Scholars of RtoP need a much deeper understanding of both how norms evolve and the competing normative commitments that drive those who remain skeptical of endowing the international community with a responsibility to protect.

The ability of RtoP to deliver has been mixed, but it is a bit early in RtoP's young life to judge what it will be when it grows up as a mature policy tool. There is reason to question, as well, whether Somalia and Darfur are the best tests of RtoP's potential.

The paper asks whether humanitarian intervention is legal and reviews contemporary legal arguments on both sides. It finds that both views are sustainable by conventional accounts of the sources of international law; humanitarian intervention is at once legal and illegal. The paper then considers the implications of this for the idea of the rule of law in world politics. The power of international law in this case comes from its utility as a resource for justifying state policies, not as a (...) means for distinguishing compliance from non-compliance. Law remains important to world politics, but in a different way than usually understood. (shrink)

Where it was once a term of art employed by a handful of likeminded countries, activists, and scholars, but regarded with suspicion by much of the rest of the world, RtoP has become a commonly accepted frame of reference for preventing and responding to mass atrocities.

This paper surveys the most important recent debates within the ethics of war. Sections 2 and 3 examine the principles governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the principles governing conduct in war (jus in bello). In Section 4, we turn to the moral guidelines governing the ending and aftermath of war (jus post bellum). Finally, in Section 5 we look at recent debates on whether the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello can be evaluated independently (...) of each other. (shrink)

When discussing whether or not our elected governments should intervene to end genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity in other countries, the humanitarian intervention debate has largely been assuming that liberal democracies bear no responsibility for the injustice at hand: someone else is committing shameful acts; we are merely considering whether or not we have a positive duty to do something about it. Here I argue that there are important instances in which this dominant third party perspective (...) (TPP) is empirically false and normatively misguided. Much before our positive ?responsibility to protect? potential victims from mass atrocities, we violate our negative duty not to harm these victims. Employing work by Thomas Pogge and Leif Wenar, I argue that this harm currently comes about as our elected governments either buy, or allow our corporations to buy, the world's most precious resources from brutal dictators and warlords, who dominate some of the states that are at the heart of intervention discussions. In these cases, democracies' most immediate duty is not intervention but rather humanitarian disintervention: boycotting severely oppressive regimes, and in particular stopping to recognizing these regimes ? whether dictators or civil warriors ? as possessing legitimate authority to sell their peoples' resources. I begin with a brief survey of the intervention literature, followed by the foundations for the disintervention alternative. I then elaborate the conceptual and practical advantages of disintervention, concluding with thoughts on the reasons for TPP's lasting dominance. (shrink)

If the Libyan intervention goes well, it will put teeth in the fledgling RtoP doctrine. Yet, if it goes badly, critics will redouble their opposition, and future decisions will be made more difficult. Libya suggests that we can say no more Holocausts, Cambodias, and Rwandas--and occasionally mean it.

Abstract Building on the authors' previous work regarding the classical Confucian position on the legitimate use of military force as represented by Mencius and Xunzi, this paper probes their understanding of punitive expeditions undertaken against tyrants in particular ? aims, justification, preconditions, and limits. It compares this understanding with contemporary Western models of humanitarian intervention, and argues that the Confucian punitive expedition aligns most closely with the emerging ?responsibility to protect? model in Western discussions, although it also differs from the (...) latter in certain respects. For example, the Confucian expedition explicitly forwards as legitimate aims regime change and the punishment of tyrants, in addition to rescue of an abused population and assistance in rebuilding a decent society. The Confucian understanding also appears to set a lower threshold standard (well short of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or large-scale massacre) for what counts as severe tyranny warranting intervention, and it explicitly speaks of an obligation (beyond mere permissibility) to intervene when that threshold is exceeded. In its concluding section, the paper discusses some possible contemporary implications of the classical Confucian understanding of a punitive expedition against tyrants. (shrink)

This paper analyses the ‘responsibility to protect’ (RtoP) from a moral cosmopolitan perspective. It argues, first, that RtoP postulates a remedial responsibility on the part of those nations that have the means and capacity to effectively protect individuals against vulnerability and to provide for the means of human security. Second, the paper explains that human security implies access to human development, including access to social and economic rights. Finally, it argues that developed nations can discharge their remedial responsibilities towards those (...) who lack social and economic rights by adopting just immigration regimes, part of which can be based on temporary foreign labour programs that allow individuals access to the economic opportunities, thus providing them with means to establish economic security. The paper thus argues for an expansion of the interpretation of RtoP. (shrink)

This article considers the duty to undertake humanitarian intervention. It first examines the arguments for the duty to intervene and questions the possibility of supererogatory humanitarian intervention. It then considers the leading objections to this duty which, it is argued, are largely unpersuasive. In the final section, the article considers the duty to intervene in the context of the responsibility to protect doctrine, which provides the framework within which debates about humanitarian intervention now in large part occur.

Three central questions lie at the heart of this roundtable. First, what are the implications of Libya for the RtoP doctrine? Second, how should we judge the intervention in Libya morally and politically? Third, what is the likelihood of future action under RtoP?

The article offers an interpretivist analysis of China’s coexistence approach to developing the Responsibility to Protect norm concerning atrocity crimes against civilians. The English school’s con...

Beginning with the support given by religious groups to humanitarian intervention for the protection of basic human rights in the debates of the 1990s, this essay examines the use of the human rights idea in relation to international law on armed conflict, the “Responsibility To Protect” doctrine, and the development of the idea of sovereignty associated with the “Westphalian system” of international order, identifying a dilemma: that the idea of human rights undergirds both the principle of non-intervention in the internal (...) affairs of states and the idea of an international responsibility for humanitarian intervention in cases of oppression. The pre-Westphalian conception of sovereignty as moral responsibility for the common good is then examined as an alternative that avoids this dilemma, and the essay concludes by suggesting that religious ethics also has other resources that, if used, may shed useful light on resolving this problem. (shrink)

Even if there is to be a general theory of ethical surveillance, though, it does not follow that the just war tradition is the best place to start. This gets to the heart of argument I make in the paper in that I believe this tradition captures all the relevant principles and misses none out. As a point of clarification, it is important to note that I am drawing on the just war tradition rather than the just war theory. While (...) the theory is, as I see it, a largely 20th century phenomenon, the tradition itself goes back much further, certainly to Augustine and arguably Cicero (Reichberg, Syse and Begby 2006). This is important as, while the theory may be tied to the state as authority (although, as I argue below, I would dispute that it is), the tradition is not (Coates 1997: 156). Tradition or theory, the key point is whether or not it is the best approach. Again, Stoddart is sceptical. He writes that the just war theory is contested and is concerned that in appealing to it we may obscure the ethical values on which it relies. Palm also refers to the contested nature of the theory but picks up on the lack of foundational values on which an ethics of surveillance, using the model I suggest, would draw as it currently stands. (shrink)