The Humanitarian Temptation

In 2000, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan posed a question to the Millennium Summit of the UN: "If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica--to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity?"

In fact, many people are quite surprised to discover that until quite recently it was unequivocally "against" international law to intervene in another state's affairs, no matter how brutally its rulers abused its subjects. The old concept of state sovereignty was enshrined in the UN Charter, which, despite its opening invocation of "We the peoples of the United Nations," was actually a mutual insurance pact among states, which left their peoples at their mercy.

George W. Bush's September 12 speech to the United Nations manifested both the seductions and the dangers of "humanitarian intervention." Carefully researched for its audience impact, it invoked the plight of the Iraqi people to justify enforced regime change, knowing that there was a growing constituency, nationally and internationally, for such a notion. However, the record of his own Administration and its predecessors betrays at best a very limited interest in the welfare of any of the Iraqi people.

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