Divine intervention (n.) suspends no law of history in the Gospels; a text disturbs history only by slowly revealing the misapprehension that shields people from their own violence.
Humanitarian intervention (n.) is an old invitation: the colonist paints the natives asking to be rescued, then arrives.
Humanitarian intervention (n.) is a "so-called right" to the governments of most of humanity, who have heard the rhetoric too often over the centuries.
Humanitarian intervention (n.) had its real cases in the 1970s — India in East Pakistan, Vietnam in Cambodia — but they were done by the wrong people, so the norm had to wait for the 1990s.
Humanitarian intervention (n.) meant, in John Stuart Mill's classic essay, conquering more of India so Britain could control the opium it needed to force open China.
Military intervention (n.) survives every fiasco because force is what the superpower does best — and to a hammer, the whole world looks like nails.
Military intervention (n.) by the United States since the 1980s has followed one simple rule: never attack anybody who can fight back.
Outside intervention (n.) in a domestic dispute is where most of the dying begins: nearly every fatality came after outsiders entered with their military might.