Two hundred years ago, Benjamin Constant foresaw the rise of humanitarian intervention as the foremost modern pretext for war. In the age of commerce and democracy, the state had to concoct “scandalous lies” to subvert the peaceful international order based on free trade, he argued. In 1814, as Napoleon Bonaparte was shipped to Elba after … Continue reading How a Classical Frenchman Predicted the 21st Century’s ‘Humanitarian Interventions’