Military humanitarian intervention, assailed by critics and praised by supporters in the United States, is often seen as a uniquely American phenomenon, and a fairly recent one at that. Gary Bass seeks to correct this misunderstanding by reestablishing intervention's pedigree with a discussion of the nineteenth century's humanitarian interventions. Then, in what could stand as a separate book, he undertakes a political treatise on the logic of these interventions as a guide for informed public opinion and the formation of policy. Although the book targets American concerns of the present, British historians will be the first to note that Britain played a central role in every actual and proposed intervention of the nineteenth century, a point made by Niall Ferguson in Empire (New York, 2003) and reflected here in the detail Bass provides on the making of government policy, the opinions of the monarchs, and the expression of British popular opinion.

Bass's inquiries differ from the recent scholarship on intervention, including Ken Booth's The Kosovo Tragedy (London, 2001) and Nicholas Wheeler's Saving Strangers (Oxford, 2000), in its use of the interventions of the nineteenth century. The historical account's vivid characterization and dramatic narrative is well supported through primary and secondary research. Amid the excitement, Bass is usually careful to point out the contradictions, ambiguities, and contingencies that make intervention so fraught with difficulty. For example, intervention may advance national interest, either explicitly or under the cover of humanitarian concern. It may also put the national interest in jeopardy, the perpetual concern of realists, by risking other losses, jealousy, escalation, Great Power conflict, or the creation of a quagmire. Bass illustrates this incisively in the conflict between Gladstone and Disraeli regarding the Bulgarian uprising and massacre in 1875. Other risks include unintended consequences, cost, and becoming embroiled in local conflicts, even to the point of taking sides with a less-than-innocent “victim” population.

Despite the risks, governments repeatedly found themselves contemplating intervention as a result of public pressure. Bass attributes this to several factors, such as expanding political participation and improved communication tools, but most of all to the growth of a free press as the energizer of public opinion. Even in Russia, the limited opening under Aleksandr II enabled a popular pan-Slavic reaction to force the tsar's hand over Bulgaria. Similarly, in France, Charles X's removal of press limitations in 1824 opened the door to French humanitarian interest in the Greek revolution.

A unacknowledged pattern emerges throughout Freedom's Battle: all the serious interventions occurred when Britain and other powers acted against the Ottoman Empire, in Greece, Syria, and Bulgaria. The author clearly feels Armenia was a similar, but missed opportunity. Other humanitarian problems—such a Russian suppression of Polish rebellions, Austria's reconquest of Hungary in 1848, and the crushing of colonial rebellions against Britain, France, and the United States—may stir outrage, but no response is feasible against a strong state. The parallel to the 2008 Georgian crisis will not escape the reader. There are other resonances with the Georgian crisis. Bass warns that countries with tight control over the media pay tribute to the power of humanitarianism by citing genocide as a reason for military action, whether it has occurred or not. The cycle of escalation that triggers intervention may also operate during the intervention, as when the slaughter of Turks during the Bulgarian rebellion precipitated the Bulgarian horrors, which led to an even more deadly Russian invasion.

Although Bass's historical section provides ample evidence of humanitarian interventions that caused more damage than the situations they had intended to remedy, the policy section makes it clear that Bass is an advocate of intervention. His only condemnations are of the Vietnam and Iraq interventions, whose original motivations were not humanitarian. Bass's enthusiasm leads him to praise even the Somalian intervention, which was unsuccessful in a humanitarian sense, and the Kosovo intervention, which has had serious geostrategic repercussions (Bass recognized this when he advised, in the New York Times Magazine on January 5, 2008, against recognizing Kosovo). He is undeterred by the risk that the cure may be worse than the original illness. His model relies on the logic of Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars (New York, 1977) in addition to a panoply of other thinkers, such as Stanley Hoffman and Reinhold Niebuhr. His careful advice on when and how to undertake these interventions closes on a pessimistic note: that the Western democracies can intervene appropriately only if news organizations stop cutting foreign correspondents, if citizens can take the time to formulate reactions to events abroad, and if governments are willing to give the orders. Bill Clinton's repentant apology to the people of Rwanda, although not quoted, is consistent with the policy section. Bass is trying to enable a more effective response to the current situation in Darfur or the next Rwanda, answering current concerns with historical examples.

Bass's characterizations almost always ring true. There are a few odd notes: the reactionary Charles X was not really a relative liberal, although he lifted press controls, and the polymath social theorist Herbert Spencer would be dismayed to find himself called only a biologist. In his drive to rehabilitate liberalism, Bass uses “liberal” as though its meaning has held constant since it became part of political discourse in the 1820s. Less familiar is the label “atrocitarian” to describe those who used the atrocity stories to demand government action. First deployed in the 1870s, “atrocitarian,” like “humanitarian,” “Tory,” and “Whig,” appeared first as a term of ridicule but was appropriated by the intended targets as a term of pride. Bass would like us to once again adopt the label in pursuit of robust humanitarian intervention.

Freedom's Battle remedies an important gap in the fragmented historiography of humanitarianism by linking disparate Great Power diplomatic crises to demonstrate humanitarian continuities and extract the lessons to guide policy in the future. The concern for the suffering of distant strangers, pioneered as a mass phenomenon by the British, expanded to include the Americans, the French, and the Russians—any people whose access to a free press and right to free expression enabled them to learn of and give voice to the humanitarian impulse. This book reminds us that the humanitarian impulse can run the gamut from pious sympathies to active relief efforts to the well-chosen military intervention. However, any humanitarian response to a foreign problem relies on three fragile legs: the accuracy of information, the correctness of the diagnosis, and the wisdom of the proposed intervention. Bass underplays the perils in his effort to reawaken a sense of possibility that he fears has become dormant.