Perhaps more than anything else, the problem of humanitarian violence
reminds us of the possibility of tragedy, in the genuine sense of the term, inherent
in the humanitarian enterprise: professional humanitarians are frequently in
positions where all the options at their disposal involve doing wrong in a morally
important way.^70 De Waal has recently argued that the tragedy of humanitarians is
precisely that ultimately they are unable completely to escape the possibility of
acting cruelly.^71 That is, they cannot entirely avoid causing precisely the kind of
suffering that, as we saw in Chapter 2, lies at the heart of the manner in which
humanitarianism comes into being in the first place. This makes a strong case for
embracing the role of the “moral politician”, for as Rieff argues: “[the] virtue of the
political is that the case for making the most tragic of all public decisions becomes
controversial and a matter for public debate, rather than some kind of categorical
moral imperative whose need to be undertaken is deemed to be self-evident.”^72
The challenge for professional humanitarians then, is how to face up to their moral
and political responsibility in such situations, for as we will see in the next chapter,
they are not easily avoided or pre-empted.
Conclusion
This chapter has argued that it is not possible to resolve the paradoxes of
humanitarian action by reducing it to its core act of saving lives. Acts of
humanitarian rescue always involve a complex negotiation of what is being saved,
which flits between the self and the other, the tangible and the intangible. Yet once
again, some definable contours can be identified: rescue is most coherent when
outcomes in terms of actual human bodies saved simultaneously honour the
integrity of the category of common humanity. Moreover, while the idea of doing
no harm must necessarily be aspirational, harmful ends or means must be
70
For an argument about why international political theory should take tragedy seriously,
see Brown, "Tragedy, 'Tragic Choices' and Contempor 71 ary International Political Theory".
72 de Waal, "The Humanitarians' Tragedy".
Cited in Smillie and Minear, The Charity of Nations , 1.