...advocates of tolerance and moderation in a harsh world of power politics. Humanitarians, says Kennedy, tend to think of themselves as champions of ethical decision making, a weak voice straining to humanize the Machiavellian princes who wield real power in the world. In The Dark Sides of Virtue (1) Kennedy traces the evolution of his own thinking about humanitarianism and arrives at the conclusion that such self-perceptions are frequently inaccurate--and sometimes dangerous.

The essential claim of The Dark Sides of Virtue is that humanitarians often make poor decisions because they are not sufficiently attentive to the potential costs of their advocacy. Why don't humanitarians do a better...

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