Nicholas J. Wheeler

The extent to which humanitarian intervention has become a legitimate practice in post-cold war international society is the subject of this book. It maps the changing legitimacy of humanitarian intervention by comparing the international response to cases of humanitarian intervention in the cold war and post-cold war periods. Crucially, the book examines how far international society has recognised humanitarian intervention as a legitimate exception to the rules of sovereignty and non-intervention and non-use of force. While there are studies of each case of intervention-in East Pakistan, Cambodia, Uganda, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo-there is no single work that examines them comprehensively in a comparative framework. Each chapter tells a story of intervention that weaves together a study of motives, justifications and outcomes. The legitimacy of humanitarian intervention is contested by the 'pluralist' and 'solidarist' wings of the English school, and the book charts the stamp of these conceptions on state practice. Solidarism lacks a full-blown theory of humanitarian intervention and the book supplies one. This theory is employed to assess the humanitarian qualifications of the cases of intervention analysed in the book, and this normative assessment is then compared to the moral practices of states. A key focus is to examine how far humanitarian intervention as a legitimate practice is present in the diplomatic dialogue of states. In exploring how far there has been a change of norm in the society of states in the 1990s, the book defends the broad based constructivist claim that state actions will be constrained if they cannot be legitimated, and that new norms enable new practices but do not determine these. The book concludes by considering how far contemporary practices of humanitarian intervention support a new solidarism, and how far this resolves the traditional conflict between order and justice in international society.

Humanitarian Intervention in International Society

Saving Strangers

Christian Reus-Smit

Ian Clark

Robyn Eckersley

Mlada Bukovansky

Richard MacKay Price

This is the first study of how major global problems have been managed through the international distribution of special responsibilities.

Global Problems and American Power

Special Responsibilities

How can two enemies transform their relationship into a cooperative one? The starting point for this book is that the discipline of International Relations has not done a good job of answering this question, and the reason for this is that the concept of trust - and the possibility of building new trusting relationships between enemies - has been marginalized by the discipline. The author argues that to understand how enemies cooperate, we need to focus on the potential for building trusting relationships between state leaders. The book argues that it is forging personal relationships of trust across the enemy divide that hold out the best chance of breaking down the 'enemy images' that fuel security competition. Previous theorizing about trust-building in the discipline of International Relations has focused on the state and individual levels. Nicholas Wheeler argues for a new level of analysis - the interpersonal level - and shows how the building of trust between leaders changes the possibilities for cooperation between states. He shows how the process of interpersonal bonding between two leaders - especially through face-to-face diplomacy - can lead to what he calls a 'leap-to-trust'. He develops his argument through three detailed case studies: the interaction between US and Soviet leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev; the relationship between Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in the context of the Lahore peace process; and the failed attempts by Barack Obama to build a trusting relationship with Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The book represents the most authoritative assessment to date of trust research in International Relations and it develops a theory that explains how interpersonal trusting relationships become possible at the highest levels of diplomacy; relationships that in transforming enemy images reconstitute the possibilities of state action in conflict situations.

Nicholas J. Wheeler

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