This book places humanitarian intervention in a long-term historical context, reconsidering the doctrine's place in international society as well as the principles on which this society is based. The author provides case studies on Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and Afghanistan, examining the following issues: * The legal and political status of humanitarian intervention * In what ways the rights of humanitarian intervention constitute a threat to the bases of international order, and how this affects the position of an individual in international society * The extent to which humanitarian intervention questions the conventional assumption that international solidarity and the pursuit of human justice are fundamentally at odds with the normative foundation of modern international society.