“War, to be abolished, must be understood. To be understood, it must be studied.”Karl Deutsch in introduction of Quincy Wright’s Study of War (Wright, 1965).

The above statement, in my view, illustrates the argument and the inner thought of the author. Since in this intriguing book, Butler avidly displays a strong interest for the study of how reconceptualising security in terms of Ken Booth’s Theory of World Security can improve the theoretical and practical limitations of solidarist theorizing on humanitarian intervention. These limitations stem from solidarism’s problem-solving approach to analyzing Supreme Humanitarian Emergencies (SHEs), where the focus is on intervention than prevention. For Butler a Critical Humanitarian Intervention Approach (CHIA), which focuses on the prevention of SHEs and changes those structures rather than replicating existing, structures and their management, is the alternative approach. This could be possible through the deconstruction of the liberal peace and solidarist perspective, which contextualized SHEs, and through the construction of CHIA. According to Butler, failing to consider the economic context in which SHEs erupt leads to missing opportunities for their future prevention. Whereas, for solidarists military humanitarian intervention, mainly after Kosovo 1999, shows international society’s moral commitment to support the values of liberty, human right, the rule of law and a better world. However, CHIA argues that these ‘claims will remain nothing more than imaginary unless the workings of international economic order are included in the analysis of humanitarian intervention complexity’ (p.1). Above all, Butler aims to address two central issues: first, reconceptualizing security through Ken Booth’s Theory of World Security and to explain ‘why solidarist theorizing on humanitarian intervention prioritizes the act of military intervention over prevention’ (Booth, 2007, p. 25); and second, to propose an alternative perspective to the solidarist theorizing on humanitarian intervention.

1. Booth, K. (2007). Theory of World Security. Cambridge and New York,: Cambridge University Press.

2. Brown, C. (2002). Humanitarian Intervention and International Political Theory . Aldershot : Ashgale Publishing .

3. Wright, Q. (1965). A Study of War. Chicago: The University of the Chicago Press.

VOLUME 03 ISSUE 04 APRIL 2020