Guerres humanitaires ?
Mensonges et intox
[Humanitarian wars?
Lies and brainwashing]
Rony Brauman, interviews
with Régis Meyran
Éditions Textuel, 2018
(published in French)
Publisher’s comments
“‘Wars are always declared in the name of a good’”, as Rony Brauman reminds us in this conversation with Régis Meyran. For the famous NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, the recent ‘humanitarian’ wars are nothing more than moral crusades based on lies. The examples of warmongering propaganda are legion: the suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction held by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the question of debatable genocide in Kosovo, trumped-up numbers regarding the famine in Somalia, the fake massacre of protesters in Libya… Without being non-interventionist on principle, Rony Brauman is nevertheless extremely wary of the bellicose enthusiasm of a number of current leaders, and does not shy away from criticising international bodies: for him, the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice represent the interests of the most powerful. Against a so-called ‘right’ to intervene, and drawing on criteria for ‘just wars’, Brauman criticises the Western obsession with imposing democratic values by force. Supported by evidence, he exposes the false reasoning for supposedly ‘just’ wars with disastrous consequences, without falling into the trap of conspiracy theories.”
This book was awarded the 2018 Albert Thibaudet prize by the Centre Thucydide, rewarding French-language authors of recent works on international relations. Watch the exclusive video interview of Rony Brauman by Boris Martin, our editor-in-chief, at www.alternatives-humanitaires.org from the Humanitarian Alternatives Interviews series.
Translated from the French by Juliet Powys
