Book Review — The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention

The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention by Rajan Menon is a study of the failure of armed humanitarian intervention. Menon holds the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair in Political Science at the City College of New York/City University of New York and is a Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University, and a Global Ethics Fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs.

For those who came to age after the end of the Cold War, the idea of humanitarian intervention is considered a normal function in foreign affairs. Bangladesh, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Bosnia have all been in the news and topics of political debate since the end of the Cold War. For many younger adults, armed humanitarian interventions are simply a norm. For older adults the idea of humanitarian interventions was unknown in the Cold War Era. Jimmy Carter was unique wanting to make human rights a centerpiece of American foreign policy. In fact, during the Cold War, both East and West supported repressive regimes to build up their number of allies and access raw materials. Even further back in history, humanitarian intervention was mostly self-interest or a move to hamper their enemies, such as Russia, Britain, and France actively supporting Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.

Menon uses recent examples of intervention and examines international law in discussing humanitarian intervention. There is the assumption that humanitarian intervention is readily accepted by the world community, in fact, that is quite the opposite. NATO intervention was not widely supported outside of Europe. NATO itself creates its own loopholes in international norms. It is not a state which exempts it from many international laws — laws are designed for state intervention. It also claimed that its actions were not to gain territory but to end atrocities. presenting the idea of acting altruistically.

Menon also looks at which interventions America and others choose to participate in. America practically ignored Rwanda and used grammatical acrobatics to avoid using the word genocide in describing the mass killings. Clinton was hesitant to send troops back to Africa. Somalia and the “Black Hawk Down” memory was too fresh in the American public’s memory. Britain also ignored Rwanda after being bogged down for years in Sierra Leone. I happened to be in graduate school at the time and the question as posed way did we intervene in Haiti and not in Rwanda? Off the cuff, I responded with the Raft Theory. My theory simply stated that if unrest in one country caused refugees in rafts to wash up on your shores, intervention was necessary. Haitians could Rwandans could not. That was my five minutes of fame in grad school, but the point was valid. If the problem did not directly affects you, it could be safely ignored without any ill effect from your own population.

The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention shows the complexity and hypocrisy in humanitarian intervention. International law is weak as well as international will. There have been very few widely supported interventions. Cold War Realist Theory competes with modern Liberal Theory. Even in both Iraq Wars, the US formed coalitions to show worldwide support. However, China, India, nearly all of Latin America and Africa, and Iraq’s enemy Iran, did not support the operation. Russia approved but did not contribute troops. The idea of worldwide support for intervention is as much of a myth as the Patriots success in downing primitive SCUD missiles.

This book, which I first thought was going to be quite light and emotionally driven, is in fact, a well-documented, real-world look at the problems of humanitarian intervention. Menon forces the reader to give a hard look at the world we think we live in. An interesting and enlightening read in foreign policy.

Audio Book Review — The Great Poets Collection: Francesco Petrarch

I actually listened to this collection and did not read it.

After having a discussion with a friend over who the Italian poet from the 13th century was in “Tangled Up in Blue,” I did a little research and found an except from a Bob Dylan interview where he stated it was “Plutarch. Is that his name?” But Plutarch was Greek and lived well before the 13th century. Petrarch, however, was born at the beginning of the 14th century and is a reasonably close in spelling.

Petrarch had a serious thing for Laura, whom he had never spoken to, and devote a good deal of his poetry to her. He was training to be a priest and the mere sight of Laura de Noves send Petrarch into a frenzy of romantic poetry writing.*

Blessed be the Day

Oh blessed be the day, the month, the year,
the season and the time, the hour, the instant,
the gracious countryside, the place where I was
struck by those two lovely eyes that bound me;

and blessed be the first sweet agony
I felt when I found myself bound to Love,
the bow and all the arrows that have pierced me,
the wounds that reach the bottom of my heart.

And blessed be all of the poetry
I scattered, calling out my lady’s name,
and all the sighs, and tears, and the desire;

blessed be all the paper upon which
I earn her fame, and every thought of mine,
only of her, and shared with no one else.

Laura de Noves

 

After listening the poems it is not hard to believe this is who Dylan was referring to because:

…every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin’ coal
Pourin’ off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue

 

Petrarch nails it as a romantic poet.

Next up is his complete collection of sonnets. This was enough of a taste to motivate me to read the rest of his work.

* An other story says that Laura is close to the laurels he wore around his head. I don’t chose to believe that story, even though Petrarch wore enough laurels around his head that he could have been mistaken for a modern combat sniper.