Humanitarian interventions are expected to bring help to populations that are suffering serious harm. Nevertheless the military intervention should not be admitted as an automatic answer to every conflict according to Rawls. The stability of the international system is the key instrument to evaluate the level of threat presented by a government. In that sense, Rawls proposes to insert even the hierarchical societies in the international system as long as they respect the fundamental rules and norms of the international society. Even so, whenever there is a severe violation of human rights, Rawls stands for a military intervention in order to protect the populations and argues that it is just to intervene in that case. This study aims at analysing the levels of threat by a kantian peace perception in order to understand how a government may lose its legitimacy and eventually, how an intervention could be justified in these circumstances.
