Humanitarian Intervention:
Security and Sovereignty Revisited

By Enzo Bollettino

What do we mean by “security?”

Security is a foundational concept in international politics and yet remains the object of considerable controversy. The predominantly Realist interpretation of security which came to dominate Cold War thinking about the subject has come under fire. A seemingly straightforward concept, security has eluded strict definition and has recently been revisited by scholars after the Cold War. A reinvestigation of the topic reveals a number of competing interpretations that enliven the debate about security in the narrow sense and international politics more broadly. This article explores the so-called “Renaissance” of security studies and looks at competing interpretations of security in the context of humanitarian intervention.

“Security” has been a foundational concept of international politics since this field's inception at the end of the Second World War. True, the idea of security has been the subject of philosophical consideration since at least the time of Thucydides as a component part of the causes of war and the nature of alliances and human behavior. However, it was not until the emergence of the national-security-state that “security” became a study in its own right. Definitions of security have been anything but clear and are usually integrally tied to far older concepts like sovereignty, territorial integrity and forms of government. How one understands notions of security rests in large part on the level employed in analyzing international politics more broadly. There are three levels of analysis: the system (international system of states), the state (domestic politics) and the individual level that theorists use as starting points for explaining international politics.1 How the theorist conceives of security therefore is very much dependent on how the world is viewed as a whole and which level of analysis is chosen to explain it.

Interpreting security: three schools

There are three schools of thought that have taken up the debate on the study of security. The Realist school focuses on states as the principle actors in the international community. Traditional Realists like Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan are concerned with notions of power as paramount to understanding human and therefore state behavior. States seek to gain and maintain power as the sole means of exercising control over their own welfare in the international system. Neo-realists like Kenneth Waltz take this logic a step further and posit the state as a unitary, rational actor that must cope with an anarchic environment (no world government monitoring their actions) and whose principal focus is survival.

A second school of thought, referred to as Neoliberal institutionalism, concentrates on the role of international institutions in mitigating world politics. In this model, there is continued concern with the centrality of states, but there is a new focus on the role of international institutions in an environment characterized by complex interdependence. Robert Keohane, who has played a central role in defining this field, points to the ability of institutions like the United Nations (UN) to redefine state roles and act as an arbitrator in state disputes. Although institutions cannot absolve anarchy, they can change the character of the international environment by influencing state preferences and state behavior. International institutions do this by a variety of methods that either create strong incentives for cooperation like favorable trade status, or through powerful disincentives like trade sanctions.

A third school of thought, which may be referred to as Structuration theory challenges some of the core assumptions made by Realists and Neoliberal institutionalists.2 Broadly, structuration theory questions positing the state as the most important actor on the international scene. Instead, structuration theory explores the dialectic relationship between human beings and the social context they live in.

Competing interpretations of security

Various definitions of security have emerged from these three schools of thought. Charles Hermann defines security as “the expectation of retaining and enhancing the ability to partake of highly regarded value outcomes free of obstructions.”3 More recently, Stephen Walt identifies what he calls a ‘Renaissance of Security Studies.’ According to this view, security studies “may be defined as the study of the threat, use, and control of military force,” and as such, its principle concern is war.4 The marriage between security studies and social science, as well as increased access to information and civilian expertise, led to a shift from an overwhelmingly military conception of security studies in a “golden age” of the ’50s-’60s, to a broader notion of security during the ’70s. This renaissance is characterized by a greater reliance on history, challenges to rational deterrence theory,5 the impact of ideas on nuclear weapons policy and conventional warfare, and increased interest in the United States’ “Grand Strategy.”6

Edward Kolodziej criticizes this idea of a renaissance in security studies and warns that Walt, in adopting a neo-realist conception of security, has betrayed competing definitions which reflect a varied set of social contexts. Walt’s social science conception of security, wedded as it is to the “standards of logic, evidence and scientific goals,” is “transformed into the handmaiden of Grand Strategy.”7 Walt fails to acknowledge that security is ultimately a human concern, and is consequently inseparable from the political realm. There is a danger in assuming that what is inherently a political question is governed by a mechanism outside of people’s control.

For Kolodziej, the real Renaissance in security studies was a “moral revolution that freed the human mind to explore without limit the possibilities of transcending the political constraints to which men are born and of escaping the tyranny of force and change in designing their fates.”8 The end of the Cold War is testimony to the fact that Neorealism is only one of many competing theories that explain world politics and security. Kolodziej offers a number of guidelines for a future agenda of security studies. These include the suggestion that the security analyst should avoid claiming a monopoly over what is real, relevant and controllable. He further suggests there is a need for a clear indication of the normative assumptions on which research is conducted, and a broader scope of analysis.

With its exclusive focus on the rational state as actor, and interest defined as military power, realism provides little room for the exploration of alternative ideas of security. Acknowledging these challenges, Seyom Brown criticizes the self-confirming nature of the realist paradigm. The result is a diverting of our attention away from what Brown characterizes as the “most profound structural problem of contemporary world society: the widening gap between the emergent realities of material interdependence and patterns of interaction among peoples and the inherited legal/political structure of the nation-state system.”9 The state is no longer able to cope with international crises like degradation of the environment, mass migration, starvation and disease. Brown recommends that we substitute world interests for the narrow state interests envisioned by realists. These world interests would include survival of the human species, reduction in world violence, provision of conditions for healthy subsistence to all people, preservation of cultural diversity and preservation of the world’s ecology.10

The Post-Cold War: a paradigm shift for
security studies?

The criticisms leveled against the realist paradigm call into serious question conclusions drawn from analyses made from that perspective alone. The end of the Cold War affords us an opportunity to explore alternative means of approaching the security debate. Structuration theory is promising: it holds that neither the system itself, nor the states that comprise it, are given ontological primacy. Both the state and the system are social constructs that vary in place and time. Theories like structural realism, which make the state ‘ontologically primitive,’ fail to demonstrate how the system itself generates actors. No social theory of the state is possible, because the state’s function and interests are taken as given.

A structuration theory avoids these dangers by viewing individuals as inseparable from their social context. Identity and interests are no longer determined externally as they are in the realist model; they are the product of interaction between actors. Self-help and power politics are two possible institutions, but are not fixed features of anarchy. Anarchy is a social construct and both identity and interest have intersubjective meaning.11 Security is no longer the exclusive domain of independent, rational states seeking survival in an anarchic environment which imposes on them the need to seek a relative advantage in power over potential adversaries. Security is inherently a human concern and should never be divorced from human ends.

Security seen through the lens of intervention

On the international political scene, this discussion on security is part of the emerging debate over intervention and state sovereignty. Founded upon the principles of territorial integrity and state sovereignty, the United Nations has recently begun to shift toward an emphasis on the rights of human beings as being at least as important as the rights of states in the international realm. In a discussion on the relevance of the Security Council, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has clearly indicated that “the last right of states cannot and must not be the right to enslave, persecute or torture their own citizens.”12 In fact, rather than rally around sovereignty as its sole governing idea, the Security Council should “unite behind the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights conducted against an entire people cannot be allowed to stand.”13

The sovereignty/intervention debate has found renewed emphasis since the end of the Cold War. Realism, the dominant theory of the Cold War period, offered only one interpretation of what intervention might mean. Realists favored a position of nonintervention based on the territorial integrity of the sovereign state. Intervention could only be justified as a means of defending the territorial integrity of the state (a war of self-defense), or as one means of maintaining the international system of states under Chapter VII of the UN charter. Arguably, the Cold War provided an environment in which the dangers of intervention based on anything but immediate state interest outweighed its potential benefits. The demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the nuclear standoff has changed the very nature of the environment in which states formulate and conceive of their interests. What then of intervention? Have material, social and cultural changes shifted the balance in favor of intervention on behalf of humanitarian concerns?

Intervention is a largely normative concept with both proponents and opponents making moral, ethical and legal arguments to address the issue. Those opposed to a right of intervention, like Michael Walzer, point to the sanctity of political communities and their right to noninterference from outside.14 Others, like Jack Donnelly and Friedrich Kratochwil, suggest that despite legitimate humanitarian concerns there is no legal right of intervention.15 Michael Mandelbaum sees the attempt to base foreign policy on humanitarian concerns as misplaced social work.16 Fareed Zakaria believes that focusing on humanitarian concerns robs the dominant power of scarce resources, thus threatening the stability of the system as a whole.17

A closer look at these arguments reveals an exaggerated preoccupation with the custom of nonintervention, which, although undergoing dynamic change, is not being abandoned altogether. Responding to critics of his “Just and Unjust Wars,” Walzer lays down the foundations for his principle of nonintervention. Walzer’s argument posits that the state is constituted by the union of people and government: the people comprise a political community and the government is merely their instrument. “Communal integrity derives its moral and political force from the rights of contemporary men and women to live as members of a historic community and to express their inherited culture through political forms worked out among themselves.”18 The state derives legitimacy according to “the fit of government and community, that is, the degree to which the government actually represents the political life of its people.”19 As such, intervention against such a community constitutes aggression and is a crime. States have a right to both internal and external sovereignty and may meet threats to that sovereignty with force. Aggressors may be legitimately punished, either in a war of self-defense by the victim or in a war of law enforcement by states acting on behalf of international society.

Because of their moral foundation, states have the right to sovereignty, and nonintervention is a just norm of international society. According to Walzer, intervention can only be justified by certain circumstances: when a particular state includes more than one political community; when a single community is disrupted by civil war and a foreign power intervenes in support of this or that party; and finally when the government is engaged in the massacre or enslavement of its own citizens. David Luban takes issue with this essentially pluralist understanding of rights. He argues that Walzer’s view of sovereignty is opposed to finding the common ground, and that in making “pluralism the overriding value, it is incompatible with a theory that grants universal human rights.”20

Luban, a proponent of humanitarian intervention, suggests that a doctrine of “jus ad bellum” (just causes of war) formulated in terms of human rights does not see aggression as the sole crime of war.21 For Luban, rights derive from a social contract theory in which members of a community have consented to join into a political community. Human rights, on the other hand, derive from the very fact of being human. Human rights are, literally, the rights that one has simply as a human being.22 Considering both human and civil rights, a just war is (1) a war in defense of socially basic human rights or (2) a war of self-defense against an unjust war.23 Both Luban and Walzer maintain a right of nonintervention in cases where the state is understood to represent the will of its citizens. However, Luban is further amenable to the idea of humanitarian intervention, in those instances where states forgo any legitimate claim to nonintervention by abusing the human rights of their citizens.

Intervention: A just means of defending
human rights?

Nonintervention, the right to not intervene, has also been viewed as the “duty correlative to the right of sovereignty.”24 Donnelly argues that “sovereignty remains the central norm in the politics of human rights and that therefore, the international community, except in rare circumstances, does not have the right to exercise the power to intervene on behalf of human rights.”25 He further maps out four forms of intervention that are used by states and/or the international community to deal with human rights abuses: authorized coercive interference, prohibited coercive interference, authorized noncoercive interference and unregulated noncoercive interference. With the exception of prohibited coercive interference, the remaining three forms of intervention respect state sovereignty and are thus potentially legitimate means of dealing with human rights abuses.

Kratochwil also sees nonintervention as a natural extension of the right to sovereignty. State sovereignty is based both on the notion of popular sovereignty and self-determination. A state’s right to sovereign dominion (territorial integrity, autonomy, and noninterference), “belongs to the state participant in the international sovereignty game, rather than to the people who have delegated specific powers to the government.”26 Furthermore, there exists no right to intervention “construed from the misuse of power by a government.”27 Like Walzer, but unlike Luban, Kratochwil affirms the idea that “a persistent violation of human rights by a government gives rise to a right of resistance on the part of its people, but hardly to a general right of intervention by outsiders.”28 Intervention can only be justified for the protection of a state’s nationals abroad, or on the measures taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

These arguments assert what has traditionally been the right of states to noninterference based on the principle of sovereignty. Yet, as Krasner has suggested, the idea of sovereignty is ever-evolving.29 The end of the Cold War marks a shift in the material and social composition of the system of states. The above arguments—Luban aside—are marked by a myopic view of where sovereignty is headed. Sovereignty is a social construct and as social and cultural circumstances shift, so too does the definition of sovereignty. Whether or not we embrace these changes, they are happening. What is important is that we understand that the actual principle of sovereignty is not being abandoned. David Fisher, for example, suggests that the moral presumption should be against intervention.30 Nonetheless, intervention can on occasion be ethically permissible, maybe even ethically required, as when people are threatened with large-scale torture, massacre or genocide. The prevention of such suffering would constitute a just cause for humanitarian intervention. Clearly, the form which sovereignty takes is undergoing a change. The direction of that change is toward a new conception of sovereignty that allows legitimate intervention on behalf of humanitarian concerns.

The power and the burden to act

Mandelbaum laments the post-Cold War shift toward humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian intervention, he claims, leads inescapably to political intervention and as such to the idea of state building.31 States that conduct humanitarian interventions must guarantee the borders of countries under challenge (Bosnia, Iraq) and/or construct an apparatus of government in places where it is absent (Somalia). Mandelbaum chastises the Clinton administration for trying to model American foreign policy on the Mother Teresa principle, i.e., to make foreign policy into a branch of social work. The Clinton administration, he asserts, has been marked by a series of failures in Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti. All three “would have involved addressing root causes of misery which would have meant deep, protracted, and costly engagement in the tangled political life of each country.”32 Moreover, the fear of over-involvement led to a confused policy where the exit strategy became the mission.

Undoubtedly, the confusion associated with a dramatic shift in world politics has been paralleled by equal amounts of confusion in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. However, Mandelbaum’s assertion that U.S. policy should continue to be based on narrow U.S. interests is ill-conceived. Acting on behalf of U.S. interest should not preclude the formulation of a clear policy that integrates the need to respond to threats to national security with a need to protect human rights where they are threatened. Decision-makers should be wary of arguments like that made by Zakaria which see “substantial intervention in areas that are peripheral to America’s long-term strategic interests” as contributing to the demise of the core by focusing too much on the periphery.33

Both of these accounts fail in that they see the United States as acting in isolation to resolve the world’s ills. Even if in reality the United States alone has the ability to project power at present, this does not suggest that the United Nations (UN) will not develop that capacity in the future. In the meantime, policy should rest on the twin pillars of sharing the burden associated with humanitarian intervention with a commitment to strengthening the ability of the United Nations to intervene. The fear that a right to humanitarian intervention will lead to its abuse by powerful states acting only nominally on behalf of human rights, is a widely-shared idea. Stephen Van Evera argues that widespread American intervention in the Third World makes little sense in the post-Cold War world.34 Intervention to institute democracy, for example, will likely fail both because democracy requires suitable social and economic conditions that intervention cannot provide and because the United States has tended to favor democracy only when it produced governments that supported American policies. Though largely true, these criticisms do not preclude intervention based on legitimate concerns with just goals. Yes, less intervention would be better where intervention is taken for narrow national interests. But strong states will intervene in other states whenever their interests are compromised, despite a law or norm of nonintervention to the contrary. If a right to humanitarian intervention is allowed, legitimate intervention becomes a possibility, with the added benefit of saving many lives.

Proponents of humanitarian intervention like Thomas Weiss agree with this last point. Weiss makes the claim that “however imperfect, the dangers of big-power abuse are actually reduced by relying on a practical system for intervention under UN auspices.”35 Weiss demands that genocide, massive abuse of human rights and starvation all merit intervention by the international community. “In today’s world, UN decisionmaking is the only available and sensible way to coordinate global responses to genocidal misery and massive human rights abuse in war zones around the world.”36 Both Weiss and Jarat Chopra call for the creation of what they call “humanitarian space.” Such a term would reflect intervention geared toward addressing the limited goal of securing aid workers and the delivery of resources to victims of war, famine, etc., without interfering directly with the host countries politics. This reflects a view of state borders as artificial and “not relevant for solidarity among human beings.”37

Richard Falk argues that intervention, as he defines it “is never good foreign policy, no matter how appealing the overall humanitarian case seems to be for changing political structure.”38 While not intervening is intolerable, intervention remains impossible. Like Mandelbaum, Falk fears that what starts out as a purely humanitarian concern inevitably turns into a political puzzle with no easy solution. So be it, politics are puzzling; human intervention should not simply be abandoned because cases vary and some situations are inevitably more difficult than others to address. Falk’s misgivings about the efficacy of intervention have not caused him to discourage the idea altogether. In fact, he calls both for a strengthening of the United Nations overall, the institution of a permanent body of UN peacekeeping forces, increased funding for UNHCR and in cases of genocide, the convening of a war crimes tribunal. All are valid suggestions and merit further attention.

Richard Betts also calls into question the benefits of intervention. Betts sees post-Cold War interventions as plagued by problems that are largely the result of the idea that intervention can be impartial.39 Addressing the specific problems associated with intervention in Bosnia and Somalia, Betts proposes that the United Nations follow a clear set of general guidelines. First, there must be recognition that to make peace is to decide who rules. Consequently, serious thought should be given to what outcome the international community would like to see before it decides to intervene. Second, the UN should avoid half measures. Intervention is an all or nothing affair. Going in half-way can often result in more harm than might have been experienced had the mission not been taken in the first place. Third, do not confuse peace with justice. Betts asserts that even unjust solutions can lead to peace. While this may assure peace in the short term, long-term peace can only be founded on a just solution. Finally, humanitarian intervention must be made militarily rational by matching appropriate forces to political goals.

The close of the ’90s and future notions of security

The sovereignty/intervention debate continues to be played out in everyday politics with ever greater emphasis of the right of the international community to protect human rights. Both East Timor and Kosovo reveal a greater propensity to invoke Chapter VII authority to intervene in what was previously considered exclusively the domestic affairs of sovereign states. By associating gross violations of human rights with a threat to international peace and security, the United States and others have pushed ever closer toward a right to intervention for the protection of human rights.

Increasingly, security is being conceived in human terms, beginning with the rights of individuals and the obligation of states to protect them. Certainly, decision-makers and academics alike will continue to view the world in terms of international security where states continue to be the principal rights’ bearers in the international system. However, renewed emphasis on this first level of analysis (the individual) has shed important light on the meaning of security. This renewed emphasis on security in human terms will likely call into question the efficacy of the existing UN Charter and Conventions to protect the most basic of human rights in practical terms on a global scale. Whatever the outcome, students of security have a great deal to learn from the link between security studies and human rights.

1 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics. See also Singer, “The levels of analysis problem in International Relations.”

2 This third school of thought has alternately been referred to as postmodern, post-positivist, post-structural, and reflectivist in the literature.

3 Charles F. Hermann, “Are the Dimensions and Implications of National Security Changing?” Mershon Center Quarterly, 1(1977) 5-7.

4 Stephen M. Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly, 35 (1991) 212.

5 “A formulation emphasizing capability and will is embedded in national deterrence theory, which assumes that the adversary will be able to make a well-informed meansend calculation of the damage which the deterrer will actually carry out its threat.” See Bruce Russett, “Deterence,” in The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, ed. Joel Krieger, (1993).

6 “Grand strategy refers to overarching plans that seek to balance a country’s resources with its global military commitments. During the Cold War, U.S. grand strategy was based on the notion of containment of the Soviet Union.” See Charles Kupchan, “Strategy,” in The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, ed. Joel Krieger,(1993).

7 Edward A. Kolodziej, “Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!” International Studies Quarterly, 36 (1992) 429.

8 Ibid., 430.

9 Seyom Brown, “World Interests and the Changing Dimensions of Security,” in World Security, Michael Klare and Daniel Thomas, eds., (1994) 12.

10 Ibid., 18-24.

11 Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46 (Spring 1992) 391-425.

12 Kofi Annan, “The Relevance of the U.N. Security Council,” in Vital Speeches, (6/15/99), v.65 i.17, 514(2).

13 Ibid.

14 Michael Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States,” in International Ethics: A Philosophy and Public Affairs, Charles Beitz ed., (1980) 109-129.

15 Jack Donnelly, “State Sovereignty and International Intervention: The Case of Human Rights,” and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Sovereignty as Dominium: Is there a right of Humanitarian Intervention?” in Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention, Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanduno, eds., (1995), 115-146.

16 Michael Mandelbaum, “Foreign Policy as Social Work,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 1996) 16-32.

17 Fareed Zakaria, “The Core vs. the Periphery,” Commentary, (December 1993) 25-29.

18 Walzer, 211.

19 Ibid., 214.

20 David Luban, “The Romance of the Nation-State,” in International Ethics: A Philosophy and Public Affairs, Charles Beitz ed., (1980) 396.

21 David Luban, “Just War and Human Rights,” in International Ethics: A Philosophy and Public Affairs, Charles Beitz ed., (1980) 201.

22 Jack Donnelly, “Human Rights, Democracy and Development,” Human Rights Quarterly, (August, 1999), 613.

23 Luban, 210.

24 Jack Donnelly, “State Sovereignty and International Intervention: The case of human rights,” 118.

25 Ibid., 115.

26 Kratochwil, 34.

27 Ibid., 35.

28 Ibid., 37.

29 Stephen Krasner, “Westphalia and All That,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., (1993) 235-264.

30 David Fisher, “The Ethics of Intervention,” Survival (Spring 1994) 51-59.

31Michael Mandelbaum, "The Reluctance to Intervene,” Foreign Policy (Summer 1994) 3-18.

32 Michael Mandelbaum, "Foreign Policy as Social Work,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 1996) 18.

33 Zakaria, 26.

34 Stephen Van Evera, "American Intervention in the Third World: Less Would Be Better,” Security Studies (Summer 1991).

35 Thomas C. Weiss, "Triage: Humanitarian Interventions in a New Era,” World Policy Journal (Spring 1994) 62.

36 Ibid., 67.

37 Thomas C. Weiss and Jarat Chopra, "Sovereignty Under Siege: From Intervention to Humanitarian Space,” in Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention, Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanduno, eds., (1995) 112.

38 Richard Falk, "Hard Choices and Tragic Dilemmas,” The Nation (December 1993) 757.

39 Richard K. Betts, "The Delusion of Impartial Intervention,” Foreign Affairs (November/December 1994) 20-33.