Ethics of Humanitarian Interventions / / ed. by Georg Meggle.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Philosophy 2000 - 2014
• MitwirkendeR: Bittner, Rüdiger,; Czaniera, Uwe,; Frank, Martin,; Galtung, Johan,; Lutz, Dieter S.,; Meggle, Georg,; Mertens, Thomas,; Miller, Seumas,; Müller, Olaf L.,; Pavković, Aleksandar,; Pfannkuche, Walter,; Prokopijevic, Miroslav,; Schmidt, Hajo,; Schüssler, Rudolf,; Steinvorth, Ulrich,; Steinweg, Reiner,; Stoecker, Ralf,; Walzer, Michael,; Zanetti, Véronique,
• HerausgeberIn: Meggle, Georg,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2013]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Practical Philosophy , 7
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (382 p.)

Humanitarian Interventions - that sounds nice; much nicer than wars, battles and use of military force. Foremost, the phrase makes you think of the delivery of sanitary goods, medication, of soup-kitchens. Here we are not supposed to think of interventions of this kind; we have to have humanitarian interventions in mind which are humanitarian intervention-wars. (I) At exactly what point is the use of military force a humanitarian intervention? What is the humanitarian aspect of those interventions? Their occasion? Their motive? Their alleged as well as their actual consequences? (II) At exactly what point are humanitarian intervention-wars morally justifiable? Are they justifiable even if they are wars of aggression breaching international law? And finally: (III) Was the war which was presented to us as the paradigmatic example of a humanitarian-intervention-war, that is: the war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 (with over 37,000 bombing missions), really justifiable as a humanitarian intervention? Many of us wanted to believe so at the time. Does our ex ante judgement hold today in an ex post reflection? And which lessons for the future should we learn from the success or failure of this humanitarian war? These are the questions proposed in this book; therefore, it is concerned with problems of semantics (part I), problems of moral assessment (part II) and with the moral, legal and political conclusions we draw from our experiences with the war in Kosovo, our primary example of a humanitarian intervention (part III). International experts in the areas of philosophy, international law, sociology and peace studies debated these questions vigorously for several days. This is the resulting volume.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- Abstracts -- I. Basic Issues -- The Argument about Humanitarian Intervention -- Collective Responsibility and Humanitarian Armed Intervention -- Reconstructing Pacifism. Different Ways of Looking at Reality -- How Far Shall We Go Humanitarian Interventions? -- The Dilemmatic Structure of Humanitarian Interventions -- Humanitarian Interventions and Other Duties to Humanitarian Aid -- Help, Intervention and Involvement -- Saving Lives in Nationalist Conflicts: A Few Moral Hazards -- Humanitarian Intervention -- II. International Ethics and Law -- Humanitarian Interventions are Wrong -- Humanitarian Intervention: Legal and Moral Arguments -- Principles of non-UN Humanitarian Intervention -- Early non-Military External Interventions. A Plea for a United Nations Intervention Council (UNIC) -- Humanitarian Intervention: An Individual Right or a State Right? -- III. Kosova / Kosovo The Moral Combat -- On the Legitimacy of NATO’s Kosovo Intervention -- NATO-Morality and the Kosovo-War An Ethical Commentary – ex post -- “Humanitarian Intervention”: Media, Ethics and Law in the Kosovo War -- Bombing Yugoslavia: Several Readings Text, Supertext, Subtext, Deep Text, Context – and a Pretext (with a Posttext) -- The Example of Kosovo: Didactics against Humanitarian Interventionism -- CONTRIBUTORS -- Backmatter