Agency and Ethics

Book Description
Explains why military interventions with humanitarian goals consistently fail.

From the Back Cover
Why does political conflict seem to consistently interfere in attempts to provide aid, end ethnic discord, or restore democracy? Agency and Ethics presents an argument drawing on diverse theorists such as Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau which focuses on how the norms that motivate an intervention often create conflict between the intervening powers, outside powers, and the political agents who are victims of the intervention. Three case studies clarify this argument: the British and American intervention in Bolshevik Russia in 1918; the British and French intervention in Egypt in 1956; and the American and United Nations intervention in Somalia in 1993. Although rarely categorized together, these three interventions share one strong commonality: they all failed in their professed goals, with the troops being ignominiously recalled in each case. The author concludes by addressing the humanitarian dilemma of the twenty-first century-how to resolve complex humanitarian emergencies without resorting to military intervention.

About the Author
Anthony F. Lang Jr. is Program Officer at The Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.


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