POLITICAL INTEREST AND HUMANITARIAN ACTION.

The article examines the unprecedented role of humanitarian issues in foreign policy. Such shortcomings reflect the gap between an ideal in which politics and humanitarian action proceed in detached and autonomous spheres and the reality in which they are generally entwined. Discussion of the disparity between principle and performance usually revolves around the problem of political will. States are unwilling to deploy resources rapidly and in quantities commensurate with the problem. The lack of political will is itself generally explained by the absence of national interests of the major states in an armed conflict.