Reshaping the Idea of Humanitarian Intervention: Norms, Causal Stories, and the Use of Force

With an ongoing human tragedy unfolding in Syria and the international community unable and unwilling to respond, Carrie Booth Walling’s All Necessary Measures reminds us that in international politics, power is “no longer simply about whose military can win but also about whose story can win.”¹ That is, the narratives that shape our understanding of the causes and possible solutions of mass violence inherently shape our willingness to act. In this carefully researched and well-reasoned book, Walling argues that scholars and practitioners must take norms seriously, even in the arena of power politics.

All Necessary Measures considers how the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) began to entertain questions about human rights and then, how principled arguments for human rights led to humanitarian intervention. It contrasts examples of successful humanitarian intervention with those instances of mass atrocity in which the UNSC either refused or failed to act. By comparing these cases, the author convincingly demonstrates that principled ideas and arguments intersect with and change states’ interests. It also makes a secondary but no less important argument about the intersection of norms, arguing that human rights exist alongside other norms, particularly state sovereignty, and that these norms are constantly co-evolving. All Necessary Measures ultimately points to an emerging synthesis of sovereignty and human rights.

The book adds to the expansive literature on humanitarian intervention by showing that in order to understand when and why states engage in humanitarian intervention, we need to pay particular attention to the narratives states are telling about the use of force and how these narratives and the principled arguments that undergird them can alter states’ material interests. Much of the literature on humanitarian intervention focuses on the legitimacy of the idea of humanitarian intervention and the domestic and international hurdles in overcoming collective action problems related to intervention. Many, if not most, of these analyses regard states’ material interests as fixed. Walling reminds us that these interests are not fixed and are instead at least partially socially constructed.

All Necessary Measures puts forth a theory of causal stories. This theory emphasizes the discourse of human rights and humanitarianism used at the UNSC and suggests that the types of stories member states tell influences the decision to authorize force. Through content analysis of UNSC texts, the author identifies three types of causal stories. The first, the intentional causal story, characterizes conflicts as one-sided and premeditated, describing human rights abuses as “systematic, targeted, deliberate.”² In intentional causal stories, there is a clear victim and a clear perpetrator, thus resulting in an impulse to punish the perpetrators and protect the victims. The main principles at play are justice and international law.

The second type of causal story, the inadvertent causal story, paints conflict as being two-sided. Civilian casualties are to be expected, but this type of story depicts these casualties as unintended and indiscriminate. Walling calls this a narrative of moral equivalency, meaning that there are multiple parties involved and the conflict often earns the label of civil war or ethnic conflict. The main principles at play are neutrality, sovereign equality, and domestic noninterference, while the main outcomes are framed in terms of providing assistance and protection or conducting observations.

Finally, the third type of causal story is the complex causal story, in which a combination of macro-level factors results in a complicated and tragic scenario that is, almost by definition, unsolvable. The main principles in these narratives are state sovereignty, stability, and the status quo, and the resulting policy outcomes involve reporting, documentation, condemnations, and appeals, but no other action.

This tripartite scale provides a unique lens through which to look at how UNSC members promote humanitarian intervention and understand the narratives they rely on to justify their action or inaction. Perhaps the two most compelling components of these narratives are the degree to which there is a clear perpetrator and the degree to which humanitarian intervention can actually...