“[I]nvocations of human rights and humanitarian intervention are selective.” It s like the West’s selective reading of history.
“It can be difficult to understand why there was ever so much faith in such an order” – the international liberal order preached in and after Nato’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo.
“[N]o Western government has invoked R2P [the Right to Protect] in response to ethnic cleansing campaigns in Sudan, Nagorno-Karabakh or Gaza.”
“[A]s the British political scientist Richard Sakwa has stressed, Russia’s aversion to R2P was not because Vladimir Putin is ‘the crude defender of sovereignty as so often presented’, but rather the West’s selective deployment of it.” (My italics N.M.)
“[W]ill the death of the liberal order clear the way for a more democratic, accountable and egalitarian world?”
I am not optimistic. One of the reasons is that articles like Lynch’s are so critical and an antidote to amnesia, a help for students, etc. but does not delve into structure of power.
Note that Lynch looks at the ‘death of humanitarianism’ from a power vantage-point – regimes and international institutions, but silent on humanitarianism of those who risk their lives to help and the brave who challenge the perpetrators of crimes, i.e. the individuals, the non-NGOs, the ‘ordinary’ people and their resilience.
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