The International Humanitarian Order

ISBN-13: 9780415776318 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 230 str.

Michael Barnett

Opis

One of the genuinely remarkable but relatively unnoticed developments of the last half-century is the blossoming of an international humanitarian order - a complex of norms, informal institutions, laws, and discourses that legitimate and compel various kinds of interventions by state and nonstate actors with the explicit goal of preserving and protecting human life. For those who have sacrificed to build this order, and for those who have come to rely on it, the international humanitarian represents a towering achievement cause for sobriety. What kind of international humanitarian order is being imagined, created and practiced? To what extent are the international agents of this order deliverers of progress or disappointment? Featuring previously published and original essays, this collection offers a critical assessment of the practices and politics of global ethical interventions in the context of the post-cold war transformation of the international humanitarian order. After an introduction that introduces the reader to the concept and the significance of the international humanitarian order, Section I explores the braided relationship between international order and the UN, whiles Section II critically examines international ethics in practice. The Conclusion reflects on these and other themes, asking why the international humanitarian order retains such a loyal following despite its flaws, what is the relationship of this order to power and politics, how such relationships implicate our understanding of moral progress, and how the international humanitarian order challenges both practitioners and scholars to rethink the meaning of their vocations.

One of the truly revolutionary developments in global affairs over the last half-century is the development of an international global architecture, replete with international norms, laws, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations. We are arguably witnessing the emergence of a global community that has developed new kinds of obligations to distant strangers and imagining new forms of interventions that will remove various causes of suffering. Yet there also is cause for greater sobriety.

This book, featuring published essays and new essays, provides a critical exploration of the politics and practice of global ethical interventions. Michael Barnett explores three defining themes and tensions that run through the essays regarding the relationship between global governance, ethics, and international order. The volume will be organized into four parts.

• The Introduction will develop the three themes and situate them as part of a necessary lens for constructing a critical understanding of the relationship between governance, security, and ethics.
• Section II focuses on different ways to think about the relationship between world orders and the UN.
• Section III provides a critical examination of international ethics in practice. Ethics have become institutionalized in global affairs, and institutionalization can transform and transfigure ethical commitments.
• The concluding essay offers less of a retrospective and more of a prospective regarding of how scholars, might begin to think about the relationship between world orders and forms of humanitarianism.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of global governance, international organizations, the United Nations system, humanitarian intervention, development, security and international ethics.

Spis treści

1. Introduction: The International Humanitarian Order  Section 1: UN and World Order  2. Bringing in the New World Order: Legitimacy, Liberalism, and the United Nations World Politics  3. The New U.N. Politics of Peace: From Juridical Sovereignty to Empirical Sovereignty." Global Governance  4. The United Nations and Global Security: The Norm is Mightier Than the Sword  5. Humanitarianism with a Sovereign Face: UNHCR in the Global Undertow  Section 2: The Ethics of Intervention  6. The Politics of Indifference at the United Nations: The Security Council, Peacekeeping, and Genocide in Rwanda  7. UNHCR and the Ethics of Repatriation.  8. Building a Republican Peace: Stabilizing States After War  9. Humanitarianism Transformed.  10. Conclusion: Beyond the International Humanitarian Order?

O autorze

Michael Barnett is the Harold Stassen Chair of International Relations at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.