humanitarian.info

Amanda asks 5 questions about the wisdom of humanitarian intervention, and I am pleased to say that I have the answers to all of them, which leads to this, yet another blog post that doesn’t feature information management at all. Roll on!

1. Is it ever appropriate for foreign citizens, governments, or international institutions to intervene in crises overseas?

Yes.

2. If the answer to #1 is “yes,” then when is it appropriate?

Depends on the situation.

3. Do we know to do it? That is, do we understand the technological means that will allow us to accomplish our stated goals?

No, we have almost no idea how to accomplish our stated goals. Somebody pointed to the thesis in Paul Collier’s new book that (broadly) peacekeeping operations have been successful in preventing a slide back to bloody all-out civil war in many situations. I look forward to reading the book, with three caveats to his thesis: first, that’s some complex causality right there, second, that’s some low expectatations right there, and three, look out for Black Swans.

4. If so, are those means available to us?

Yes, we have various means at our disposal, but no idea how to use them effectively, no sound understanding of how those means interact, and an unwillingness to face the law of unintended consequences.

5. If they are, are we willing to expend the resources necessary to use those means?

No.

A lot depends on what sort of intervention we’re talking about, of course. Humanitarian interventions are frequently attempts to mitigate the huge amounts of damage done by people who think that military interventions will resolve matters. In the comments to the post,  Conor Foley suggests that there are no simple answers to these  questions, which is why humanitarian action is frustrating; but it seems like a lot of the complexity has been added post facto, in the legal and bureaucratic layers which have been added since the end of the Second World War. Perhaps there are simple answers to these questions and we just don’t like them?