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Humanitarian Intervention: The United Nations in an Evolving World Order. By Sean D. Murphy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Pp. xviii, 418. Index. $59.95.
Although the ideas, norms and cases analyzed in Sean Murphy's book have been dealt with before in numerous other books and articles, there are several things that distinguish this new work on humanitarian intervention. It is not that, together with traditional issues (unilateral humanitarian interventions), the author discusses the latest trends and practices, for this has also been done previously. But there are at least three other aspects of Murphy's book that distinguish it positively from many other works on the topic. First, Murphy seems free of preconceived ideas on the legality (or illegality) of humanitarian intervention; he is neither an advocate nor an opponent of intervention on humanitarian grounds. Second, he does not impose any methodological blinkers on his research; while he briefly discusses differing rule-oriented, policy-oriented and philosophy-oriented approaches to the analysis of humanitarian intervention, Murphy does not single out any of them as the only true approach capable of giving us all the right answers. In fact, each of these approaches has something important to say about the topic; each highlights different facets of the problem and all must be considered together to reveal the complexities of an issue for which there are not any simple yes or no answers. Finally, Murphy has skillfully used some materials that, though in the public domain, are rather difficult to find.
Murphy, who is currently Counselor for Legal Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, states that the object of his study is not to declare humanitarian intervention legal or illegal, moral or immoral, prudent or imprudent, but to explore issues of legality, morality and prudence in humanitarian intervention from the standpoint of competing values of world order and with particular attention to the potentially greater use of the United Nations after the Cold War. (P. 2)
Chapter 1 is devoted to definitional and methodological questions. In chapter 2 the author discusses pre-Charter interventions in which humanitarian considerations may have played some role. In chapter 3 he analyzes the relevant Charter provisions that throw light on the topic. Next Murphy presents a detailed analysis of interventions of the...