Might and rights: The operational culture of humanitarian military intervention

This dissertation develops a theory regarding the conditions under which states will intervene militarily to end humanitarian crises abroad. I argue that states contemplating intervention are likely to undertake and sustain it only where they believe that they will be able to avoid armed, organized resistance from within the target state. I maintain that intervenors' aversion to armed, organized resistance stems largely from their desire not to violate what I call the "operational culture" of humanitarian intervention---a body of norms and practices associated with humanitarian operations that promotes the delivery of succor, and that eschews violence and killing. States' willingness to intervene thus depends not simply upon some material calculus, but also upon their ability to behave in a manner compatible with their understanding of the meaning of humanitarian intervention, and of the proper role of a state undertaking such an operation. While this is not to suggest that potential intervenors are indifferent to the number of lives at stake in humanitarian operations, it does mean that how they save and lose lives is actually more important to their decision-making processes than how many lives are likely to be saved and lost. The dissertation tests my theory against four cases of humanitarian intervention: The US intervention in Somalia (1992); the US intervention in Haiti (1994); the French intervention in Rwanda (1994); and the United Nations/NATO intervention in Bosnia (1992, 1995).;The dissertation has significant implications for theory and policy. By demonstrating operational culture's role in states' decision-making processes, the dissertation challenges standard, materialist explanations of state interest and behavior. And by specifying the military conditions under which states will actually undertake and sustain intervention, the dissertation enables me to prescribe the most effective short and long-term military solutions to the range of possible humanitarian crises.