Humanitarian intervention and foreign policy in the Conservative-led coalition

This paper examines the role of humanitarian intervention as a tool of foreign policy in the Conservative-led Coalition. The first section of the paper provides historical context and assesses the traditional approaches to humanitarian intervention as an instrument of foreign policy of Conservative governments since the end of the Cold War. This analytical narrative considers the Major Government's response to the Bosnian War. The second section of the paper considers the Conservative-led Coalition's approach to humanitarian intervention in two ways: first by an examination of the influence of Blair's humanitarian intervention and secondly, by an evaluation of British involvement in the Libyan Revolution of 2011. The third and final section of the paper offers an explanatory interpretation of the Conservative-led Coalition's humanitarian intervention. This interpretation is predicated on an English School theoretical framework for understanding international relations and, in particular, advances the argument that the global worldview of David Cameron, William Hague and their liberal Conservative colleagues can be understood as solidarist