After the fiasco of the Iraq War of 2003, the West pushed for a new mandate through the UN called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2005. This new mandate revived ideas of humanitarian intervention that had been called into question from the detritus of Iraq. No lessons were learned. After R2P came Libya, a society now in ruins, and then came Syria, a country whose civil war had been fanned along even as no good outcome seemed on the horizon. This talk will explore the landscape of intervention and its perils.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian Studies and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College. He writes regular columns and reports for Frontline (India), The Hindu (India), Alternet (USA) and BirGün (Turkey).

Co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Weiss Chair of the Humanities, the Department of History,
the School of International Affairs, and the Rock Ethics Institute