The responsibility to protect? Imposing the ‘Liberal Peace’

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, debate over international peacekeeping has been dominated by the question of the so-called ‘right of humanitarian intervention’. Advocates of the right of intervention, largely Western states, have tended to uphold liberal internationalist claims that new international norms prioritizing individual rights to protection promise a framework of liberal peace and that the Realist framework of the Cold War period when state security was viewed as paramount has been superseded. In an attempt to codify and win broader international legitimacy for new interventionist norms, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty released a two-volume report, The Responsibility to Protect, in December 2001. In the light of this report and broader developments in international security in the wake of September 11, this essay suggests that rather than a moral shift away from the rights of sovereignty, the dominance of the liberal peace thesis, in fact, reflects the new balance of power in the international sphere. Justifications for new interventionist norms as a framework for liberal peace are as dependent on the needs of Realpolitik as was the earlier doctrine of sovereign equality and non-intervention.

Acknowledgements

This is an amended version of a paper of the same title presented to the British International Studies Association annual conference at the London School of Economics, 16–18 December 2002. I would like to thank Nicholas Wheeler and the two anonymous reviewers for International Peacekeeping for their comments.

Notes

Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000,

The liberal peace thesis's emphasis on shared international moral norms is often traced back to the Enlightenment and Immanuel Kant's 1795 essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, accessed at www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm, Kant argues that as democratic consciousness develops liberal states will emerge and band together to form a ‘league of peace’ to protect their own security but also to encourage the spread of liberal ideas and promote individual rights internationally. See further, Kenneth Waltz, ‘Kant, Liberalism and War’, American Political Science Review, Vol.56, 1962, pp.331–40; Michael Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Policy’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Part I in Vol.12, 1983, pp.205–35; Part II in Vol.12, 1983, pp.323–53; Chris Brown, Terry Nardin and Nicholas Rengger (eds.), International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.428–55.

For an overview see International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001, pp.129–38.

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001, p.vii.

Ibid.; see also The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background, p.341. The Commission was launched on 14 September 2002. The Canadian Government invited the Honourable Gareth Evans, AO QC, President of the International Crisis Group and former Australian Foreign Minister, and His Excellency Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General and formerly his Special Representative, SRSG, for Somalia and the Great Lakes Region of Africa to jointly head the ICISS. In consultation with the Co-Chairs, ten other distinguished Commissioners were appointed: Gisèle Côté-Harper; Lee Hamilton; Michael Ignatieff; Vladimir Lukin; Klaus Naumann; Cyril Ramaphosa; Fidel Ramos; Cornelio Somaruga; Eduardo Stein; and Ramesh Thakur. Canada's Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Honourable John Manley, also appointed an international Advisory Board of serving and former foreign ministers from Canada, Chile, the Palestinian National Authority, the UK, Poland, Mexico, the US, Egypt, Greece, Thailand, South Africa and Argentina, as well as other eminent individuals, to help ground the report in current political realities and to assist in building up political momentum and public engagement to follow up its recommendations. As well as meetings with the Advisory Board the Commissioners held five full meetings, and 11 regional roundtables and national consultations were held around the world at Ottawa, Geneva, London, Maputo, Washington, Santiago, Cairo, Paris, New Delhi, Beijing and St. Petersburg. At these meetings a variety of national and regional officials, representatives of civil society, academic institutions and think tanks, joined some of the Commissioners and one, but usually both, of the Co-Chairs in deliberations. The Commission also met with interested governments, representatives of Permanent Missions, heads or senior representatives of major international organizations and UN agencies and with the Secretary-General Kofi Annan and key members of the UN Secretariat. Alongside this process, an extensive research programme was organized in support of ICISS's work and an international research team created, led jointly by Thomas G. Weiss, Presidential Professor at The CUNY Graduate Centre and Stanlake J.T.M. Samkange, a lawyer and former speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.2.

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001,

The Responsibility to Protect, p.viii.

Ibid. p.9.

Ibid.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.129.

Ibid. pp.134–5.

Ibid. p.136.

The Report notes: ‘There is little reason to invest much hope that global civil society can systematically ensure human security.’ NGOs can play important roles in standard-setting and monitoring but states remain the only actors with the resources and power to ensure human protection measures are enforced. See Research, Bibliography, Background, p.136.

Ibid.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.57.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.21.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.61.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.213.

Ibid., p.191.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.11.

Ibid. p.16.

Ibid. p.11.

Ibid. p.17.

Ibid.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.127.

Ibid. p.136.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.17.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.11.

Ibid. p.11.

As Robert Jackson states, sovereignty is a legal concept which is absolute: ‘Absolute in that sovereignty is either present or absent. When a country is sovereign it is independent categorically: there is no intermediate condition’, either a state has legal sovereignty, i.e. ‘is not subordinate to another sovereign but is necessarily equal to it in international law’ or it does not have sovereignty; it is legally impossible to have some ‘half-way house’ and therefore, ‘no question of relative sovereignty’. Robert Jackson, Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p.32.

Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.81, No.6, Nov.–Dec. 2002, pp.99–110, p.101.

Participants at the Maputo regional roundtable, for example, believed that Africa had been marginalized by the Security Council, comparing the billions of dollars expended on the Balkans with the case of Liberia where UN members failed to meet pledges of $150 million in support of subregional efforts. The discussion stressed the ‘strong nexus between poverty and conflict’ and complained that in relation to poverty international responses have ranged from inadequate to entirely absent. Of particular concern was the increasing deterioration in the terms of trade and the sharp reduction in the disbursement of bilateral aid. Research, Bibliography, Background, p.363.

Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun (see n.32), p.101.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.22.

Ibid. p.17.

Ibid. p.67.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.28.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.23.

Ibid.

Ibid., p.25.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.199.

As stated above, the Report considers that: ‘the “responsibility to protect” is more of a linking concept that bridges the divide between intervention and sovereignty; [while] the language of the “right or duty to intervene” is intrinsically more confrontational’, The Responsibility to Protect, p.17, Whereas the language of the ‘right of intervention’ highlights the challenge to established rights of sovereign equality, the language of the ‘responsibility to protect’ attempts to minimize the importance of this proposed shift in legal perspective.

Ibid. p.49.

See for example, Research, Bibliography, Background, p.377.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.35.

Ibid. p.31.

Ibid. p.11; Research, Bibliography, Background, p.360.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.32.

Ibid. p.33.

Ibid. pp.34–5.

Ibid. p.35.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.140.

Ibid. p.141; see also p.186.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.51. For example, the majority of participants at the Cairo regional roundtable felt that the Security Council lacked legitimacy with Arab public opinion following its perceived double-standard approach in dealing with the region and was ‘unrepresentative and undemocratic’; Research, Bibliography, Background, pp.376–7. Many participants at the New Delhi regional roundtable called for a review of the structure and composition of the Security Council to make it more representative and increase its legitimacy; Research, Bibliography, Background, p.389,

The Responsibility to Protect, p.53; see also Research, Bibliography, Background, p.377.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.54.

Participants at the Maputo regional roundtable were concerned that intervention would reflect the needs of powerful states intervening and wished to avoid the Western view of Africa ‘as a problem to be solved’, Research, Bibliography, Background, pp.362–4, The New Delhi regional roundtable raised similar concerns that ‘the morality and claimed legitimacy of interventions have in reality only been those of dominant nations or groups of nations’. These fears were held to be as relevant today as in the past as ‘international society still lacks…an authoritative, objective decision maker to adjudicate the applicability of intervention’; Research, Bibliography, Background, p.388, The majority of the participants at the Cairo regional roundtable agreed that the use of force should be strictly in conformity with the UN Charter. Nabil Elarby from the Egyptian Council of Foreign Affairs, the Chair of the meeting, concluded the session with a ringing endorsement of the UN Charter's prohibition of the use of force ‘as the greatest achievement of the contemporary international legal order in the 20th century’; Research, Bibliography, Background, pp.376–8. In Beijing, Chinese participants at the regional roundtable strongly emphasized that the interventionist liberal peace thesis was flawed on the basis of law, theory and practice, concluding that ‘using force for moral or conceptual reasons is questionable and dangerous’; Research, Bibliography, Background, p.392. A similar response greeted the Commissioners at the St Petersburg regional roundtable, which raised concerns over Western unilateralism and double standards, highlighting that the ICISS thesis ‘risks undermining the whole international system’; Research, Bibliography, Background, pp.394–8.

For example, participants at the Cairo roundtable rejected the ICISS Commissioner's suggestion that an international board of eminent persons make recommendations to the Secretary-General or president of the Security Council as to when intervention may be required: ‘They noted that for the majority of the Third World, the General Assembly, while flawed, is still the most democratic of the existing international bodies, and it is, at the very least, a better reflection of world public opinion’; Research, Bibliography, Background, p.377.

Ibid. p.53.

Ibid. p.54.

Ibid. pp.54–5.

Ibid. p.52.

Ibid.

Ibid. p.55.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.137.

In the Cold War era the UN Security Council, hamstrung by the veto of one or other of the Great Powers, played a minor role in the authorization of military intervention. It is in the context of UN Security Council activism over the past decade that the question of the enforcement of UN mandates has become increasingly problematic. This was apparent in the case of Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War when there was no consensus on whether UN Security Council Resolution 688 authorized the air-exclusion zones restricting Iraqi sovereignty in North and South Iraq. There was similarly little agreement over whether UN Security Council Resolution 1441 authorized the use of military force in the run-up to the second Gulf War in 2003.

Ibid. p.120.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.55.

Richard Falk and David Krieger, ‘Subverting the UN’, The Nation, posted 17 October 2002. Accessed at www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021104&s=falk.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.27.

George W. Bush, ‘Remarks by the President at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy West Point, New York’, 1 June 2002. Accessed at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html.

Jack Straw, ‘Failed and Failing States: A Speech given by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the European Research Institute, University of Birmingham’, 6 September 2002. Accessed at www.eri.bham.ac.uk/jstraw.htm.

The Report states that ‘military action can be legitimate as an anticipatory measure in response to clear evidence of likely large scale killing’, The Responsibility to Protect, p.33. I am grateful to Michael Byers for highlighting this link at the British International Studies Association annual conference, London School of Economics, 16–18 December 2002. See also The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Accessed at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html.

See further, David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention, London, Pluto Press, 2002, pp.185–90.

George W. Bush, ‘President's Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly’, Office of the Press Secretary, 12 September 2002. Accessed at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html.

Cited in Julian Borger, ‘Bush Rallies Troops for War’, Guardian, 4 Jan. 2003.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.361.

John Kampfner, ‘Interview with John Reid’, New Statesman, 3 March 2003.

As Chris Brown notes, today all but a few ‘hyper-realist’ international relations theorists would agree that normative principles are intimately bound up with definitions and understandings of the national interest, ‘Ethics, Interests and Foreign Policy’, in Karen E. Smith and Margot Light (eds.), Ethics and Foreign Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp.15–32, p.24.

See, for example, Jon Holbrook, ‘Humanitarian Intervention and the Recasting of International Law’ in David Chandler (ed.), Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002, pp.136–54, at p.142. Hedley Bull confidently asserted that international law and the system of the reciprocal rights of state sovereignty ‘assume a situation in which no one power is preponderant in strength’; otherwise international law and sovereign rights could be disregarded with impunity, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd edn., Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1977/1995, p.112,

Tony Blair, ‘A New Generation Draws the Line’, Newsweek, 19 April 1999.

For example, the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that although the war was of ‘dubious legality’ it was, however, ‘justified on moral grounds’, Fourth Report, Session 1999–2000, paragraph 138. The UN's Independent International Commission on Kosovo concluded that ‘the intervention was legitimate, but not legal’, Independent International Commission on Kosovo The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.289.

See, for example, Tony Blair's statements in the face of the largest anti-war political demonstrations ever seen in Britain, on 15 February 2003. While he did not openly reject the legal standing of the UN, the justification for conflict and explicitly for ‘regime change’, for which there is no basis in international law, is made in moral terms: ‘The moral case against war has a moral answer: it is the moral case for removing Saddam. It is not the reason we act… But it is the reason, frankly, why if we do have to act, we should do so with a clear conscience.’ Tony Blair, ‘The Price of My Conviction’, Observer, 16 Feb. 2003.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.150.

Ibid.

Ibid., p.143.

The Responsibility to Protect, p.37.

Research, Bibliography, Background, p.136.

Ibid. p.12.