No More War (The Misuse and Abuse of 'Humanitarian' Intervention) w/ Dan Kovalik

On this edition of Parallax Views, are the West's humanitarian interventions (or humanitarian wars) really waged for humanitarian purposes? Or is that just an Orwellian façade to cover-up for more strategic interests at play? Our guest labor and human rights attorney Dan Kovalik, author of No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using 'Humanitarian' Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests, makes the case the the latter is closer to the truth.

We delve into:

- The history of "humanitarian interventions" by the West from the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia to the U.S.-backed overthrow of Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya and the destruction it wrought.
- When could the case be made for humantarian intervention?
- King Leopold II and the massacre in the Congo
- South African apartheid, the U.S., and Cuba
- The Kurds and Turkey
-The ideas of pro-interventionist Samantha Powers and how Dan takes them on in the book

And much, much more

Book Description for Dan Kovalik's No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using 'Humanitarian' Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests:

"Kovalik helps cut through the Orwellian lies and dissembling which make so-called 'humanitarian' intervention possible." —Oliver Stone  

War is the fount of all the worst human rights violations―including genocide―and not its cure. This undeniable truth, which the framers of the UN Charter understood so well, is lost in today’s obsession with the oxymoron known as “humanitarian" intervention.  

No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using 'Humanitarian' Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests sets out to reclaim the original intent of the Charter founders to end the scourge of war on the heels of the devastation wrought by WWII. The book begins with a short history of the West’s development as built upon the mass plunder of the Global South, genocide and slavery, and challenges the prevailing notion that the West is uniquely poised to enforce human rights through force.  

This book also goes through recent “humanitarian" interventions carried out by the Western powers against poorer nations (e.g., in the DRC, Congo, and Iraq) and shows how these have only created greater human rights problems – including genocide – than they purported to stop or prevent.  

No More War reminds the reader of the key lessons of Nuremberg – that war is the primary scourge of the world, the root of all the evils which international law seeks to prevent and eradicate, and which must be prevented. The reader is then taken through the UN Charter and other human rights instruments and their emphasis on the prevention of aggressive war.