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ABSTRACT
This article explores the problem of attribution in the context of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) intervention through an analysis of the Syrian chemical weapons attack of 2013. We argue that R2P advocates can be confronted by a crisis dynamic where the political momentum for military intervention runs ahead of independent verification and attribution of mass atrocity crimes. We contrast the political momentum for intervention with the technical process of independent attribution and show that the sort of independent evidence that would ideally legitimize an R2P intervention was unavailable when there was political momentum for action. Conversely, the information that was available (which inevitably informed the political momentum for action) was largely produced by state intelligence organizations – or a potentially briefed media – and shaped by the interests and priorities of its end users. While understandable in the face of the ‘extreme’, we suggest that the mobilization of political momentum by R2P advocates entails significant dangers: first, it risks undermining the integrity of R2P if evidence is later discredited and second, it risks amplifying the perception that states sometimes exploit humanitarian pretexts in pursuit of other strategic ends.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Tim Aistrope is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Cyber Security, UNSW Canberra. His research interests include post-truth politics, asymmetric warfare, cyber security and the implications of new media for war and peace. These themes are drawn together in a recent book, Conspiracy Theory and American Foreign Policy, published in 2016 by Manchester University Press. He has recently published articles in Security Dialogue, Critical Studies on Terrorism and Australian Journal of International Affairs.
Jess Gifkins is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Manchester. Her research is on global governance, international decision-making, the 'responsibility to protect', and the role of the UK after Brexit. An article she wrote with Professor Jason Ralph was awarded the 'best article for 2017' within the European Journal of International Relations by the European International Studies Association. She has also published in Cooperation and Conflict, the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Global Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect.
N. A. J. Taylor has published two books, Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the post-Cold War (Routledge, 2017) and Athens Dialogue on a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction as well as their Means of Delivery (European Public Law Organisation, 2013), as well as two special issues, “Re-imagining Hiroshima” (Critical Military Studies, 2015) and “Re-imagining Monte Bello, Emu, Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Culture” (Unlikely: Journal for Creative Arts, 2018).
Notes
1 This collaboration was born out of a desire for dialogue on humanitarian intervention that reaches across sub-disciplinary boundaries – in this case, security/International Relations (IR) theory (Tim Aistrope), R2P/UN (Jess Gifkins), and arms control and disarmament (N.A.J. Taylor). For an earlier discussion of the Syrian crisis that sparked this conversation, see N.A.J. Taylor, ‘Responsibly Protecting Syrians’, Iraq War Inquiry Group, May 13, 2013, http://iraqwarinquiry.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/responsibly-protecting-syrians.html (accessed August 2013); and Tim Aistrope, Jess Gifkins, and N.A.J. Taylor, ‘Responsibly Protecting Syrians: Reconciling R2P with the Chemical Weapons Taboo’, Oceanic Conference on International Studies, University of Queensland, July 5, 2016. Throughout this process we received generous feedback that improved the article significantly. In particular, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, as well as Tony Burke, Deane-Peter Baker, Peter Balint, Toni Erskine, Luke Glanville, Anna Tanascosa, Sarah Teitt and Ramesh Thakur. We are also very grateful to the International Ethics Research Group hosted by UNSW Canberra to which an earlier version of the article was presented.
2 Richard Price, ‘A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo’, International Organization 49, no. 1 (1995): 73–3; Richard Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Richard Price, ‘No Strike, No Problem’, Foreign Affairs, September 5, 2013, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2013-09-05/no-strike-no-problem; Richard Price, ‘How Chemical Weapons Became Taboo’, Foreign Affairs, December 16, 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2013-01-22/how-chemical-weapons-became-taboo.
3 The article also contributes to critical engagements with the role of security intelligence and WMD politics underway at the Harvard Sussex Program. For discussion, see Julian Perry Robinson, ‘Alleged Chemical Weapons Use in Syria’, Issue 4, Occasional Paper Series (Harvard Sussex Program, 2013); Caitriona McLeish, James Revill, and Julian Philip Perry Robinson, ‘Some Potential Implications for the Chemical Weapons Regime Resulting from the Syria Case’, Reports and working papers (Harvard Sussex Program, 2016), http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/61837/; James Revill, Alex Ghionis, Caitriona McLeish, and Steve Johnson, ‘Ghouta Narratives: A Critical Assessment of Syrian Chemical Weapons Narratives’, Reports and working papers (Harvard Sussex Program, 2016), http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/61840/. Other critical engagements that are no less useful but with less direct applicability to the present inquiry are available in related programs in the UK (e.g. at Bath, Bradford, Kings College London), and in Belgium.
4 United Nations, World Summit outcome document (United Nations General Assembly, A/RES/60/1, 2005).
5 Ban Ki-moon, ‘Secretary-General Defends, Clarifies “Responsibility to Protect” at event on ‘Responsible Sovereignty: International Cooperation for a Changed World’, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/sgsm11701.doc.htm (Berlin, 2008).
6 Stephen McLoughlin, The Structural Prevention of Mass Atrocities: Understanding Risk and Resilience (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).
7 For discussion on pillar two, see Adrian Gallagher, ‘The Promise of Pillar II: Analysing International Assistance Under the Responsibility to Protect’, International Affairs 91, no. 6 (2015): 1259–75.
8 For discussion on the peaceful components of pillar three, see Alex J. Bellamy, ‘The First Response: Peaceful Means in the Third Pillar of the Responsibility to Protect’ (Stanley Foundation Policy Analysis, December, 2015).
9 For discussion on unarmed civilian peacekeeping see Ellen Furnari, Huibert Oldenhuis and Rachel Julian, ‘Securing Space for Local Peacebuilding: The Role of International and National Civilian Peacekeepers’, Peacebuilding 3, no. 3 (2015): 297–313.
10 Aidan Hehir, The Responsibility to Protect: Rhetoric, Reality and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Thomas G. Weiss, Military-Civilian Interactions: Humanitarian Crises and the Responsibility to Protect, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 200–1.
11 Philip Cunliffe, ‘Sovereignty and the Politics of Responsibility’, in Politics without Sovereignty: A Critique of Contemporary International Relations, ed. Christopher J. Bickerton, Philip Cunliffe, and Alexander Gourevitch (Oxon: University College London Press, 2007), 39–57.
12 Eli Stamnes, ‘“Speaking R2P” and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities’, Global Responsibility to Protect 1, no. 1 (2009): 70–89; Alex J. Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect – Five Years On’, Ethics and International Affairs 24, no. 2 (2010): 143–69.
13 The UN Security Council is bound by the UN Charter (1945) and its Rules of Procedure which remain ‘provisional’.
14 Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
15 For discussion on this point, see Antonios Tzanakopoulos, ‘Strengthening Security Council Accountability for Sanctions: The Role of International Responsibility’, Journal of Conflict & Security Law 19, no. 3 (2014): 409–26.
16 Gareth Evans, ‘R2P down by not out after Libya and Syria’, Open Democracy, September 9, 2013; Weiss ‘After Syria, Whither R2P?’, E-International Relations, February 2, 2014, 36. We use the term R2P advocates throughout in its broadest possible sense, recognizing of course the plurality of perspectives and approaches that inform R2P advocacy. For instance, in sharing our paper at conferences and other forums, one interlocutor was apt to point out that the Foreword to the 2011 ICISS Report detailed the main points of division between the 12 Commissioners. See ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect: The Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2010).
17 Office of the Press Secretary, ‘Remarks by the President to the White House Press Corps’, White House, August 20, 2012, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/20/remarks-president-white-house-press-corps.
18 Jon Day, ‘Syria: Reported Chemical Weapons Use – Letter from the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee’, Cabinet Office, August 29, 2013, 1.
19 Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘The Day Obama Broke with the Washington War Hawks’, The Atlantic, April 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/473025/syria-red-line-that-wasnt/.
20 United Nations, ‘Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’, Human Rights Council, November 23, 2011. A/HRC/S-17/2/Add.1: 20.
21 United Nations, ‘Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’, Human Rights Council, August 16, 2012. A/HRC/21/50.
22 Ibid., 1.
23 United Nations, ‘Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’, Human Rights Council, July 18, 2013. A/HRC/23/58: 2.
24 ‘Syria Death Toll now above 100,000, Says UN Chief Ban’, BBC, July 25, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23455760.
25 A Factiva search of news articles with the search terms ‘Syria’ and ‘responsibility to protect’ between 21 May 2013 and 21 November 2013 returned 530 original articles. Of these, 96 were prior to the 21 August chemical weapons attacks and 434 were after. This search was limited to English language news sources.
26 A Factiva search of news articles by year shows 1171 articles in 2013 that referred to both Syria and the responsibility to protect, with an average of 777 per year in the subsequent 2014–2016 period.
27 Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, ‘Looking Back at Kosovo Can Move the Syria Conflict Forward’, The Globe and Mail, August 26, 2013.
28 Gareth Evans, ‘R2P Down but not Out After Libya and Syria’, Open Democracy, September 9, 2013. https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/gareth-evans/r2p-down-but-not-out-after-libya-and-syria.
29 Geraint Alun Hughes, ‘Syria and the Perils of Proxy Warfare’, Small Wars & Insurgency, 25, no. 3 (2014): 522–38.
30 Michelle Bentley, Syria and the Chemical Weapons Taboo: Exploiting the Forbidden (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); Bentley, ‘Chemical Weapons Are Being Used in Iraq – But the US Won't Raise Hell About It’, The Conversation, September 23, 2016. https://theconversation.com/chemical-weapons-are-being-used-in-iraq-but-the-us-wont-raise-hell-about-it-65914. Even when the Obama Administration changed tack on intervention, they sought political cover and public sanction by putting the proposal before Congress, rather than relying on executive powers.
31 Carroll Bogert, ‘Syria’s Chemical Weapons: The Russia Factor’, Human Rights Watch, September 26, 2013. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/26/syrias-chemical-weapons-russia-factor; Putin, ‘A Plea for Caution from Russia’, New York Times, September 11, 2013.
32 At the same time, there was a widespread assumption that independent attribution would confirm the Assad regime was behind the attacks. It is certainly the case that any R2P proposal for intervention in Syria was only, at this stage of the conflict, intended to protect Syrian civilians from the Syrian government.
33 Richard K. Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Mark M. Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Evidence to Policy (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006); Richard L. Russell, Sharpening Strategic Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
34 James Der Derian, ‘Anti-diplomacy, Intelligence Theory and Surveillance Practice’, Intelligence and National Security 8, no. 3 (1993): 35.
35 Betts, Enemies of Intelligence, 66–103; Lowenthal, Intelligence, 174–89.
36 Bruce Berkowitz, ‘The Big Difference Between Intelligence and Evidence’, Washington Post, February 2, 2003.
37 Paul H. Barratt, ‘The Case for an Iraq War Inquiry Global Change’, Global Change, Peace and Security 26, no. 3 (2014): 333.
38 Betts, Enemies of Intelligence, 115.
39 Mark Danner, ‘The Secret Way to War’, New York Review of Books 52, no. 10 (2005).
40 Perhaps the best acknowledgement of this fact is the mea culpa delivered by the New York Times about the failures of its pre-war coverage, which points to the way government officials exploited reporters to push the case for war. See The Editors, ‘The Times and Iraq’, New York Times, May 26, 2004.
41 Jack Shaffer, ‘The Real Problem with Judith Miller’, Politico, April 10, 2015.
42 The Chicot Report advances a broader critique of the case for war, which is scathing in its assessment of the way intelligence was used by government. See ‘The Report of the Iraq War Inquiry’, Report of the Privy Council, 2016. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20171123122743/http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/.
43 N.A.J. Taylor, ‘Responsibly Protecting Syrians’, Iraq War Inquiry Group, May 13, 2013, http://iraqwarinquiry.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/responsibly-protecting-syrians.html (accessed August 2013). As we noted above, the US was more reticent about attribution initially, a position that aligned with its strategic framework of non-intervention.
44 Tim Aistrope, Conspiracy Theory and American Foreign Policy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 96–7.
45 J.P. Zanders, ‘Syria: Should the UN Investigators Pass Judgement?’, The Trench, August 23, 2013. http://www.the-trench.org/syria-should-un-investigators-pass-judgement/.
46 Tim Dunne, ‘Syria and the Laws of War: Permission Accomplished?’ The Interpreter, August 27, 2013.
47 Indeed, the team was staying in a hotel just twelve kilometres from the incident site.
48 United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic, Report of the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area of Damascus on 21 August 2013, Report A/68/663, December 13, 2013, 2.
49 The reports of the OPCW-UN mission which ceased in September 2014 are collated here: https://opcw.unmissions.org/other-relevant-documents and https://opcw.unmissions.org/opcw-un-reports. While the reports of the subsequent OPCW mission are located here: https://www.opcw.org/special-sections/syria/fact-finding-mission-reports/
50 Julian Perry Robinson, ‘Alleged Chemical Weapons Use in Syria’, Occasional Paper Series: Harvard Sussex Program 4 (2013): 3.
51 Zanders, ‘Syria: Should the UN Investigators Pass Judgement?’.
52 Stamnes, ‘Speaking R2P’; Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect – Five Years On’. It has been argued elsewhere that the framing of ‘rallying cry’ and ‘policy agenda’ is overly simplistic, as R2P can serve as a ‘catalyst for debate’ that helps to foreground protection needs, but does not determine a specific course of action (which will depend on multiple normative, strategic and pragmatic factors) Jennifer Welsh, ‘Norm Contestation and the Responsibility to Protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect 5, no. 4 (2013): 365–96. We use the distinction here however, as there was an attempt by advocates to link R2P and chemical weapons use in this case as part of a call to action, in line with the ‘rallying cry’ framing.
53 Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect – Five Years On’.
54 Jeremy Moses, ‘Sovereignty as Irresponsibility: A Realist Critique of the Responsibility to Protect’, Review of International Studies 39 no. 1 (2013): 113–35.
55 Ibid., 22–3.
56 Toni Erskine, ‘Moral Responsibility – And Luck? – In International Relations’, in The Oxford Handbook of International Theory, ed. Chris Brown and Robyn Eckersley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
57 Ibid., 10.
58 Siddharth Mallavarapu, ‘Colonialism and the Responsibility to Protect’, in Theorising the Responsibility to Protect, ed. Ramesh Thakur and William Maley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 305–22. There is a related literature on the role of non-Western and non-liberal emerging powers in R2P advocacy, see Ramesh Thakur, ‘R2P after Libya and Syria: Engaging Emerging Powers’, The Washington Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2013): 61–76; Hardeep Singh Puri, Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos (New York: Harper Collins, 2016); Oliver Stuenkel, ‘Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order’, Foreign Affairs, February 13, 2017. One reviewer pointed out the irony that many of these interventions – in Abysinia, Mesapotamia, Manchuria, and Rhodesia, for example – involved chemical weapons in one way or another.
59 Alex J. Bellamy, The Responsibility to Protect: A Defence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 112–20.