Decolonising the Selectivity Debate in Military Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract Selectivity is often understood as global powers using military intervention in certain humanitarian crises but not in others based on perceived strategic interests at stake. Though the scholarship has acknowledged selectivity’s practice, more disputed has been its ‘problematic’ ascription. Critics have correctly identified selectivity as a problem of hypocrisy, while advocates have construed it as necessary and even pragmatic. Importantly, however, both camps have premised selectivity as a problem of ‘inaction’ towards ‘non-intervened’ crises. In contrast to this existing ‘bystander complicity’ paradigm of selectivity, this article argues that selectivity must be reinterpreted as a problem of global power ‘active complicity’ to better understand and appreciate its problematic ascription. The proposed active complicity paradigm reveals the neglected colonial and imperial underpinnings within selectivity. It destabilises and challenges the idea that global powers simply ‘stand by’ as onlookers to disassociated, faraway crises, and instead highlights their key role in enabling and perpetuating them.