Intervention: Shaping the Global Order. By Karen A. Feste. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003. 304p. $64.95.

Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas. Edited by J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 362p. $75.00 cloth, $26.99 paper.

To intervene or not to intervene? This question has dominated global politics over the past five years, in regions as diverse as the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Sudan. Yet the question is as old as international relations and is a logical extension of the institution of sovereignty. Indeed, it was with the rise of sovereign states that the notion of an exclusive jurisdiction, free from the meddling of outsiders, came to have normative value. Since that time, as Karen Feste notes, patterns of intervention have shaped the international system, “defining contours of connection between its units, guiding interaction, and creating operational expectations” (p. xiii).