Featuring the author Michael W. Doyle, Director, Columbia Global Policy Initiative, Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Political Science, Columbia University; with comments by Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO, New America; and Christopher A. Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute; moderated by Brad Stapleton, Visiting Research Fellow, Cato Institute.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has conducted a
number of humanitarian interventions. Following the UN’s
enshrinement of the “responsibility to protect,” and in the midst
of ongoing international instability, Washington is bound to face
pressure to perform more such operations. Given that likelihood,
policymakers need standards for deciding when to intervene abroad.
In his new book, Michael Doyle provides a sophisticated analysis of
the circumstances in which moral and security considerations
supersede the norm of state sovereignty and justify foreign
intervention. Building on John Stuart Mill’s 1859 essay “A Few
Words on Non-intervention,” Doyle argues that the default principle
of non-intervention should only be overridden in grave situations
following multilateral deliberation. Please join us for an engaging
discussion.
