From ISIS to ICISS: A critical return to the Responsibility to Protect report
| Author | Philip Cunliffe |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010836715612854 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Cooperation and Conflict
2016, Vol. 51(2) 233 –247
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836715612854
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From ISIS to ICISS: A critical
return to the Responsibility to
Protect report
Philip Cunliffe
Abstract
In light of the post-intervention crisis in Libya, this article revisits critically the vision of the
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) offered in the 2001 report of the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) – frequently taken as the conceptual bedrock for R2P
doctrine. It is argued that the perverse effect of ICISS doctrine is to replace political responsibility
with paternalism. The demand that states be made accountable to the international community
ends by making states accountable for their people rather than to their people. The argument
is developed across five critical theses. These include claims that R2P changes the burden of
justification for intervention, that it usurps popular sovereignty in favour of state power, and that
it diffuses post-conflict responsibilities. The article concludes that pre-emptive ‘human protection’
efforts risk crowding out questions of systemic transformation, i.e. what kind of an international
order we want to live in.
Keywords
International relations, intervention, Libya, paternalism, Responsibility to Protect (R2P),
sovereignty
Introduction
Since the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) captured the city of
Derna in eastern Libya in November 2014, the parallels between Iraq and Libya have
become increasingly irresistible. In both cases, we had the overthrow of a dictator by
Western military intervention leading directly to civil war, state collapse, massive refugee
flows and both countries disintegrating into their constituent ex-Ottoman provinces.
While advocates of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) have vociferously argued
that the invasion of Iraq did not authentically embody the principles of R2P (e.g. Thakur,
2005), this is harder to argue in the case of Libya. The United Nations (UN) resolution
Corresponding author:
Philip Cunliffe, University of Kent, Rutherford, Canterbury CT2 7NX, UK.
Email: p.cunliffe@kent.ac.uk
612854CAC0010.1177/0010836715612854Cooperation and ConflictCunliffe
research-article2015
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