Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility To Protect: Who Should Intervene? - Tapa blanda

James Pattison should be congratulated on writing a comprehensive, coherent and rigorous account of the rights and wrongs of humanitarian intervention. (Graham Long, Global Discourse)

There is much to admire in Pattison's book. It gives us a systematic analysis of the problem of humanitarian intervention, moving easily from philosophical first principles to practical discussion of the logistics of intervention. Such breadth of approach seems to me essential if we are to gain a proper perspective on this most controversial of issues in international politics today. (David Miller, Global Discourse)

I would recommend this text to all those who want to take the debate surrounding humanitarian intervention- and the responsibility to protect- one step further. (Adrian Gallagher, Political Studies Review)

Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility To Protect considers who should undertake humanitarian intervention in response to an ongoing or impending humanitarian crisis, such as found in Rwanda in early 1994, Kosovo in 1999, and Darfur more recently. The doctrine of the responsibility to protect asserts that when a state is failing to uphold its citizens' human rights, the international community has a responsibility to protect these citizens, including by undertaking humanitarian intervention. It is unclear, however, which particular agent should be tasked with this responsibility. Should we prefer intervention by the UN, NATO, a regional or subregional organization (such as the African Union), a state, a group of states, or someone else? This book answers this question by, first, determining which qualities of interveners are morally significant and, second, assessing the relative importance of these qualities. For instance, is it important that an intervener have a humanitarian motive? Should an intervener be welcomed by those it is trying to save? How important is it that an intervener will be effective and what does this mean in practice? The book then considers the more empirical question of whether (and to what extent) the current interveners actually possess these qualities, and therefore should intervene. For instance, how effective can we expect UN action to be in the future? Is NATO likely to use humanitarian means? Overall, it develops a particular normative conception of legitimacy for humanitarian intervention. It uses this conception of legitimacy to assess not only current interveners, but also the desirability of potential reforms to the mechanisms and agents of humanitarian intervention.