy and
norm construction in international society correlate with the dilemmas commonly
associated with intervention. The central debate in the English School is one between
pluralists who argue that state sovereignty and the principle of non-intervention are
sacrosanct and solidarists who argue that state sovereignty is not ontologically prior
to humankind and that a universal solidarity exists between humans.2
The debate between pluralists and solidarists has shaped debates about the theory
and practice of humanitarian intervention. Solidarists argue that a new norm of
intervention in times of supreme humanitarian emergency has been created, whilst

1 The term 'new military humanism' is Noam Chomsky's. See Noam Chomsky, The New Military
Humanism: The Lessons From Kosovo (London: Pluto, 1999). A similar argument is put forward by Ken
Booth in 'Military Intervention: Duty and Prudence' in Lawrence Freedman (ed.), Military Intervention
in European Conflict (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994). The echoes of E. H. Carr are unmistakable. Carr
argued that universal moral values were nothing other than the interests of the powerful masquerading
as universalism. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year's Crisis 1919-1939 (London: Macmillan, 1939).
2 See Nicholas J. Wheeler, 'Pluralist or Solidarist Conceptions of International Society: Bull and
Vincent on Humanitarian Intervention', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 17:2 (1992),
Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Oxford: Macmillan St.
Anthony's Series, 1998), Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), Fernando Teson, Humanitarian Intervention: An Enquiry into Law
and Morality (Dobbs Ferry: Transnation, 1988), R. J. Vincent, Non-intervention and International
Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), and R. J. Vincent and P. Wilson, 'Beyond
Non-Intervention' in Ian Forbes and Stanley Hoffmann (eds.), Political Theory, International
Relations and the Ethics of Intervention (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993).

321

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322 Alex J. Bellamy

pluralists continue to argue that individual acts of intervention are illegitimate

because they breach the fundamental rule of international society: the principle of
non-intervention. Recently, however, several writers have identified shortcomings
with the scope of the debate as a whole. Writers from a variety of intellectual tradi
tions have identified four key problems with the debate.
First, there remains a disjuncture between discourses of human rights and con
tinuing practices of human wrongs.3 Second, there is a deep contradiction between
the supposed norm of non-intervention and the consistent interventionist practices
of states.4 Third, the normative quality of state sovereignty is paradoxical. On the
one hand, pluralists tell us that states are a moral good in themselves because the
raison d'etat is the guarantee of human welfare and security. On the other hand, the
non-intervention rule effectively protects the state even if it threatens its citizens'
welfare and security. Finally, states are inconsistent in the way they interpret the
relationship between sovereignty and human rights. In some cases, some states argue
that massive human rights abuse creates a legitimate exception to the non-interven
tion rule. In other similar cases, those same states will argue that sovereign prerogatives
deny the possibility of armed intervention.5
One of the central problems with the pluralism-solidarism debate is that it is
self-referential and tends to assume that it constitutes the limit of possibility in
thinking about the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention. To date,
therefore, there have been few conversations between adherents to the English
School approach to intervention and their critics. This article seeks to address
these problems by opening a conversation between English School approaches to
humanitarian intervention and their critics. It asks what perspectives emanating
from constructivism, the 'Welsh School' of Critical Security Studies6 and critical
approaches to Third World International Relations7 can contribute to the way we

3 Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler, 'Introduction: Human Rights and the Fifty Years' Crisis', in
Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler (eds.), Human Rights in Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), p. 1.
4 See Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999).
5 Lori Fisler Damrosch, for instance, argues that, 'critics of international law complain that a system
can hardly qualify as "law" when its rules are enforced only selectively and only in accordance with
the preferences of great powers'. See Lori Fisler Damrosch, 'The Inevitability of Selective Response?
Principles to Guide Urgent International Action', in Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds.),
Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation, Collective Action and
International Citizenship (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2000), p. 405.
6 This term was first coined anecdotally by Ken Booth and Richard Wyn Jones. The label was first used
in publication to describe a particular critical approach associated with these two writers in Steve
Smith, 'The Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualising Security in the Last Twenty
Years', in Stuart Croft and Terry Terriff (eds.), Critical Reflections on Security and Change (London:
Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 89-90. This approach is primarily concerned with articulating the notion of
security as emancipation. I use the term 'Welsh School' to distinguish these critical approaches from
others such as the post structural approaches advanced by those such as Michael Dillon who do not
share the idea that security is defined as a commitment to emancipation.
7 Here I am referring to literature that shares the aims of 'Welsh School' Critical Security Studies but
focuses specifically on Third World International Relations. Indicative of this approach are Caroline
Thomas, Global Governance, Development and Human Security (London: Pluto Press, 2000) and Rita
Abrahamsen and Paul Williams, 'Britain and Southern Africa: A Third Way or Business as Usual?', in K.
Adar and R. Ajulu (eds.), Globalization and Emerging Trends in African States' Foreign Policy-Making
Process (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 307-328. Such approaches are distinct from the English School
concerns with the Third World espoused in particular by Mohammed Ayoob and Robert Jackson.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 323

think about humanitarian intervention. In doing so, it focuses on two concerns in

particular: the view of intervention as a discrete political act that informs the
English School's definitions of intervention and its narrow conception of what it
means to be humanitarian. In regard to both issues, it suggests that broadening
our conceptions opens up new ways of thinking about humanitarian intervention
and, perhaps more importantly, it opens spaces for new political practices. I begin,
though, by re-evaluating the debate between pluralists and solidarists and con
sidering some of the concerns levelled by critics of the debate as a whole.

Pluralist and solidarist accounts of international society

English School debates can be characterised as a debate between two different

conceptions of international society that were first identified by Hedley Bull:
pluralism and solidarism.8 Both conceptions agree that the states system is actually a
society of states which includes commonly agreed values, rules and institutions. Bull
argued that there is disagreement, however, about the normative content of this
society on three important questions in particular: the place of war in international
society, the sources of international law, and the status of individuals.9 Pluralists
insist that society is founded on acceptance of a plurality of actors and the existence
of a constitution as the best guarantor of the protection of the actor. International
society permits the diffusion of power to peoples via the plurality of states, allowing
each nation and state to develop its own way of life. The normative content of such
an international society is limited to a mutual interest in the continued existence of
the units comprising the society. Thus, pluralist international society rests on
mutual recognition of the component units' right to exist. This is manifested in the
reciprocal recognition of state sovereignty and the norm of non-intervention. For
pluralists, states are unable to agree about substantive issues such as redistributive
justice but do recognise that they are bound by the rules of sovereignty and non
intervention.10 State sovereignty and non-intervention are powerful norms that
combine state interests, moral principles, and formal laws. Pluralist international
society, then, 'establishes a legal and moral framework which allows national com
munities to promote their diverse ends with the minimal of outside interference'.11

8 See Hedley Bull, 'The Grotian Conception of International Society', in Martin Wight and Herbert
Butterfield (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1966).
9 Bull, 'The Grotian Conception', p. 52. These ideas are expanded on in Hedley Bull, The Anarchical
Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977). Bull's own position in The
Anarchical Society was that order depended on consensus between states about basic moral and
political questions. Acts and norms of humanitarian intervention could be justified, but only on the
basis of the consensus of the overwhelming majority of states (p. 157).
10 See Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School, p. 100 and Andrew
Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1990), p. 20. Although the idea of a pluralist-solidarist divide can be attributed to Bull,
the most forceful defence of the pluralist position can be found in Robert Jackson, 'Martin Wight,
International Theory and the Good Life', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 19:2 (1990)
and Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), especially pp. 156-84.
11 Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), p. 59.

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324 Alex J. Bellamy

This minimalist conception of international society prompts pluralist writers to

doubt the legitimacy and efficacy of humanitarian intervention. Pluralists argue that
there is no agreement - nor any possibility of agreement - about what constitutes a
supreme humanitarian emergency or overwhelming abuse of human rights. They
argue that human rights are constructed within a specific cultural context and are
not universal. Moreover, proposals for universal ethics or common standards of
humane governance are always culturally biased. Pluralists argue that sovereignty is
often the only protection that weak states have against the strong and that inter
ventionism is illegal and illegitimate because it offends against the constitutive
norms of international society. Finally, pluralists reject both the empirical claim that
a legitimate right of humanitarian intervention is developing in customary practice
and the normative claim that such a right should be developed. Interventionist
practices, even well-intentioned interventionism, threatens international order, they
argue. As Robert Jackson pointedly remarked in a classic restatement of the pluralist
case, 'in my view, the stability of international society, especially the unity of the
great powers, is more important, indeed far more important than minority rights
and humanitarian protections in Yugoslavia or any other country - if we have to
choose between those two sets of values'.12
In contrast, the solidarist conception of international society holds that diverse
communities can and do reach agreement about substantive moral standards and that
international society has moral agency to uphold those standards.13 According to
Hedley Bull, a solidarist international society is one in which the states that comprise
it display a degree of solidarity in developing and enforcing international law.14 The
use of force in such a society will be considered legitimate only if it is an 'act of law
enforcement'.15 Such law enforcement includes the defence of a state against the
crime of aggression (collective security) and the upholding of the society's moral
purpose.16 Bull issued an important caveat by insisting that actions aimed at changing
the law would not be considered legitimate by such a society. Solidarists therefore
claim that there is agreement in international society about what constitutes a
supreme humanitarian emergency and legitimate act of intervention.17
They find evidence for this in the sophisticated contemporary human rights regime
that includes agreed and detailed standards of humane behaviour, accepted methods
of governmental and non-governmental surveillance, and increasing acknowledgement
of universal criminal culpability. Just as this consensus has grown over time, so too has

12 Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant, p. 291.

13 Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, pp. 166-7. Also see Chris Brown,
'Moral Agency and International Society', Ethics and International Affairs, 15:2, 2001.
14 Bull, 'The Grotian Conception of International Society', p. 52.
15 Ibid., p. 57.
16 Bull holds out the possibility that this moral possibility may come to include a right of humanitarian
intervention and notes that Grotius believed such a right to exist. Nevertheless, Tim Dunne's citation
of Bull stating that 'kings...are burdened with the guardianship of human rights everywhere' (Tim
Dunne, Inventing International Society, pp. 100-1) should be tempered with Bull's observation that 'It
would not be possible to find much support at the present time for the view that international law
confers upon international society a right of humanitarian intervention, still less that it bestows such
a right upon particular states'. Hedley Bull, 'The Grotian Conception of International Society', p. 64.
17 This argument is powerfully conveyed by A. C. Arend and R. J. Beck, International Law and the Use
of Force: Beyond the UN Charter Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1993) and Fernando Teson,
Humanitarian Intervention.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 325

state practice developed towards a growing recognition that there is indeed a right of
intervention in extreme cases. Solidarists argue that a precedent was set after the Gulf
War by Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq. Advocates of the operation
argued that it was authorised by UN Security Council Resolution 688,18 which itself
marked a revolutionary moment in international society because it implied that
human suffering could constitute a threat to international peace and security and
hence warrant a collective armed intervention by the society of states.19 Solidarists
argue that the subsequent interventions in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda reinforced
this new norm. Sovereignty, they argue, is not a veil that human rights abusers can
hide behind. Instead, 'state authorities are responsible for the functions of protecting
the safety and lives of [their] citizens'.20 Solidarists argue that extreme cases of human
suffering constitute a legitimate exception to the rule of non-intervention.
Debates between pluralists and solidarists are primarily concerned with three
issues. First, the extent to which there is agreement on what constitutes a supreme
humanitarian emergency. Second, the question of whether there is a legitimate right
of intervention in situations of supreme humanitarian emergency. Third, the
problem of how states and militaries should conduct themselves when intervening.
These concerns have produced a burgeoning literature on the legality and legitimacy
of humanitarian intervention.21 As it has developed, each debate has become more
sophisticated but also more self-referential. For instance, the debate about the
legality and legitimacy of humanitarian intervention has become a sophisticated
struggle over whether humanitarian claims constitute a legitimate exception to the
non-intervention principle. The debate comes down to nuanced assessments of who
argued what in Security Council debates and how those arguments were received by
the society of states. Convincing cases can, and have, been put forward by pluralists
and solidarists alike to support their particular perspectives on these issues. How

18 Those advocating this position include Nigel Rodley, 'Collective Intervention to Protect Human
Rights', in Nigel Rodley (ed.), To Loose the Bands of Wickedness (London: Brassey's, 1992), p. 32 and
Marc Weiler, The Times, 10 April 1991. In contrast to the positions, WHieeler points out that 'the
threat to use force in defence of the relief effort is certainly not mandated in Resolution 688' and At
best, Resolution 688 provided meagre legal cover for Western military intervention'. Nicholas J.
WTieeler, Saving Strangers, p. 154.
19 Resolution 688 found a threat to international peace and security in the refugee crisis cased by the
oppression - thus, the link between human rights and Security Council action was merely implied. On
the background to, and importance of, Resolution 688 see J. Chopra and Thomas Weiss, 'Sovereignty
is no Longer Sacrosanct: Codifying Humanitarian Intervention', Ethics and International Affairs, 6
(1992), p. 113. Anthony Parsons described Resolution 688 as 'unquestionably the most intrusive and
wide-ranging array of demands made on a sovereign state'. Anthony Parsons, From Cold War to Hot
Peace (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 68.
20 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect
(Ottowa: International Development Research Centre, 2001), p. 13.
21 These include: Arend and Beck, International Law and the Use of Force, Alex J. Bellamy, Kosovo and
International Society (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002), Bellamy and Kroslak, 'The Dawning of a
Solidarist Era?', in Lori Fisler Damrosch (ed.), Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal
Conflicts (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993), Thomas Franck and Nigel Rodley, After
Bangladesh: The Law of Humanitarian Intervention by Force', American Journal of International
Law, 67:2 (1973); Christine Gray, International Law and the Use of Force (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), Greenwood, 'Is There a Right of Humanitarian Intervention?', Justin Morris, 'Force
and Democracy: US/UN Intervention in Haiti', International Peacekeeping, 2:3 (1995), Adam
Roberts, 'Humanitarian War: Military Intervention and Human Rights', International Affairs, 69:1
(1993), and Karin Von Hippell, Democracy by Force: US Military Intervention in the Post-Cold War
World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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326 Alex J. Bellamy

ever, proponents from both sides have been unable to address the four problems
identified earlier. This has prompted many writers to articulate alternative ways of
thinking about humanitarian intervention.

Challenges to English School ideas about intervention

There are a growing number of attempts to move the debate forward by changing
the terms of the debate or articulating alternative methods for legitimising
interventionist actions. Dunne, Hanson and Hill, for example, argue that problems
with English School approaches to intervention are caused by its over-emphasis on
the notion of sovereign consent.22 Similarly, the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty replaced the legal debate about a 'right of inter
vention' with the concept of 'sovereignty as responsibility'.23 More recently, a
symposium in the International Journal of Human Rights discussed Mohammed
Ayoob's suggestion that international society should find new ways of legitimising
interventionism that are more transparent and accountable than current Security
Council decision-making.24 The problem with these approaches is that changing the
terms of the debate does little to further our understanding of the key dilemmas at
the heart of the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention. On the one hand
such approaches may do little other than offer interveners new ways of justifying
their actions. On the other, there is no guarantee that a new concept of sovereignty
or new methods of decision-making in the Security Council would help produce
consensus in particular cases or address the problems discussed earlier.25 To do that,
we need to question the basic assumptions that underpin the English School's
approach to intervention and introduce ideas from other strands of International
Relations theory.
Some elements of the constructivist approach to International Relations theory
have much to say about the pluralist-solidarist debate. The links between construc
tivist and English School thought have been well documented. Tim Dunne, for
instance, noted that the English School approach was a forerunner of contemporary
constructivism in International Relations theory, a point supported by construc
tivists such as Alexander Wendt, John Ruggie, and Martha Finnemore, who all

22 Tim Dunne, Marianne Hanson and Cameron Hill, 'The New Humanitarian Interventionism' in
Marianne Hanson and William Tow (eds.), International Relations in the New Century: An Australian
Perspective (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001).
23 ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect.
24 See Mohammed Ayoob, 'Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty', International journal of
Human Rights, 6:1 (2002); Samuel M. Makinda, 'The Global Covenant as an Evolving Institution',
International Journal of Human Rights, 6:1 ( 2002); Nicholas J. Wheeler, 'Decision-making Rules and
Procedures for Humanitarian Intervention', International Journal of Human Rights, 6:1 (2001); and B.
S. Chimni, A New Humanitarian Council for Humanitarian Intervention', International Journal of
Human Rights, 6:1 (2002). The lack of transparency and democratic accountability in Security
Council decision-making has been ably exposed by Linda Melvern. See Linda Melvern, The Ultimate
Crime: Who Betrayed the UN and Why (London: Allison and Busby, 1995) and Linda Melvern, A
People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000).
25 See Nicholas J. Wheeler, 'Legitimating Humanitarian Intervention: Principles and Procedures',
Melbourne Journal of International Law, 2:2 (2001), p. 556.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 327

acknowledge the intellectual debt they owe to English School theorists such as
Hedley Bull.26 It is not difficult to see why constructivists and English School writers
have a lot to say to each other.
Constructivism is more of a loose tradition than a distinct school of thought,
spanning a range of concerns from post-structuralism to empiricism.27 Construc
tivists basically argue that the identity, interests, and values of actors are constructed
by the social structures they inhabit. The relationship between actors and structures
is mutually constitutive, with actors also shaping the generative structures of world
politics that create identity, interests and values.28 Just as English School writers are
interested in the ways that states construct an international society, so many con
structivists investigate the ways that structures construct identities and interests and
hence shape practice in international relations.
Although constructivists tend to share concerns with English School approaches
to international society they also cast doubt on the foundations of the pluralist
solidarist schism. Pluralists claim that international society is a practical association
based on mutual recognition that allows states to pursue their diverse interests.29 As
Reus-Smit accurately portrays it, 'the image here is of sovereign states with different
identities and interests working to maintain a pluralist, practical association, the
framework of which is a web of functional, procedural institutions'.30 Construc
tivists point out that states share a mutually constitutive relationship with inter
national society and that different types of state have populated (and constructed)
different types of international society.31 Reus-Smit argues that if the argument that
state identity is constituted by societal structure is accepted, the ontological found
ation of pluralism (and hence the pluralism-solidarism debate) becomes 'shaky'. In
other words, the idea that an international society based on non-intervention allows
diverse units to pursue divergent paths falls apart if one accepts that membership of
the society influences the identity (and hence the interests and values) of its
members. Such concerns prompt constructivist writers to investigate the way that
practices of humanitarian intervention are conditioned by their international
normative context, which frames the interests and values of actors, and how that
normative context changes over time.32 Such a conception of humanitarian inter

26 Tim Dunne, 'The Social Construction of International Society', European Journal of International
Relations, 1 (1995), Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999) - Wendt locates his own position as within the same 'quadrant' of theory
occupied by Bull, pp. 31-2; John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity, argues that English
School thought influenced many constructivists - himself included, p. 11, Martha Finnemore,
National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 17-18.
27 For a good overview of the different types of constructivism, see Christian Reus-Smit
'Constructivism', in Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater et al., Theories of International Relations, 2nd
edn. (London: Macmillan, 2001).
28 For the best overview of the conversation between English School and constructivist writers see
Christian Reus-Smit, 'Imagining Society'.
29 The following passage is drawn from Christian Reus-Smit, 'Imagining Society'.
30 Ibid., p. 18.
31 This argument is one of the central claims made in Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the
State: Culture, Social Identity and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001).
32 Martha Finnemore, 'Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention', in Peter Katzenstein (ed.),
The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1966), p. 154.

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 328 Alex J. Bellamy

vention as a set of dynamic social relationships points towards a rejection of the

'logocentrism' that lies at the heart of the pluralism-solidarism debate. According to
Dunne and Wheeler, this logocentrism prompts the English School's concern with
binary oppositions such as human rights or sovereignty; intervention or non
intervention.33 Aspects of constructivist thought point towards imminent possibilities
beyond such oppositions.
It is the ontological limitations of English School approaches to humanitarian
intervention that are exposed by the 'Welsh School' approach to Critical Security
Studies. This approach applies critical social theory to the study of security. It shares
Robert Cox's view that theory is always for someone and some purpose34 and argues
that it frames the issues and actors that are considered to be important, whilst
marginalising others. The 'Welsh School' draws its approach to security from the
Frankfurt School and the work of Antonio Gramsci.35 The defining characteristic of
this approach to security is its theoretical and practical commitment to emancip
ation. Security, it argues, cannot be achieved through methods that make others feel
insecure. 'True security', Ken Booth argues, 'can only be achieved by people or
groups if they do not deprive others of it'.36 Rather than being understood in
military terms, security should be read as 'emancipation'. According to Booth,
emancipation means, 'freeing people from those constraints that stop them carrying
out what freely they would choose to do'.37 Such constraints include war and conflict,
but also poverty, curable disease, political oppression, poor healthcare and the lack
of education. The 'Welsh School' of Critical Security Studies asks how we got to
where we are and who the prevailing order, which prioritises military and state
security, favours. It also tries to articulate strategies that give voice to the margin
alised actors in world politics as a way of contributing to their emancipation.
Combining the concerns of the 'Welsh School' approach to Critical Security
Studies with those of many writers on Third World politics produces an important
critique of the pluralist-solidarist debate on humanitarian intervention. There are
broadly two sets of claims that are of interest here. First, many writers point out
that threats to security in the Third World come from within the state rather than
from outside.38 Security may therefore depend more on state building and economic

33 Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler, ' "We the Peoples": Contending Discourses of Security in
Human Rights Theory and Practice', in Ken Booth (ed.), Security, Community, and Emancipation: An
Introduction to Critical Security Studies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, forthcoming), p. 17.
34 Robert Cox, 'Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory (1981)',
in Robert Cox with Timothy Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), p. 87.
35 See Pinar Bilgin, Ken Booth and Richard Wyn Jones, 'Security Studies: The Next Stage?', Nacao e
Defesa, 84:2 (1998). For the most thorough exploration of the intellectual roots of this approach see
Richard Wyn Jones, Security. Strategy Critical Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999).
36 Ken Booth, 'Security in Anarchy', p. 539. Booth expands on the idea of security as emancipation in
Ken Booth, 'Security and Emancipation', Review of International Studies, 17 (1991).
37 Ken Booth, 'Security in Anarchy', p. 539.
38 The idea of weak states posing a threat to the security of its own citizens is discussed in Caroline
Thomas, In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations (Brighton: WHieatsheaf,
1987), Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era
(Hemel Hempstead: Harvester WTieatsheaf, 1991), and Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security
Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict and the International System (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner, 1995).

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 329

development than protection against military threats internal and external. Second,
related to the first, they suggest that the biggest humanitarian challenge is not to
configure global responses to rogue regimes that systematically persecute and
butcher their own citizens. Such regimes are rare and the number of lives lost to
them miniscule when compared with the 'silent genocide' of thousands every day at
the hand of malnutrition, preventable disease and poverty. Structural violence,
rather than organised military violence, is the main contemporary humanitarian
problem they insist.
These suggestions imply that English School approaches to humanitarian
intervention overlook a series of important issues that render them unable to address
the four problems outlined at the beginning of the article because they are predicated
on particular assumptions that are either left undisclosed or else are treated as
unproblematic. The rest of this article turns to address the two fundamental concepts
that underpin the pluralist-solidarist debate. First, a conception of intervention that
views it as a discrete political act and prioritises the form of the act (the inter
vention) over its humanitarian content. Second a partial and restrictive conception
of 'humanitarian emergency' that provides human suffering with temporal and
spatial borders. It argues that insights from constructivism, the 'Welsh School' of
Critical Security Studies and critical approaches to Third World International
Relations suggest broader conceptions of both 'intervention' and 'humanitarian'
that can contribute new insights to the study of humanitarian intervention.

The concept of intervention

The combination of the 'Welsh School' approach to Critical Security Studies and
critical Third World International Relations makes an important ontological
challenge to the way the English School debate on intervention is framed. Most
contemporary English School writers share R. J. Vincent's classic definition of
intervention as:

Activity undertaken by a state, a group within a state, a group of states, or an international

organisation which interferes coercively in the domestic affairs of another state. It is a discrete
event, having a beginning and an end, and is aimed at the authority structure of the target
state. It is not necessarily lawful or unlawful, but it does break a conventional pattern of
international relations.39

Viewed from a 'Welsh School' perspective, however, such a definition is problematic

for two reasons. First, the idea that intervention is a discrete event suggests that the
intervening states are not already implicated in the crisis they are intervening in.
Military intervention, it is argued, is but one aspect of wider relations of inter
ference in domestic societies.40 It is the very policies of Western states and financial

39 R. J. Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order, p. 3. Similarly definitions can be found in

Louis Jacquet (ed.), Intervention in International Politics (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoflf Press, 1971),
p. 40; and Stanley Hoffmann, Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical
International Politics (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1981), p. 11.
40 See Paul Williams, 'Indifference and Intervention: International Society and Human Rights in
Africa', International Journal of Human Rights, 5:2 (2001).

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 330 Alex J. Bellamy

institutions such as the World Bank and IMF that exacerbate the grinding poverty
and patrimonial politics that are often identified as the root causes of supreme
humanitarian emergencies. Intervening in the domestic economy of Third World
states to promote good governance and neo-liberal economics benefits the direct
recipients (local elites) and the donors.41 It does very little to emancipate most
people in the Third World. The English School's claim that intervention is a discrete
act with a beginning and end blinds writers to the way that interveners and targets
are already involved in mutual relationships. There is a plethora of work on
particular instances of intervention that begin with the decision to intervene and end
with the culmination of military activities. The background to the 'crisis' is usually
given scant consideration and international society's role in constructing that
historical background is often ignored altogether.42 So, for example, the French role
during and immediately after Rwanda's genocide needs to be seen not as a discrete
intervention by a disinterested state but as part of a wider set of client-donor
and economic relations. Similarly, it is not possible to understand the demise of
Yugoslavia and subsequent Western armed interventions without understanding the
role that Western states and International Financial Institutions played in the
collapse of the Yugoslav economy that directly precipitated dissolution. What is
important here is not the extent to which the role has been identified by regional
experts (which it has been in both cases)43 but the fact that it has not been
recognised by the English School debate about humanitarian intervention.
Second, although Vincent does not specifically mention armed intervention, his
reference to intervention as a coercive act draws attention to its military aspects. It is
the military aspects and implications of humanitarian intervention that have
provoked so much attention and controversy. This concern prioritises the nature of
the intervention over and above its humanitarian content. The rationale for this
prioritisation is that it is armed intervention alone that challenges the constitutive
norms of international society. There is a difference, Robert Jackson argues, between
trying to persuade states to act in a particular way by diplomatic and economic
means and forcibly intervening. The former challenges a state's autonomy (and no
state has complete autonomy) whilst the latter challenges its sovereignty.44 However,
this position assumes that international society constitutes the limit of political
imagination in world politics. Awarding priority to the form of intervention over its
humanitarian content is a direct consequence of the ontology that both pluralism

41 Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa
(London: Zed Books, 2000).
42 Indicative of this approach are: Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers; Karin von Hippell, Democracy
by Force: US Military Intervention in the Post-Cold War World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000); Thomas Weiss, Military-Civilian Interactions: Intervening in Humanitarian Crises
(Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); William Durch (ed.), UN Peacekeeping, American Politics and
the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (London: Macmillan, 1997), Damrosch (ed.), Enforcing Restraint.
43 See Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed; Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United
Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy:
Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995); John
Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia (London: Hurst & Co., 2000). Those that doubt the claim that
English School accounts of intervention follow Vincent in viewing it as a discrete act should compare
these works with accounts of the same conflicts contained in the works cited in n. 42.
44 Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant, p. 251.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 331

and solidarism are built on (a world made up of a society of states) - assumptions

that are increasingly being brought into question.
Viewing humanitarian intervention as part of a wider set of relations raises
important issues for the way that intervention relates to both conflict prevention and
post-conflict rebuilding. In short, the idea that intervention is not a discrete act
means that attempts to legitimise armed intervention on humanitarian grounds must
go hand in hand with concerted efforts at conflict prevention and post-conflict
rebuilding. Although the links between prevention, intervention and rebuilding have
been widely acknowledged45 there have been few concerted efforts to amplify the
relationships between them. Thus, although there is widespread agreement that
prevention is better than cure when it comes to armed conflict, military intervention
is still awarded the lion's share of resources by states and attention by scholars.
A broader ontology of intervention raises three key problems for students of
humanitarian intervention. These problems derive from the idea that the legitimacy
of an armed intervention is tied to the existence of genuine attempts to prevent the
humanitarian catastrophe and a commitment to post-catastrophe rebuilding, an
argument that flows from the observation that intervention is not a discrete act but
is instead merely one aspect of a web of relations.
First, there is the problem of identifying the legitimising body in political practice.
English School writers, for instance, argue against the broadened ontology of
intervention by suggesting that states do not consider past prevention and rebuilding
efforts when deciding whether to legitimise interventionist acts. What they consider
is the legal and normative quality of the act itself. Critics, however, insist that this
position is borne out of the English School's statecentrism. New approaches to
humanitarian intervention emphasise the notion of 'sovereignty as responsibility'
proposed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty.
This concept suggests that the legitimising body should be the people in need,
though the Commission itself stopped short of saying so and instead identifies the
UN Security Council - and hence the UN's member states - as the most important
legitimising body. The problem with identifying the victims as the key legitimising
body is that invariably the victims will regard any armed intervention as legitimate
even if it does not immediately alleviate their suffering and even if the intervener is
implicated in the structural causes of the emergency. Moreover, does a failure to
prevent or a lack of interest in rebuilding delegitimise action that halts mass killing
or alleviates humanitarian suffering?
This dilemma questions the relationship between humanitarianism and inter
vention that is addressed later. Put briefly, English School approaches to interven
tion equate a supreme humanitarian emergency with cases of state-sponsored mass
murder and ethnic cleansing. The stress here is on the direct man-made nature of the
problem and its immediacy, both of which lend themselves to military solutions. In
this context, the link between the legitimacy of the intervention and commitment to
prevention and rebuilding is weak. However, approaches interested in emancipation
insist that all forms of mass human suffering constitute supreme humanitarian
emergencies. Read this way, involvement in the social and economic structures that

45 See for example, ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace
(New York: UN, 1992), and Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Preventing Deadly
Conflict (Washington DC: Carnegie Corporation, 1997).

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332 Alex J. Bellamy

create human suffering in the first place casts a serious veil of doubt over the
legitimacy of an armed intervention.
The second issue raised by the broader ontology of intervention is how much
intervention should there be? Critics of the English School debate tend to be
sceptical about the efficacy and legitimacy of using force. They argue that force is a
blunt humanitarian instrument that creates as many problems as it solves. They also
insist that the use of humanitarian claims to legitimise armed intervention are
crocodile tears shed by the very states and institutions that caused the problem in the
first place. The dilemma, however, is that a broader ontology implies that powerful
states should become more rather than less interventionist. The argument follows
that states should actively intervene to prevent humanitarian catastrophes and
rebuild societies because they are already implicated in the problems and therefore
have a responsibility to alleviate the suffering caused by them. This logic is reminis
cent of Charles Beitz's argument that moral responsibility for the welfare of people
in other countries derives from patterns of global social relations.46 The implication
of this is that there would be more, rather than less, intervention. Two important
possibilities for further study are opened up by this insight. On the one hand, it is
important for English School writers to acknowledge the non-violent aspects of
humanitarian assistance and the full panoply of ways that 'we' can influence the
quality of life of people in other states. On the other hand, a useful avenue of study
opened up by this critique is investigation into why one form of humanitarian
suffering ('death by polities', state-sponsored killing) is prioritised over another
('death by economies') and the relationship between them.47
The third contribution offered by the broadened ontology of intervention is the
diverting of attention away from the preoccupation with mediating between an
individual's claims to human rights and a state's claim to sovereign rights. This returns
us to Robert Jackson's important argument that there is a qualitative difference
between armed humanitarian intervention and non-violent types of interference that
curtail a state's autonomy but not its sovereignty.48 One view is that derogating the
preoccupation with military means and the imperatives of sovereignty is the only way
of moving the humanitarian intervention debate out of its current impasse. Instead of
reifying military humanitarianism, states and intellectuals should use non-violent tools
to promote human welfare. This view too sits well with a broader view of supreme
humanitarian emergency and has some important merits. In particular, it draws our
attention to the deeper structural causes of human suffering and highlights sources of
suffering that often go unseen. This opens up sites for humanitarian action beyond the
traditional realm of state sovereignty and military intervention. Movements such as
the Jubilee 2000 campaign to eradicate Third World debt and the campaign to
persuade the World Bank to retreat from its policy of structural adjustment are
undoubtedly humanitarian yet attract very little attention from English School writers
because they do not call for the breaching of the sovereignty principle.

46 See Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1979).
47 The terms 'death by politics' and 'death by economics' are Ken Booth's, as is the idea that English
School approaches to humanitarian intervention tend to prioritise the former over the latter. I am
grateful to Paul Williams for bringing this to my attention.
48 Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant, p. 251.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 333

On the other hand, one needs to ask whether there are situations where only
armed intervention will remedy a supreme humanitarian emergency. Clearly there
are, particularly in cases where the causes of the humanitarian emergency are
directly attributable to the actions of specific groups. Genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia
and East Timor and massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo could only be brought to an
end by the application of military force. Moreover, the record of purely non-violent
movements in dealing swiftly with humanitarian catastrophes caused by politics is
not a good one. Humanitarian aid can be used to feed armies as well as civilians,
particularly when the donors have no means of ensuring that the aid gets to the
people who need it most and the local belligerents are able and willing to redirect aid
to their own ends.49 In these cases, forcible military intervention has to be considered
and a debate about the rights of sovereigns and rights of individuals engaged with.
The initial point made by the critics holds good, however: if we accept that all forms
of mass human suffering constitute a 'supreme humanitarian emergency' we must
acknowledge that military responses to state-sponsored mass killing address only the
tip of the iceberg of human suffering.
By challenging the English School's ontology of intervention, critical approaches
make a series of important contributions that both pluralists and solidarists can
develop in order to broaden the scope of the debate and hence address its limitations.
These insights derive from the view that intervention is not a discrete act but part of a
wider web of transnational relations. Humanitarian claims made by interveners
should not therefore be treated in isolation or evaluated solely in relation to abstract
notions of international law. Instead, they should be assessed alongside the
intervener's role in constructing the structural environment that caused the humani
tarian emergency and the resources it committed to preventing the catastrophe and
rebuilding afterwards. This view returns us to Wil Verwey's idea that to count as
'humanitarian', a forcible intervention must be 'for the sole purpose of preventing or
putting a halt to a serious violation of fundamental human rights'.50 In doing so, it
points away from the idea that an intervener's motivation can be assessed by focusing
on its justifications for action and directs us instead to the intervener's prior and
subsequent actions across a range of policy areas.51 When they did just this, Dixon
and Williams found that loud rhetoric about the need to protect people from human
suffering caused by state-sponsored violence went hand-in-hand with ambivalence
towards suffering caused by economics and support for maintaining and extending
the very economic practices that cause poverty and malnutrition.52

49 See Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace or War (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner, 1999), David Shearer, Aiding or Abetting? Humanitarian Aid and its Economic Role in
Civil War', in Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (eds.), Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in
Civil Wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), and Alex J. Bellamy, 'The Great Beyond: Rethinking
Military Responses to New Wars and Complex Emergencies', Journal of Defence Studies, 2:2 (2002).
50 \Yil Verwey, 'Legality of Humanitarian Intervention after the Cold War', in E. Ferris (ed.), The
Challenge to Intervene: A New Role for the United Nations? (Uppsala: Life and Peace Institute, 1992),
p. 114).
51 The justifications offered by interveners is viewed by Nicholas J. WTieeler as crucial to understanding
the evolving legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. See Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers.
52 Rob Dixon and Paul Williams, 'Tough on Debt, Tough on the Causes of Debt? New Labour's Third
World Debt Policy', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3:2 (2001). Compare this
with Nicholas J. WTieeler and Tim Dunne, 'Good International Citizenship: A Third Way for British
Foreign Policy', International Affairs, 74:4 (1998).

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 334 Alex J. Bellamy

Broadening the ontology of intervention beyond that of R. J. Vincent's classic

definition opens up three further avenues for enquiry. First, how should armed
intervention be legitimised? English School approaches engage in sophisticated
debate about the way that international society legitimises armed intervention and
methods for making the legitimisation process more democratic and transparent.53 A
broader ontology suggests that legitimacy should be sought from the people whom
the intervention is trying to save from peril. Whilst this approach is problematic
because victims will tend towards seeing any intervention as legitimate, it does open
up the potential for a wider debate about the legitimacy of interventionism. Second,
the broader ontology raises the question of how much intervention is desired. At
one end of the spectrum, critics of intervention argue that there should be less of it
because it is not genuinely motivated by humanitarian concern. At the other end,
liberal interventionists argue that the logic of this argument points towards ever
more intervention incorporating more in the way of conflict prevention and post
conflict rebuilding than has been case previously. This raises the spectre of liberal
neo-colonialism.54 Finally, a broader ontology displaces the central role played by
sovereignty in English School debates. As we noted earlier, the tendency of pluralist
and many solidarist writers to suggest that sovereignty and non-intervention are
sacrosanct values is empirically problematic. Stephen Krasner has shown that since
the birth of the supposedly territorially inviolable sovereign state, states have
repeatedly and consistently breached the sovereignty of others. Displacing sovereignty
draws attention to the non-military aspects of intervention that have often been
overlooked because they do not challenge the sovereignty principle. It also demon
strates that sovereignty is itself a malleable principle that has been constructed in
different ways over time and can be reconstructed in the future.55 The idea of
'sovereignty as responsibility' cannot therefore be dismissed and neither should
students of humanitarian intervention treat sovereignty, non-intervention, and terri
torial integrity as pre-given assumptions that limit the possibilities of thinking about
humanitarian action in international relations.
The first aspect therefore of critical engagement with the English School debate
on humanitarian intervention is to question its ontological foundations and propose
a broader vision which denies that intervention is a discrete activity. The second key
aspect is to question what writers on intervention mean by 'humanitarianism' and
how the relationship between 'humanitarianism' and 'interventionism' is framed.

53 See Mohammed Ayoob, 'Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty', International Journal of
Human Rights, 6:1 (2002), Samuel M. Makinda, 'The Global Covenant as an Evolving Institution',
International Journal of Human Rights, 6:1 (2002); Wheeler, 'Decision-making Rules and Procedures
for Humanitarian Intervention'; and B. S. Chimni, A New Humanitarian Council for Humanitarian
Intervention', International Journal of Human Rights, 6:1 (2002).
54 One of the most consistent critics of an expansive vision of humanitarianism is David Chandler.
Chandler argues that UN protectorates in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor resemble colonial entities
and suffer from a democratic deficit. See David Chandler, Faking Democracy: Bosnia After Dayton
(London: Pluto Press, 1999). A counter, liberal internationalist, argument is put forward by Ian R.
Mitchell, 'The Ambiguities of Elections in Kosovo: D?mocratisation versus Human Rights' in Ken
Booth (ed.), The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions (London: Frank Cass, 2001).
55 As R. B. J. Walker puts it, 'Despite all appearances, sovereignty is not a permanent principle of
political order; the appearance of permanence is simply an effect of complex practices working to
affirm continuities', R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 163.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 335

Humanitarianism and the 'supreme humanitarian emergency'

What is the 'humanitarianism' that acts of armed intervention seek to promote? Does
the recasting of security as emancipation and broadening of the ontology of
intervention prompt a rethink of the pluralist-solidarist debate? The first thing to
note is that despite the proliferation of the use of the word 'humanitarian' there is
very little clarity about what it actually means.56 It is linked to activities as diverse as
the pursuit of universal human rights, the prosecution of those guilty of offending
the 'conscience of mankind',57 the delivery of emergency aid for human subsistence,
and the use of military force in a variety of circumstances. To the extent that they
ever identify humanitarianism, English School approaches to humanitarian inter
vention propose a very narrow understanding that mirrors and reinforces their
narrow ontology of intervention. The English School understanding of humani
tarianism also privileges the latter of the four humanitarian activities identified above.
Pluralists and solidarists tend to refer to intervention in times of 'supreme
humanitarian emergency'. The notion of a 'supreme emergency' was first coined by
Michael Walzer.58 A supreme emergency has two components. The first is the
immediacy of the danger and the second is its nature. A supreme emergency occurs
where the danger is very close and in order to qualify it must be 'of an unusual and
horrifying kind'. There is widespread agreement amongst English School writers and
others who unconsciously share their position that if humanitarian intervention is to
be contemplated at all it must only be in situations of 'supreme humanitarian
emergency'. As R. J. Vincent put it, 'humanitarian intervention is . . . reserved for
extraordinary oppression, not the day-to-day'.59 More recently, the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty concluded that military action
for humanitarian purposes was only legitimate 'in extreme and exceptional cases'.60
Nicholas Wheeler provides an important outline of what constitutes a 'supreme
humanitarian emergency'. Wheeler argues that the concept of a supreme humani
tarian emergency 'captures the exceptional nature of the cases under consideration'.61
Although he admits that there are no objective criteria for evaluating when a
humanitarian emergency becomes supreme or when a supreme emergency becomes
humanitarian, he argues that such an emergency exists 'when the only hope of
saving lives depends on outsiders coming to the rescue'.62 The key defining charac
teristic, therefore, is not the scale or nature of human suffering but whether that
suffering requires outside intervention to alleviate it. The important characteristic of
all these definitions is that humanitarianism is viewed through the lens of inter
vention rather than as a self-contained concept or group of practices.

56 'What on earth does the word humanitarian mean?' asked Adam Roberts. Adam Roberts, 'The Road
to Hell: A Critique of Humanitarian Intervention', Harvard International Review, 16:1 (1993), p. 13.
According to Bruce Nicholls, 'a consistent and working definition of humanitarianism has evaded
public and private authorities'. Bruce Nicholls, 'Rubber Band Humanitarianism', Ethics and
International Affairs, 1 (1987), p.193.
57 This is Michael Walzer's phrase.
58 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 251-55.
59 R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations, pp. 126-7.
60 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect, p. 31.
61 Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, p. 34.
62 Ibid., p. 34.

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336 Alex J. Bellamy

Pluralist and solidarist conceptions of the 'humanitarian' element of humani

tarian intervention are framed by international society's statecentric ontology.
Priority is given to 'intervention' as a discrete and temporally bounded activity that
temporarily suspends the society's constitutive norms.
Pluralists and solidarists focus on the legitimacy of the temporary suspension of
the norm of non-intervention. In order to persuade sceptical pluralists who fear that
legitimising humanitarian intervention would encourage states to abuse any such
right for their own ends,63 solidarists and other advocates of humanitarian inter
vention define their 'humanitarianism' very narrowly. Wheeler argues that legitimate
humanitarian intervention can only take place in response to a 'supreme humanitarian
emergency', Jack Donnelly suggests that such emergencies be limited to genocide,64
whilst Wil Verwey, Richard Lillich and R. J. Vincent all identified the actions of a
tyrannical government as an essential legitimising component.65 'Humanitarian'
emergencies are therefore understood as the result of violent oppression, mass
killing, and ethnic cleansing. They are limited, both temporally and spatially, and
are believed to have causation directly attributable to a particular group. Death in a
supreme humanitarian emergency comes either directly at the hands of other
humans or indirectly through the clearly identifiable acts of other humans.
The spatial and temporal restrictions on pluralist and solidarist accounts of
intervention provide the context for thinking of humanitarian intervention solely in
terms of armed intervention against systematic abusers of human rights. Returning
to the insights offered by constructivism and the 'Welsh School', two problems can
be identified. First, this restrictive ontology exposes only the margins of human
suffering and second, obscures alternative, often older, theories and practices of
humanitarianism. English School writers respond better to the latter than the former
charges. They argue, quite simply and persuasively, that the non-violent provision of
humanitarian aid, third party mediation, and development assistance (to name only
three areas) do not require the suspension of the non-intervention norm and are
therefore not as problematic as coercive intervention.
The response to the charge that the pluralist-solidarist debate only addresses the
tip of the humanitarian iceberg has been mute to say the least. Some writers imply
that only state-sponsored mass killing casts doubt on the ethical quality of the state
and hence its sovereign rights.66 Whilst recognising the scale and significance of
human suffering caused by poverty and malnutrition, other writers follow Hedley
Bull in arguing that 'the conflict between international order and demands for just
change arises in those cases where there is no consensus as to what justice involves,

63 This argument was most powerfully conveyed by Ian Brownlie when he argued that 'a rule allowing
humanitarian intervention is a general licence to vigilantes and opportunists to resort to hegemonial
intervention', Ian Brownlie, 'Thoughts on Kind-Hearted Gunmen', in Richard Lillich (ed.),
Humanitarian Intervention and the United Nations (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia,
1973), pp. 147-8.
64 Jack Donnelly, 'Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention', unpublished paper, 1 November 2001.
This paper appears in a slightly different form in Jack Donnelly, 'Genocide and Humanitarian
Intervention', Journal of Human Rights, 1:1 (2002).
65 See Wil Verwey, 'Legality of Humanitarian Intervention', Richard Lillich, 'Forcible Self-Help by
States to Protect Human Rights', Iowa Law Review, 53 (1957); R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and
International Relations.
66 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 87-9.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 337

and when to press the claims of justice is to reopen questions which the compact of
coexistence requires to be treated as closed'.67 There is enough of a struggle to
persuade states that mass killing and genocide is wrong. Attempts to enforce a
'partial' notion of distributive justice that threatened the interests of powerful states
would only lead to disorder in international society. That would not reduce human
suffering anywhere.
The problem however is that, even accepting Bull's argument, the notion of
humanitarianism as expressed in the pluralist-solidarist debates bears little resem
blance to other widely understood interpretations and practices. Indeed, widely
accepted conceptions of humanitarianism that pervade the aid community and
Peace Studies oriented approaches are barely discussed at all by the English School.
Although Ramsbotham and Woodhouse's work on humanitarian intervention has
been influential, their approach to humanitarianism is often overlooked. They
argued that although humanitarianism is an essentially contested concept a
framework of broad humanitarian principles can be established by considering the
underlying principles of the Red Cross - an organisation almost universally accepted
as unambiguously humanitarian.68 Four principles are particularly important here.
(1) The principle of humanity. This is the idea that humanitarianism aims to 'prevent
and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found'. (2) The principle of
impartiality. Humanitarianism does not distinguish between people according to
race, sex, religion, nationality, class, whether they live in a powerful state or strategic
ally, or whether 'we' have interests there. It distinguishes only according to need. (3)
The principle of neutrality. Humanitarianism does not take sides in a conflict and is
only interested in ensuring that people have access to food, shelter, clothing and
medical care. (4) The principle of universality. Humanitarianism is universally
applicable and all humans have identical humanitarian rights.
Elements of the Red Cross' interpretation of humanitarianism are questionable.
Specifically, the principle of neutrality is objectionable on both moral and practical
grounds. If the cause of human suffering is mass killing or ethnic cleansing or
specific economic practices, how can the suffering be 'alleviated' let alone 'prevented'
without taking a political stance? Other humanitarian organisations, most famously
M?decins Sans Fronti?res, argue that whilst impartiality in terms of treating and
judging everyone on an equal basis is important, it is not possible to tackle major
humanitarian crises without making a political stand.69 Throughout its history, the
Red Cross' stance on neutrality has provoked fierce criticism particularly when it
caused the organisation to refuse to condemn the holocaust or the more recent
genocide in Bosnia.70

67 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 94. Also see Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society, p.
155. Bull was concerned that putting forward advanced conceptions of justice would call the rules of
coexistence (sovereignty) into question. Both contemporary pluralists and solidarists share this fear,
which manifests itself in their concern for limiting the ontologies of intervention and
humanitarianism.
68 The following section is taken from Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Humanitarian
Intervention in Contemporary Conflict (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), pp. 14-18.
69 See Julia Groenewold, 'M?decins Sans Fronti?res Around the World', in Julia Groenewold (ed.),
World in Crisis: The Politics of Survival at the End of the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge,
1996).
70 See in particular, Jean-Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).

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 338 Alex J. Bellamy

English School writers also point out that these lofty principles of humanitarian
ism tell us very little about political prudence and the limitation that power politics
places on humanitarian action. Universality is neither likely, because state leaders
are primarily responsible for their own citizens and not other state's, nor in many
cases desirable, if the wider geopolitical costs outweigh the humanitarian benefits.71
Despite these objections, it is clear that opening up the English School's under
standing of humanitarianism, even as briefly as we have done here, exposes two
issues that question the very foundations of the pluralist-solidarist debate on
humanitarian intervention. Firstly, it exposes the fact that both pluralism and
solidarism prioritise the interventionist aspects of the act over the pursuit of humani
tarianism. The concept of the supreme humanitarian emergency is primarily based
not on concern for alleviating human suffering but rather on the idea that inter
vention must be temporally and spatially limited because it violates the constitutional
rules of international society. To put it another way, it is an interest in discovering a
legitimate exception to the non-intervention rule (thus reinforcing a relatively static
conception of state sovereignty) rather than a desire to formulate strategies to
alleviate human suffering that prioritise according to need, that shapes the pluralist
solidarist debate.
The second important point that is that the humanitarianism of English School
discourses bears very little resemblance to the humanitarianism of other discourses.
To advocates of an approach to humanitarianism based on the Red Cross key
principles, not one of the interventionist acts dealt with by Wheeler, Damrosch,
Weiss, and other participants in the debate qualifies as humanitarian. The inter
ventions in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), Cambodia, Uganda, northern Iraq, Somalia,
Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo were all partial and selective. That does not mean that
they were not 'good' or legitimate. They were political and military acts, however,
not humanitarian acts.72 Some of these acts were, nevertheless, primarily motivated
by concerns about human suffering. Even if we accept the prudential argument that
humanitarian assistance needs to be rationed we are left on one hand with the
problem that the price of the military elements of all these missions outweighed the
value of humanitarian assistance actually delivered by a phenomenal ratio, and on
the other hand the fact that the military interveners have done very little to address
the quantitatively biggest source of suffering in the world: malnutrition and grinding
poverty. Even if we accept that the sense of emergency is greatest in time of armed
conflict and protracted violence we have to confront the fact that the three bloodiest
wars of the 1990s, Rwanda, Congo, and Bosnia, produced the feeblest efforts on the
part of international society.

71 This was a recurring theme of Justin Morris, 'The Concept of Humanitarian Intervention in
International Relations', MA Dissertation, University of Hull, 1991. It is also raised by Nicholas J.
Wheeler, 'Decision-making Rules and Procedures for Humanitarian Intervention', International
Journal of Human Rights, 6:1 ( 2001).
72 David Forsythe exhaustively deals with the relationship between humanitarianism and politics.
Forsythe disputes the idea that there is a rigid separation between humanitarianism and politics that
is implied by the Red Cross. Instead, he identifies 'realpolitik' (power politics), 'partisan politics'
(domestic politics), and 'humanitarian politics' (the global struggle to put humanitarian values into
practice). David Forsythe, Humanitarian Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 1-2.

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 Humanitarian intervention and international society 339

Conclusion

The English School's debates about intervention, humanitarian and otherwise, have
been unable to deal with a number of problems because of the limited conceptions
of 'intervention' and 'humanitarianism' that underpin it. The result has been a
tendency to go round and round in circles, debating the 'true' meaning of Article 2
(4) of the UN Charter, arguing about what the drafters of Resolution 688 'actually'
meant, and evaluating the extent to which a new customary norm of intervention
has come into being. Constructivist writers such as Christian Reus-Smit have
successfully exposed the internal incoherence of this debate between pluralists and
solidarists. This creates a space for rethinking the ontological assumptions that
underpin dominant conceptions of both the act of intervention and the nature of
humanitarianism. On both subjects, English School approaches are based on a
restrictive ontology. Predominant definitions of 'intervention' identify it as a discrete
activity. It is an act that is both temporally and spatially limited. However, inter
veners are already implicated in the human suffering they are ostensibly seeking to
remedy. The legitimacy and efficacy of intervention can therefore only be assessed in
relation to the intervener's contribution to prevention, rebuilding, and the structural
causes of the problem in the first place.
On intervention, I argued that a broader ontology of intervention created three
avenues of research. First, there is a need to critically reassess who legitimises acts of
intervention. The narrow English School conception draws our attention to legiti
misation by states and their organisations but a broader conception focuses attention
on legitimisation by the victims of oppression and structural violence. Nicholas J.
Wheeler refers to the 'court of world opinion' as a legitimising body but pluralists
and solidarists alike need to investigate who constitutes the court, how it makes
legitimising decisions, on what its moral agency is based, and what its normative
foundations are. Critical writers suggest that no such court exists and, echoing E. H.
Carr, argue that appeals to this abstract court are nothing other than the self-serving
pronouncements of the powerful.73 If pluralists and solidarists are to convince
others that international society is more than merely a 'protection racket' for the
powerful74 they need to elaborate on the sources and functions of legitimacy.
Secondly, a broader ontology of intervention implies that potential interveners
should dedicate more resources to prevention and rebuilding and that pluralists and
solidarists should commit more intellectual resources to studying them. The critique
of narrow conceptions of intervention creates an opening for English School writers
to evaluate the extent of prevention, intervention, and rebuilding that is needed and
tolerable in international society and the legal, moral, and practical links between
these intimately related acts.
Thirdly, a broader ontology of intervention diverts us away from the struggle
between individual claims to rights and states claims to rights. Christian Reus-Smit
suggests that this dichotomy is flawed anyway.75 This suggests that pluralists and

73 See for instance John Pilger, 'Humanitarian Intervention is the Latest Brand Name for Imperialism as
It Begins a Return to Respectability', New Statesman, 28 June 1999.
74 Ken Booth, 'Human Wrongs and International Relations', International Affairs, 71:1 (1995).
75 Christian Reus-Smit, 'Human Rights and the Social Construction of Sovereignty'.

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340 Alex J. Bellamy

solidarists should dedicate more time to considering non-violent humanitarian

strategies that do not offend against sovereign sensibilities.
A brief analysis of the English School's understanding of humanitarianism
exposed two important problems. Firstly, there is a problem with the notion of the
'supreme humanitarian emergency' which shapes English School thinking. This
concept links humanitarianism with interventionism but prioritises the latter. The
supreme humanitarian emergency is conceptualised as the exceptional case that
permits the temporary suspension of sovereignty. In order to permit spatially and
temporally limited intervention the nature of the emergency must be itself spatially
and temporally limited. Second, even my cursory study showed that this notion of
humanitarianism bears little resemblance to ideas of humanitarianism that are
commonplace outside the English School. Read through the Red Cross' understand
ing of humanitarian principles, not one act of armed 'humanitarian' intervention
discussed by pluralists and solidarists could earn the label 'humanitarian'.
These two insights create several new avenues of research. Despite the fact that
the term 'humanitarian' is used so often, English School writers barely consider
what it actually means. Can a concept of humanitarianism stand apart from
interventionism? How does the idea of a supreme humanitarian emergency relate to
death by structural violence? Which is more supreme? Which is more humanitarian?
In these post-'war against terrorism' days there is also a need to remember that
intervention for humanitarian purposes is not the only possible form of legitimate
intervention in international society - a point that emerged at the very beginning of
the English School's investigation of intervention.76
There are many avenues down which the pluralist-solidarist debate on the
legitimacy and efficacy of humanitarian intervention can profitably develop. These
avenues are based on conversations with other theoretical traditions and adherence
to the methodological pluralism that is one of the defining characteristics of the
English School.77 Constructivism, 'Welsh School' approaches to Critical Security
Studies and critical Third World perspectives in particular have a lot to teach
pluralists and solidarists about humanitarianism, interventionism and the links
between the two.

76 Hedley Bull (ed.), Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
77 See Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society, pp. 7-9 and Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne,
'Hedley Bull's Pluralism of the Intellect and Solidarism of the Will', International Affairs, 72:1 (1996).

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