This chapter examines the legacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, notably the impact it has had on doctrines of humanitarian intervention. Of particular relevance are the contemporary emphases on such events as the intervention in Libya by NATO forces in March 2011, arguably the first instance of what is now termed the responsibility to protect (R2P). The mixed humanitarian rhetoric behind the Iraq intervention provided a template for what to avoid. The intervention in Libya would emphasise the politicisation of the human subject as victim – an individual in need of rescue.

The invasion of Iraq on 19 March 2003 provided an object lesson for supporters of humanitarian intervention: stress the humanitarian agency inherent in the operation and highlight the need to protect civilians at risk. Such focus conceals the fact that armed support is always selective, provided for one group – or groups – in a conflict. The responsibility to protect all too often becomes one to intervene for other motivations, suggesting that the realm of the political cannot be divorced from the exercise of human rights (Rancière 2004; Schaap 2011). Despite seeming plausible, at least initially, the reasoning behind such actions tends to retreat into a realm of ulterior considerations. The humanitarian basis for such engagements risks becoming rhetorical padding, secondary to the logic of power politics. With a sense of chastened awareness, David Rieff's summation may be correct: there are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems (Rieff 2002: 111).

Situating Iraq

The argument around humanitarian intervention has been termed by Michael Walzer (1995) the ‘politics of rescue’. The elements of such rescue have been articulated by numerous authorities stretching back to Francisco de Vitoria (1492–1546) and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), often through the lens of civilising paternalism (Massingham 2009: 810). John Stuart Mill (1867) considered that there would be ‘cases in which it is allowable to go to war, without having ourselves been attacked’. A working rationale for such intervention involves a nation or group of nations that moves troops into another state for philanthropic purposes, be it stopping the oppression of a group, protecting relief efforts, assisting refugees or supporting incipient democratic administrations (Miller 2000: 3). Another clearer formulation is offered by Thomas Hill: the ‘forcible interference in the governance of one legitimate state by another for the primary purpose of protecting the latter's subjects from abuse and oppression by its own government’ (2009: 222).