Human rights vs. Human Nature Term Paper by Master Researcher

This paper reviews the question of justifying military intervention on the basis of protection of human rights, pointing out that such a question requires a prior assumption. The paper clarifies this assumption to be that countries are capable of benevolent, disinterested altruism. History refutes this assumption. The paper further discusses how individuals and groups within a country may very well have the best intentions to bring relief to the suffering citizens of a brutal dictatorship or civil war; but countless examples, from Vietnam, to Latin America, to Rwanda, to present day Iraq, show a road to hell paved with such good intentions. The political and military forces involved in such maneuvers, by their very nature, preclude truly altruistic actions.