The Internal Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention
This chapter addresses a remarkably neglected issue in just war theory: the internal legitimacy of humanitarian military intervention, military actions in another state undertaken with the objective of stopping occurring or preventing imminent large-scale violations of basic human rights, without the consent of the state in which the intervention occurs. When such wars cannot be justified as necessary for protecting the rights or advancing the interests of the citizens of the states that undertake them, the question arises as to whether they are legitimate from the standpoint of the state’s own citizens. This chapter argues that the decision to engage in humanitarian wars is so especially serious and problematic (given that the primary duty of the state is to protect the rights and serve the interests of its own citizens), that special institutional processes are needed for authorizing such military action.