The New World Order

Tony Judt reviews At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention by David Rieff; The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich; A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility: Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change; and Guantanamo and Beyond: The Continuing Pursuit of Unchecked Executive Power by Amnesty International.

And yet it isn't so simple. Saddam Hussein (like Milosevic) was a standing threat to many of his subjects: not just in the days when he was massacring Kurds and Shiites while we stood by and watched, but to the very end. Those of us who favor humanitarian interventions in principle-not because they flatter our good intentions but because they do good or prevent ill-could not coherently be sorry to see Saddam overthrown. Those of us who object to the unilateral exercise of raw power should recall that ten years ago we would have been delighted to see someone-anyone-intervene unilaterally to save the Rwandan Tutsis. And those of us who, correctly in my view, point to the perverse consequences of even the best-intentioned meddling in other countries' affairs have not always applied that insight in cases where we longed to see the meddling begin.

The New York Review of Books July 14, 2005