The conceit of humanitarian intervention /

As mass atrocities increased in frequency and severity at the end of the Cold War, arguments for humanitarian intervention rose to the top of the international agenda. The unanimously adopted United Nations World Summit resolution of 2005, the "Responsibility to Protect," was widely interpreted as confirming a consensus in support of humanitarian intervention. Menon (City College of New York and Columbia Univ.) challenges with this monograph the "shared assumptions" underlying that consensus, first by questioning whether there was a consensus at all. UN speeches and other documents give the impression of consensus, but on closer inspection, consensus is not called for by the great powers--thus the "conceit of humanitarian intervention." Menon's main point is that states have not changed their foreign policies since the Cold War. The primary determinant, he says, is whether intervention serves the states' interests. This explains, for instance, why the US intervened in Kosovo but not Syria. Although not a scholarly analysis of humanitarian intervention, the book is recommended as an accessible introduction to an important international relations issue. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. --Rita P. Peters, Univ. of Massachusetts / Harvard Univ. Davis Center.