Going Nowhere: The Rhetoric of Warfare and Humanitarian Intervention in Global Law and Policy Debates
Journal: Research Explorer (The University of Manchester)
Year: 2015

From Kosovo and Iraq to Syria and Crimea, the specter of military intervention is a core theme within international law and policy literature. Rather than address ‘warfare’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’ as something actually occurring ‘out there in the real world’, this essay focuses on their functions within the text as a rhetorical device that helps constitute the structural conditions of disciplinary argument. In the face of what feels like escalating threats requiring immediate reaction, t