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Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention: A Fresh Legal Approach Based on Fundamental Ethical Principles in International Law and World Religions
Few foreign policy issues in the past decade have elicited as much controversy as the use of military force for humanitarian purposes. In this book Brian Lepard offers a new method for analyzing humanitarian intervention that seeks to resolve conflicts among legal norms by identifying ethical principles embedded in the UN Charter and international law and relating them to a pivotal principle of "unity in diversity." A special feature of the book, which avoids the charge of ethnocentricity brought against other approaches, is that Lepard shows how passages from the revered texts of seven world religions may be interpreted as supporting these ethical principles. In connecting law with ethics and religion in this way, he takes a major step forward in the effort to formulate a normative basis for international law in our multicultural world.
Hardcover
First published April 18, 2002
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September 17, 2015
Pretty much all wars are made in the name of peace. Either side fighting the war, generally claim they are entering the conflict with the intention of settling issues which cannot be settled in any other way.
For this reason, determining when military intervention can occur (for humanitarian reasons) is key to determining what is an act made in the name of peace and what is not.
Part of the form this determination should take, is the same form that multiculturalism and democracy have found to be the most practical...in other words, determination should be as "objective" as possible, meaning that it has to be beholden to a process. And the way processes are objective is that they are the same for everyone. Thus, for Lepard, the U.N. must adopt a formalized, unambiguous process for deciding when peacekeeping measures (in the form of military intervention, perhaps) should happen! And all nations must adhere to this.
In a way, Lepard wants to define when peace with military action is still peaceful, in order to do so for purely humanitarian reasons. He backs this up with several of the world's most prominent religions (though Confucianism may or may not be a religion). In the process of doing so, Lepard wishes to highlight the idealized shape that most of humankind recognizes as being necessary for good living, for proper and stable society, for how people ought to get along. In essence, this other view, is often a 3rd point of view of human reasons, in the same way that Kant used religion to seal how humans, who struggle with good and evil, should live together in a state. Religion in this sense, gives us a pre-formed image of being human so that we can all be on the same page as far as boundaries are concerned. And believe me, pretty much all human interaction has to do with defining and re-defining boundaries.
Read sideways Lepard would want us to adhere to the U.N. in the guise of a religious institution... not in the sense of worship, but in the sense of allowing it have the final word on what kind of people we are to be. That's certainly not his intention though, but at the onset, he does want the U.N. to reflect the better part of humanity's values as individuals rather than what world leaders would want for the rest of us.
All in all, I found his book to be a bit boring as it was highly repetitive. His language is formalistic, academic and thus not the most existing thing around. Nonetheless, I found his thoughts interesting. Given that much of the U.N.'s many articles are ambiguous or at times, lacking procedure, much of his text ends up reading as a series of "he said, she said" kind of back and forth between nations trying to save face and nations pushing for certain agendas. His thought that the permanent members vetos should be reduced in authority is well taken, as much of the other nations seem to be keenly interested in introducing verbiage that limits that power.
For this reason, determining when military intervention can occur (for humanitarian reasons) is key to determining what is an act made in the name of peace and what is not.
Part of the form this determination should take, is the same form that multiculturalism and democracy have found to be the most practical...in other words, determination should be as "objective" as possible, meaning that it has to be beholden to a process. And the way processes are objective is that they are the same for everyone. Thus, for Lepard, the U.N. must adopt a formalized, unambiguous process for deciding when peacekeeping measures (in the form of military intervention, perhaps) should happen! And all nations must adhere to this.
In a way, Lepard wants to define when peace with military action is still peaceful, in order to do so for purely humanitarian reasons. He backs this up with several of the world's most prominent religions (though Confucianism may or may not be a religion). In the process of doing so, Lepard wishes to highlight the idealized shape that most of humankind recognizes as being necessary for good living, for proper and stable society, for how people ought to get along. In essence, this other view, is often a 3rd point of view of human reasons, in the same way that Kant used religion to seal how humans, who struggle with good and evil, should live together in a state. Religion in this sense, gives us a pre-formed image of being human so that we can all be on the same page as far as boundaries are concerned. And believe me, pretty much all human interaction has to do with defining and re-defining boundaries.
Read sideways Lepard would want us to adhere to the U.N. in the guise of a religious institution... not in the sense of worship, but in the sense of allowing it have the final word on what kind of people we are to be. That's certainly not his intention though, but at the onset, he does want the U.N. to reflect the better part of humanity's values as individuals rather than what world leaders would want for the rest of us.
All in all, I found his book to be a bit boring as it was highly repetitive. His language is formalistic, academic and thus not the most existing thing around. Nonetheless, I found his thoughts interesting. Given that much of the U.N.'s many articles are ambiguous or at times, lacking procedure, much of his text ends up reading as a series of "he said, she said" kind of back and forth between nations trying to save face and nations pushing for certain agendas. His thought that the permanent members vetos should be reduced in authority is well taken, as much of the other nations seem to be keenly interested in introducing verbiage that limits that power.
Displaying 1 of 1 review