Educated minds of CelticsBlog...

[CelticsWhat35]

Evidently, this thread is not for me, beacause I only made it through..

I'm in the middle of a dissertation on Humanitarian Intervention...

...before I got sidetracked and wondered why Zack Morris had so many friends on Saved By The Bell, even though he screwed them over week after week.  Carry on... 

[Schupac]

Thanks for the input guys, I've TP'd you all and really appreciate this.

Schupac, I liked your Darwinism v Altruism point, that's one I hadn't considered so I'll look further into that, thanks.

Yay glad to help.  If it backfires someone stole my computer and typed that.

[Hoyo de Monterrey]

Just a couple really quick things... I'm probably way in over my head, and certainly have no educational/professional credentials to critique your work, but maybe something here will help.

First, I'm sure you're already all over this, but would it maybe be beneficial to raise certain examples of where humanitarian intervention, if such a term exists, should have been applied but were not during modern history? For example, the Rwandan situation has not been brought up yet, and it would seem to me like that would be a prime target of examination. What was the difference between Rwanda and Kosovo? What makes one worthy of intervention, while the other struggles for media attention and goes (relatively) unnoticed.

Second, what role does public opinion play in whether or not a country decides to intervene? Does media outcry affect a foreign policy, and would a government intervene in a human rights situation just to placate its citizens?

Finally, billgiddens* made interesting points about a selfless act. However, I would say while selfless acts exist on a personal level and can certainly happen in individual situations, what government would possibly formulate a selfless policy? Doesn't the very nature of a country's existence mean any decision should be made for the betterment of the country itself, either short or long term? If that is the case, there cannot be truly selfless policy formulation, for if it did exist, then wouldn't that harm the country? If the country benefitted at all, then it wouldn't be selfless either.

Hope something in here helps... good luck while I'm not too well versed I do find the subject pretty fascinating.

*EDIT

[guava_wrench]

This is probably my more philosophical nature but when I read your first post my take on it was more a darwinism vs. altruism thing... IE are you really helping anyone by intervening and giving a stopgap solution, or should the situation be allowed to settle itself and allow the naturally stronger group to prevail?  And then the question becomes - does allowing the natural winner in a dispute result in a more beneficial settlement in the long term?

That would be an interesting direction to take but it might smell like a cop-out to most professors.

Darwinism? That has nothing to do with Darwinism. Altruism itself developed through natural selection.

Regarding your actual point, if the KKK decided to have ethnic cleansing in Mississippi, would we intervene? I expect so. The same moral imperatives apply when such things happen in other countries. The problem is that violating the sovereignty of other nations is very problematic.

There is no reason to think than problems will "settle themselves" unless you consider the end of the Tutsis a form of settling the problem. I guess curtailing the KKK's ability to hang blacks could be considered stopgap, but I don't see it that way.

Nice to say you might use what we say, but won't quote us. Isn't that plagiarism?

The main problem with humanitarian interventions in practice is the fact that we only notice the atrocities of our enemies and ignore the atrocities of our allies. An example is our acknowledgment of atrocities in Cambodia while we ignored East Timor cuz we hated commies.

Fortunately, I think the international community is better positioned to deal with such problems in this age of non-polarity that arose when the cold war ended.

[celticmaestro]

Thanks for this great input guys, appreciate it. TP's all round.