Review by Choice Review
This is a thoughtful, scholarly collection of eight essays by prominent thinkers with diversified backgrounds in law, philosophy, and political science. The authors participated in a conference at the Kennan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and attended a follow-up conference at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University in September 2001. The contributors are concerned with the issue of humanitarian intervention in the instance of state failure to protect minorities. Humanitarian intervention is defined as the "threat or use of force across state borders by a state (or group of states) aimed at preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of the fundamental human rights of individuals other than its own citizens, without the permission of the state within whose territory force is applied." The book looks at the issue from the relevant ethical, legal, and political perspectives. Michael Ignatieff's essay "State Failure and Nation Building" is especially topical in view of the situations in countries such as Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, and Sri Lanka. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. W. Webking University of Lethbridge
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
