In this article, I draw on Judith Shklar to provide an alternative to the liberal model of military intervention proposed in the last few years by intellectuals such as Michael Ignatieff. I suggest that Ignatieff misunderstands Shklar’s liberalism of fear when he appropriates it as a foundation for military intervention on behalf of human rights and, unlike her, is oblivious to hierarchies of power and colonial histories. Through a reading of his Tanner Lectures Human Rights as Politics. Human Rights as Idolatry on one hand, and drawing on Shklar’s entire body of work on the other, I highlight the profound differences separating these authors with regard to: their stance on natural law; the question of foundations (Are there moral universals? What is their function in political argument?); the question of voice (Who speaks on behalf of the oppressed?), and their general stance with respect to the legacy of colonialism and hierarchies it entails. With Shklar, I put forward a reading of “putting cruelty first” as opening a forum for contestation and forms of activism that make space, rather than silence, the voice on whose behalf Ignatieff would intervene. I finally ponder how this change in perspective might speak to how liberal democratic countries are relating to the current crisis in Syria.
