Miguel D’Escoto, GA president
What kind of issue would cause a left-wing priest, a radical linguist, and a free market economist to take the same side? The answer: opposition to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) at the United Nations. The priest is the nutty General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto, the linguist is the flaming radical Noam Chomsky, and the economist is the sensible young academic Christopher Coyne.
R2P is the principle that the international community should intervene to protect people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity if their own governments fail to do so. It has been official UN doctrine since 2005, and the UN General Assembly debated its renewal last week.
Most of the discussion about R2P is normative: should we rescue people from genocide and war crimes? Of course we should. How can anyone familiar with Auschwitz, Cambodia, and Rwanda feel otherwise?
What D’Escoto, Chomsky, and Coyne all do is shift the debate from normative (how should people behave?) to positive (how do people actually behave?) They ask, who is the “we” in the normative statement above going to be, and how will they behave? D’Escoto started the General Assembly debate by asking the positive questions:
(1) Is it more likely that the principle would be applied only by the strong against the weak?(2) Will adoption of the R2P principle in the practice of collective security more likely enhance or undermine respect for international law?
(3) Does it guarantee that states will intervene to prevent another Rwanda?
(4) Do we have the capacity to enforce accountability upon those who might abuse the right that R2P would give nation-states to resort to the use of force against other states?
Chomsky and D’Escoto both conclude that, in practice, R2P is just Great Power imperialism in disguise. Although a lot of other statements by these two are nuts, this conclusion is not completely crazy. After all, any intervention has to be approved by the Great Powers that sit on the UN Security Council.
Christopher Coyne, who wasn’t actually present at the UN R2P debate last week, and does not share the leftist paranoia of Chomsky and D’Escoto, does arrive at similar positive conclusions. He wrote a paper about the “Nirvana fallacy,” the assumption of a perfect intervener. So in the R2P case, Nirvana is a neutral, benevolent, all-knowing, powerful, rapid, humanitarian force that will identify and rescue those at risk. A positive analysis would conclude that no such Nirvana exists or ever will exist, and that the likely answers to D’Escoto’s questions are (1) Yes, (2) Don’t Know, so Be Careful (3) No, and (4) No.
There is plenty of space between “Never Again” and “Never Intervene.” There are probably some situations where some Power can rescue innocents from war crimes, and we personally would move Heaven and Earth to support them. But the advocates of R2P as a general principle have a long way to go to explain how they will turn the normative into the positive.
20 Comments
I think that the calls to invade Burma after the cyclone are a good example of the risks of R2P in practice. It was clearly not a situation where R2P applied (http://philanthropy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/05/13/invasion-burma/) but that didn’t stop people from calling for invasion on R2P principles anyway.
Alanna mentions the calls to invade Burma after the cyclone – those calls would likely have existed without RTP.
Russia used RTP as one of its myriad of excuses for invading Georgia – an invasion that certainly would have happened without RTP.
In this context, RTP is more likely to be an excuse but not an enabler for unjust intervention. It, at least in the short term, won’t change behaviour for the better, but I fail to see how it would clearly worsen behaviour
It’s worth noting that it was the African Union that initially began endorsing concepts like RPTP.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14087788
Conor Foley’s The Thin Blue Line is an excellent critique of recent examples of humanitarian interventions.
Incidentally Bill, what statements of Chomsky’s to you consider to be ‘nuts’?
One of the things that I’m often frustrated by in debates around R2P is that everyone (including it’s proponents) is tempted to get all excited by the prospect of some good old fashioned violence.
The doctrine of R2P stresses that the use of force is the very LAST resort, and there are a raft of other avenues that must be exhausted first.
In the vein of quoting religious leaders to make one’s point, here is Desmond Tutu in Feb 2008:
“Unfortunately, the Responsibility to Protect is frequently misunderstood. It is not a justification of military intervention. It simply requires states to protect their own people and help other states to build the capacity to do the same. It means that international organizations like the UN have a responsibility to warn, to generate effective preventive strategies, and when necessary, to mobilize effective responses. The crisis in Kenya illustrates this: The primary role for outside actors is to protect civilians – not least by helping governments to improve security and protect human rights.”
What’s more, there is an extremely high threshold for military intervention:
1. Just Cause
2. Right Intention
3. Final Resort
4. Legitimate Authority
5. Proportional Means
6. Reasonable Prospect
(see the r2p wiki)
So for the time being it is likely that R2P’s use in any actual threat of force will be in the context outline above by Matt.
PS: Chomsky IS nuts…
Thanks for discussing this, Bill.
While I’m sure of the wisdom and intent of Gareth Evans and co, I do wonder about the practicalities of last resort intervention within the existing UN framework. It comes down to one issue: how quickly and with what potency can an interventionist force be assembled?
Timor Timur took 25 years, Kampuchea took 4. Rawanda took 100 days, and Srebrenica took 9.
Had the UN had an R2P based decision rule in 1995, on what day would the killing of Bosniaks been met by an intervention? The first? The tenth?
Further, in that particular example, would Russia’s pro-Serbian views have influenced their security council vote?
There’s also the issue of which problems get the attention to be labeled R2P. Government action to kill a lot of people could be labeled genocide, and it specifically includes government inaction to stop someone else from deliberately killing a lot of people, but doesn’t address the millions who die from government action without someone holding a gun – hunger, malnutrition, and preventable disease come readily to mind.
I recognize this is another normative argument, but if you have to have a positive one, chalk it up to the lack of accountability domestic and international governments face. The last EU elections weren’t about African genocide, the 2010 US election won’t be dependent on Sudan and Congo, for instance. If they have a positive right to protect others but no one will hold them responsible for fulfilling it, it does seem more like granting themselves privileges instead of responsibilities.
I observed the Responsibility to Protect debate at the UN and I must confess that I am surprised Bill covers much of the debate favorably. I expected worse. But anyway, Bill misses the more important point of discussion which really centers around the composition of the Security Council. The central argument around the issue of the “responsibility to protect” is not necessarily whether or not it is effective or if it would be done properly but it really is a debate about who calls the shots. The debate that Miguel is really trying to introduce or at least the eventual result he understands he is more likely to achieve is an expansion of permanent membership of the Security Council. This follows trends in the General Assembly under Miguel which is really about challenging the current global order. He did this very same thins in the significant but hardly hyped debate on the Financial Crisis and its Impact on development. He did it again in the ECOSOC debates in Geneva.
I must confess that I really like his approach and this has been a very interesting year at the UN because of him. Next year, Libya takes the reins of the Presidency of the General Assembly, it will be interesting to see where the debate eventually ends.
Anyway, thanks a lot Bill for bringing this up. This is why you are my development celebrity
First, having Noam Chomsky talk about genocide is a bit like inviting Richard Nixon to talk about presidential secrecy.
Now, you raise a very interesting question about whether we should continue to include a normative statement without any clear path to its positive implementation.
A historical parallel struck me, and while imperfect, I think it speaks to the normative/positive discussion. The Declaration of Independence represented a joint agreement of the colonies in which it was stated all men were created equal.
Because of differences of opinion and political economic challenges, this normative statement would not be reflected in positive action for hundred(s) of years.
The normative declaration was made when there was no “capacity to enforce accountability upon those who might abuse the right,” did not “guarantee that states will intervene,” would have the same potential impact on respect for the integrity of the colonies’ declaration, and was certainly only applied on the basis of what the strong throuht appropriate at each point in history.
Still, while it would take years and years to see the positive fruition of this normative ideal, I don’t think it hurt matters. In fact, I think it eased the path for the liberal developments to come.
Maybe we don’t have an effective means to stop genocide today. But maybe in 100 years we will have one, and the declaration of a right to not be ethnically cleansed on the books may make things easier for the civil rights leaders of the 22nd century, just as Thomas Jefferson’s words made the path easier for Martin Luther King Jr. and company.
And again, it’s an imperfect analogy, but serves the purpose of assessing the value of normative statements without productive means of enactment.
Exactly how is Chomsky “nuts?” Point to statements he has made in the near or distant past that make you question his sanity.
The thing about Chomsky is, he ruffles feathers and makes people angry. Therefore, these angered, ruffled individuals engage in petty name-calling rather than critique his ACTUAL IDEAS.
Incidentally, Chomsky considers himself, in many respects, a true conservative, because he believes in traditional values.
Since states are inherently self-serving, I wouldn’t expect any state-based actions to have anything but self-serving political motivations. Why would a state — as opposed to a group of individuals — contribute selflessly to any situation? Failure to acknowledge this seems to explain a lot of the bewildered frustration that the UN system doesn’t really affect the major political actors.
The example Gareth Evans gives for Right to protect is Cambodia. But the US and UK, both permanent Security Council members, continued to support Pol Pot’s regime even after he had been ousted (and I think the same would be true of China simply because it opposed Vietnam). It is thus extremely likely they would have vetoed any military intervention.
“First, having Noam Chomsky talk about genocide is a bit like inviting Richard Nixon to talk about presidential secrecy.”
wut? a bit how?
A whole series of very interesting points above, from Bills opener to Aboyeji´s thoughtful explanation of De Soto´s strategy at the GA. I too listened to the debate and, to an extent, I felt that it was all beside the point.
1) R2P, beyond the words of the 2005 GA resolution, is not clearly defined. To some people it is a vegetable and to others a fruit, to some it is red and to others it is green. The differences in the understandings of R2P are such that discussions using the term are confused and contradictory. See the above references to FRance´s insistence that R2P applied in Myanmar, an assertion later rejected by R2P supporters in NY; or see Putin´s assertion that he was using R2P to prevent genocide in Georgia.
2) If R2P is useful at all, then it should be designed in a way that corresponds with the international community´s weaknesses in responding to crimes against humanity and related crimes. The UN is reasonably effective at preventing or responding to crimes against humanity and genocide. Where it falls short, the reasons are primarily political. If we accept this to be correct, the solution to strengthening the international response must therefore address these political problems. For R2P to be relevant that it must be fashioned so as to provide this solution.
3) Focusing on genocide is not usually that helpful. Focusing on genocide is somewhat akin to designing a Public Health policy so that its number one priority is preventing the Plague, rather than assuring primary health care, providing vaccinations, and treating Malarais and malnutrition. Genocide is a precise legal term and is very rare. In theory one could have genocide in a situation where no one is killed or harmed, and one could have a situation in which 500,000 people are killed but there is no genocide. The focus should be on human rights violations in general, and not on the specific crime of genocide.
4) It is interesting and disconcerting that the majority of the actors most prominently involved in defining R2P and in leading the debate have little or no experience in responding internationally to large scale human rights violations. It brings to mind a group of people who have read books on medical procedures but who have never set foot in an operating theatre or left the library, and who are now instructing the Worlds surgeons on how technical surgeries should be performed in the future.
In conclusion:
- While I wouldn´t agree with everything De Soto and Chomsky said, I do think that they are right to be wary of misuse of R2P which could easily be interpreted as applying to every actual or potential crisis situation in the World
- I think that one can effectively prevent large scale human rights violations without recourse to military force in almost any contemporary situation.
- I think R2P could be very useful, but only if it is fashioned so as to correspond with the actual problems in the international community´s response to large scale human rights violations and, thus far, that has not been the case. To this extent, the R2P discussion is largely irrelevant. If proposals for R2P were to be adopted as is I think they would actually harm the international community´s response to these situations rather than strengthen it.
Beh,
Chomsky was an apologist for the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, discounting all reports of the massive death toll until it was absolutely impossible to do so anymore. I am sorry, but when you publicly argue against the contention that a (later-verified) genocidal regime is committing genocide. Not only that, but he argued vehemently and extensively, drawing on largely (Cambodian) government sources, that the Khmer Rouge were not killing their people en masse and may indeed represent a positive step forward for Cambodia:
(HT Delong for what follows)
Chomsky: “If a serious study…is someday undertaken, it may well be discovered…that the Khmer Rouge programs elicited a positive response…because they dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past and exacerbated by the imperial system.… Such a study, however, has yet to be undertaken.
…
…there are many other sources on recent events in Cambodia that have not been brought to the attention of the American reading public. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing.”
There Chomsky falsely claims “in 1977 that accusations of Cambodian genocide had been disputed in the pages of the Economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review by “highly qualified specialists”judging “the full range of evidence” and that these highly-qualified specialists put a firm upper bound of “at most in the thousands” on Khmer Rouge execution.”
In addition, to yoink Brad Delong yet again, Chomsky also wrote the preface for a book by Robert Faurisson, who’s thesis is essentially that the holocaust was an elaborate lie.
I find Chomsky’s track record on genocide absolutely appalling. He has firmly entrenched himself on the wrong-side of a seemingly straightforward issue. I would no more want him on a committee on genocide than I would want Richard Nixon to lend me his informed opinion on presidential secrecy.
So he was suspicious of what western media was reporting until there was sufficient evidence it was clear the reports are correct.
What Chomsky said was that Faurisson should be allowed to publish his views, and that there is no evidence Faurisson was anti-Semitic. The first is self-evident; the second I don’t have enough evidence to comment on.
Chomsky, put it clearly in ‘Manufacturing Consent’:
“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.”[
I think Kim makes the critical point: R2P actually sets a very high bar for military intervention. And, properly used, provides a helpful tool for distinguishing situations where external powers ought to intervene from those where they shouldn’t (the invasion of Iraq would have failed the R2P test by quite some margin).
Second, criticism of R2P based on the nature of geopolitics as it currently is ignores R2P’s potential role in moving geopolitics closer to how it ought to be.
I think it’s good you take on the critics from the left, because they are driven primarily by Marxist anti-imperialist dogma, and they apply it blindly.
I think it’s possible to generally support the notion that other states’ concern about human rights violations must not be construed as “interference in internal affairs”. This is the principle of the Helsinki Final Act and OSCE process (now under fire by Russia), and it is a counterpoint to the UN charter’s “non-interference in internal affairs” which states invoke to deflect human rights criticism.
Yet I do think this largely rhetorical campaign without much strenuous definition has to be debated, because otherwise it just becomes one more hortatory mantra from the human rights movement, with little effect, honoured only in the breach.
I think there is a liberal critique to be made of RTP as well which has to do with the profound bad faith involved in invoking “responsibility to protect” regarding states that are in fact busy murdering their own citizens (Sudan, Nigeria, China) sometimes with proxies, or not intervening early enough to quell communal violence.
Unlike other negative or positive rights involving the state doing something or not doing something, the complex of notions around RTP have to do with three different actors which variously try to invoke and implement this principle — the state itself, which usually is not exercising it; the “international community” which can mean various formal bodies like “the Security Council” or informal groups like “the Coalition of the Willing”; and the victims of mass crimes who appeal to one or the other or both.
And usually this involves the state seeing those in need of protection as in some way not within their framework of workaday protection but just the opposite, i.e. as rebels, terrorists, ethnic minorities, etc. Then that requires the international community to either get the state to stop harming their own citizens and see them as their own to protect, or, intervene through a variety of steps which can culminate in outside military intervention.
So obviously there are two real vulnerabilities in this notion — the problem of determining the point at which a state has so failed you must intervene, and the problem of assigning to bad-faith states the “responsibility” which they inherently have, but really shouldn’t have as they can’t be trusted.
Here’s what’s happening with RTP these days — some groups are backdating the concept and saying Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia involved the “responsibility to protect” in order to bring a country like Vietnam on board with the concept (Vietnam is now on the Security Council); Russia is speciously suddenly becoming a friend of RTP when it wishes to intervene in Southern Ossetia; and various Western countries are saying they can’t really use the RTP notion on Darfur/Sudan/Chad because to intervene would invite recollections of imperialism and would likely be impossible politically, as the West is not going to open up yet another front against a Muslim state.
More discussion here:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-responsibility-to-protect-holding-the-line-0
I think we have to ask what the success stories are for RTP if we are going to keep invoking it. The list is short, but important — recent situations in Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire.
But the list of where it was invoked, discussed, and not used because it couldn’t be is longer, and that begs the question: Burma, Chad, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, DRC.
Surprisingly, the recent debate at the General Assembly went better than expected despite D’Escoto’s sectarian ravings, and I suppose the value of this concept is that incrementally, states are coming to perceive the necessity of their implementation of the whole array of human rights earlier rather than later, in all the treaties that all existed long before there was RTP to collate some of their principles.
Right to Protect had been used in Sri Lanka with the Indian PeaceKeeping Force in 1987. It triggered a protest uprising in the South that resulted in over 50,000 deaths. led to open war between the Tamil militant groups the Indian force had gone to protect and the Indian Army, resulted in over a thousand deaths of Indians and many more of Tamils, resulted in the peacekeepers leaving with their tale between their legs, and merely postponed the military victory by twenty years, resulting in an extra 60-80,000 deaths.
With regard to Afghanistan who do you want to protect from whom?