The Responsibility to Protect and the problem of military intervention

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has come a long way in a relatively short space of time. From inauspicious beginnings, the principle was endorsed by the General Assembly in 2005 and unanimously reaffirmed by the Security Council in 2006 (Resolution 1674). However, the principle remains hotly contested primarily because of its association with humanitarian intervention and the pervasive belief that its principal aim is to create a pathway for the legitimization of unilateral military intervention. This article sets forth the argument that a deepening consensus on R2P is dependent on its dissociation from the politics of humanitarian intervention and suggests that one way of doing this is by abandoning the search for criteria for decision‐making about the use of force, one of the centre pieces of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001 report that coined the phrase R2P. Criteria were never likely to win international support, the article maintains, and were less likely to improve decision‐making on how best to respond to major humanitarian crises. Nevertheless, R2P can make an important contribution to thinking about the problem of military intervention by mitigating potential ‘moral hazards’, overcoming the tendency of international actors to focus exclusively on military methods and giving impetus to efforts to operationalize protection in the field.     

From humanitarian relief to humanitarian intervention: victims, interveners and pillars

Current humanitarian crises are bedeviling the United Nations, relief agencies and governments. Efforts to provide food and other basic supplies to traumatized populations are frequently stymied by uncooperative regimes, violent militias, remote locations, high costs and complicated operations. As a result, humanitarian relief operations that have focused primarily on food distribution must be radically revised to encompass the much broader agenda of humanitarian intervention, which entails an aggressive, multilateral role within states. Five ‘pillars’ are proposed—basic needs, public security, political dialogue, human rights/justice and sustained economic development—on which to base future humanitarian interventions.     

The Responsibility to Protect at 15

In the fifteen years since the publication of the report ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, there has been a burgeoning literature on all aspects of R2P. This review article focuses on five issues. First, it revisits the shift from ‘humanitarian intervention’ to R2P as the key innovation in 2001, highlighting the political, conceptual, normative, procedural and operational differences between the two. Second, it examines the state of knowledge regarding the causes of atrocities; the institutional vulnerabilities and points of resilience; the pathways from simmering animosities to mass killings; the indicators and precursors; and the most effective preventive and response mechanisms. Third, it reviews the unsatisfactory state of R2P implementation. Fourth, it discusses the main R2P actors, from international organizations and key groups of states to individuals. Finally, it addresses the continuing scepticism about R2P, in that it does not resolve all the dilemmas of how outsiders can provide timely, decisive and effective assistance to any group in need of protection.     

A chronic protection problem: the DPRK and the Responsibility to Protect

The Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) is arguably the world's most chronic abuser of human rights. In an unprecedented move, a Commission of Inquiry established by the UN's Human Rights Council accused the DPRK government of systematic violations of human rights amounting to crimes against humanity. In so doing, the Commission succeeded in putting human rights in the DPRK on the global agenda. Within months the UN's General Assembly and Security Council had joined the human rights body in examining the issue. This article explains the emergence of this new engagement with human rights in the DPRK, showing its relation to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ principle. It charts the growing sense of frustration felt at the lack of progress on human rights in DPRK and shows how this was manifested in the General Assembly's decision to pursue the Commission's recommendations and call on the Security Council to take concrete steps. Despite this, however, the article shows that there are powerful obstacles in the way of a more robust international approach to human rights in the DPRK and counsels a less confrontational approach focused on engaging China and building trust within the Security Council.     

A normative case for pluralism: reassessing Vincent's views on humanitarian intervention

While R. J. Vincent's overall goal in Human rights and International Relations was to demonstrate how human rights might be promoted in international society, there was one area in which he was sceptical about allowing human rights to serve as the basis for international conduct: military intervention. This article begins by demonstrating that Vincent's greatest fear—that legitimizing humanitarian intervention would lead to countless wars—has proved largely unfounded. Nonintervention in the face of gross violations of human rights has marked the post‐Cold War period more than rampant interventionism. Moreover, while the use of force for humanitarian purposes has become acceptable in very exceptional circumstances, the manner in which it has been legitimized and the depth of the consensus around its appropriateness illustrate lingering scepticism among states about infringements of sovereignty. The article concludes by showing how Vincent's writings on humanitarian intervention, in particular his caution about an imperialist advance of cosmopolitanism, might provide a basis for a more robust normative defence of pluralism in contemporary international society.     

The Responsibility to Protect and the International Criminal Court: counteracting the crisis

The establishment of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) process and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were seen by many to constitute significant progress in the protection of human rights. However, these institutions are now in crisis, due in large part to their failure to prevent or prosecute recent acute human rights abuses in Syria. There have been two responses to this crisis: the first assumes that the crisis is caused by the current structures of international governance, in particular the power of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), and calls for radical reform. The second sees possibilities within the current structure and advocates making R2P and the ICC more closely aligned under UNSC control. The article argues that both responses are mistaken and sets out an argument in favour of refocusing on the complementary nature of each institution. The Court's most successful actions have been in exercising the powers afforded by its complementary jurisdiction in situations such as Colombia. Similarly, R2P works more successfully at preventing conflict and changing expectations of acceptable state behaviour than it does at confronting situations in which large‐scale violence has begun. The article argues that the ICC and R2P should focus on ‘positive complementarity’ agendas, with the ICC devoting more resources to assisting states to build legal capacity in order to deter future conflict through stronger domestic criminal systems, and advocates of R2P focusing less on intervention in live conflict situations and more on building within states the capacity and resources to protect their own populations.     

Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

From humanitarian exceptionalism to contingent care: Care and enforcement at the humanitarian border

Throughout the world, increasingly securitized and militarized border enforcement efforts have made transnational migration an increasingly deadly endeavor for unauthorized migrants. The deadly consequences of unauthorized migration has compelled the emergence of what William Walters refers to as the humanitarian border—the concentration of humanitarian aid and services along the edges of the global North. This paper expands on Walters work through an in-depth analysis of the emergence and transformation of the humanitarian border in southern Arizona, USA. Through an examination of transformations in how migrant care is provisioned, overseen, and regulated in southern Arizona, this paper traces a shift from humanitarian exceptionalism to contingent care whereby care is increasingly linked with enforcement efforts. In doing so, this analysis illustrates how care functions as a technology of border enforcement, increasing the reach of the state to govern more bodies and more spaces.     

叙利亚与两伊战争

叙利亚为了维护国家利益和阿萨德阿拉维派复兴党统治集团的利益,基于现实矛盾、地缘政治和教派因素,在两伊战争中从军事、外交和经济方面支持伊朗,反对伊拉克,叙利亚的两伊政策因两伊战争的进程和阿以冲突的起伏而呈现出阶段性特征,并对叙利亚和伊朗及中东地缘政治产生了重要影响。     

Urbanism and economic development in a pre-industrial context: the case of southern Russia

Russia's southern frontier in the seventeenth century was continuously menaced by the nomadic Tatars who inhabited the open steppe grasslands. In this situation the Russian government attempted to harness all the frontier's sources to the cause of defence by founding a series of military towns which could control and direct the process of settlement. Government control, however, did not extend to the widespread illegal migration and settlement of runaway serfs. In a later period, as the Tatar threat subsided and colonization continued, the importance of most of the towns diminished and a system of secondary central places arose as trade expanded. But the oldest towns retained their importance in this changing social and economic situation, becoming higher-order central places for long-distance trade and, increasingly, centres for agricultural processing.