Humanitarian Military Intervention.

The 1999 U.S.-led NATO air assault against Yugoslavia undertaken with the avowed aim of stopping human rights abuses in Kosovo has been extolled by some as a new model of humanitarian intervention. President Clinton and others have argued that when a nation is committing gross human rights violations against its citizens, other nations or multilateral coalitions have the right to intervene militarily, without the authority of the UN Security Council, to end those abuses.

However, the United Nations charter clearly prohibits nations from attacking other states for claimed violations of human rights. Article 2(4), the central provision of the charter, prohibits the "threat or use of force against" another state. There are only two exceptions to this prohibition. Article 51 allows a nation to use force in "self-defense if an armed attack occurs against" it or an allied country. The charter also authorizes the Security Council to employ force to counter threats to or breaches of international peace. This has been interpreted to allow individual nations to militarily intervene for humanitarian reasons, but only with the explicit authorization of the Security Council. This has occurred in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Bosnia.

In line with post-World War II international law, most governments and jurists have rejected unilateral humanitarian military intervention because of the potential that powerful states will abuse such a doctrine. The history of humanitarian military intervention is replete with examples of powerful states or coalitions invoking the doctrine to conceal their own geopolitical interests. Professors Thomas Franck and Nigel Rodley examined the historical record of such interventions in the 1973 American Journal of International Law and concluded that "in very few, if any, instances has the right [to humanitarian intervention] been asserted under circumstances that appear more humanitarian than self-seeking and power seeking." The International Court of Justice concluded in 1949 that the doctrine of forcible intervention in the name of international justice "has, in the past, given rise to most serious abuses ... [F]rom the nature of things, it would be reserved for the most powerful states."

Some scholars argue that recent UN practice allows for an exception to Article 2(4)'s prohibition on humanitarian intervention. They assert that the world's interest in countering serious human rights abuses cannot be blocked by the veto of a permanent Security Council member. They would legitimize unilateral military action in instances where the Security Council is silent, where it has condemned the human rights record of the target country, or where the UN is participating in the settlement of the war.

The purported good that might come from allowing countries to intervene unilaterally based upon such arguments is, however, outweighed by the dangers that arise from weakening the international restraints on the use of force. In addition, the UN charter requires that the use of force be a last resort, taken only after all peaceful alternatives have failed. The UN's primary goal is to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." To further this goal, its charter requires that decisions to go to war be made by a deliberative body of states representing a broad range of constituents: i.e., the Security Council.

The Kosovo crisis illustrates the danger of bypassing the Security Council and lends credence to those who argue that intervention was not for humanitarian purposes. Had the United States gone to the Security Council, it is possible that a settlement similar to the one that ended the air war could have been achieved without the use of force. The Security Council might have insisted on more negotiations, a more flexible approach to the Rambouillet proposal, or a less prominent role for NATO and the United States. Moreover, the destructiveness of the war and its aftermath undermine Washington's humanitarian claims and reemphasize the reasons that the charter's framers chose peace as its central tenet.

There may, of course, be certain extreme cases of genocide where one country's veto blocks the Security Council from authorizing the use of force. In dealing with those cases, it is preferable to recognize that in rare instances (and the factual evidence indicates that Kosovo was not one of these) a nation or group of nations may need to intervene without UN authorization in order to save lives. That is a less dangerous alternative than permitting an "escape clause" on the prohibition of the unilateral use of force, an exception that would likely be widely and dangerously abused.

Key Points

* The history of "humanitarian" military intervention is replete with invocations of humanitarian intentions by strong powers or coalitions in order to conceal their own geopolitical interests.

* The United Nations charter prohibits nations from attacking other states to remedy claimed violations of human rights.

* The requirement that the Security Council must authorize any use of force to protect human rights is critical to the maintenance of world peace and order.