The Responsibility to Protect in a world of already existing intervention
| Author | Michael Neu,Robin Dunford |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119842208 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119842208
European Journal of
International Relations
2019, Vol. 25(4) 1080 –1102
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066119842208
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The Responsibility to Protect
in a world of already existing
intervention
Robin Dunford
University of Brighton, UK
Michael Neu
University of Brighton, UK
Abstract
In the face of humanitarian crises, members of the international community are often
presented with a choice: engage in forms of action, including military intervention, or stand
by and watch. This framing ignores practices of intervention that are already taking place and
contributing to the emergence and perpetuation of humanitarian crises. Despite calling for
more attention to be paid to already existing intervention, literature on the Responsibility
to Protect has not adequately understood its implications for the legitimacy and likely
effectiveness of military intervention. To redress this gap, we argue, first, that a focus on
already existing intervention complicates the moral calculus on which defences of military
intervention as part of the Responsibility to Protect are based. Second, we claim that actors
already engaged in damaging practices of intervention are bad international citizens who are
not fit for the purpose of humanitarian military intervention. Third, we argue that in both
ignoring already existing intervention and calling for additional military intervention under
its third pillar, the Responsibility to Protect legitimises a moralistic form of militarism. These
three arguments show that it is a mistake to follow recent literature in responding to already
existing intervention by simply adding to the Responsibility to Protect, for instance, duties to
engage in structural prevention and to support refugees. Rather, what is needed is a more
fundamental rethink that departs from the Responsibility to Protect.
Keywords
Good international citizenship, humanitarian intervention, jus ad bellum, mass atrocity,
militarism, Responsibility to Protect
Corresponding author:
Robin Dunford, University of Brighton, 10–11 Pavillion Parade, East Sussex, BN2 1RD, UK.
Email: Rfd10@brighton.ac.uk
842208EJT0010.1177/1354066119842208European Journal of International RelationsDunford and Neu
research-article2019
Article
Dunford and Neu 1081
Introduction
Amid reports of a chemical weapons attack carried out by the Assad regime in Douma,
there arose a familiar call for the international community, and ‘the West’ in particular, to
‘do something’. ‘It is just not good enough to say that there is nothing the West can do in
the face of mass murder’, wrote Simon Tisdall (2018); ‘after Douma, the West’s response
to the Syrian regime must be military’. This was but the latest in a long line of calls for
the international community to stop its ‘hand-wringing’ and to step up and act (Simpson,
2016). The crisis in Syria, Conservative member of the House of Commons George
Osborne (quoted in Wintour, 2016) had said over one year earlier, was ‘created by a
vacuum, a vacuum of western leadership, of American leadership, British leadership’.
The crisis highlights, he continued, ‘the price of not intervening’. Osborne’s words are
reflective of the broader way in which mass atrocity situations — and suitable responses
to them — are framed in public discourse and in writing on the Responsibility to Protect
(R2P) — the international commitment to prevent and respond to mass atrocity crimes of
genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is a framing that
imagines that crises like Syria simply crop up. The ‘international community’, previ-
ously uninvolved, then faces a choice: ‘act’ — often a euphemism for engaging militarily
— or ‘stand aside’ and watch the crisis unfold.
What this framing ignores is the large extent of intervention that is already occurring,
including international monetary intervention, activity that degrades the environment
and attempts to stoke ethnic tensions. These practices of intervention not only result in
an everyday atrocity of mass avoidable death and suffering through hunger, poverty, ill-
health and pollution; they are also conducive to the emergence of the humanitarian crises
that the R2P seeks to address. In this article, we argue that existing literature has not
adequately recognised the implications that already existing intervention has for the
legitimacy and likely effectiveness of military intervention. As a result, it is not clear
whether those who contribute to the emergence of atrocity crimes through their non-
military interventions have additional duties of military intervention (Fabre, 2012),
whether they ought to engage in humanitarian disintervention (Nili, 2011), or whether
already existing intervention has different implications still (Brown and Bohm, 2016).
To fill this gap, we make three arguments. First, we argue that everyday atrocity and
already existing intervention complicate the moral calculus on which defences of mili-
tary intervention as part of the R2P are based. Second, we claim that actors already
engaged in damaging practices of intervention are bad international citizens who are not
fit for the purpose of third-pillar military intervention. States that fail to meet both nega-
tive duties to cease harmful practices and positive duties that can be fulfilled without the
use of harmful military means are not ‘good international citizens’ (Souter, 2016) whose
interventions are likely to result in good humanitarian outcomes. The track record of
such actors in engaging in inhumanitarian and unprotective action in Libya and else-
where, far from being an aberration to be corrected as ‘protectors’ learn through experi-
ence and as state interests are increasingly reconciled with humanitarian values, is to be
expected on the basis of the kind of actors that the intervening states are. Third, we claim
that in both ignoring already existing intervention and calling for additional military
intervention under its third pillar, the R2P works to legitimise a moralistic form of
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