Right to Protect interventionism is essentially a utilitarian argument – that by using violence in reply to violence the greater good of the greater number can be achieved – specifically, that fewer people will die if there is an armed intervention than if the state or non-state actor is allowed to continue killing unopposed by external forces. But it largely ignores a wider utilitarian argument to do so – that the resources required to intervene could be put to better use saving more lives elsewhere.

The war in Libya has cost the US somewhere in the region of $1.2 billion over six months, at a rough guess. That’s a drop in the ocean compared with the hundreds of billions so far spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the bloated overall defense budget. But State spends far less on core foreign assistance – including food aid – than is spent on America’s wars. That stands at only $32.9 billion in the FY2012 request. DoD will get three and a half times that money for Afghanistan and Iraq alone.