Confronting a wide array of difficulties that often have little to do with national defense, states contemplating humanitarian intervention face hard dilemmas. First, there is the immediate question of intervention. Facing massive human rights abuses in authoritarian and/or failing regimes, states must nonetheless ask whether their own national interests legitimately prevent them from intervening. Observers often speak of pure humanitarian intervention, that is, military action that defends the rights of another nation's citizens but offers the intervening nation no tangible benefits. In other instances, however, intervening nations have conflicting interests. The rights of the persecuted make one demand, while national interest or “reason of state” makes another. As nations work through this dilemma, they may very well decide to intervene. This leads to the paradox of intervention: a state may recognize an obligation to intervene but remain unable to demand that its citizens risk their lives for others. While many moral theories recognize the duty to rescue others, the cost must be reasonable. Dying, however, is not a reasonable cost for anyone. As a result, no individual has any obligation to join an intervening force even when his or her nation has the obligation to provide one.

THE DILEMMA OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

The dilemma of humanitarian intervention is often phrased as follows: Does the duty to respect state sovereignty trump the responsibility of the international community to take action when the people of a nation are at risk?