"Brian
Lepard brings a massive research effort to bear in support of his
fresh approach to humanitarian intervention. By relying on a blend
of ethics, religion, and law, this study challenges the validity of
both realism and liberalism as the basis for policy and interpretation
in international relations. An excellent book that deserves a wide
readership and much discussion."—Richard Falk, Princeton University
"Lepard provides a fresh exploration of legal and moral justifications
for humanitarian intervention. . . . He opens new analytic vistas
and provides a foundation for resolving conflicts over the content
of the law. He applies the framework in masterly examinations of
intervention in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Kosovo. Rarely
do we see an author sustain as much sensitivity to opposing arguments
while constructing a strong ethical basis for shaping diplomacy,
ethics, and international law. This is a ground-breaking and, in
its moral sweep, even a breath-taking book."—Robert C. Johansen,
Notre Dame University
Few foreign policy issues in the past decade have elicited as much
controversy as the use of military force for humanitarian purposes.
In this book Brian Lepard offers a new method for analyzing humanitarian
intervention that seeks to resolve conflicts among legal norms by
identifying ethical principles embedded in the UN Charter and international
law and relating them to a pivotal principle of "unity in diversity."
A special feature of the book, which avoids the charge of ethnocentricity
brought against other approaches, is that Lepard shows how passages
from the revered texts of seven world religions may be interpreted
as supporting these ethical principles. In connecting law with ethics
and religion in this way, he takes a major step forward in the effort
to formulate a normative basis for international law in our multicultural
world.
