Ethik humanitärer Interventionen. Eine konsequentialistische Konzeption

In this paper a consequently welfarist criterion for morally justified humanitarian interventions is developed and illustrated by its application to the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. The criterion is justified on the basis of a historical conception of moral norms ("progressive norm welfarism"), which tells moral subjects to obey the morally good among the norms currently in force and encourages subjects to morally improve this stock of norms. According to this conception, properly restricted and regulated humanitarian interventions (exact conditions are provided in section 7) can be a morally good means in extreme situations; and practising them in the current situation, even without UN authorisation, can be seen, besides the aspect of direct helping, as a policy to socially establish a morally good norm (in certain conditions to be obligated to help by humanitarian interventions). This was the case in the Kosovo intervention, as a rough empirical analysis shows.