Money Money

I feel that public goods liberalism is a great way to look at “humanitarian” interventions. I have placed humanitarian inside of quotation marks because when I use that term I mean all sorts of things. Peace making operations such as those we have been reading about in Kosovo, peace keeping operations such as those in Afghanistan, and other sorts of situation where a nation places its troops on foreign soil with out the intent to conquer that nation. But back to public goods liberalism. I really like this theory because of the way that it looks at the costs of paying for the public good. The hegemon in the world system has to be willing to front much of the cost of humanitarian work in order for it to be completed. I feel that this is true because most other powers simply do not have the resources or the political clout to get the job done by them selves. They need the power that an actor such as the US is able to provide. This is why nothing seems to get done with out the US. We aren’t willing to do much about Darfur or Rwanda so nothing happens there. But we decided that intervention is necessary in Kosovo and Haiti so action is taken there. Clearly with out a great power nothing gets done.

It all goes back to costs. Humanitarian interventions cost a lot but provide very little in the way of direct benefits. It is very difficult for a government to risk its military forces for people that it is not even responsible for protecting. The issue of free riding is also a problem. Countries would be less willing to put up the cost if other countries will gain the benefits with out paying. So it really is up to a hegemon that has vastly more resources and power than any other nation to pay for a humanitarian intervention.

Thus I feel that public goods liberalism is a good way to explain humanitarian intervention because it shows how it is largely dependent on the willingness of a hegemon to act. And if we look at the history of the world since the end of the cold war when there has only been one super power interventions have only really happened when the US has decided that they were necessary.

Matt Bank