As part of Amnesty International's Global Ethics Series, Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus have provided a pair of thoughtfully conceived essays that seek to explain what makes interventions work and what makes them fail. Eschewing prevalent considerations of abstract moral rights or duties to intervene, the authors instead focus on whether and how one should intervene in a particular country at a particular time. Characterizing their approaches as “passionate moderation” and “principled incrementalism,” respectively, Stewart and Knaus reject paradigms of “heroic international planners” and “heroic international leaders,” who reside within both “the planning school” and “the liberal imperialist school.” Because intervention is intrinsically unpredictable and uncertain, not even carefully tuned formulas, fixed theories, and doctrines can guarantee success.

Through a focus on narrative—on the history of events, decisions, and individuals—and informed by their respective on-the-ground experiences in the military, in international and national nongovernmental organizations, and in the Iraqi provincial government, the authors explain the limits of Western institutions (ranging from the United Nations to nongovernmental organizations and the U.S. military, some of which lack not only legitimacy and local support but also knowledge of crucial local and regional factors), and demonstrate how intervention is an art rather than a science. Stewart focuses exclusively on Afghanistan, warning against the overwhelming pressures of overextension; Knaus focuses largely on Bosnia, explaining how international institutions misinterpreted an intervention that nevertheless worked. Echoed throughout each of these case studies is the assertion that local and regional factors tend to be the most important determinants of success, both for the intervention and for the interveners themselves. The causes of a crisis are not, as is commonly assumed, the result of structural flaws or ungoverned space, but are instead specific to a particular place and time.

To their credit, the authors acknowledge the limitations of their conclusions. Stewart and Knaus convincingly demonstrate that their titular question is a complex one, and that a thorough effort to grapple with it must be nuanced and context-specific. Given the uniqueness of every crisis situation, the experience garnered in one place is not necessarily useful elsewhere. Still, the authors argue that interveners must carefully distinguish between factors they can control, the dangers they can avoid, and the dangers they can neither control nor avoid; courage, thought, and preplanning are relevant but are not enough on their own. Interveners must proceed carefully and invest heavily in finding out more about the specific context in which they operate—especially after the intervention—and must define concrete goals. Equally important, the international community must be much more humble about what it can accomplish in terms of state-building abroad and abandon the notion that “failure is not an option.”