thing we do (especially the hypocrisy of liberals).^110 For Brown, it is important to
recognise that not all situations lend themselves to the establishment of rules, and
that meaningful moral agency requires that we acknowledge the importance of
practical judgement, especially when faced with situations of extreme
complexity.^111 He argues that the greatest humanitarian failures, such as the
absence of any kind of meaningful intervention to stop the 1994 Rwandan
genocide, are above all failures of judgement and of political will.
Of course, humanitarianism encompasses discussions about the first resort,
about what rules and processes should be put in place to avoid situations of
extreme human suffering, but if those discussions, or those processes fail,
humanitarianism also implies a response of last resort. The very failure of the
former implies to a great extent the contingency of the latter, and the importance
of practical judgement on the one hand, and the formation of political will, as
pointed to in the previous section, on the other.^112
A related discussion is the requirement of altruism on behalf of
humanitarian actors, whether individuals, organisations or states. Again, for Brown,
this is to miss the point that a moral universe in which actions are either wholly
altruistic or wholly selfish represents Manichean wishful thinking, rather than a
plausible picture of the moral life.^113 To return to the second section of this chapter,
it hampers us with unbearably heavy saintly requirement. In line with the third
section, it also disregards the important ways in which we can come to see our
identities and interests in a more expansive way and how, to mobilise the
110
For two different versions of this tendency, see David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul
and Beyond: Human Rights and International Intervention , 2nd ed. (London: Pluto, 2006).
Noam Chomsky, 111 The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (London: Pluto, 1999).
Chris Brown, "Selective Humanitarianism: In Defence of Inconsistency", in Ethics and
Foreign Intervention , ed. Deen K. Chatterjee and Don E. Scheid (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003). 112
For a summary of the problems of rules versus judgement in the context of humanitarian
intervention, see Anthony F. Lang, Jr., "Humanitarian Intervention", in The Ashgate
Research Companion to Ethics and International Relations , ed. Patrick Hayden (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009), 141-143. 113
Brown, "Selective Humanitarianism", 46. For further discussion of motives, intentions
and consequences in humanitarian action, see the next chapter.