Towards Reliable and Responsible Atrocities-Policing

As Rwanda and Yugoslavia indicate,atrocities policing ("humanitarian intervention")is, in our currentglobal polity,unreliable and carried out crudely. Thisbecomes apparent when it is comparedwith domestic policing. It is the result ofthe system of sovereign states, into whichatrocities policing does not readily fit.Even innovation to accommodate it leadsto the haphazard interventions we haveseen in this decade. But the sovereign state system,which developed in Europein the context of a particular historicalcontingency and was then endowed to therest of the world through decolonization,is not the only possible way of organizingthe global polity. Thus, the author offersas an alternative the concept of a democraticglobal federation in which atrocitiespolicing - including preventativepolicing - can be conducted in a muchmore reliable and responsible manner.While such a global political organizationmay seem utopian, in the long termit is not, given how radical change hasbeen in the past century and can he expectedto he in the next one. Moreover, itprovides direction to current institutionalreform and adds to current decisions about atrocities policing the issue ofthe longer-term consequences for globalpractices and institutions.