HUMANITARIAN MILITARY INTERVENTION: WARS FOR THE END OF
HISTORY?
Clifford Orwin a1 a1 Professor of Political Science, Fellow of St.
Michael's College, and Director of the Program in Political
Philosophy and International Affairs, University of
Toronto
A current topic of global justice is the debate over the right of
humanitarian military intervention or, as some style it, the
“responsibility to protect” the “human security”
of all, especially where that security is threatened by the very sovereign
power charged to defend it. Such intervention came into its own only in
the decade of the Nineties. This essay analyzes the factors that favored
that outcome and sketches the difficulties to which humanitarian
intervention proved to be exposed. There can be no doubt that the rhetoric
supporting such a policy has expanded greatly during the past generation.
But what of the reality? Is the “responsibility to protect”
likely to prove the wave of the future, or merely that of the (still very
recent) past?
