GLOBAL INSIGHTS Humanitarian Intervention and International Society

Humanitarian intervention is the current buzzword in international politics. Intrastate violence, especially when linked to the pre sumed abuse of human rights, has come to be considered a le gitimate concern of the "international community." Although the latter concept is itself an elusive one, very few people stop to think what the term really means. Even fewer dare to ask whether a less than repre sentative body, such as the UN Security Council, or a military alliance, such as NATO, should be permitted to arrogate to itself the right to speak and act on behalf of the "international community." The problem becomes more acute when these "representatives" of the "international community" choose targets for intervention selectively while ignoring human rights violations of equal or greater magnitude elsewhere. Much of this selectivity stems from the strategic interests of the dominant North Atlantic Concert. The decision in 1991 to create a safe haven for the Kurds in Iraq but not in Turkey, where the human rights of Kurds were being violated with equal severity, cast grave doubts on the sincerity of the intervening powers. Predicated on strategic considerations, double standards were at work and humanitarianism was the new code word for old-fashioned intervention undertaken for puni tive purposes that had little to do with humanitarian concerns. Skepticism about the humanitarian enterprise also emanates from other factors. Violation of state sovereignty in an international society, whose norms give pride of place to nonintervention, is perceived by many as threatening international order in the long term. This is especially the case when such violation takes place by a cabal acting under the UN Charter's veto provision and through a patently discriminatory process. The legitimacy of such actions is further eroded when they are undertaken outside the framework of the charter, as in Kosovo in 1999, by a concert of powers that dominates both the international economic and military