Jean Bricmont
Outstanding figure of the anti-imperialist movement, Jean Bricmont is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain (Belgium). He has just published Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War (Éditions Aden, 2005).

Unable to find a new ideological identity after the demise of its big Soviet brother, the European left has engulfed itself in societal issues at home and humanitarian interventionism abroad. In an inconsistent stance, it calls for the protection of peoples by U.S. imperialism. But how can it wish to protect anyone when it has given up its own freedom?

While the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, promotes the implementation of the new juridical concept on the "responsibility to protect", the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, invited four intellectuals to present their analyses for the enlightenment of member-state delegations. The panel consisted of Gareth Evans (one of the fathers of the concept), Noam Chomsky, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Jean Bricmont. The latter’s intervention is reproduced below.

A figure of the anti-imperialist movement, Jean Bricmont, opened the round table discussion on humanitarian interference during the conference Axis for Peace 2005. In this text, taken from his most recent book, “Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l’homme, droit d’ingérence, droit du plus fort?” (“Humanitarian imperialism. Human rights, right of interference, law of the strongest? ”), he explains that peace can only be based on international law and that the right to interfere, like the manipulation of human rights, serves as a disguise for the law of the jungle.

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