Asserting that humanitarian intervention is a highly ambiguous principle, Pasic and Weiss warn of the dangers of politically driven rescues that often force trade-offs between the pursuit of rescue and political order.

LaBerge examines the ethical positions of Rawls, Kant, John Walzer adapted from J. S. Mill, and Canadian philosopher Howard Adelman are, and writes that they constitute "an ethics of human rights, ethics of the right to a historical community, and an ethics of peace.".