Sovereignty-building: three images of positive sovereignty projected through Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

This article argues that the increasingly frequent and robust implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) principle reflects not only the operation of the functionally narrow doctrine of humanitarian intervention, but also the emergence of a new paradigm of global security, namely sovereignty-building. RtoP protects populations from mass atrocity crimes, supports and builds responsible sovereigns committed to protecting their populations, and restrains ‘irresponsible’ sovereigns. These functions of RtoP perfectly capture the sovereignty-building paradigm. This article will draw upon the philosophical literature on sovereignty, the analysis of the norm development of RtoP, and empirical evidence of the UN Security Council's deliberations on the situation in Libya in 2011 to argue that the image of responsible sovereignty featured in RtoP is composed of three aspects: popular, spontaneous and indivisible sovereignty. That image is projected on states in the implementation of RtoP, and constitutes the teleological objective of the emerging paradigm of sovereignty-building, which can be distinguished from the traditional doctrines of state-building and humanitarian intervention.

Keywords:

• conflict resolution
• human security
• international relations theory
• sovereignty

Notes

1 See Aidan Hehir and Νeil Robinson, eds., State-Building: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2007); Charles T. Call, ‘Ending Wars, Building States’, in Building States to Build Peace, ed. Charles T. Call and Vanessa Wyeth (London: Lynne Rienner, 2008), 1–24; Michael Wesley, ‘The State of the Art on the Art of State Building’, Global Governance 14, no. 3 (2008): 369–85.

2 James S. Robbins, ‘Sovereignty-Building: The Case of Chechnya’, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 21, no. 2 (1997): 17.

3 The term ‘international society’ applied in this article is defined in accordance with the ‘Grotian’ or ‘solidarist’ theory of International Relations research, which states that international society is not only comprised of states with minimum purposes, but also exhibits solidarity or potential solidarity among states with respect to the enforcement of international law. See Hedley Bull, ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, in Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, ed. Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), 52.

4 2005 World Summit Outcome, UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, October 24, 2005, 30.

5 Francis M. Deng, Sadikiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, Donald Rothchild, and I. William Zartman, Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1996); Roberta Cohen, Human Rights Protection for Internally Displaced Persons (Washington, DC: Refugee Policy Group, 1991), 1.

6 This term was devised by Thomas Hobbes and the French philosophes in the age of Enlightenment, as will be demonstrated in more detail in the fourth section.

7 In the philosophy of political science, the metaphor of ‘body politique’ has been applied to illustrate the indivisibility of state sovereignty. Rousseau, for example, notes that, ‘Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his own limbs, the social pact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members; and it is this same power which, directed by the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of sovereignty’. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), 74. See also John Locke, Two Treatises of Government: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus by Peter Laslett, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 349.

8 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

9 See Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 29.

10 Quoted in Alan James, Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 169.

11 Quoted in ibid., 169.

12 Mary Kaldor, Νew and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).

13 R.J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 123–4.

14 Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 14.

15 UCDP defines a major armed conflict as a conflict that involves at least 1000 war-related deaths per year.

16 Lotta Themnér and Peter Wallensteen, ‘Armed Conflict, 1946–2010’, Journal of Peace Research 48, no. 4 (2011): 525–36.

17 Deng et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility.

18 ICISS (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (December 2001), xii–xiii, http://www.iciss-ciise.gc.ca/report2-en.asp (accessed November 10, 2011).

19 UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, October 24, 2005, 30.

20 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UN Doc., SG/SM/11701, July 15, 2008.

21 Deng et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility.

22 Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/63/677, January 12, 2009.

23 This term is derived from the official definition of RtoP: ‘[W]e [member states] are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council … should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.’ UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, October 24, 2005, 30.

24 ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect, xii–xiii.

25 Interview with Professor Edward Luck in New York on March 19, 2009.

26 Touko Piiparinen, Law Enforcer or Mediator? The Libya Crisis Reveals Paradoxes in UN Conflict Management, FIIA Comment 4/2011 (Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2011).

27 UN Doc. A/63/677, January 12, 2009, 7.

28 Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Sharing Sovereignty: Νew Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States’, International Security 29, no. 2 (2004): 85–120.

29 Hans Morgenthau's classic political realist account Politics among Nations (1949), for example, argues: ‘That fact [sovereignty] is the existence of a person or a group of persons who, within the limits of a given territory, are more powerful than any competing person or group of persons and whose power, institutionalized as it must be in order to last, manifests itself as the supreme authority to enact and enforce legal rules within that territory.’ Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 3rd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 319.

30 See for example Ramesh Thakur, ‘UN Breathes Life into “Responsibility to Protect”’, Toronto Star, March 21, 2011; André de Nesnera, ‘New UN Doctrine Invoked in Libyan Conflict’, Voice of America, March 16, 2011, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/New-UN-Doctrine-Invoked-in-Libyan-Conflict-118083259.html (accessed March 1, 2012).

31 UN Doc. S/RES/1973 (2011), March 17, 2011, 3.

32 Irwin Cotler and Jared Genser, ‘Libya and the Responsibility to Protect’, New York Times, February 28, 2011.

33 James Pattison, ‘The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention in Libya’, Ethics and International Affairs 25, no. 3 (2011): 271–7.

34 UN Doc. S/PV.6498, March 17, 2012, 2.

35 Ibid., 3, 4, 8.

36 Ibid., 2.

37 For this insight, I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer.

38 The term ‘pen-holder’ refers to the main drafter of the UN resolution.

39 Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 32.

40 Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, ‘The New Politics of Protection? Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and the Responsibility to Protect’, International Affairs 87, no. 4 (2011): 843.

41 See for example Julia Driver, Ethics: The Fundamentals (London: Blackwell, 2006).

42 UN Doc. S/RES/1973 (2011), March 17, 2011, 3 (emphasis added).

43 UN Doc. S/RES/1975 (2011), March 30, 2011, 3 (emphasis added). The comparison here is made between Resolutions 1973 and 1975, because both of them have been cited as the hallmark precedents of RtoP in the existing literature.

44 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), Opening Remarks by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the Meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in Brussels on 10 March 2011, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_71398.htm (accessed August 19, 2011).

45 Author's translation of original text: ‘Päätöslauselmassa ei mainita hallinnon vaihtoa, mutta hyväksymiskokouksessa käyty keskustelu tuskin jätti paikalla olleille epäilyksiä siitä, mihin päätöslauselmaa tultaisiin käyttämään.’ Janne Taalas, ‘Turvaneuvosto terästi otettaan’, Ulkopolitiikka 49, no. 2 (2012): 54.

46 Raghida Dergham, ‘Moscow's Hesitancy to Support the Arab Uprisings’, The Huffington Post, June 3, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raghida-dergham/moscows-hesitancy-to-supp_b_871233.html (accessed March 2, 2012).

47 Rousseau, The Social Contract. Martti Koskenniemi's account provides a more contemporary twist on the long-held principle of RoL emanating from the Enlightenment: ‘A free people obey but it does not serve; it has magistrates but not masters; it obeys nothing but the laws, and thanks to the force of laws, it does not obey men.’ Martti Koskenniemi, ‘The Politics of International Law’, European Journal of International Law 1, no. 1 (1990): 5.

48 Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 381.

49 James Traub, The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power (New York: Picador, 2007), 113.

50 Edward C. Luck, ‘Sovereignty, Choice, and the Responsibility to Protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect 1, no. 1 (2009): 14.

51 Fernando R. Tesón, Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality (Dobbs Ferry: Transnational Publishers, 1988), 15.

52 Martin Doornbos, ‘State Collapse and Fresh Starts: Some Critical Reflections’, in State Failure, Collapse and Reconstruction, ed. Jennifer Milliken (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 56.

53 UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, October 24, 2005, 30.

54 Rousseau, The Social Contract, 74; Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 349.

55 UN Doc. A/63/677, January 12, 2009, 11. This article disagrees with the state-centric approach in the report, but agrees with the general idea of the indivisibility of a responsible collective agent.

56 Ibid., 20–21.

57 Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 348–55.

58 See for example Alex J. Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect – Five Years On’, Ethics and International Affairs 24, no. 2 (2010): 143.

59 UN Doc. A/63/677, January 12, 2009, 10–11.

60 Ibid., 20 (emphasis added).

61 Ibid., 20.

62 David Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics (London: Martin Robertson, 1975).

63 UN Doc. S/RES/1973 (2011), March 17, 2011, 2.

64 Ibid., 3.

65 BBC News, ‘Libya UN Resolution 1973: Text Analysed’, March 18, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12782972 (accessed December 1, 2011).

66 Pattison, ‘The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention’, 271–7; Bellamy and Williams, ‘The New Politics of Protection’, 846.

67 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, ΝJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

68 Quoted in John M. Broder, ‘U.S. and Allies Weigh Libya No-Fly Zone’, The New York Times, February 27, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/europe/28military.html?_r=3 (accessed December 2, 2011).

69 Broder, ‘U.S. and Allies Weigh Libya’.

70 Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy.