Humanitarian Intervention In Syria

Following the event of 9/11, Muslims have been labelled as today’s “barbarians.” Many Muslim states and people have been “othered” by states following the attacks. States, such as the United States, have even gone to the extent of waging war on/in their country. In The Bombardment of Damascus, Quincy Wright asserts that international law does not “require the application of [the] laws of war to people of different civilization” as the law does not explicitly state that there is a distinction between civilized and barbaric peoples (Wright 266). The role of international law during France military interventions in Syria was questioned by Wright. France claimed that using force on Syria was legitimatized because it was not technically regulated …show more content…
In the responsibility to protect: Is anyone interested in humanitarian intervention, MacFarlane, Thielking and Weiss examine the question of whether states are interested in humanitarian intervention. They provide that there are ultra-motives that exist behind the notion of humanitarian intervention through military forces, as Bellamy has previously noted (MacFarlane, 978). Often, intervention narratives are used to meet national interests, such as state influence, national power, prestige and access to potential oil supplies. This is further discussed by Alex Bellamy when he discusses the international engage with Darfur and the international norm of ‘responsibility to protect.’ Bellamy examines the rationale behind the interference of the international community in the case of the Darfur conflict in Sudan (Bellamy, 31). Ultimately, Bellamy provides an examination of Rwanda, Bosnia and the ongoing crisis in Darfur to illustrate how state intervention was not successful as these nations were not considered to be of importance (49). He exemplifies that the responsibility to protect norm can be used and abused by the state to satisfy any political agenda …show more content…
The concept of othering and white’s man burden has been used extensively throughout international law to determine who is good and who is bad. Narratives and language of international law have been manipulated to serve the needs of Europeans countries. Anyone who is not deemed European has been discriminated and excluded from the protection of international law during times of armed of conflict. This paper adequately demonstrated patterns of exclusion is heavily used in armed conflict when distinguishing enemy from their own soldiers. The constitutive order of patterns of exclusion was discussed in this paper. There apparent that patterns of exclusion evolved more readily from the Victoria Era to the events post 9/11. Terms such ‘uncivilized’, ‘barbarian’, and ‘savage’ were used to categorize opponents to distances them from the laws of armed conflict (Mégret, 267). It can, therefore, be concluded that non-Europeans who were labelled as such were often excluded from international dialogue. Consequently, “othering” has lead powerful nations to use terms as a means of justification for their acts that go beyond the laws of armed