Praise and Reality in Humanitarian Interventions

In the spring of 1999 NATO made history by conducting an eleven week bombing campaign with the declared intent of stopping ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The intervention also entered the annals of history as the ‘good case' of humanitarian intervention, earning praise from one of the leading philosophers of our time: Jurgen Habermas. The aim of the book is to take a critical look at Habermas's positive assessment of the Kosovo case. The approach is to review how celebration of the bombing is at odds with both the messy facts on the ground and the Western documentary record. It demonstrates, for instance, that Habermas misses crucial facts; the understanding that KLA rebels in Kosovo purposely incited a brutal Serb response and NATO intervention. With much in the news about the strenuous efforts by the Obama administration to halt bloodshed in Libya, this work also critiques faith in the normative credentials of Washington to intervene. It serves as a cautionary tale against unflinching endorsement of humanitarian bombing by powerful states.