Discuss the view that a "humanitarian intervention" reflects the interests of great powers rather than legal or moral principles.

A great power is a state with considerable economic, political and military strength, which therefore enjoys considerable influence over global affairs.

Based on their permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), USA, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France qualify, and based on gross domestic product Germany, Japan and India should arguably also be included. All of the above rank in the world's top ten countries for military expenditure, with USA accounting for 48 percent of global military expenditure in 2005 [1].

Holzgrefe soundly defines humanitarian intervention 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” [2].

Because military capacity is a prerequisite for intervention, this means that, based on military expenditure alone, intervention is not possible without the backing of the great powers in general and USA in particular.

From a legal point of view the question of humanitarian intervention is, superficially, quite simple [3]: the UN Charter prohibits the use of force unless it is in self-defence or it is authorised, due to exceptional circumstances, by the UNSC. The drafters of the Charter included in the norms the requirement to refrain from threat or use of force against “the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (Article 2.4), an essential safeguarding of domestic sovereignty (Article 2.7) and the option for the UNSC to authorise the use of military force to restore international peace and security (Chapter VII, particularly Article 42).

In practice, however, the system of acquiring UNSC authorisation for intervention is bureaucratic and fraught with political tension due to the composition of the five ideologically opposed permanent members, any of whose veto can stop action being taken, as has been the case with the American veto of intervention in Rwanda and the Chinese veto of intervention in Darfur.

This imperfect system has led to unauthorised unilateral action being taken, as with the 1999 NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia, on the grounds that unauthorised action is better than inaction. However, it can be argued that acting without authorisation is a fundamental threat to law and order (Donnelly 2003: 248). Consequently there is increasing debate around the perceived legitimacy, despite illegality, of such action.