Not necessarily. A total prohibition there would give free reign to tyrants to oppress their own people or even invade their insufficiently-allied neighbours without fear of consequence. The second world war is widely regarded as a just conflict (on the balance), even if it did topple the governments of the Axis powers.
However, my thinking above raises cost-estimation from a practical problem (can we afford the war?) to a moral one. An optimistic belief in a 'short victorious war' gives the intervenor at least partial culpability for the harms of state failure following insufficient occupation and reconstruction.
> give free reign to tyrants to oppress their own people
Come on, North Korean regime exists for 70 years now and it is relatively stable. You're not going to heal the world. China will continue to do whatever it wants in Tibet and Cental Asia. The only thing you get by doing interventions against the regimes you do not like, is encouraging other countries to do interventions against the regimes that they do not like.
You can nudge tyrants into becoming milder and perhaps transitioning power sometimes in the future, and that would also have a benefit of not starting civil wars and having refuge crises.
Not necessarily. A total prohibition there would give free reign to tyrants to oppress their own people or even invade their insufficiently-allied neighbours without fear of consequence. The second world war is widely regarded as a just conflict (on the balance), even if it did topple the governments of the Axis powers.
However, my thinking above raises cost-estimation from a practical problem (can we afford the war?) to a moral one. An optimistic belief in a 'short victorious war' gives the intervenor at least partial culpability for the harms of state failure following insufficient occupation and reconstruction.