many professional humanitarians of the state, this chapter will seek to defend a
vision of a progressive humanitarian politics in a world of states. That is, a world
that resembles our own, and might be harnessed in the short rather than longer
term to alleviate suffering. The suggested avenue for enquiry is an engagement with
the internationalist tradition. This has recently been pointed to by Peter Lawler,
who recommends a return to what he terms “classical” internationalism in asserting
the potential of a “good state” against dominant cosmopolitan trends in
international political theory.^3 This chapter’s core argument is that internationalist
thinking provides insight into how our solidarities are often layered in a way
favourable to the nesting of the humanitarian impulse within a humanitarian
internationalist politics.
The chapter proceeds in three parts. First, it debunks the last remaining
potential claim of professional humanitarians to be apolitical, that is in the context
of their relationship with the state, through an engagement with the key concept of
humanitarian space. Second, it sets out the advantages of an internationalist
perspective, defending the agency of states within humanitarianism, their ability to
harness collective humanitarian understandings, and their advantages in being
closer to the lived experience both of putative humanitarians and their putative
objects of concern, than a strictly cosmopolitan perspective. Finally, it illustrates this
case for a return to internationalist thinking via an engagement with the work of
Michael Walzer, arguing that his work provides a good example of how
humanitarian impulses can be situated within a realistic “phenomenology of the
moral life” that sits comfortably with the workings of the humanitarian impulse
explored in Chapter 3.
3
Peter Lawler, "The Good State: In Praise of 'Classical' Internationalism", Review of
International Studies 31, no. 3 (2005).