| |
| | David Reiff: A new Age of Liberal Imperialism - World Policy Journal - World Policy Institute (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21) |
 | | The writer Michael Ignatieff is surely correct when he insists that "the military campaign in Kosovo depends for its legitimacy on what fifty years of human rights has done to our moral instincts, weakening the presumption in favor of state sovereignty, strengthening the presumption in favor of intervention when massacre and deportation become state policy."1 |
 | | In becoming dependent on NATO's logistical support, or, as in Kosovo, in effect serving as a humanitarian subcontractor to one of the belligerents, its intellectual and moral coherence, which is based on impartiality, has been undermined. |
 | | But Wilson's original idea, which was, as he put it, to take temporary control over certain territories in order "to build up in as short a time as possible...a political unit that can take charge of its own affairs," may be one way out of the current impasse. |
| www.worldpolicy.org /journal/rieff2.html (4532 words) |
|