It has long struck me as sadly ironic that one of the principal tools at the disposal of global powers by which to respond to humanitarian disasters inflicted on societies by their own leaders, has been to bomb the very country whose peoples have suffered. Those whose research and work focuses only on the subject may be immune to the irony but I have found that for students coming to the subject for the first time, the juxtaposition of problem and solution often appears quite stark.

As the editors of this thought-provoking collection point out, other aspects of the practice and theory of intervention are just as deserving of reflection and ripe for fundamental re-evaluation. For example, while it may have become clear that regime removal does not of itself guarantee a better future for the citizens post-intervention, it is not so obvious that ruling out regime change after a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) intervention would as a matter of course protect the citizens. Presumably if a regime has no qualms about inflicting harm on its own people once it may well do so again, as the experience of Syria would seem to suggest.

And, whether or not intervention encompasses regime removal, the question remains as to what then? And what of those from the previous state apparatus who are removed if regime change is enforced? Although none of these issues are new, they have been the subject of particular concern to the international community since the failure to intervene in the Rwandan genocide and the decision to intervene without authorisation by the United Nations Security Council international during the Kosovo crisis in 1999.

The concept of the R2P has been the most tangible product of this review, and debate on the issues raised by intervention has, since the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, generally been centred on the R2P concept. Advocates of the concept tend to be those who feel compelled to find a way by which the international community does not become complicit through silence in atrocities.