Daniella Portal

Daniella Portal

GVPT200

Mark Shirk

10/24/13

Humanitarian intervention may sound good in theory, but given its subsequent consequences may not be the best approach. In this case human intervention refers to one with military force. People who object humanitarian intervention believe that it almost always correlates with war.  Those who support such interventions make their case in terms of the moral responsibility of the US under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Although humanitarian intervention has undoubtedly saved lives, the US has seriously under appreciated the price involved, and must eliminate war as a solution.

            To begin, a major consequence of such a military intervention is the inherit loss of civilian life. If a state is acting with humanitarian intentions, it is quite contradictory to instill those values using force. Even if the ends of such actions could be humanitarian, means don’t always turn out that way. The people who support such intervention believe that the bombing of people is the best way to protect human and civil rights, disregarding the deaths of many innocent civilians. If true humanitarian intervention is the end goal, military force is not the answer.

            Humanitarian interventions can also result in even more political instability than already present. People tend to forget the cost of maintaining military control. It involves money, time, and manpower, some of which are hard to find. Take for example Iraq: even though the US was able to dismantle the Hussein regime, it causes civil conflicts, in this case, conflicts between the Shiites and Sunnis. After such chaos occurred, the US was in no position to leave, and had to remain in order to build up a stable government. Ten years later, the US is still there, there is still no stability, and our soldiers are still not home.

In cases where there is a rebel and a dominant group, intervention is also the wrong approach, because it causes the state in charge to support one group, when both groups are acting immorally. The country intervening is forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. Often times the outside power, or a third party, will support the rebels, thus reinforcing that what they are doing is allowed. So essentially the role of a third party explains why minority groups have the courage to begin a rebellion in the first place.

Another of the central obstacles to greater U.S. participation in humanitarian intervention has been the domestic political cost. The Black Hawk Down incident in 1993 exemplifies this idea being that the American public does not have any concern for suffering casualties unless they are directly connected to the US. The 18 soldiers that fell in Somalia are far more recognized than the 500 Somalis that the US killed that day. In addition to causing more harm than good, the US also displayed their indifference to the casualties, thus showing that their original goal was provoke by humanitarian reasons.

Often proponents of humanitarian intervention neglect US interests. However, this does not mean that the United States should stop trying to promote its values abroad—it just needs a different strategy. Instead of starting more wars of intervention, Washington should shift its focus to true humanitarian policies revolving saving lives, aiding victims, and assisting refugees. Abandoning military humanitarian intervention in would not mean leaving victims of genocide and repression to their fate. It would mean that instead of combating war with war, there must be a more liberal strategy involved. Although such a strategy is unknown, if we continue the way we are going, we will just be the perpetrators of more death and conflict.