Responsibility to Protect: The Coming of Age of Sovereignty-Building

Abstract

The principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) requires states and international society as a whole to protect civilians from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. This article argues that, instead of considering RtoP as a continuum to the humanitarian intervention doctrine aimed at performing limited protection tasks, RtoP might best be understood as a form of another doctrine which has been recently emerging in global conflict management, namely sovereignty-building. The main value added of this methodological shift resides in its potential to show that RtoP involves not only limited functions of short-term rescue and protection of civilians from immediate physical harm but also more long-term and ambitious efforts aimed at building responsible sovereigns and transforming societies. RtoP projects two kinds of images of responsible sovereignty on weak, fragile and failed states: the ‘Bodinian’ image, which implicates institution-building, reconstruction and empowerment of societies emerging from civil war and the ‘Lockean’ image, which refers to attempts to socialise states to a global human rights culture, by means of collective peer pressure, political and diplomatic means, and the use of coercive force, as demonstrated by military interventions in Libya and Côte d'Ivoire in 2011. This article argues that the sovereignty-building paradigm embodied in RtoP also involves potential pitfalls: it gives an opportunity for sub-state actors such as rebel groups to manipulate RtoP as an instrument (or weapon) to enhance their own political objectives in civil wars against incumbent national authorities.

Notes

^1.2005 World Summit Outcome, UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 24 Oct. 2005, p.30.

^2. The term ‘international society’ applied here is defined in accordance with the ‘Grotian’ or ‘solidarist’ theory of International Relations that international society not only comprises 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 Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds) Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen & Unwin 1966) p.52.

^3. Scott Peterson, Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. A Journalist Reports from the Battlefields of Africa (London: Routledge 2000) p.74; Adam Roberts, ‘Humanitarian War: Military Intervention and Human Rights’, International Affairs 69/3 (1993) p.436.

^4.Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/63/677, 12 Jan. 2009, pp.15–22.

^5. ICISS (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), ‘The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’, online at < http://www.iciss-ciise.gc.ca/report2-en.asp>, accessed 14 Dec. 2001, p.xi.

^6. In the literature on RtoP, it is widely viewed that the term ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ which underlies the notion of RtoP was first used in 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). However, Roberta Cohen wrote already in 1991 that ‘Sovereignty carries with it a responsibility on the part of governments to protect their citizens.’ Roberta Cohen, Human Rights Protection for Internally Displaced Persons (Washington, DC: Refugee Policy Group 1991) p.1. Deng himself dates the beginning of the concept of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ to the late 1980s. See Ramesh Thakur and Thomas G. Weiss, ‘R2P: From Idea to Norm – and Action?’, Global Responsibility to Protect 1/1 (2009) p.28.

^7. Drawing upon Isaiah Berlin's philosophical account, Robert Jackson defines positive sovereignty as ‘being active and self-directive; choosing, pursuing, and realizing goals’. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1990) p.29.

^8. This term is derived from Martin Wight's classic account of IR theory, according to which the main debates in IR have been conducted between Hobbesians (political realists), Grotians (rationalists) and Kantians (revolutionists). Both Hobbesians and Grotians are state-centric in IR, although the same cannot be said of Hobbes's and Grotius's original accounts. The former group focuses on power politics and rivalry between states, while the latter maintains that the diplomatic and normative structures of international society can bind states together. Kantians are less state-centric in that they promote radical transformations – even revolutions – in the state-centric world system, which could bring about the emergence of the international community between transnational actors. See for example Ole Wæver, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Inter-Paradigm Debate’ in Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Zalewski (eds) International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996) p.149. In this article, the term ‘Kantian moment’ refers to the propensity of RtoP interventions – and sovereignty-building more broadly – to generate radical transformations in the state-centric world system, including regime changes and revolutions in states and the consequent elevation of new sub-state actors to power. It differs from the Bodinian image of sovereignty projected through sovereignty-building, which relates more closely to the Hobbesian state-centric worldview of IR, and from the Lockean image of sovereignty, which reflects the Grotian state-centric worldview of IR.

^9. However, this is not to say that there would not be other examples and innovations of global conflict management which reflect the emerging paradigm of sovereignty-building. For example, UN Special Political Missions would be an interesting topic of future research on sovereignty-building.

^10. UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 24 Oct. 2005, p.30; Emphasis added by author.

^11. James S. Robbins, ‘Sovereignty-Building: The Case of Chechnya’, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 21/2 (1997) p.17.

^12. GCR2P (Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect), Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. The 2009 General Assembly Debate: An Assessment (New York: GCR2P 2009) p.5.

^13. Robbins (note 11) p.17.

^14. Ibid., pp.17–18.

^15. UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 24 Oct. 2005, p.30.

^16. In the literature on statebuilding and peace-building, state failure mainly refers to the unwillingness of a state to perform its core functions and to deliver public goods to its citizens, including basic security, whereas weak states refer to those states which lack effective state authority and power within their respective territories. Christopher Clapham, ‘The Challenge to the State in a Globalized World’ in Jennifer Milliken (ed.) State Failure, Collapse and Reconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell 2003) p.29.

^17. UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 24 Oct. 2005, p.30.

^18. Ibid.

^19. Ibid.; Emphasis added by author.

^20. UN Doc. S/RES/1970 (2011), 26 Feb. 2011.

^21. UN Doc. S/RES/1973 (2011), 17 Mar. 2011.

^22. UN Doc. S/RES/1975 (2011), 30 Mar. 2011.

^23. Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the Six Books of the Commonwealth, edited and translated by Julian H. Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992) p.1.

^24. Quoted in Jackson (note 7) p.34.

^25. Alan James, Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society (London: Allen & Unwin 1986) p.4.

^26. As Weber describes the power dimension of sovereign states, ‘The claim of the modern state to monopolize the use of force is as essential to it as its character of compulsory jurisdiction and of continuous organization.’ Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, NY: The Free Press 1964) p.156.

^27. UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 24 Oct. 2005, p.30.

^28. ICISS (note 5) p.xi.

^29. Quoted in Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (Cambridge: Polity 2009) p.167.

^30. Antony Duff, ‘Responsibility’ in Edward Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge 1998), online at < http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/L085>, accessed 14 Jul. 2009; Emphasis added by author.

^31. Larry May, ‘Responsibility to Rebuild and Collective Responsibility: Legal and Moral Considerations’ in Jan Klabbers and Touko Piiparinen (eds) Normative Pluralism and International Law: Exploring Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013) p.333.

^32. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (New York, NY: Penguin Books 1968); John Locke, Two Treatises of Government: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus by Peter Laslett, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1967) p.381.

^33. Bodin (note 23) pp.3–4.

^34. Ibid., p.50.

^35. Locke (note 32) pp.375–6.

^36. Ibid., p.440.

^37. Ibid., p.441.

^38. Ibid., p.442.

^39. ‘Hence it is evident, that Absolute Monarchy … is indeed inconsistent with Civil Society, and so can be no Form of Civil Government at all …. For he being suppos'd to have all, both Legislative and Executive Power in himself alone, there is no Judge to be found, no Appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly, and indifferently, and with Authority decide, and from whose decision relief and redress may be expected of any Injury or Inconveniency, that may be suffered from the Prince or by his Order. So that such a Man, however entitled, Czar, or Grand Signior, or how you please, is as much in the state of Nature, with all under his Dominion, as he is with the rest of Mankind.’ Ibid., p.344.

^40. Louise Arbour, ‘The Responsibility to Protect as a Duty of Care in International Law and Practice’, Review of International Studies 34/3 (2008) p.448.

^41. UN Doc. A/63/677, 12 Jan. 2009, pp.15–22.

^42. Ibid., pp.10–14, 22–8.

^43. See for example G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2011).

^44. On the democratic peace theory, see for example Jack S. Levy, ‘Domestic Politics and War’ in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (eds) The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989) p.88; Thomas Risse-Kappen, ‘Democratic Peace – Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument’, European Journal of International Relations 1/4 (1995) p.494.

^45. Michael N. Barnett, The International Humanitarian Order (London: Routledge 2010) p.149.

^46. Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) p.235.

^47. Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk, ‘Introduction: Understanding the Contradictions of Postwar Statebuilding’ in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds) The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London: Routledge 2009) p.2.

^48. Joan Kakwenzire and Dixon Kamukama, ‘The Development and Consolidation of Extremist Forces in Rwanda 1990–1994’ in Howard Adelman and Astri Suhrke (eds) The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 1999) pp.66–9.

^49. Bellamy (note 29) p.173.

^50. Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (London: Vintage 2003) p.19.

^51. On IBL and statebuilding, see for example Aidan Hehir and Neil Robinson (eds) State-Building: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge 2007); Charles T. Call, ‘Ending Wars, Building States’ in Charles T. Call and Vanessa Wyeth (eds) Building States to Build Peace (London: Lynne Rienner 2008) pp.1–24 and Michael Wesley, ‘The State of the Art on the Art of State Building’, Global Governance 14/3 (2008) pp.369–85.

^52. Miles Kahler, ‘Statebuilding After Afghanistan and Iraq’ in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds) The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London: Routledge 2009) p.298.

^53. Michael Barnett and Christoph Zürcher, ‘The Peacebuilder's Contract: How External Statebuilding Reinforces Weak Statehood’ in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds) The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London: Routledge 2009) p.23.

^54. Paris (note 46) pp.188–9.

^55. UN Doc. S/RES/1970 (2011), 26 Feb. 2011; UN Doc. S/RES/1973 (2011), 17 Mar. 2011; Irwin Cotler and Jared Genser, ‘Libya and the Responsibility to Protect’, New York Times 28 Feb. 2011.

^56. Ramesh Thakur, ‘UN Breathes Life into “Responsibility to Protect”’, Toronto Star 21 Mar. 2011 online at < http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/957664–un-breathes-life-into-responsibility-to-protect>.

^57. James Pattison, ‘Introduction’, Ethics & International Affairs 25/3 (2011) p.251; Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, ‘The New Politics of Protection? Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and the Responsibility to Protect’, International Affairs 87/4 (2011) p.846.

^58.Letter Dated 9 November 2011 from the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/66/551–S/2011/701, 11 Nov. 2011.

^59. This crime was specified in the international arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against members of the Gaddafi and Gbagbo regimes.

^60. BBC News, Ivory Coast: Besieged Gbagbo “in Basement” of Residence, 5 Apr. 2011 online at < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12967610>.

^61. UN Doc. S/RES/1973 (2011), 17 Mar. 2011, p.3.

^62. It is interesting to note that the NTC itself did not actually enjoy a widespread support in the whole Libyan territory at the outset of the Libya war.

^63. See for example William Rasch, Sovereignty and Its Discontents: On the Primacy of Conflict and the Structure of the Political (London: Birkbeck Law Press 2004) p.12.

^64. Alan J. Kuperman, ‘The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans’, International Studies Quarterly 52/1 (2008) pp.49–80.

^65. For a critical examination of Kuperman, see Alex J. Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect – Five Years On’, Ethics & International Affairs 24/2 (2010) pp.143–69, 162–3.

^66. Quoted in David Chandler, ‘The Responsibility to Protect: Imposing the Liberal Peace’ in Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams (eds) Peace Operations and Global Order (London: Routledge 2005) pp.65–6.

^67. Quoted in Edward C. Luck, ‘Sovereignty, Choice, and the Responsibility to Protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect 1/1 (2009) pp.17–18.

^68. David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond: Human Rights and International Intervention, 2nd ed. (London: Pluto Press 2006) p.245.

^69. Ibid.

^70. Luck (note 67) p.11.

^71. UN Doc. A/63/677, 12 Jan. 2009, p.27.

^72. Philip Cunliffe, ‘Sovereignty and the Politics of Responsibility’ in Christopher J. Bickerton, Philip Cunliffe, and Alexander Gourevitch (eds) Politics Without Sovereignty: A Critique of Contemporary International Relations (Milton Park: University College London Press 2007) p.54.

^73. Ibid., p. 39.

^74. Jake Sherman, Benjamin Tortolani, and J. Nealin Parker, ‘Building the Rule of Law: Security and Justice Sector Reform in Peace Operations’ in CIC (Center on International Cooperation) (ed.) Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2010: A Project of the Center on International Cooperation (London: Lynne Rienner 2010) p.16.

^75. Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk, ‘Introduction: Understanding the Contradictions of Postwar Statebuilding’ in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds) The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London: Routledge 2009) p.1.