SIPRI Yearbook 2008: summaries in three languages
Humanitarian Military Intervention
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Humanitarian Military Intervention
Taylor B. Seybolt
Price: £40.00 (hardback) |
Contents
About the author
How to order
Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional ‘just war’ principles, the central premise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm.
This book asks, ‘Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?’ It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were the defining cases of the 1990s—northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor—shows that the majority were successful by this measure.
In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, ‘Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?’ This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are the objectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. The focus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.
Humanitarian military intervention is
controversial. Scepticism is always in
order about the need to use military
force because the consequences can
be so dire. Yet it has become equally
controversial not to intervene when a
government subjects its citizens to
massive violation of their basic human
rights. This book recognizes the limits of
humanitarian intervention but does not shy
away from suggesting how military force
can save lives in extreme circumstances.
Contents
1. Controversies about humanitarian military intervention (download sample chapter)
Dr Taylor B. Seybolt (United States)
is a Senior Program Officer at the United
States Institute of Peace. In 1999–2002
he was the Leader of the SIPRI Conflicts
and Peace Enforcement Project and in
1997–99 was a research fellow at the
Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, Kennedy School
of Government, Harvard University. His
publications include ‘The Darfur Atrocities
Documentation Project: a perspective
from Washington, DC’, in Genocide in
Darfur: Investigating the Atrocities in
Sudan (Routledge, 2006, edited by
S. Totten and E. Markuson); ‘Humanitarian
intervention and communal civil wars:
problems and alternative approaches’,
Security Studies (2003, with Daniel
Byman); and a number of contributions
to the SIPRI Yearbook in 2000–2002.
He received his PhD in political science
from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Successs and Failure
xvii + 294 pp.
is published for SIPRI by Oxford
University Press
To order your copy please use our
Humanitarian intervention debates
The structure of this book
2. Judging success and failure
What is success?
Counting people who did not die
A typology of humanitarian military intervention
Summary
3. Humanitarian military interventions in the 1990s
State oppression of the Kurds in northern Iraq, 1991–96
State failure and famine in Somalia, 1991–95
Secession and ethnic expulsion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992–95
Genocide and civil war in Rwanda, 1994
Secessionist violence and ethnic expulsion in Kosovo, 1999
Independence and fear in East Timor, 1999–2000
Summary
4. Helping to deliver emergency aid
Strategies for delivering aid
Direct aid and logistics provision in the 1990s
Advantages and disadvantages of military intervention to help provide aid
Summary
5. Protecting humanitarian aid operations
Strategies for protecting aid operations
Protecting aid operations in the 1990s
Advantages and disadvantages of military intervention to protect aid operations
Summary
6. Saving the victims of violence
Strategies for protecting civilians
Saving the victims of violence in the 1990s
Advantages and disadvantages of military intervention to save the victims of violence
Summary
7. Defeating the perpetrators of violence
Strategies for defeating the perpetrators of violence
Defeating the perpetrators of violence in the 1990s
Advantages and disadvantages of military intervention to defeat the perpetrators of violence
Summary
8. The prospects for success and the limits of humanitarian intervention
Taking stock
Choosing among types and strategies
The limits of humanitarian military intervention
Concluding comments
About the author
How to order
Taylor B. Seybolt
ISBN 978–0–19–925243–5 hardback
£40.00
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
book order form