Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society

by Nicholas J. Wheeler

The extent to which humanitarian intervention has become a legitimate practice in post-cold war international society is the subject of this book. It maps the changing legitimacy of humanitarian intervention by comparing the international response to cases of humanitarian intervention in the cold war and post-cold war periods. While there are studies of each individual case of intervention--in East Pakistan, Cambodia, Uganda, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo--there is no single work that examines them comprehensively in a comparative framework.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, International Relations

352 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2000

Reviews

[Nikhil Mahadea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, this is a book that deserves 5 stars! And if you looked at my account I don't give 5 stars very often. But, this is well deserved.

I wish this had more reviews on Goodreads and on Amazon --which it currently only has 1... However, Goodreads and Amazon are rating systems for the laymen, the public. This book is not a layman's book. It's a very well research, scientific book. And for books of this kind, i.e scientific books, they deserve their own rating system by scientist and not laymen. Google Scholar provides that. And lo and behold, "Saving Strangers" got 1968 citations! A very good amount of citations.

This book answers the questions: Is humanitarian intervention allowed? If so, when is it allowed? And if it does happen, are there any rules that can guide the intervention and make sure it doesn't turn "chaos" and "hell"? If there are rules, have anyone voiced them before? Who and what are they?

If you're interested in any of the questions above or in foreign policy or even how to run a better government and the world, then this is a book you read twice. And at the end of the book, you're likely to ask, "Mr. Wheeler, why are you not Secretary of State?" Yes, that's how great this book is.

The only problem with this book, as with many books, is that it's long. It's not 1000 pages, but I think the same argument could have been made in fewer words which would have benefited the public on knowing and understanding these great ideas.

Either way, this is my category of books where if someone calls out "Fire! Fire!" I respond with where's Wheeler's Saving Strangers. :)

[Pratibha Suku]

Best suited for academia.
Otherwise selective reading.
It is a work of 2003.

I haven't read it all page by page so won't be rating.

[Eugenia Montiel Aceti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read some of the chapters of this book in order to write an undergraduate university paper.

[Molly Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this for class but still pretty interesting

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wheeler seeks to assess the means by which interventionism has become an acceptable international norm over the course of the 20th Century. Through just war theory, he argues the existence of five threshold characteristics in order that an intervention be legitimate; porportionality; violence as last resort; the existence of a humanitarian emergency; and high likelihood that military action will have a positive humanitarian outcome. Through this, he analyses the Cold War era (in which action by powers was constrained), to argue that there were three examples of humanitarian action: India's invasion of East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), Tanzania's invasion of Uganda, and Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia. He contrasts this with the Post-Cold War, in which the UN first began to intervene under a justification of humanitarianism in Iraq, Somalia, etc. He argues that there is an increasing norm allowing unilateral intervention, or multilateral intervention outside the UN system (e.g. Kosovo). Worth noting this book was written before the invasion of Iraq.