Factors affecting US cross-border humanitarian military interventions

For some of its own citizens and administrators, the United States, may be perceived as a state that does what the world needs to appreciate, does not give the same sentiment to people outside its borders. Explanations about the reasons for humanitarian military interventions made under the leadership of the United States have a significant effect on the emergence of this perceptual difference This study proposes a method to demonstrate justifications for the interventions, especially the ones justified with humanitarian reasons, made under US leadership by analyzing on five benchmarks. The concept of "Humanitarian Military Intervention" was first defined in the study, followed by the "Responsibility to Protect (R2P)" approach, which states that the understanding of sovereignty of states should be evaluated together with their responsibility to protect their citizens. Subsequently, USA foreign policy in the recent history was examined in order to evaluate the reasons for humanitarian military interventions. A literature review was conducted to shed light on the benchmarks which will be proposed for the international community to evaluate the humanitarian military interventions of USA. Following the examinations and evaluations made, five benchmark were set, and this method was applied to Kosovo and Afghanistan interventions, which were identified as case studies, in order to demonstrate the justifications for US humanitarian interventions. When the Kosovo intervention was examined according to the 5 benchmark method, it was concluded that the reason for the intervention was predominantly the prevention of human rights violations, but after the intervention it was observed that the victimisation of the people of the region did not fall to an acceptable level and only the perpetrators changed. When the Afghanistan operation was examined in the same way, it came to the conclusion that the reason for the intervention was mainly the interests of the US in the region, human rights violations and the September 11 attacks were used to mask the grounds for the main intervention. In both cases, the fact that the United Nations, the most important legitimacy authority according to international makeup law, did not make a decision to use military force in both cases thus it led to the continuation of debates about the legitimacy of the interventions.