India and the Libyan Crisis: Flirting with the Responsibility to Protect, Retreating to the Sovereignty Norm

Abstract

India sat on the Security Council in 2011 when Resolution 1973 passed. This authorized NATO's intervention in the humanitarian crisis in Libya, which ultimately precipitated regime change. India's engagement with the crisis is analysed here with reference to various ‘identity-discourses’, treated as ‘shapers’ of India's specific policy-responses to the Libya crisis. This study finds that India flirted with the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm by abstaining when the Council voted on Resolution 1973; New Delhi effectively declined to oppose measures to resolve the crisis which were broadly consistent with Pillar III of R2P (that is, the responsibility of the international community to protect threatened persons). But after reflecting on NATO's intervention, Indian leaders largely retreated to their traditional preference for relatively strong interpretations of the sovereignty norm, suggesting India's flirtation with R2P – or at least with Pillar III – was brief and unhappy. While this paper finds that ‘soft’ liberal-democratic logic is very firmly established – Indian elites are committed to liberal-democratic principles, at least at home – it seems likely to take some time before the ‘hard’ liberal-democratic logic which shapes Pillar III-consistent responses to humanitarian crises becomes influential in Indian policy-making circles. In other words, New Delhi is unlikely to become a wholehearted supporter of the R2P norm without profound changes to India's international identity, which in turn has negative implications for the wider effort to further entrench R2P, especially its controversial Pillar III.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author would like to thank Nicolas Blarel and the audience at the ISA panel where an early draft of this paper was presented, and Christian Downie, Tanya Jakimow, Kudrat Virk, and Jennifer Whalan who offered comments on later drafts, as well as CSP’s reviewers and editor for the same.

Notes

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