Does R2P matter? Interpreting the impact of a norm

Abstract

There is a curious tendency among some scholars and commentators to denigrate the impact of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Drawing on constructivist scholarship that illuminates both the regulative and constitutive ways that norms matter and that explains how the effects of norms can be interpreted, I argue that the R2P norm has a real and observable impact on the behaviour of states. I demonstrate that this impact can be detected not only in instances of compliance, such as in Libya, but perhaps even more clearly in examples of violation, such as in Syria.

Keywords

Constructivism Libya norms Responsibility to Protect Syria

Introduction

There is a curious tendency among some scholars and commentators to denigrate the impact of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). One observer has described R2P as ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’; a mere ‘slogan employed for differing purposes shorn of any real meaning or utility’ (Hehir, 2010: 218−219). Another has insisted that, for all the talk of R2P, state responses to mass atrocities continue to be dictated by ‘rational calculations premised on self-interest’ (Murray, 2013: 16). Some have denied that R2P was ‘a major influencing factor’ in the decisions of states to intervene in response to threats of mass atrocities in Libya in 2011 (Morris, 2013: 1272). Others have concluded that the lack of external intervention to resolve the ongoing crisis in Syria indicates that R2P ‘is about to expire and its death is not avertable’ (Nuruzzaman, 2014).

Each of these claims is flawed. Such claims, I suggest, tend to stem from a problematic understanding of how norms matter and how their impact should be interpreted. Drawing on resources provided by three decades of constructivist international relations scholarship, I argue that the R2P norm in fact has a very real and readily observable impact on the behaviour of states. I demonstrate that this impact can be detected not only in instances of compliance with the norm, but perhaps even more clearly in examples of violation. As such, the purpose of the article is not to advance a new theoretical claim about norms so much as it is to draw on well-established theoretical claims in order to refute those who deny the impact of the R2P norm.

I advance the argument in three sections. First, I draw on constructivist scholarship to explain how we might fruitfully interpret the impact of a norm such as R2P. I examine how norms can have both regulative effects, prompting actors to act in accordance with the norm for instrumental reasons, and also constitutive effects, leading actors to internalise the norm such that they define their identities and interests in accordance with it. I detail how we can recognise these regulative and constitutive effects, in cases of both compliance and violation, through analysis of the deliberations of actors, the justifications they offer for their actions, and the responses they make to the actions of others. And I explain the importance of establishing reasonable expectations for a norm such as R2P, given that it involves positive duties that are in potential tension with other cherished norms and values.

In the second section, I interpret the impact of R2P in an example of compliance. I argue that the available evidence suggests that the Obama administration was moved by a felt imperative to act to protect Libyan civilians in 2011. Indeed, President Obama chose to intervene in Libya despite the expressed concerns of leading officials within the administration that the United States had no strategic interest in doing so. I suggest that the impact of R2P and related ideas of human protection in this case is clear.

In the third section, I interpret the impact of R2P in an example of violation. I note that it is false to suggest that the absence of military intervention in Syria represents a violation of the R2P norm, as the norm does not require imprudent action that would likely do more harm than good. However, it seems clear that the international community has failed to discharge its responsibility to do what it can, short of military intervention, to protect the people of Syria since the crisis erupted in 2011. In this sense, the international community has violated the R2P norm. This is deeply regrettable. Nevertheless, we can still detect the impact of the norm in several ways: in the acceptance of the international community that the crisis in Syria is one to which they are bound to respond; in the efforts of states to justify the significance of the actions they have taken to protect the vulnerable and to provide excuses when they have refused to act; and in the willingness of states to condemn those, particularly Russia and China, who they claim are standing in the way of the international community discharging its responsibility to protect. States thus recognise that the R2P norm matters and that they need to justify, excuse, or shift blame for its violation.

Indeed, states have tended to proclaim that the international community has a responsibility to protect populations from mass atrocities more boldly with respect to the Syrian crisis than they did when deliberating how to respond to earlier crises such as in Libya. Although this offers no consolation for those suffering in Syria, we know that such discursive practices can often have profound effects on the diffusion of a norm. To be sure, norm development is never inevitable. Nevertheless, it is often the case that actors become ‘rhetorically entrapped’ by the arguments they use in one case such that expectations for action are amplified in the next. Such ratcheting of expectations is something we have repeatedly witnessed with respect to questions of international responsibilities toward the vulnerable since the end of the Cold War. For now, at least, the R2P norm has developed to the point that, although states and their leaders may still be able to avoid paying a significant cost for refusing to respond adequately to a particularly complex and geopolitically sensitive crisis such as that in Syria, they are less inclined than they once were to stand by in the face of threats of mass atrocities, not only in Libya, but also Côte d’Ivoire (2011), Mali (2012), the Central African Republic (2013), and Iraq (2014), where it seems relatively clear that they can do some good.

Interpreting the impact of R2P

A norm can be defined as ‘a standard of appropriate behaviour for actors with a given identity’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 891). It is important to clarify at the outset that R2P, as negotiated by world leaders at the 2005 UN World Summit, entails two distinct, although complementary, norms (A/60/1, 24 October 2005, paras 138–139).¹ I suggest that much of the confusion in the literature, among both those who defend R2P’s impact and those who deny it, flows from a failure to distinguish between the two separate norms at play. The first norm holds that each state has a responsibility to protect its population from atrocity crimes – specifically genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. This norm is uncontroversial. It is acknowledged by all states, it is firmly established in international law, and its violation is commonly subject to condemnation, the imposition of sanctions, and in some cases military intervention and international criminal prosecution. The second norm holds that the international community has the responsibility to do what it can to ensure that populations are protected from atrocity crimes.² This is understood to involve not only helping and encouraging states to protect their populations but, where necessary, using appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means and even taking collective action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter should states manifestly fail to protect their populations. This second norm, which accords a residual responsibility to the international community, is of course closely related to the first, which accords a primary responsibility to the host state. But it is distinct and more controversial. It is this second norm whose impact is most commonly called into question by scholars and commentators and it is the one on which I shall focus. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to this second norm simply as the R2P norm.

Few deny that norms can matter. The more interesting questions are which norms matter and how much do they matter? To answer those questions, we need to first understand how norms matter and how we can recognise their impact.

How do norms matter?

Scholars have explained that norms can have two types of effects on the behaviour of states. They can have ‘regulative’ effects such that they constrain or encourage states to act in certain ways in spite of their prior interests, and they can have ‘constitutive’ effects such that they lead states to act in certain ways by influencing the very constitution or production of their identities and interests (Katzenstein, 1996; Klotz, 1995). Norms have regulative effects as states are ‘socialised’ to adhere to them for instrumental reasons, acting in particular ways because of pressures for legitimation, conformity, and esteem, without necessarily accepting the validity of the norms. When states resist pressures to comply with a norm, they may be subject to practices of naming and shaming that can lead them to alter their approach in the future. When they make tactical concessions and adapt their arguments to alleviate pressures to comply, they implicitly accept that the norm has some social validity. They can then become ‘entrapped’ by their own rhetoric such that resistance becomes more difficult in the future (Risse and Sikkink, 1999). Repeated processes of ‘rhetorical entrapment’ can lead to a ratchet effect whereby standards of appropriate behaviour ratchet up across successive cases. Such an effect has arguably played a role in the Security Council’s increasing involvement in issues of human protection since the end of the Cold War, despite the notorious failures of the Council to respond adequately to some particularly tragic crises.³ To offer a recent example that I have detailed elsewhere, we can observe the effects of ‘rhetorical entrapment’ in the decision of Russia and China to justify opposition to Security Council authorisation of enforcement measures in response to crises in Darfur, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe on the grounds that they were respecting the opinions of regional organisations. When regional organisations themselves called for enforcement measures to protect civilians in Libya in 2011, Russia and China no longer had a plausible argument against enforcement available to them and so chose instead to abstain on Resolution 1973, which authorised the use of force (Glanville, 2013).

In addition to their regulative effects, norms can have constitutive effects as states ‘internalise’ norms through processes of domestic ‘institutionalisation’ and ‘habitualisation’ and thus adhere to them routinely because ‘it is the normal thing to do’ (Risse and Sikkink, 1999: 17). In this way, norms no longer constrain the pursuit of interests. Rather they play a part in the constitution of those interests (Klotz, 1995). Scholars have begun to document the institutionalisation of R2P in domestic settings, examining for example executive branch institutional changes within the US government aimed at improving the preparedness and capacity of the United States to deal with the problem of mass atrocities (Vaughn and Dunne, 2014). Scholars have also begun to describe the habitualisation of R2P, exposing particularly the emergence of a ‘habit of protection’ within the Security Council such that it now considers R2P-related issues ‘as a matter of routine’ (Bellamy, 2013: 335).

The R2P norm can be seen to have both regulative and constitutive effects on the behaviour of states. I will document these effects in the examples of Libya and Syria later in the article. Thus, debate over whether R2P works as a rallying call to action, leading states to act to help protect vulnerable populations in spite of their prior interests, or whether it works to reshape the identities and interests of actors, such that they habitually consider what can be done to protect those populations, seems to be misplaced.⁴ R2P works in both of these ways at the one time, constraining the interests of some actors and constituting the interests of others. The effects of R2P on a given actor, moreover, can vary over time as the norm becomes more or less internalised.

Seeking to explain how norms evolve over time, scholars have suggested that they tend, at first, to merely regulate the behaviour of states and only gradually do they develop constitutive effects on state behaviour. That is, states will tend to initially choose to comply with a norm for instrumental reasons and only over time will they come to internalise the norm and comply with it habitually (see, for example, the three stage norm ‘life-cycle’ developed by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998), and the ‘spiral model’ of norm socialisation developed by Risse and Sikkink (1999)). Finnemore and Sikkink (1998: 900) indicate that, in order for a norm to successfully move through the ‘life-cycle’, such that compliance is no longer an instrumental choice but an internalised habit, a norm will usually need to be institutionalised at the international level ‘in specific sets of international rules and organizations’. They claim that ‘institutionalization contributes strongly to the possibility for a norm cascade both by clarifying what, exactly, the norm is and what constitutes violation … and by spelling out specific procedures by which norm leaders coordinate disapproval and sanctions for norm breaking’.

Such models of norm evolution are useful for understanding shifts in the engagement of particular states with the R2P norm in recent years. However, they have been subject to some criticisms that are also relevant for our understanding R2P. First, scholars have challenged the assumption in these models that, although norm diffusion and socialisation is a dynamic process, the contents and meanings of norms remain static. They have likewise expressed concern about the unidirectionality of the models, noting that the suggested cycles and spirals of norm development travel only one way and towards a clear endpoint that is internalisation. These scholars have emphasised that norms are in fact dynamic, often subject to ongoing contestation and reinterpretation, and, in turn, potentially subject to ‘cooptation, drift, accretion and reversal’ (Krook and True, 2012: 104; Sandholtz, 2008; Wiener, 2004). Drawing on such scholarship, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on R2P, Jennifer Welsh (2013), has recently demonstrated that we can acknowledge and account for ongoing contestation and reinterpretation of R2P and accept that it may never be finally and universally internalised as a static norm, even while insisting on the significant ways in which the norm has been embraced and implemented by states over the last decade.⁵

Additionally, scholars have questioned some of the assumptions about the role of international institutionalisation in the process of norm development. They have questioned the importance of clarity and specificity at moments of institutionalisation, explaining that excess precision can impede the development of consensus, close off possibilities for incremental adjustment necessary to sustain consensus, and create loopholes that may perversely undermine the norm by making particular violations justifiable. They have also questioned the significance of the legal institutionalisation of norms in international treaties and conventions, noting that legalisation does not necessarily lead to compliance (Percy, 2007; Widmaier and Glanville, 2015).⁶

The R2P norm can be said to have been institutionalised at the international level in the Outcome Document negotiated and adopted by more than 150 heads of state and government at the UN World Summit in 2005. This agreement has no legal force. Moreover, owing to the efforts of US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, in particular, who was determined not to bind his government to an obligation to protect distant populations where it had no interest in doing so, it was composed such that the nature and scope of the international community’s responsibilities remained ambiguous. The agreement affirms merely that the international community is ‘prepared to take collective action’ and makes clear that the decision to do so should be taken ‘on a case by case basis’ (A/60/1, 24 October 2005, para 139). The R2P norm, therefore, is not codified in law and its institutionalised formulation lacks specificity. But, as we will see, and as is consistent with recent constructivist theorising, this has not prevented it from having a recognisable impact on state behaviour.

How do we recognise the impact of a norm?

We can recognise the impact of a norm both in instances of compliance and violation. Demonstrating the impact of a norm in a case of compliance is not necessarily easy. Correlation between the dictates of a norm and the behaviour of an actor does not mean that the former inspired the latter. Compliance may be coincidental. The actor may act in accordance with the norm for reasons that have nothing to do with the norm. Moreover, even if an actor justifies their actions with reference to a norm, this does not mean that the norm supplied the motivations for action. Actors sometimes lie. (It should be noted, however, that the fact that an actor hypocritically appeals to the norm at least shows that they recognise that the norm constitutes a standard of acceptable behaviour and that it is worth making an effort to be seen to act in accordance with it.) Nevertheless, norms often inspire compliance and it is often possible to offer a plausible account of the impact of a norm on the behaviour of an actor.

We can observe the regulative impact of a norm, for example, when an actor discards an earlier policy of resistance and chooses to instead act for instrumental reasons within the parameters of socially acceptable behaviour rather than accept the reputational costs of ongoing violation. The decisions of Russia and China to allow the Security Council to adopt Resolution 1973, authorising intervention in Libya, after years of refusing to authorise resolutions enforcing the protection of populations without the consent of the host state, might constitute such an example. We can likewise observe the constitutive impact of a norm when an actor chooses to comply in the absence of significant social pressures or clear material or strategic interests for doing so. I will argue later that the decision of President Obama to push Resolution 1973 through the Security Council seems to be an example of such constitutive effects of the R2P norm in action.

Demonstrating the impact of a norm in a case of violation, in contrast, is relatively straightforward, even if not altogether satisfying. For many years now constructivists have explained how norms can continue to matter even when they are sometimes or even often violated. The key questions to be asked are: how do violators explain their violations and how do others respond? As Kratochwil and Ruggie (1986: 768) have usefully observed:

Precisely because state behavior within regimes is interpreted by other states, the rationales and justifications for behavior which are proffered, together with pleas for understanding or admissions of guilt, as well as the responsiveness to such reasoning on the part of other states, all are absolutely critical component parts of any explanation involving the efficacy of norms. Indeed, such communicative dynamics may tell us far more about how robust a regime is than overt behavior alone.

If violating states feel no need to defend their behaviour and if other states do not seek to condemn or sanction violations, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the norm does not matter. In contrast, if states make efforts to conceal their violations, or if they offer justifications for their actions, rejecting the evaluations of others that they have violated the norm, or if they offer excuses for their actions, explaining that there are legitimate reasons for violating the norm in a particular instance, then we can begin to see that the norm matters at least to some degree and that violation is understood to have consequences that actors want to avoid. Likewise, we find evidence that the norm matters if other states respond to violation with moral condemnation, social sanction, or material punishment. Finally, if the violating state subsequently expresses regret and apologises for their actions, this too can be taken as an indication that they recognise the validity of the norm. Certainly, the fact that a state chooses to violate a norm and either works to avoid or simply accepts the consequences of violation in a given instance suggests that the norm is not yet sufficiently internalised that it trumps all competing interests and values in all situations. But the communicative dynamics around violation can reveal much about how robust the norm is perceived to be and, in turn, what the possibilities are for compliance in similar and different situations in the future (see Shannon, 2000). I will argue later that we can observe the impact of the R2P norm, despite its violation, in the case of Syria where states have felt the need to justify the significance of what they have done, to excuse their failure to do more, and to blame others for preventing the international community from discharging the R2P.

In this context, it is worth noting that I am largely in agreement with the argument of Hehir (forthcoming) that the mere regularity of the usage of R2P language does not necessarily tell us anything about the impact of the R2P norm. What matters, I suggest, is not so much the frequency of invocations of R2P as how such language about the imperative to protect populations is deployed and how it is received by relevant audiences. By analysing the language of states we can discern the ‘standard of appropriate behavior’ against which they are seeking to either justify their actions or to admonish the actions of others and from there we can begin to interpret the impact of this standard.

How might R2P matter?

Before examining the impact of the R2P norm, it is important to first establish reasonable expectations. Since the end of the Cold War, constructivists have explained the development and examined the influence of a range of human rights-based norms. Most of these norms entail negative duties. That is, they require that states refrain from certain behaviours. Examples include duties to not engage in practices of slavery, colonialism, or apartheid and duties to not use chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, or land mines (Crawford, 2002; Klotz, 1995; Nadelmann, 1990; Price, 1997, 1998; Tannenwald, 2007). Violation of each of these duties involves doing something that is almost universally condemned. Moreover, states tend to be fully capable of complying with these norms in all instances. Violation, therefore, tends to be inexcusable and is commonly subject to social sanction and even material punishment.

In contrast, the R2P norm entails a positive duty. That is, rather than a duty to refrain from doing something abhorrent, it is a duty to do something good. It requires that states take action on behalf of the international community to protect vulnerable people beyond their borders. This positive-duty norm exists in potential conflict with other cherished norms and values (see similarly Finnemore, 2008). Action to protect those beyond borders can be risky and costly in terms of blood and treasure. The normative impulse to act may therefore be undercut by felt duties to protect one’s own military forces and to preserve the well-being of one’s own political community. In some situations, action thought necessary to protect distant populations will be opposed by constituencies within the target state. Thus, the R2P norm may be found in tension with well-established norms of non-intervention and self-determination. When it seems that the only way to protect a vulnerable population will be to resort to military force, decision makers will need to weigh the imperative to protect against widely shared principles bequeathed by the just war tradition, not least of which is the requirement that intervention not do more harm than good. Finally, the complexity and multiplicity of crises around the world at a given time may mean that states simply do not have the collective capacity to adequately address all situations and fully discharge the R2P on behalf of the international community.

Any assessment of the impact of the R2P norm in a given instance, then, needs to account for the substantial limits imposed by these weighty ideational and practical considerations. Although failure to protect a vulnerable population is always deeply regrettable, there will often be good ethical and pragmatic reasons why the international community should not or cannot pursue certain measures to alleviate suffering. To put it bluntly, R2P does not demand that states take collective action to protect the populations of other states in ways that will inordinately harm their own populations, gravely undermine international order and stability, or cause a greater number of deaths than lives saved, and nor does it require states to act beyond their capabilities. Therefore, as Welsh (2013: 368) rightly observes, the appropriate test for the impact or effectiveness of the R2P norm is not whether or not military intervention occurs in a particular case. The appropriate course of action will vary from case to case and, tragically, sometimes the international community will simply be unable to do much to prevent grave suffering. As former Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on R2P, Edward Luck, suggests, the norm should therefore be understood as a ‘responsibility to try’ (Interview, 19 September 2011). It is an obligation of conduct, not of result.⁷ The R2P norm imposes upon states a collective responsibility to do what they can to protect populations from mass atrocities.

To be sure, this ‘indeterminacy’ of the norm means that there is substantial scope for contestation about how R2P should be implemented in a given situation. States may debate the salience of competing norms and values, they may offer divergent assessments of the cause and severity of a crisis, and they may disagree on how to best seek to resolve the crisis. This weakens the ‘compliance pull’ of the norm to a certain extent (Bellamy, 2015: 63). Nevertheless, although R2P tends not to prescribe a single course of action in response to a given crisis, there are limits to the range of arguments and behaviours that states can hope to legitimise. We will see in the cases of Libya and Syria that states understand these limits and they feel a need to act within these limits or at least offer justifications and excuses when they fail to do so.

Libya

On 17 March 2011, the UN Security Council responded to the perpetration of atrocities and threats of further atrocities by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi by adopting Resolution 1973, authorising the use of ‘all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi’. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (2011) commended the Council for its ‘historic decision’ and proclaimed that the resolution ‘affirms, clearly and unequivocally, the international community’s determination to fulfil its responsibility to protect civilians from violence perpetrated upon them by their own government’. However, numerous observers have since denied that R2P played a significant role in the decision to intervene. One insists that the intervention was ‘the consequence of a unique constellation of necessarily temporal factors unrelated, or only tangentially related, to R2P’ (Hehir, 2013: 140). Another, insisting that states only act to protect populations when it is ‘beneficial … to their own interests’, charges that states intervened in Libya only because they were ‘faced with regional spill-over and the prospect of oil and gold reserves’ (Murray, 2013: 31). Such scepticism is misplaced. The impact of the R2P norm on the decision to intervene can be clearly seen both at the domestic level, in the deliberations of the Obama administration, and also at the international level, in the deliberations of the Security Council.

Certainly, there were numerous exceptional factors that made the Libyan intervention particularly feasible. Gaddafi’s clear threat of mass atrocities, his lack of powerful allies, and the explicit request of the League of Arab States for international action combined to make the intervention a viable option (Bellamy and Williams, 2011). But, contra Hehir (forthcoming), I would argue that such factors do not explain why states chose to act rather than not act. States do not undertake military intervention just because it is feasible. After all, the intervention, although limited, was still costly. It cost the United States alone US$1.1 billion (Daalder and Stavridis, 2012: 3). And even if the risks to the lives of intervening forces were not substantial in this instance, the action was still politically fraught, particularly given the exhaustion of Western publics with war. Given the costs and risks that attend any intervention, states do not intervene simply because the conditions make it possible. Rather, they need a reason to do so. In this instance, the available evidence suggests that the primary reason why the United States intervened in Libya was a genuine desire to protect Libyan civilians.

On 15 March, Obama met with his advisors to discuss the crisis in Libya. Lebanon, France, and the United Kingdom had announced plans to introduce a draft resolution to the Security Council that would authorise a no-fly zone. The Pentagon suggested that Obama had two options: do nothing or establish a no-fly zone. Some advisors, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and national security adviser Tom Donilon, cautioned against action on the grounds that core security interests of the United States were not at stake. As Obama later recalled, however, he could not accept the option of not intervening because ‘[t]hat’s not who we are’. But the establishment of a no-fly zone was not a suitable option either. As Obama recalled, ‘[w]e knew that a no-fly zone would not save the people of Benghazi … The no-fly zone was an expression of concern that didn’t really do anything’. On Obama’s request, the Pentagon developed a third option: secure a Security Council resolution authorising ‘all necessary measures’ to protect Libyan civilians and then do what was necessary to destroy Gaddafi’s forces. Obama adopted this option and his administration quickly worked to generate sufficient international support to push Resolution 1973 through the Security Council (Lewis, 2012). Given the perceived absence of core security interests and given the risks and costs of action, Obama’s decision is inexplicable without reference to the power of the felt imperative to protect Libyan civilians. Moreover, given the absence of substantial domestic or international pressure for such a strongly worded Security Council resolution, the decision would seem to indicate not merely the regulative but the constitutive effects of the norm in action.

The impact of R2P can also be seen in the deliberations of the Security Council on Resolution 1973. In a recent study of the ‘practice’ of the Security Council’s negotiations, Adler-Nissen and Pouliot (2014: 900–902) show how ‘competent’ pro-interventionist states were able to pressure other states to vote in favour or at least abstain on the resolution by warning that they would otherwise be seen as standing in the way of human protection and not acting for the interests of the Libyan people. This pressure would have had no force if it was not for the fact that states recognised that to be seen to facilitate rather than hinder the protection of populations was the prevailing ‘standard of appropriate behavior’. Such recognition of the R2P norm was further in evidence in the 17 March Security Council debate. The debate proceeded on the assumption that the international community generally and the Security Council in particular had an important role to play in protecting civilians from atrocities. States disagreed not on whether the international community had a responsibility to protect, but on how best to ensure that protection. Among the ten states that voted in favour of the resolution, France spoke of the need to act quickly, noting that ‘[e]very hour and day that goes by increases the burden of responsibility on our shoulders’, Nigeria noted that the violations of rights in Libya ‘leaves an indelible imprint on the conscience and moves us to act’, and South Africa claimed that, in adopting the resolution, the Council ‘has acted responsibly to protect and save the lives of defenseless civilians’. The five states that abstained tended to emphasise pragmatic concerns about whether military intervention was the appropriate response to the crisis, while acknowledging that the Council should do what it could to protect civilians. Brazil cautioned that its vote should not be interpreted as ‘disregard for the need to protect civilians and respect their rights’ and Russia emphasised that they had put forward their own draft resolution ‘with a view to saving numerous human lives’ (S/PV.6498, 17 March 2011). Even those states that refused to endorse the resort to military force, then, recognized the weight of the imperative to protect Libyan civilians, both in private negotiations and in public statements, even if they disagreed over the means with which to do so.

Although it is true that neither individual states nor the resolution itself explicitly invoked the notion that the international community had a ‘responsibility to protect’ Libyan civilians, the R2P norm clearly played an important role – if not a constitutive role for some states then at least a regulative role – in guiding ten states to vote in favour and leading five others to abstain and allow the resolution to pass. A norm need not be enunciated for it to have an impact on the behaviour of states. As Bellamy (2015: 96) observes, despite the absence of R2P language, it is ‘difficult to see how the response [of the Security Council] was anything other than consistent with the demands of R2P or to believe that this consistency was produced by chance’. It would seem clear that the decisions of states to adopt or at least not block the resolution can in large part be explained by the power of the idea that the international community should do what it can to protect populations from mass atrocities.

Syria

For over four years, an extraordinarily brutal civil war has waged in Syria. Civilians have borne the brunt of the conflict. As of June 2015, the war has cost the lives of more than 220,000 people, including more than 11,000 children, and the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance has grown to over 12 million. Although the international community has been closely engaged with the conflict since its beginning, it has failed to bring it to an end. This failure has led commentators to again question the impact of the R2P norm (Hehir, forthcoming). One asserts that ‘the continuing UNSC deadlock over Syria suggests that the timely and decisive international response in Libya was an aberration’ (Garwood-Gowers, 2013: 613). Another takes the Security Council’s ‘immobility over Syria’ as evidence that ‘R2P is set to fade away gradually’ (Nuruzzaman, 2014). However, again, such scepticism is misplaced.

It is important to clarify at the outset that the failure of the international community to undertake military intervention in Syria does not constitute violation of the R2P norm. After all, although some commentators have called for the use of military force to protect the Syrian population (Ignatieff, 2014; Slaughter, 2014), most have concluded that the resort to force would likely do more harm than good. Syria has always been a more complex and confusing crisis than Libya and it has been difficult to see how military intervention could feasibly resolve the crisis and end the suffering. Nevertheless, there is often much that the international community can do to protect populations without resorting to force and, in the case of Syria, the international community’s efforts in this regard have been shameful. For four long years the international community has failed to work together to discharge its responsibility to do what it can, short of military intervention, to protect the people of Syria. In this sense, the R2P norm has been violated. Nevertheless, this need not lead us to pronounce the death of the norm.

Norms are sometimes violated. The material and strategic concerns of states, for example, sometimes trump even the strongest of norms. But this doesn’t mean that the norm is dead or that it may not continue to have a profound impact on the behaviour of states in other cases. After all, no one suggested that the norm of non-intervention was obsolete or meaningless when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 or when it interfered in Ukraine in 2014. Great power politics sometimes trumps norms and it would seem that it has done so in the case of Syria. A key reason for the international community’s failure in Syria has been the intransigence of Russia and China who have on four occasions vetoed draft Security Council resolutions dealing with violence against civilians. Russia has had important interests at stake, leading it to shield the al-Assad regime in the Security Council, including fear that Islamist threats might spill over to the North Caucasus region, concern that another instance of Western-driven regime change may undermine Russia’s domestic political order, and, to a lesser extent, desire to preserve the material benefits of relations with the Syrian state and nostalgic considerations of solidarity with the Syrian people (Allison, 2013). China, in turn, has had substantial reasons for voting with Russia in the Security Council, not least so that Russia might return the favour on matters critical to China in the future (Pei, 2012). That the R2P norm is sometimes trumped by other motivations is not particularly surprising and need not be read as indicative of the decline of the norm.

Moreover, even in this tragic case, we can see that states continue to recognise the weight of the R2P norm and, hence, they seek to justify their actions, excuse their inaction, and shift blame for the failure of the international community to prevent grave suffering in an attempt to avoid paying the social costs that attend violation. To begin, we can observe the impact of the R2P norm in the acceptance of the international community, and the permanent members of the Security Council in particular, that they are bound to respond in some way to the atrocities and massacres being perpetrated in Syria. In the first three and a half years of the Syrian civil war, prior to the emergence of the Islamic State, which has complicated the situation even further, the Human Rights Council adopted 12 resolutions on the crisis and the General Assembly adopted eight. Although the Security Council’s response fell well short of what many had hoped for, it still managed to adopt six resolutions on the crisis, including resolutions demanding unhindered access for humanitarian agencies and authorising these agencies to provide assistance where it was needed even without the consent of the Syrian government (Resolution 2139, 22 February 2014, and Resolution 2165, 14 July 2014). These measures are indicative of the Security Council’s emergent ‘habit of protection’ that Bellamy (2013) has described.

We see further impact of the R2P norm in Syria in the fact that those states that are thought to have a particular capacity to do something to ease the suffering and resolve the crisis have felt the need to justify the significance of what actions they have taken and to provide excuses for their decisions not to do more. Obama, for example, has maintained that the United States has ‘both a moral obligation and a national security interest in … ending the slaughter in Syria’ and he has explained that this is why his administration has provided humanitarian aid (US $4.0 billion to date), assisted the opposition, and worked with the international community to isolate the Assad regime (Obama, 2013). An argument can be made that, given the complexity of the crisis and the intransigence of Russia and China, there is not much more that the United States could have done to resolve it. Nevertheless, Obama has felt continued pressure to defend his policies. In response, he has emphasised the difficulties of the situation and the careful consideration given by his administration to alternative policies and he has characterised the suggestion that earlier financial and military assistance to the opposition could have resolved the crisis as ‘magical thinking’ (Remnick, 2014). Appealing to the limits of what the United States is able to do, he has emphasised that ‘we cannot and should not’ intervene with military force ‘every time there’s an injustice in the world’ and he has cautioned that stronger action in Syria may actually do more harm than good (Obama, 2012, 2013).

A further indicator of the weight of the R2P norm in the case of Syria has been the fierce condemnation meted out against those perceived to be standing in the way of a more unified and more effective international response to the crisis. States have fiercely criticised Russia and China when they have vetoed Security Council resolutions on the crisis, expressing ‘disgust’ and ‘distress’ at their ‘shameful’ intransigence in the face of international efforts to stem human suffering (S/PV.6711, 4 February 2012: 5). In the process of condemning Russia and China, leading Western states have articulated the international community’s responsibility to protect in stronger terms than they did in the case of Libya. The United States, for example, has offered a remarkably clear articulation of the Security Council’s responsibilities: ‘[i]t is the Council’s responsibility to stop atrocities if we can and, at a minimum, to ensure that the perpetrators of atrocities are held accountable’ (S/PV.7180, 22 May 2014: 4). It is conceivable that these states could find themselves entrapped by their bold rhetoric such that they feel even stronger regulative pressures to act to alleviate suffering in future cases (if it happens that the degree to which they have internalised the R2P norm is not itself sufficient to prompt action).

Russia and China, for their part, have defended their use of the veto on the grounds not that the international community has no role to play in resolving the crisis, but that the measures being proposed by other states will do more harm than good. But their excuses have failed to convince others. The General Assembly has responded to the Security Council’s failure by voting overwhelmingly in favour of resolutions reminding the Security Council of its responsibilities to act to end atrocities and ‘deploring the failure of the Security Council to agree on measures to ensure the compliance of Syrian authorities with its decisions’ (Resolution 66/253B, 3 August 2012; Resolution 68/182, 18 December 2013). Each of these justifications, excuses, and condemnations offered by states, even if some of them may be hypocritical and self-serving, demonstrate that states recognise that the notion that the international community has a responsibility to do what it can to protect the Syrian people is a powerful idea against which they need to explain their actions.

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, although commentators debating R2P have been so focused on the terrible suffering in Syria, the international community has repeatedly taken up the burden of responsibility to do what it can to deal with threats of atrocities in other parts of the world, such as Côte d’Ivoire (2011), Mali (2012), the Central African Republic (2013), and Iraq (2014), where the ethical and practical impediments to effective action have been less pressing and an opportunity to save lives has been recognised. States may be able to avoid paying a substantial cost for failing to respond adequately to a particularly complex and geopolitically sensitive crisis such as Syria. But they need to work hard to justify their behaviour. And meanwhile, in these other parts of the world where the impediments to meaningful action have not been so strong, states have recognised a regulative pressure, and even a constituted interest, in acting to protect populations, just as they did in Libya.

Conclusion

It is sometimes said that the international community’s approach to R2P is one marked by ‘inconsistency’ (Hehir, 2013). There is a danger, however, that the label of ‘inconsistency’ obscures more than it reveals. The R2P norm tends to shape and shove states in the direction of doing what they can to protect those beyond their borders, but what that involves necessarily varies from case to case according to a range of factors including not just the self-interests of states but also their capacities, the applicability of competing norms, the risks and costs of action, and the likelihood that action will do good rather than harm. International responses to the threat or perpetration of atrocities may therefore be marked by ‘inconsistency’ in terms of what particular policies are pursued, but this tells us little about the impact of the norm. In many instances, these inconsistent responses are indicative of the international community doing what it can to alleviate suffering given particular ethical and practical realities. And where the international community fails to do what it can, those states that are perceived to be responsible for the failure tend to be firmly condemned.

As so much of the scholarship on R2P remains preoccupied with the question of military intervention, it is worth concluding with the following observation: since the unanimous endorsement of R2P by states at the UN World Summit in 2005, there has been only one clear case, Libya, in which it was widely agreed that non-consensual intervention would be an effective and justifiable response to mass atrocities and in that case the international community did not fail to intervene. Although we should not discount the possibility of norm regression in the future, for now the available evidence suggests that the R2P norm matters in a real and observable way.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Alex Bellamy, Mathew Davies, Aidan Hehir, Marylou Hickey, Gavin Mount, James Pattison, the ANU IPS reading group, and the editors of Cooperation and Conflict for discussions and comments on drafts.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Luke Glanville is a fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. He is the author of Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect: A New History (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2014) as well as articles in journals including International Studies Quarterly and European Journal of International Relations.

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