investments. His essay on ‘The Balance of Power’ remains one of the clearest
expositions of what later became both a major theory in international relations
and an actual practice of governments.
Humanitarian Intervention
Humanitarian intervention is a concept developed in the last decade of the
20th century and made possible only by the end of thecold war. It means the
use of force by one or more foreign powers to intervene in a country whose
population is experiencing great suffering, to facilitate non-military aid that
could otherwise not be delivered. The source of the suffering may be civil war,
extensive insurgency against a government, or total state collapse. Either way
the problem is that deliverers of aid, for instance food and medical services,
could not safely go about their relief work unless protected by some indepen-
dent military presence. This meaning can be extended to cover situations
where a total collapse of law and order leaves no functioning state to intervene
in a genocidal attempt by any group or tribe. The point about humanitarian
intervention is that it is justified only by appeal to high moral principles and is
intentionally limited in its aim. It is not, for example, the same as intervening
on one side or other in a civil war, with the aim of determining the winner.
The humanitarian intervention does not, in itself, seek to solve the underlying
political and power struggles that have led to the disaster, only to create safe
havens and safe supply routes, safe refugee centres and so on.
The reason humanitarian intervention is so limited in aim is that the world
system has not as yet completely given up the idea of national sovereignty,
which otherwise precludes forcible intervention in the affairs of a state by
outside military and civil institutions. During the cold war it would have been
impossible to maintain that such an intervening force was genuinely politically
neutral and of limited intent, because whichever countries contributed forces
would inevitably have been associated with one or othersuperpower. Even
now there is always great suspicion about the genuine neutrality of such forces,
and Russia often has to be placated before it will readily accept any interven-
tion which includes US orNATOcontingents.
Humanitarian Intervention