Armed humanitarian intervention and the problem of abuse after Libya

The idea of armed humanitarian intervention has long been attended with warnings that it will be abused by powerful states seeking to justify wars fought not for humanitarian purposes but for self-interest. This problem of abuse has received renewed attention in the wake of NATO's recent intervention in Libya. This chapter represents an attempt to find a way through this problem of abuse. It concludes by briefly contemplating what options, if any, might be available to the society of states for further limiting the problem of abuse without abandoning the idea of armed humanitarian intervention altogether. Arguments about the problem of abuse became particularly prominent from the early 1990s onwards as skeptical states and commentators sought to restrain the emergence of a right of humanitarian intervention in international discourse and interstate relations.