The Rise and Fall of Humanitarian Intervention

World Affairs, a classic neocon journal of international politics, has launched a new website, World Affairs Daily. The article cited here, Mark Mazower, "Saviors & Sovereigns: The Rise and Fall of Humanitarianism," is available from the March/April issue:

On November 9, 2001, George W. Bush created a new public holiday—World Freedom Day. The United States, he explained, would lead the global fight for “liberty, freedom and the universal struggle for human rights”; it would try to help the “more than two billion people” still living under repressive regimes. The idea that America could, or should, do this had informed a certain kind of Washington mind-set throughout the Cold War. But after the Berlin Wall came down, freedom’s crusaders increasingly set their eyes not so much on Communism as on violators of human rights in general. They unfurled the banner of humanitarianism and, righteously, scorned the cowards and skeptics who wanted to keep America’s powder dry.

RTWT.