The notion of humanitarian interventions, understood as interventions in other states to stop human rights abuses, has been observed since the 19th century. Scholars have often identified the interventions in the
Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) as the first humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian concern was apparent when
Britain,
France and
Russia decisively intervened in a naval engagement at
Navarino in 1827 to secure for the Greeks independence from the
Ottoman Empire. In 1823, after initial ambivalence, the
Foreign Secretary George Canning declared that "when a whole nation revolts against its conqueror, the nation cannot be considered as piratical but as a nation in a state of war". In February that same year, he notified the Ottoman Empire that the United Kingdom would maintain friendly relations with the Turks only under the condition that the latter respected the Christian subjects of the Empire. He was also instrumental in the outcome of the St. Petersburg Protocol 1826, in which Russia and Britain agreed to mediate between the Ottomans and the Greeks on the basis of complete autonomy of Greece under Turkish sovereignty. When this did not end the War, Canning negotiated a following
treaty that ultimately led to the destruction of the Egyptian-Turkish fleet at the
Battle of Navarino. , a
Philhellene who fought for Greek independence. was described by
The Times as stemming from humanitarian motives. The treatment of minorities under the Ottoman aegis proved a rich source of liberal agitation throughout the nineteenth century. A multinational force under French leadership was sent to
Lebanon to help restore peace after the
1860 Druze–Maronite conflict, in which thousands of Christian
Maronites had been massacred by the
Druze population. Following an international outcry, the Ottoman Empire agreed on 3 August 1860 to the dispatch of up to 12,000 European soldiers to reestablish order. This agreement was further formalized in a convention on 5 September 1860 with
Austria,
Great Britain,
France,
Prussia and
Russia. , which shocked Europe. Despite the unprecedented demonstration of the strength of public opinion and the media, the Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli remained an unmoved practitioner of
realpolitik, and considered British interests to lie in the preservation of Ottoman sovereignty in
Eastern Europe.
Lord Derby the Foreign Secretary disagreed and telegraphed the
Sublime Porte that "any renewal of the outrages would be more fatal to the Porte than the loss of a battle." Apart from issuing stern advice and proposals for internal Turkish reform and the legal protection of minorities, the Disraeli government did nothing. However, the issue convulsed British politics with former Prime Minister
William Ewart Gladstone coming out of retirement to campaign over the atrocities. In a
famous campaigning speech he said: Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Blmhashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. Rising Great Power tensions in the early 20th century and the interwar period led to a breakdown in the concerted will of the international community to enforce considerations of a humanitarian nature. Attempts were made under the auspices of the
League of Nations to arbitrate and settle international disputes. Aggressive actions, such as the Italian
Invasion of Abyssinia and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria were condemned, but the League lacked the resolve to enforce its will effectively. The Allied discovery of
the Holocaust and the subsequent
Nuremberg trials at the end of
World War II caused attitudes to change considerably. After the tragedies in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s, the international community began to debate how to react to cases in which human rights are grossly and systematically violated. Especially, in his Millennium Report of 2000, then
Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, called on Member States: "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 offend every precept of our common humanity?". Since the end of the
Cold War, interventions have increasingly been used, such as the
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the
2011 military intervention in Libya.
Philosophy of humanitarian intervention , an early proponent of humanitarian intervention. One of the first champions of the duty of humanitarian intervention to prevent atrocities around the world, was the Victorian
liberal John Stuart Mill, who wrote in his 1859 essay
A Few Words on Non-Intervention: "There seems to be no little need that the whole doctrine of non-interference with foreign nations should be reconsidered, if it can be said to have as yet been considered as a really moral question at all... To go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little justifiable to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to submit to our will in any other respect. But there assuredly are cases in which it is allowable to go to war, without having been ourselves attacked, or threatened with attack; and it is very important that nations should make up their minds in time, as to what these cases are... To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and
barbarians, is a grave error...." In 1859, Mill wrote that both
Algeria and
India (both of which were under
European colonial rule) were inhabited by "barbarous peoples". Mill's justification of intervention was overt
imperialism. First, he argued that with "barbarians" there is no hope for "reciprocity", an international fundamental. Second, barbarians are apt to benefit from civilized interveners, said Mill, citing Roman conquests of
Gaul,
Spain,
Numidia and
Dacia. Barbarians, "have no rights as a nation, except a right to such treatment as may, at the earliest possible period, fit them for becoming one. The only moral laws for the relation between a civilized and a barbarous government, are the universal rules of morality between man and man." While seeming wildly out of kilter with modern discourse, a similar approach can be found in theory on intervention in
failed states. Of more widespread relevance, Mill discussed the position between "civilized peoples". "The disputed question is that of interfering in the regulation of another country's internal concerns; the question whether a nation is justified in taking part, on either side, in the civil wars or party contests of another: and chiefly, whether it may justifiably aid the people of another country in struggling for liberty; or may impose on a country any particular government or institutions, either as being best for the country itself, or as necessary for the security of its neighbours. Mill brushes over the situation of intervening on the side of governments who are trying to oppress an uprising of their own, saying "government which needs foreign support to enforce obedience from its own citizens, is one which ought not to exist". In the case however of a civil war, where both parties seem at fault, Mill argues that third parties are entitled to demand that the conflicts shall cease. He then moves to the more contentious situation of wars for liberation. "When the contest is only with native rulers, and with such native strength as those rulers can enlist in their defence, the answer I should give to the question of the legitimacy of intervention is, as a general rule, No. The reason is, that there can seldom be anything approaching to assurance that intervention, even if successful, would be for the good of the people themselves. The only test possessing any real value, of a people's having become fit for popular institutions, is that they, or a sufficient portion of them to prevail in the contest, are willing to brave labour and danger for their liberation. I know all that may be said, I know it may be urged that the virtues of freemen cannot be learnt in the school of slavery, and that if a people are not fit for freedom, to have any chance of becoming so they must first be free. And this would be conclusive, if the intervention recommended would really give them freedom. But the evil is, that if they have not sufficient love of liberty to be able to wrest it from merely domestic oppressors, the liberty which is bestowed on them by other hands than their own, will have nothing real, nothing permanent. No people ever was and remained free, but because it was determined to be so...."Mill's argument for humanitarian intervention, however, is not compatible with modern
international law. International law after World War II establishes the principle of sovereign equality, and therefore to subject a sovereign state to outside intervention is generally considered illegal. To deal with this potential conflict between humanitarian intervention and the international legal system, there are some philosophical attempts to conciliate the two concepts and specify conditions for ethically justified interventions.
John Rawls, one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century, offers his theory of humanitarian intervention based on the notion of "well-ordered society." According to Rawls, a well-ordered society should be peaceful and legitimate, and it must respect basic human rights. Between such well-ordered societies, the principle of non-intervention should uphold. On the other hand, expansionist or human rights violating regimes are not shielded from the international law: in grave cases such as ethnic cleansing, coercive intervention by others is legitimate.
Martha Nussbaum, however, is critical of Rawls' approach. She points out that the sufferings of individuals, not those of the impersonal states, form the moral foundations of humanitarian intervention. Therefore, the concept of "well-ordered society," by falsely focusing on the state rather than individuals, cannot determine whether an intervention is justified. Instead, Nussbaum proposes a more concrete standard based on human capabilities (see
Capability approach). She argues that "[n]ational sovereignty should be respected, within the constraints of promoting human capabilities". In other words, if a state fails to provide its citizens the basic "capabilities," such as the capability to live a healthy life, then outside intervention is justified. Some critics contend that modern philosophical arguments for humanitarian aid fail to recognize the flaws of current international law itself. International Relations scholar
Martha Finnemore argues that humanitarian crises often involve conflict between the most basic principles of international law: sovereignty, human rights and
self-determination. As a result, philosophical attempts to integrate all those principles into a clear ethical guideline of humanitarian intervention is deemed to be futile. Legal scholar
Eric Posner also points out that countries tend to hold different views of human rights and public good, so to establish a relatively simple set of rules that reflects shared ethics is not likely to succeed. The debate about whether humanitarian intervention can be seen as a righteous and justified act, depends largely on which one of the variety of theories we decide to examine the concept through. In the school of international relations, we can analyse humanitarian intervention from the perspectives of for example
realist,
constructivist,
liberalist, and
idealist theories. When it comes to
realist theory, humanitarian intervention can never be purely humanitarian since the main actors are states who act out of their own interests. In addition, realists highlight that the decisions whether to intervene or not are made by political decision makers who all have their own reasons behind the willingness to intervene or not intervene. Similarly, some realists argue that humanitarianism should not be treated as a separate category in a state's behavior. One of the problems in this approach is that it might lead to lack of intervention, unless states see a material interest in it. According to
constructivist theorists, a state's self-interest is also defined by its identity as well as shared values and principles, which include promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights. Therefore, if we expect that these values are morally valuable, intervention which is self-interested in the above-mentioned sense might not be morally problematic. Moreover, they emphasize that morals and self interests are not mutually exclusive. For certain constructivists it's also important that the intervener is seen as legitimate on a global level, in order to not meet pressure that would prevent its success.
Liberalism can be perceived as one of humanitarian intervention's ethical sources, which challenges the norms and methods of sovereign states’ governance together with its existence in the case where one of many nationalities experience oppression. Certain liberalists even value national self-determination higher than an individual's right to democratic government, refusing the ethical origin of an intervention when only democracy is at risk. One strain of liberalism in this context is forceful liberalism, which perceives sovereignty as only an instrumental value. Forceful liberalists highlight the human rights defense through intervention both with the consent from the Security Council or without it. For them, the lack of intervention to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 was more grave than not intervening because of lack of authorisation. At the other end there is
idealist theory, according to which all individuals are connected through shared values, rights, duties and universal norms. Since the world is seen as a big community, everyone is connected through a common humanitarian law, thus making intervention a responsibility rather than a violation against state sovereignty. Human rights violations happening in one part of the world would therefore affect everyone equally. However, idealism is often seen as too simplified and narrow since it claims that intervention has to follow purely altruistic motives where people selflessly want to help other individuals regardless of their race, religion or nationality. ==Legal grounds==