In our vaunted era of Westphalian statehood, great powers regularly meddle in the internal affairs of smaller states. If the lesser country is a friend, then help can be expected, such as diplomatic support, financial rewards, coercive reinforcements, and other goods aimed at improving domestic stability. If the lesser country is a foe, all bets are off. Diplomatic pressure, financial sanctions, and coercive meddling, including invasions to topple the incumbent regime, are all options. Some political scientists, like me, have explored the first scenario and found that strategic intercessions from a powerful patron seldom give the recipient state lasting security. Others, such as Rajan Menon, look at the second scenario, and reach a similar conclusion about the failures of intervention. Even the noblest of reasons to violate the sovereignty of smaller states—the prevention of mass atrocities—is morally facetious, politically inconsistent, and operationally catastrophic. Hence, the title of this jarring book, which holds lessons for scholars of human rights, democracy, nation building, and conflict.

Menon reveres the instinct to protect human life. Horrific examples of recent slaughters—Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Sri Lanka, Syria, and more—reveal that more than ever, the weak remain prey for genocidal jackals. For Menon, though, the problem lies not so much in the idea of liberal interventionism but rather in the interveners themselves. If applied perfectly, large-scale brutalities might indeed end, but we do not live in a world governed by Kantian categorical imperatives. Instead, humanitarian interventions are Trojan horses that allow great powers to continue dominating lesser countries, while enabling an elite stratum of intellectuals and politicians to imagine a fictitious global consensus regarding a collective responsibility to protect (R2P). In sum, the entire discourse of liberal interventionism is rife with “hypocrisy, smugness, and historical amnesia,” because it can “never become an ethically driven pursuit disentangled from power and interest” (pp. 4, 11). Tragically, such destructive blowback tarnishes the very sanctity of human life that interventionism supposedly cherishes from the start.

The book is rich with detail and insight, so much so that sometimes the reader is at once overwhelmed and impressed with its incorporation of virtually every treatise, doctrine, agreement, and book that constitute the corpus of humanitarian interventionism. Indeed, the first few chapters of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention could well serve as a primer on this vast literature. Cutting through the dense academic foliage, though, uncovers two powerful insights that upend prevailing wisdom.

First, the project on humanitarian interventionism brims with contradictions. Wrapped in the mantle of Enlightenment liberalism, it manifests as a teleological dogma that holds that the international community can and should prevent mass atrocities through principle state-based action. Such well-intentioned but fanciful thinking largely reflect the ambitions of Western academics and diplomats, who by the 1970s had created enough momentum to start some discussions about the universality of principles. In this Manichaean framework, the “good guys” who defend human rights have a duty to forgo sovereignty norms that normally govern the international system, and do what they must to prevent senseless slaughter anywhere (p. 32).

This is problematic for a few reasons. Opinion polls show that in powerful countries that bear this mandate, such as the United States, popular support for humanitarian interventions remains low. Despite the graveness of global barbarism, most Westerners do not think about, much less vote on, interventions to protect human life outside of their national boundaries. As Menon suggests, Western proponents of R2P are engaged in a kind of intellectual bubble, oblivious of what leaders of great powers like the United States, Russia, and China really calculate. Even the concept of “international community” is suspect. The United Nations writhes in internal paralysis when presented with the task of authorizing military force for humanitarian ends. Further, as a doctrine, R2P itself is noncommittal on the formal protective actions that are justifiable. This suggests that “the world’s political and cultural plurality rules out universally accepted principles, let alone laws that legitimize . . . humanitarian interventions” (p. 76).

The second insight shines in the latter half of the book, when Menon shifts to the historical record. Great powers are extremely selective in intervening, and mask pragmatic interests with the language of humanitarianism. There are almost no cases of a large country deciding that despite an absolute lack of strategic gain, and at the cost of its own soldiers, it was worthy to intervene for the sole purpose of preserving human life. A startling hypothetical scenario emerges on page 98: If another Arab Spring rocks the Middle East and the Saudi government starts killing its own citizens on a terrible scale, would the West ever approve an intervention into this oil-rich ally for the purpose of saving Saudi citizens?

Of course not. The carapace of realism, it seems, is impenetrable. Humanitarian interventionism cannot be applied consistently because its actors are incapable of doing so. Since the Cold War, the United States, Britain, and France have had no problem supporting repressive dictatorships when it suits their geopolitical interests, but then invoking humanitarian ideals to justify the destruction of unfriendly autocracies like Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011. There was no post–Cold War normative shift toward liberalism and human rights, Menon holds; there is only hypocrisy. What about not just Rwanda or Darfur, but Turkey’s campaign against the Kurds, the Algerian civil war, carnage in Indonesia’s East Timor, the 1971 Bangladeshi genocide, repeated famines in North Korea, and most recently the U.S. inaction against civil bloodshed in Egypt and Yemen? People died in these places because external states with the capacity to prevent their murder refused to do so. The cost of intervening was not worth the strategic payoff.

Worst of all, even instances of “successful” intervention are disconcerting. In some cases, there is mission creep: witness NATO-imposed no-fly zones in Libya back in 2011 quickly morphing into an all-out war against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime, which has now resulted in a fractured country. In other cases, interventions come far too late, as in the abattoir of Bosnia. Even there, well-meaning interveners left unintended consequences, such as the failure of the Dayton Accords to resolve the Serbian–Kosovar fault line, which ultimately “grease[d] the wheels” for the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia (p. 132). And all this says nothing about war crimes that still transpire today but merit little Western involvement, as in the Syrian slaughterhouse.

Menon, then, is realist without being realist. This exceptional work extols humanitarianism denuded of all political context, but mourns its inevitable abuse by naive advocates and inexorable subversion by rational governments. As a fellow scholar of interventions, I can only underscore the tendency for the warmest of intentions to be subsumed by cold realist calculations. In the Middle East, there are, sorely, few cases where societies were left better-off when Western patrons did something involving their ruling government—either by propping them up with cash and arms or upending them in the name of freedom.

Yet two questions linger, one empirical and one prescriptive. First, what about nonmilitaristic forms of intervention? For most of this tract, Menon envisages humanitarian intercessions as essentially military operations to invade and sometimes occupy a targeted country. However, coercive projection is but one expression of state behavior when leaders summon liberal norms. They can also furnish economic relief, including food shipments and refugee provisions, as well as fund transnational civil-society groups. Can we potentially universalize these lesser forms of intercession, however shrouded in realpolitik? Menon does not make clear if his broadside against the humanitarianism discourse also covers these less overt forms of state behavior, which can still affect the internal dynamics of targeted countries but require no bombs and infantry.

The second question is prescriptive. To my view, the historical fact that so many client states that are supported by the aid and arms of great power patrons ultimately collapse implies that, as a rule, great powers wanting to help their smaller allies—however unsavory—should paradoxically leave them alone. Does the same hold true for humanitarian operations? Assume two identical Earths, one this reality and the other a world where no interventions take place, ever. In this reality, most humanitarian missions encapsulate great power geopolitics, rest upon a false global consensus, and fail to protect everyone while engendering bloody consequences. Yet, undeniably, some people—perhaps millions—have been saved by the few operations and campaigns that did not descend into total chaos. In the parallel world, though, genocides and massacres unfold unimpeded because no state desires to ever meddle in another’s affairs.

Which world should we prefer? Does the failure of so many humanitarian errands mean that, as a rule, we strive to be like that parallel world? I suspect that Menon may have reservations about this, and rightfully so; we need not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yet as his powerful book makes clear, the bathwater has become sullied beyond all recognition. Although there are no easy answers, that we recognize this at last merits a moment of reflection.