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Essays

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RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT ANDMILITARIZED HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

When and Why the Churches Failed to Discern

Moral Hazardjore_524 308..335

Esther D. Reed

ABSTRACT

This essay addresses moral hazards associated with the emerging doctrine

of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). It reviews the broad acceptance by the

Vatican and the World Council of Churches of the doctrine between Septem-

ber 2003 and September 2008, and attempts to identify grounds for moreadequate investigation of the moral issues arising. Three themes are

pursued: how a changing political context is affecting notions of sovereignty;

the authority that can approve or refuse the use of force; and plural

foundations for human rights in a religiously and otherwise plural world

such that the human rights protection does not become tyrannical.

KEY WORDS: Responsibility to Protect (R2P), humanitarian aid, use of force,

sovereignty, intervention

IN JUNE 1999, United States President Bill Clinton said to Jim Lehrerof the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS):

I think the most important thing is were we right to take a stand in Kosovo

against ethnic cleansing . . . . We cant stop every fight like the fight between

Eritrea and Ethiopia and the struggles in Chechnya. But where we can, at

an acceptable cost; that is without risking nuclear war or some other terrible

thing, we ought to prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians and the

wholesale uprooting of them because of their race, their ethnic background

or the way they worship God. I think thats an important principle myself.

I think its a noble thing. I think the United States did a good thing. (Clinton1999)

Two years later, the International Commission on Intervention and State

Sovereignty (ICISS), established by the Canadian Government, issued

The Responsibility to Protect report (ICISS 2001). It addressed the

complex of legal, moral, operational, and political issues surrounding

humanitarian intervention to prevent inter alia ethnic cleansing and

genocide. Kofi Annan, the then Secretary-General of United Nations,

Esther D. Reed is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics and Director of the Network for

Religion in Public Life at the University of Exeter UK Esther D Reed 7 Canterbury Road

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commented approvingly that its authors wanted to avert these ills by

forging consensus around basic questions of principle and process entailed

in humanitarian intervention (Annan 2005).

For reasons reviewed below, between September 2003 and September2008, the Vatican and World Council of Churches (WCC) broadly wel-

comed the central concept of the ICISS Report, namely, the responsibility

to protect (R2P). The Vatican became more critical in September 2008 in

a statement by Msgr. Celestino Migliore to the 63rd Session of the General

Assembly of the United Nations Organisation (UN) to the effect that the

principle had been invoked as a pretext for the arbitrary use of military

might (Holy See 2008). This note of concern was a long time coming,

however, and seems barely to have touched upon moral issues concerning

the militarization of humanitarian action, the blurring of humanitarianand other security-related or Western liberal political agendas, the

authority of customary international law regarding the authorization of

force, and more.

A theologian presuming to say something to this debate risks blunder-

ing into the proverbial china shop and knocking over everything not

nailed firmly to the floor. Yet some of the consequences of the R2P doctrine

are so far-reaching that public attention, including that of the major world

religions, is warranted. This essay attempts to identify grounds for more

adequate investigation of the R2P doctrine from a Christian perspective,and of the moral challenges associated with its component elements.

1. Vatican and WCC Statements on R2P

I begin with a brief overview of Vatican and WCC statements on R2P

between September 2003 and September 2008. Prior to the Address by

Msgr. Celestino Migliore to the 63rd Session of the General Assembly of

the UN in September 2008, the thrust of Vatican and WCC statements

about R2P is broadly positive:

In 2001, The Protection of Endangered Populations in Situations of

Armed Violence: Toward and Ecumenical Ethical Approach (PEP)

referred back to WCC work in 19941995 on criteria for determining

the applicability and effectiveness of sanctions, and was mindful of

serious criticisms of UN peacekeeping. The paper talked in broad

terms about re-shaping the debate and about why the protection of

endangered populations sometimes requires robust action to stop

atrocities, restore the rule of law, and rebuild. I start with this 2001

WCC paper because it includes the sub-headings The Responsibilityof the International Community for Prevention of Violent Conflict,

h l d S d l

Responsibility to Protect 309

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powerful idea around which Christian people holding very different

ideas about the use of armed force in any circumstance could poten-

tially unite (WCC 2001).

In 2003, the WCC issued The Responsibility to Protect: Ethical and

Theological Reflections as a follow-up to PEP. Despite including in its

title the name of the ICISS Report and recommending it for further

study, this WCC report is little more than a list of topics for further

work (WCC 2003). A book of the same title was published subse-

quently in 2005 and comprised papers from a WCC Conference in

Geneva April 2123, 2005, at which Gareth Evans, co-chair of the

ICISS, was present (WCC 2005).

In 2005, UN employment of the concept Responsibility to Protect waswelcomed by the Vatican as affirming the dignity of persons. Cardinal

Angelo Sodano spoke to the Summit of the Heads of State and

Government during the 60th General Assembly of the UN of the

principle having arisen from the UNs long-standing commitment to

the pre-eminent dignity of every single man and woman over the State

and over every ideological system. The Cardinal welcomed the conti-

nuity of the principle with the Preamble of the Statute of the UN which

says specifically that the UN Organization was created in order to

save future generations from the scourge of war (Sodano 2005).

By 2006, the WCC was using the phrase the responsibility to

protect in its own documentation. It did so in the context of Chris-

tian teaching that war is never an act of justice. Even so, the phrase

was deemed to resonate with Christian commitment to the most

vulnerable people beyond ones own state boundaries. The Statement

of the WCC 9th Assembly, Porte Alegre, February 2006, welcomed

explicitly how the concept of R2P shifted the focus of debate from the

rights of sovereignty to the responsibilities of sovereignty and rights

of the civilian population. It added further:

The churches are in support of the emerging international norm of the

responsibility to protect. This norm holds that national governments

clearly bear the primary and sovereign responsibility to provide for the

safety of their people. Indeed, the responsibility to protect and serve the

welfare of its people is central to a states sovereignty. When there is

failure to carry out that responsibility, whether by neglect, lack of capac-

ity, or direct assaults on the population, the international community has

the duty to assist peoples and states, and in extreme situations, to

intervene in the internal affairs of the state in the interests and safety ofthe people. (WCC 2006)

310 Journal of Religious Ethics

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vision of Gods kingdom, and refused to refute absolutely the need to

resort to the use of force for the protection of the vulnerable. A key

condition was that the use of force must be controlled by interna-

tional law in accordance with the UN Charter:

This is an imperative condition. The breach of law cannot be accepted even

when this, at times, seems to leadunder military aspectsto a disad-

vantage or to hamper the efficiency of the intervention in the short term.

(WCC 2006)

This 2006 report was clear also about the need to distinguish

humanitarian relief from the use of force for humanitarian purposes,

which, in turn, must be distinguished from military war-fighting

objectives.

In 2006, Msgr. Celestino Migliore used the phrase the responsi-

bility to protect to describe that which is essential to the raison

dtre of any state. In other words, he opted to treat state sover-

eignty in these terms (Holy See 2006). Msgr. Migliore closed his

address at the UN on the phenomenon of genocide with the rhe-

torically rousing phrase never again, having just repeated the

growing international consensus that when a country cannot or

does not want to intervene to protect its population, the interna-tional community represented by the UN has not only the right but

the duty to intervene.

Also in 2006, Msgr. Silvano M. Tomasi called for sufficient political

will in the international community to interpret the responsibility to

protect broadly enough in order to prevent the forced displacement of

persons fleeing conflict (Holy See 2006a).

In 2007, Msgr. Celestino Migliore extended the concept in Vatican

usage to mean not only a responsibility to protect citizens, but topromote their welfare especially through legal means (Holy See

2007). In an intervention on the rule of law, he spoke of the need to

pursue debate about juridical codification of peaceful means in order

to promote the rule of law under which sovereignty is not understood

as an absolute right. Of significance here is that Msgr. Migliore links

R2P to the protection of citizens not only from the International

Criminal Court (ICC) provisions against genocide, war crimes, ethnic

cleansing, and crimes against humanity, but more socio-economic

provisions also. This runs counter to UN interpretation of R2P thatpredominated in the Report of the Secretary-General on January 12,

2009 (UN 2009) and is to my mind welcome Msgr Migliores


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Elsewhere, Msgr. Pietro Parolin called for the concept of R2P to apply

also in the context of climate change (Holy See 2007a).

Also in 2007, the WCC repeated theological support for R2P in a

Minute on Darfur: It is in those who are most vulnerable that Christ

becomes visible for us, the Assembly said, The responsibility to

protect the vulnerable reaches far beyond the boundaries of nations

and faith traditions. It is an ecumenical responsibility, conceiving the

world as one household of God (WCC 2007).

This minute prcised UN understanding of R2P at the time, urged

member churches to bring the people of Darfur to the attention of

their governments alongside reference to WCC 9th Assembly policy

on the responsibility to protect, and noted with seeming approval thatUN Security Council Resolution 1706 on Darfur was the first time the

Security Council had referred to the responsibility to protect in a

specific crisis: we recommend that churches request their govern-

ments to pay special attention to its implementation.

In April 2008, His Holiness Benedict XVI commented that the

responsibility to protect

is coming to be recognized as the moral basis for a governments claim to

authority. It is also a feature that naturally appertains to a family, inwhich stronger members take care of weaker ones. This Organization

performs an important service, in the name of the international commu-

nity, by monitoring the extent to which governments fulfil their respon-

sibility to protect their citizens. (Holy See 2008a)

In a meeting with the members of the General Assembly of the UN,

he rooted the concept of the responsibility to protect in ancient

philosophical discourses on governance, notably the ancient concept

of ius gentium as the foundation of every action taken by those in

government with regard to the governed, and cited the Dominican

Friar Francisco de Vitoria who described this responsibility as an

aspect of natural reason shared by all nations (Holy See 2008b).

Explicit reference was made to the capacity of the principle

to evoke the idea of the person as created in the image of the

Creator.

Not until September 2008 does the Vatican voice a strong public word

of caution. In the Address by Msgr. Celestino Migliore to the 63rd

Session of the General Assembly of the UNO, it states:In the past, the language of protection was too often a pretext


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Despite the growing consensus behind the responsibility to protect as a

means for greater cooperation, this principle is still being invoked as a

pretext for the arbitrary use of military might. This distortion is

a continuation of past failed methods and ideas. The use of violence toresolve disagreements is always a failure of vision and a failure of

humanity. The responsibility to protect should not be viewed merely in

terms of military intervention but primarily as the need for the interna-

tional community to come together in the face of crises to find means for fair

and open negotiations, support the moral force of law and search for the

common good. Failure to collectively come together to protect populations at

risk and to prevent arbitrary military interventions would undermine the

moral and practical authority of this Organization. (Holy See 2008)

Here a warning is sounded about the use of violence under the guise of anobjective to protect. Hitherto, the principle of R2P, its component ele-

ments and norms, seems to have provided not only the UN but the

churches with a way of holding together disparate elements of debates

about responding ethically to the humanitarian horrors of the 1990s

(Rwanda, Srebrenica, Racak, and more).

Considerably more critical comment was made on July 23, 2009 by

H. E. Father Miguel dEscoto Brockmann, M.M., President of the 63rd

Session of the United Nations General Assemblyalbeit not in his capac-

ity as ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church (dEscoto 2009).Referring to the silence and inactivity that had shamed much of the world

after the Khmer Rouge killing fields, the massacres in Rwanda, and the

former Yugoslavia, to name just a few, dEscoto opened to question the

best form of response to these horrors. Significantly, he noted the prevail-

ing lack of trust from many developing countries when it comes to the use

of force for humanitarian reasons, and identified four tests for R2P:

(1) Do the rules apply in principle, and is it likely that they will be

applied in practice equally to all nation-states, or, in the nature of

things, is it more likely that the principle will be applied only by thestrong against the weak?

(2) Will adoption of the R2P principle more likely enhance or under-

mine respect for international law?

(3) Is the doctrine of R2P necessary and, conversely, does it guarantee

that states will intervene to prevent another Rwanda?1

(4) Do we have the capacity to enforce accountability upon those who

might abuse the right that R2P would give nation-states to resortto the use of force against other states?


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Here, at last, we find adequately tough, critical attention to the moral and

political hazards associated political agenda to require potential interven-

ers to be proactive in the use of force. DEscotos speech represents, to my

mind, the kind of critical engagement absent from ecclesial statementsover the previous decade.

This review has shown that the churches were broadly uncritical in

welcoming the R2P doctrine even though it moved debate about the use of

force toward the requiring of states to be proactive militarily rather than

reactive. Between September 2003 and September 2008, the Vatican and

WCC both accepted and used the new doctrine called R2P as a way of

expressing that the world could no longer remain inactive in the face of

massive human suffering, waiting until the crisis spilled across borders or

posed a more conventional threat to international peace and security. Thenotion of R2P was deemed to resonate favorably with many of the

impulses of Christianity: it directed attention to the vulnerable, affirmed

the dignity of every person created in Gods image; shifted the focus of

debate from the rights of sovereignty to the responsibilities of sovereignty

and rights of the civilian population; had features that appertained

naturally to a family in which stronger members take care of weaker ones;

and had roots in ancient and traditional teaching with respect to ius

gentium. The remainder of this essay examines further some of the

reasons why the churches welcomed the emerging R2P norm, and seeksmore constructive engagement with the orientation of traditional Chris-

tian teaching toward limiting the use of force.

2. R2P and Limiting the Use of Force

I have suggested that the churches neglected to exercise an adequately

strong ministry of ideology critique between September 2003 and Sep-

tember 2008 with respect to R2P. The following substantiates this sug-

gestion by pointing out that militarized aid often has often, in practice,given offending governments spurious humanitarian credentials or

become a component of counter insurgency. With Paul Ramsey in his 1965

essay The Ethics of Intervention, I accept that militarized intervention

may be a necessary evil. Ramsey lamented the moral short-comings of

sitting and watching while humanitarian crises unfold.2 Like Ramsey, we

must keep in view that principled inactivity fails to judge and act wisely

2 This essay is perhaps the most well-known and substantive engagement in the last fifty

years with the question of intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state; it addressed directlythose impressed only by the immorality and probably ineffectiveness of interventionary

action asking such people to sensitize their conscience to the immorality and probably


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in the face of wrongdoing.3 I also accept that some militarized interven-

tions on humanitarian grounds have been pacifistic. So, for instance, the

Nigerian-led UN and British intervention in Sierra Leone, notably Opera-

tion Palliser, is accepted widely as hastening a ceasefire and restoring acivilian government to power in 2000. Even so, strong arguments can be

advanced to the effect that, on balance, the militarization entailed in R2P

has achieved more harm than good.

Regarding intervention in Rwanda and Somalia, for instance, the noted

observer of African politics Alex de Waal concludes:

It is in this context that the call for military intervention has emerged:

ungrounded in a sober and professional appraisal of the situation, unen-

cumbered by demands for accountability, and subject only to the hasty

demand to do something by an array of organizations that have monopo-lized the moral high ground. (de Waal 1995)

In Somalia, the militarization of intervention proved disastrous. In

December 1992, the UN authorized the deployment of 35,000 soldiers in

a U.S.-led mission (UNOSOM II) which ultimately failed in October 1993

when two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Aidids militia.

Mohammed Sahnoun, a co-author of The Responsibility to Protect Report

(ICISS 2001) and head of UNOSOM I in 1992/3 wrote: It is my belief that

if the international community had intervened earlier and more effectivelyin Somalia, much of the catastrophe that has unfolded could have been

avoided (Sahnoun 1994, xiii). A series of missed diplomatic opportunities

allowed a dreadful situation to become horrendous. The imperative to

prevent had not been taken seriously enough politically at an early

enough stage. More recently, the U.S. and Ethiopia intervened in Somalia

early 2007. Within six months almost 6,000 people were dead (OConnell

2007).

It is true that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lobbied for

military intervention by the UN before the doctrine of R2P was formu-lated. Journalist and experienced NGO worker Connor Foley notes: One

of the main arguments from those who supported the UNs military

of intervention differs from the ethics of preemptive and preventive war in that the action to

be undertaken is on behalf of the citizens of a nation other than the nation, or group of nations,

initiating military action. Borrowing J. Warren Smiths working definition drawn from his

study of Augustines De libero Arbitrio and Civitas Dei, intervention may be classed together

with preemptive rather than preventive action. Preemptive war may be understood as action

to protect the innocent from suffering unjustly and preventing the would-be aggressors

carrying out his unjust will (Smith 2007, 147). Preventive measures are those taken becauseof a perceived vulnerability and the threat that might be imagined to arise because of it (Smith

2007 151) Smith understands Augustine to allow the possibility of preemptive though not


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intervention [in SomaliaEDR] in 1992 was that the aid effort was

sustaining a war economy (Foley 2008, 54). The looting of supplies and

murder of five workers pushed CARE to request militarized UN protec-

tion. Oxfam America and other U.S.-based NGOs called publicly formilitary intervention (Foley 2008, 54). NGOs called upon the interna-

tional community for militarized assistance. The resulting realities were

not those that had been sought. De Waal examined the difficulties facing

relief agencies when large amounts of food aid are diverted to militias (de

Waal 1995). The sad truth, he wrote in 1995, is that the huge pouring

of relief aid into Africa for over a decade has contributed to the institu-

tionalization of violence. Hence the supposed need for militarized inter-

vention to support humanitarian work. As Mary Ellen OConnell

concludes, however: R2P may have added to the new acceptability of war(OConnell, 2008).

In Kosovo, militarized humanitarian intervention without adequate

domestic and international legal mechanisms has also been recognized

widely as counter-productive. This is especially noteworthy because the

doctrine of humanitarian intervention began to take shape shortly after

Prime Minister Tony Blairs speech on April 22, 1999 to the Chicago

Economic Club at which he asserted: No one in the West who has seen

what is happening in Kosovo can doubt that NATOs military action is

justified . . . .We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand. . . . Milosevicwill have no veto on the entry of this international force (Blair 1999).

NATOs use of force in Yugoslavia had begun on March 24, 1999. At least

in the short term, the consequence of military intervention was to escalate

the fighting. In the mid-term, 2006 and 2009 Reports from Minority

Rights Group International express repeated concern about a manifold of

matters, not least too little capacity under the international missions

legal accountability for the protection of minoritiesBosnians, Croats,

Gorani, Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptians (Stevens 2009, 6). Despite Blairs

optimism, there has been an appalling failure of the UN Mission inKosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) to turn the

rhetoric of military-backed humanitarian intervention into beneficial

results.

In venturing to speak about R2P, the churches were faced with extraor-

dinarily weighty and complex matters concerning the extent to which the

warning against principled inactivity must be treated together with

questions about the probability of a good outcome. Three themes are now

pursued: how a changing political context is affecting notions of sover-

eignty; practical and procedural questions about the authority that canapprove or refuse the use of force; and the responsibilities of the most

f l h l d h k d f d


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3. Changing Notions of Sovereignty

Integral to R2P is a reconceptualization of political sovereignty in terms

of responsibility rather than control, and in a manner that reflectsbroadening conceptions of human rights standards amongst the interna-

tional community. Recognizing the shift entailed in this reconceptualiza-

tion is important if we are to assess the moral claim associated with R2P

that people are more important than state sovereignty, and the question

of whether moral benefits associated with this shift blinded the churches

to how the doctrine was contributing to a new militarism rather than the

limitation of force. The shift is away from sovereignty conceived as an

attribute of military power or legal standing or the locus of decisive

political power, and toward a definition subject to a variety of transsov-ereign problems and responsibilities that cross borders and entail what

cosmopolitans call transnational citizenship (Ieda 2006).

The import of this shift may be illustrated by means of a comparison

between Ramseys engagement with notions of sovereignty in the 1950s

and 1960s, and more recent accounts. Ramsey engaged with versions of

modern or post-Westphalian doctrines of sovereignty (Ramsey 1950, 384).

He spoke of national sovereignty as that which locates the cause of justice

among the rights and duties of states unless and until supplanted by

superior government (Ramsey 1968, 20). In an essay on human rights inBasic Christian Ethics, he contrasts biblical notions of Israels obligation

to God and Hugo Grotiuss success in putting sovereignty under the

concept of natural right (Ramsey 1950, 383; referencing Grotius 1738, Bk

II, chap. xxii, sec. xi, 478). Here, says Ramsey, is the heart of the modern,

Hobbesian notion of contracted sovereignty whereby the people retain no

rights of a governing kind (Ramsey 1950, 383, emphasis in original). A

footnote expounds differences between Grotius, Rousseau, and Hobbes

regarding personal liberty in relation to sovereignty. Similarly, in The Just

War, he refers to the inherent attributes of national sovereignty supposedin Pacem in Terris and to the preferability of resolving disputes between

nations by diplomacy not arms (Ramsey, 1968, 192). Albeit alert to the

differences between these modern theorists, his discussion of sovereignty

is framed by them. In other words, Ramsey supposed the familiar range

of modern conceptions of sovereignty as attributes that embody force,

dominance, legal superiority, etc., and which weigh against intervention.

In the emerging doctrine of R2P, concepts of sovereignty such as those

supposed by Ramsey are portrayed as increasingly problematic for many

and complex reasons. R2P catches a drift in international relations towardtranssovereignty and a critique of methodological nationalism which

k f h h h d d d ll


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Concept of Suspended Sovereignty (Yannis 2002), Justice without Borders

(Tan 2004), Negotiating Sovereignty and Human Rights (Sibylle 2009),

and the like. Many, though not all, are written by the so-called new

cosmopolitans who contend typically that Immanuel Kants formulation ofthe universalistic character of right, universal history, perpetual peace,

and cosmopolitan justice, can be reconstructed in our own time as a

corrective to post-Westphalian nationalism (Fine 2008, 4). They challenge

not only methodological nationalism but the related realist school of

international relations which contends that there is no legal authority

beyond the plurality of nation states. This interest in transsovereignty is

fuelled by a variety of political and economic factors, notably the entrench-

ment of human rights in international law, transborder flows of people,

commodities, knowledge, viruses, the global scope of media institutions,terrorism, and how environmental concerns are exposing the interdepen-

dence of nation-states. Of interest for our purposes is why and how the

relatively uncritical acceptance by the churches of R2P is due, at least in

part, to the welcome aspects of this renewal of interest in the concept of

sovereignty.

Problems arising from diverse modern, politico-philosophical definitions

of sovereignty have long been recognized by political theologians. Most

notable is the analogy between state sovereignty and sovereignty of the

self understood in terms of an individualistic account of the will. So forinstance, John Lockes response to Robert Filmers tracing of political

authority back to Adams personal and paternal power associates political

sovereignty with an anthropology that begins from the conatus or the

individuals will to live. Locke constructs from this mighty power in

Adam theories of the human essence cast in terms of sovereignty over

self, children, labor and property (Locke 1690/1988, First Treatise sec. 10,

148). The theologico-moral problem is that when Adams dominion or

sovereignty is treated as a faculty rather than a call to answerability

before God, it becomes a matter of masterywhether of the passions,ones property, or the state. There is a kinship between this problematic

anthropology and political theories of sovereignty. Hence Oliver

ODonovans observation that Augustine managed altogether without

what was later called a theory of sovereignty (ODonovan 2008, 4). To the

extent that modern definitions of sovereignty are essentially about

mastery, they are fundamentally at odds with the ordered love of the

Civitas Dei and the ordering of natural law within divine providence. The

conceptual basis is radically different.4

4A similar point is made in John Milbanks essay Christ the Exception which describes


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The attraction of the reconceptualization of sovereignty associated with

R2P is clear. Sovereignty, says the ICISS Report, is not about the unlim-

ited power of a state to do what it wants to its own people but implies a

dual responsibility: externallyto respect the sovereignty of other states,and internally, to respect the dignity and basic rights of all the people

within the state (ICISS 2001, 78). Sovereignty is no longer a Westpha-

lian concept that signifies the legal identity of a state in international law

but recharacterized from sovereignty as control to sovereignty as respon-

sibility in both internal functions and external duties (ICISS 2001, 13).

This rethinking is said to have a threefold significance:

First, it implies that the state authorities are responsible for the functions

of protecting the safety and lives of citizens and promotion of their welfare.

Secondly, it suggests that the national political authorities are responsible to

the citizens internally and to the international community through the UN.

And thirdly, it means that the agents of state are responsible for their

actions; that is to say, they are accountable for their acts of commission and

omission. (ICISS 2001, 13)

Sovereignty is cast in explicitly moral terms as responsibility for the

human security of citizens, that is, for economic development, universal

education, good governance, political inclusion, fair trade, promoting

confidence in public institutions, etc. All this offers opportunities for

constructive engagement on the international scene. Hence the churches

enthusiasm to conceive of sovereignty in terms of responsibility. The R2P

reconceptualization proposes a new interpretation of sovereignty that

reflects the broadening of the concept of human rights, long advocated by

the churches, and leaves behind the main conceptual links between these

late modern, political definitions of sovereignty that are problematic for a

variety of reasons.

R2P could thus be welcomed by the churches as directing aspects of the

modern discourse back toward questions of rightness (iustitia) in earthly

governance, and the measures required to curtail the corruption of human

nature. A strong ethic of prevention was deemed to resonate with biblical

teaching about obligations to widows, aliens, the poor, orphans, the

afflicted and the needy (Exodus 22:2026; Isaiah 1:17; Psalms 82). Indeed,

these passages were cited by Konrad Raiser, former General Secretary of

the WCC, in the book entitled The Responsibility to Protect: Ethical and

Theological Reflections (2005). The responsibility to protect, writes Raiser,

must never pretend to provide security for all. Yet acute threats to human

somehow reflecting the divine essence construed as power that cannot bind itself (Milbank

2001) Agamben does not of course allow that the limits to human sovereignty remain


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security call UN member states to account. Care must be taken to

minimize the risk of escalation, protect places of religious significance,

and strengthen legitimate authorities and the rule of law. These consid-

erations regarding an ethic of protection should ultimately find expressionin new norms to be incorporated into the framework of international law

(WCC 2005, 16). Within this constraint, however, Raiser gives broad

support to the development of the doctrine and its entrenchment in UN

policy. R2P was deemed to offer a way of asking afresh the question of

human government in relation to Christs lordship of earthly powers. For

those still struggling with why many Christians remained silent when the

Nazi regime took over the church in the early 1930s, and for others, R2P

was potentially a catalyst for bringing together the forces of good will.

No one can see with the clarity of hindsight when looking ahead. Evenso, to have signed-up to R2P without some attempt to assess the

militarization of humanitarian invention in Somalia and Rwanda, Bosnia

Herzegovina and Kosovo, and elsewhere, now seems rather too much like

heeding only one aspect of the truth; a triumph of optimism over experi-

ence. Mindful of Ramseys lament against the moral short-comings of

sitting and watching whilst humanitarian crises unfold, it is important to

note also his test of seeking the whole truth. He states his test as

follows: [i]f the churches presume to address any word to them, it must

be the whole truth, and not merely a corrective piece of it (Ramsey 1968,24). My concern in this essay is that difficult questions were largely

unasked and unaddressed by the churches, at least in public, between

September 2003 and September 2008. Where, we must ask, were the

questions about perceptions of R2P from those at the receiving end?

Where was the concern that a new customary rule should not develop in

international law to legitimize unilateral or regional organization inter-

vention? Where were questions about the widening of the legal grounds on

which force may be used against states thereby risking the emergence of

a new culture of violence under the guise of church-blessed moral accept-ability? What about empirical investigations into whether, on balance,

military intervention for humanitarian purposes more often does harm

than good? What about evidence to the effect that, since 2001, there has

been a frequent merging of humanitarian intervention with broader

security concerns and political agendas? What about the concern that the

R2P doctrine, at least in its dominant interpretations, is locked into a

particular human rights discourse and promotion of Western liberal

values that Christian people might want to question? Where are questions

about the correlation between acceptance of R2P and a new acceptabilityof war? The churches do not seem to have seen beyond the welcome

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4. On the Identity of the Authority that CanApprove Intervention

Few member states condemned NATO for violating international law

after the decision to use force in Yugoslavia in 1999, and fundamental

values underpinning the legitimate authority of the United Nations Secu-

rity Council (UNSC) remain broadly recognized. Yet few since the Kosovo

conflict have supported the argument that NATO and other regional

security organizations are no longer bound by the requirements of UNSC

authorization (OConnell 2000, 88). The Outcome Document of the 2005

World Summit reiterated the importance of promoting and strengthening

the multilateral process and of addressing international challenges and

problems by strictly abiding by the Charter and the principles of inter-

national law, and further stress our commitment to multilateralism

(United Nations General Assembly 2005). Section 79 states:

We reaffirm that the relevant provisions of the Charter are sufficient to

address the full range of threats to international peace and security. We

further reaffirm the authority of the Security Council to mandate coercive

action to maintain and restore international peace and security. We stress

the importance of acting in accordance with the purposes and principles of

the Charter.

Gareth Evans has emphasized that the ICISS did not see its work astrying to find alternatives to the legal authority of the UN Security

Council but rather to make it work better (Evans 2008, 43). This, in

contrast to Blairs April 1999 speech to the Chicago Economic Club which

noticeably omitted legitimate authority, that is, approval by the UNSC,

from his list of five basic considerations.5 Evanss multilateralism helps to

close the gap that Blair attempted to introduce between law and morality,

that is, between the militarized pursuance of humanitarian goals and

their UNSC authorization. Even so, NATOs decision to use force in

Yugoslavia raised questions about the identity of the authority that canapprove intervention.

The legality or otherwise of the NATO authorization of force in Yugo-

slavia has been debated in detail.6 Some have (correctly, to my mind)

5Blair listed right cause (are we sure of our case?); last resort (have we exhausted all

diplomatic options?); probability of success (are there military options we can sensibly and

prudently undertake?); long-term commitment; and national interest (The mass expulsion

of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo demanded the notice of the rest of the world. But it does

make a difference that this is taking place in such a combustible part of Europe). Citationsin parentheses are found in Blair 1999.

6Security Council resolution 1199 (1998) affirmed that the deterioration of the situation


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regarded the bypassing of right authority as troubling. Father Miguel

dEscoto Brockmann spoke of the extent to which some great powers have

recently avoided the strictures of the Charter in resorting to the use of

force, and have gone out of their way to denigrate international law(dEscoto 2009). DEscoto spoke of self-appointed saviours who arrogate to

themselves the right to intervene with impunity in the name of overcom-

ing nation-state impunity. His idiom is inflammatory. Nevertheless, that

some member states bypassed the Security Council is insufficient reason

to suppose that the principle no long holds, or that the principles of the

UN Charter now apply directly to NATO and its members.

DEscoto is surely correct that bypassing of the principle of right

authority should be resisted. Yet the temptation is to freeze political

discourse into dismal prospects for reform of the Security Council versusthe need to provide security for all peoples in dire humanitarian need, or

at risk of becoming caught up in non-international armed conflicts. The

temptation to allow this opposition may be illustrated with further ref-

erence to Ramseys essay The Ethics of Intervention. The choice, said

Ramsey in 1965, is to side with the Charter and try to strengthen the UN,

or for the smaller nations to rally in an effort to prevent the UN forum

remaining an ancillary of luxuriant nationalism (Ramsey 1968, 26).

Ramsey wrote to a predominantly American audience where the prospect

of reform of the veto was unlikely to have been welcome and weighed thebalance of interests question regarding intervention in full awareness of

the problem with the veto. Until higher authorities in the government of

mankind are organized, resolute and powerful, he writes the responsi-

bilities of national statesmen in our structurally defective international

order must still include possible resort to intervention (Ramsey 1968, 25).

Ramseys 1965 essay rehearsed with remarkable prescience many of

the arguments that have been in play since the NATO use of force in

Yugoslavia. Theoretically, said Ramsey, the principle of state sovereignty

in the world community contains within itself at least the possibility ofintervention: even the principle of non-intervention contains an implied

right to intervene to bring protective retribution upon any violation

of . . . policy, and to restore the system of non-interventionary states by

deterring future non-compliance (Ramsey 1968, 25). This is not readily

accepted because we have not properly analyzed the meaning of a

commitment to non-intervention as a political promise (emphasis in

original). In other words, the system of non-intervention rests in the

international community upon states claiming the right to be imperme-

able. Deterrence rests upon at least the possibility of interventiontheproblem being that the people of the world lose out when permanent


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members of the Security Council exercise their veto thereby putting a stop

to interventionary measures that could correct threats and dangers to

peace: the Assembly seems not to be an organ capable of the radical sort

of decision-making this would require (Ramsey 1968, 26). Toward the endof The Ethics of Intervention essay, Ramsey pulls back from the seem-

ingly wide-open range of possibilities for intervention presented to the

statesperson. His discussion of penultimate justifications of interven-

tions comprises a case-study type consideration of two justifications of

intervention: counter-intervention and intervention by invitation (Ramsey

1968, 3338). Nothing in his exposition prohibits in theory unilateral or

regional action inconsistent with the UN Charter if justice and order

require it. Nor would anything in Ramseys discursus necessarily have

required member States to accept that such action was exceptional andshould have no bearing on the future need for Security Council authori-

zation.7 Indeed, some sections of the essay read as though they could have

been written as a briefing for Tony Blairs April 1999 speech to the

Chicago Economic Club, and also for The Responsibility to Protect Report

(ICISS 2001), which proposed a significant departure from the UN

Charter in its claim that subsequent authorization could be sought from

the Security Council by a regional or sub-regional authority (ICISS 2001,

XIII). Ramsey is resistant to the legalism that does not give the states-

person room to move in an attempt to effect the best available conjunctionof justice and peace, and opts, at the end of the day, for military force. The

question is whether his realism hides a way to unfreeze political discourse

from the dilemma between dismal prospects for reform of the UNSC

versus the need to respond to humanitarian need.

Need for reform of the UNSC is no less urgent today than in 1965. As

Ramsey anticipated, states have not obtained the authorization which

they sought for the use of force. Yet more can be done than merely lament

this impasse. Secretary-General Kofi Annans High-Level Panel on

Threats, Challenges and Change addressed the problem of bypassing theCouncil by inter alia returning to core principles of the just war tradition.

A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. The Report of the

High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change faced up to the

bypassing of the UNSC and acknowledged that the Security Council has

not been very consistent or effective in dealing with humanitarian disas-

7Issues here about the rules governing the use of force by regional organizations are

complex. I draw on OConnell for her discussion of whether NATOs operations since 1992 in

supporting no-fly zones (Resolution 781) and enforcing the embargo (Resolution 787) meant,in effect, that the SC treated NATO as a Chapter VIII organization, that is , as a regional

agency authorized to undertake enforcement action (2000 6267) Her conclusion is that


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ters in Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur,

Sudan, and elsewhere (UN 2004, sec. 201). The Report also endorsed the

emerging norm that the United Nations should exercise a collective

responsibility to protect against genocidal acts or other atrocities andaddressed the issue of the legality of militarized interventions in such

contexts:

The Security Council is fully empowered under Chapter VII of the Charter

of the United Nations to address the full range of security threats with

which States are concerned. The task is not to find alternatives to the

Security Council as a source of authority but to make the Council work

better than it has. (2004, sec. 198)

It acknowledged that the UNSC was far from perfect as an institution butstill provided the means for a global collective security system that is

subject legally to the United Nations Charter. Of particular interest,

however, was that the question of legality of military measures autho-

rized, or not authorized by, the UNSC was addressed explicitly alongside

a relatively detailed exposition of a set of guidelines that should always be

addressed by the UNSC or anyone else involved in such decisions: seri-

ousness of threat, proper purpose, last resort, proportional means, and

balance of consequences.

Of interest is that The Report of the High-level Panel on Threats,Challenges and Change appears to be seeking constructive engagement

with the orientation of traditional just-war thinking about limiting the

use of force. It focuses attention on the principled relation between

military action, the identity of the authority that can approve interven-

tion, and the rule of law. At a time when many politicians and theorists

of international relations were rethinking the rules and questioning the

potential universality of norms and principles, The Report of the High-

level Panel was prepared to reassert key tenets of traditional just war

thinking with respect to the judicial structure of the framework withinwhich an appropriate authority decides upon the use of force.8 This

willingness stands in contrast to Ramseys acceptance in 1965 that when

states do not obtain the authorization sought for the use of force, then the

most powerful nations bear responsibility for quasi police action in the

absence of right or competent authority. When posed as an either/or, he

outlined the possible justifiedness of political and military intervention

(Ramsey 1968, 21). The welcome move in The Report appears to be more

than an exercise in political realism or mere appeal to legal rules that

govern an institutions mediation of social action by means of an agreed


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set of criteria, and more like a reminder that legal validity depends upon

proper justification. Ramsey wrote at a time when the so-called command

theories (J. Bentham and J. Austin) and social convention theories (H.

Kelsen and H. L. A. Hart) were no longer acceptable because, as the directexpression of will, they lacked integration in the politics of the day. Such

theories told us what the law ought to be but tended in their application

towards the amoral, apolitical, and atheoretical. It was not enough to

achieve order by either the force exercised by a sovereign or that implicit

in convention. He also wrote at a time when even secularist conceptions

of natural law were written off by broad sweeps of opinion because of the

plurality of modern conceptions of the good, and when it was no longer

assumed that there was a shared rational foundation for moral and legal

judgment. I remain unconvinced, however, that Ramsey can help usfurther in finding a path between, on the one hand, the new militarization

that has accompanied the early years of the new R2P doctrine and, on the

other, an absolute prohibition on intervention in a states internal affairs,

because his theology of natural law reasoning was not sufficiently devel-

oped. More hopeful is that The Report of the High-level Panel on Threats,

Challenges and Change indicates openness to the possibility that

reworked accounts of natural law reasoning are necessary once more in

jurisprudential debate about right authority.

5. R2P and the Protection of Human Rights

The emerging doctrine of R2P is associated closely with respect for

human rights and promoting confidence in legal institutions that protect

human rights. Of foundational significance in the 2001 ICISS Report The

Responsibility to Protect was the role of human rights obligations: specific

legal obligations under human rights and human protection declarations,

covenants and treaties, international humanitarian law and national law

(ICISS 2001, XI). The Report recounts inter alia how international orga-nizations, civil society activists and NGOs use international human rights

norms and instruments as reference points against which to judge state

conduct (ICISS 2001, 14). The 2009 Report of the Secretary-General

Implementing the Responsibility to Protect has lengthy sections on the

monitoring of human rights and humanitarian norms, education and

advocacy.

At issue in this section is the nature of appeal to legal human rights

obligations in the doctrine. My concern is that the R2P doctrineat

least in its dominant interpretationshas been locked into a particularhuman rights discourse that Christians and others might want to ques-

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overwhelmingly to a secularizing agenda progressively at odds with

older Christian traditions of political right (Reed 2007). Yet the question

of how the U.S./NATO should lend its weight on the international stage

in the name of human rights protection remains of high importance.Some kinds of human rights ideology undermine rather than support

universality claims for human rights and damage prospects for the sus-

tainability of human rights regimes in the twenty-first century. Politi-

cally, it can be argued, for instance, that the UN Mission in Kosovo

(UNMIK) and the NATO-led Kovoso Force (KFOR) were too optimistic

in assuming that the adoption of minority rights standards under inter-

national law would not only be possible but would transform political

practice. As Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim has said about religious minori-

ties under Islamic Law: It takes more than normative formulation interms of positive law, even in the domestic context, to achieve compli-

ance (An-Naim 1987, 3).

Consider briefly the failure of UNMIK and KFOR to turn the

rhetoric of protecting minority rights into reality. This is especially note-

worthy because the so-called doctrine of humanitarian intervention

began to take shape shortly after Prime Minister Tony Blairs speech on

April 22, 1999 to the Chicago Economic Club (Blair 1999). In the short

term, the consequence of military intervention was to escalate the fight-

ing. In the mid-term, 2006 and 2009 Reports from Minority RightsGroup International expressed repeated concern about little capacity

under the international missions legal accountability for the protection

of minorities. According to Clive Baldwins report Minority Rights in

Kosovo under International Rule (2006), written for Minority Rights

Group International, an NGO working to secure rights for minorities

and indigenous peoples worldwide, reasons for concern politically

clustered around:

such broad reference to minority rights that the term becomes too

unwieldy to be effective;

casual appeal to minority rights in situations of ethnic conflict

readily leads to segregation rather than integration;

the prioritizing of minority rights used to justify the problematic

overturning of other legal standards; for example, Regulation 2000/47

On the Status, Privileges and Immunities of KFOR and UNMIK and

Their Personnel used, in effect, to allow detention without the order

of a judge. (Baldwin 2006, 36, 26)

More recently, the May 2009 Report from Minority Rights Group Inter-

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Egyptians. From having been a people in need of international protection,

the new Kosovo state is now reportedly failing to protect minority rights

within its newly proclaimed independence:

In the new Kosovo state, smaller minorities suffer from lack of access to

information or tertiary education in their own languages, and discrimina-

tion due to association with the former Serbian majority. Together with a

bad economy, these conditions mean that many members of minority

communities are now leaving the new Kosovo altogether. Unless reversed,

this trend will see the steady migration of minority groups who have

other states to migrate to, such as Bosniaks and Turks, who have lived

in Kosovo for hundreds of years. For Ashkali, Gorani and Roma, who have

no such options of escape, these trends are likely to lead to ingrained

poverty and further marginalization for generations to come. (Stevens2009, 6)

The report analyzes the shortcomings of legal protections for minorities

under the pre-independence UNMIK international protectorate and under

the post-independence Constitution. The focus is on the rule of law,

political participation and, crucially, on international accountability with

respect to minority rights. The concern in these MRGI reports is that

minority rights are not discussed in abstraction from implementation of

the rule of law. They discuss in some detail the effects of the absence of

effective remedy for human rights abuses before and during the transfer

from UNMIK protection to the implementation of the Ahtissari Plan by

the International Civilian Office (ICO) and the European Union Rule of

Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX). The message that comes through loud

and clear is that, in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic context, high-

minded and quasi-philosophical abstract talk about minority rights

without adequate domestic and international legal mechanisms has been

counter-productive.9

9Debate about how globalization has affected human rights thinking has been ongoing

within the Journal of Religious Ethics for nearly two decades. Preston N. Williams warned

in 1995 about the need to be watchful for Western biases in human rights discourse and

mindful because no talk about human rights is self-evidently neutral (Williams 1995, 324).

The counter-position, that is, the autonomy of human rights vis--vis religion, was argued

later by Louis Henkin (1998). David Littles review of human rights literature for the Spring

1999 issue questioned the plausibility of Abdullahi An-Naims resistance to cultural rela-

tivism combined with critique of the assumed universality of rights discourse but heightened

sensitivity with respect to his concerns (Little 1999). In both 1998 and 2004, Sumner Twiss

laid out the hermeneutical options available to theorists seeking intra- and cross-culturalunderstanding, with a view to understanding the impact of globalization on the politics and

philosophy of human rights (Twiss 1998; 2004) He highlighted the need for practical wisdom


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Many things are needed where massive violations continue to occur. It

is necessary both to deny violators the pretext of claiming that they need

not act in conformity with human rights standards because they are alien

to their own cultural standards, and to advance the politics of humanrights in a religiously and otherwise plural world. An underlying problem

is also that no normative system of morality and political accountability

is culturally neutral; all normative systems are the product somehow of

contextual specificities (An-Naim 2000, ix-xiv, 132, see especially 3).

Even the language of human rights is not neutral. Kosovo shouts to us

that this was not adequately recognized. The following caption from J. B.

Handelsman New Yorker cartoon illustrates the kind of point that I am

attempting to make. The cartoon shows one iron-age, tunic-clad man

being clubbed by another (Handelsman 1998). The caption reads: AndCain rose up against Abel and violated his civil rights. The cartoon is

funny because of the cultural and contextual adjustment that the reader

is asked to make. Expected associations invoked in everyday, twenty-first-

century talk about human rights are frustrated and unusual associations

invited.

As cultural critic Mikhail M. Bakhtin reminds readers that we can

never find a word in its virginal state; any word is always-already

imbued with the evaluations and perceptions of others (Bakhtin 1963/

1984, 231). Whether used of Cain killing Abel or the Cambodian genocideof 19751979, the language of human rights cannot be employed as if we

were a primordial Adam or Eve. Nor can the language of human rights

ever grasp the entirety of the event but represents only some aspects to

the neglect of others. Bakhtin, Bloch, Gramsci, Adorno, and other major

twentieth-century analysts of ideology interpreted neglect of this reality

with respect to language as a fundamental form of injustice. We must of

course use words, concepts and identifications in order to talk or think

about anything. The point here is not to reject conceptual identification of

the injustice suffered by the Cambodians and so many others as violationsof human rights, but to call attention to the shortcomings of many

attempts to shake the a priori universality of human rights into the

partiality of culturally-shaped positive law. The problem is forgetfulness of

the blind spots of all representational thinking, and neglect of how the

supposed achieving of unity and identity in language can suppress or

ignore different understandings of the object in question.

The ICISS Report is, to my mind, a good example of this forgetfulness

of what John Gray calls standard or conventional liberal thought which

supposes human rights norms to be rationally derived and thereforeinsulated from those incommensurabilities that arise within and among

l G ff l h l l


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rights theorists are not keeping up with these developments, and that

there is need for Christians to contribute to this debate. Drafters of the

UNDHR were silent in the Declaration on matters of faith and philosophy.

More recently, theorists such as Michael Ignatieff have urged thoseworking with human rights to maintain this deliberate silence with

respect to substantive beliefs. A thin (describing only the rights them-

selves) rather than thick (contextualizing rights in the religious, cul-

tural, economic and other complexes of a given society) approach is

preferable, he argues, because it tends to keep human rights instruments

out of political debates about the relation of rights to traditional, religious

and authoritarian sources of power (Ignatieff 2003, 76). Significant here is

that Ignatieff was one of the human rights specialists on the ICISS when

it was launched in 2000. He was, says Gareth Evans, particularly closelyengaged with the co-chairs along with Ramesh Thakur. No surprise,

therefore, that the ICISS Report is characterized by the core values of

liberalism: individualism, egalitarianism universalism, and meliorismto

borrow Grays summary (Gray 1995, 200). The Report represents some-

thing of a low point in this non-sustainable approach to human rights

discourse in the twenty-first century.

6. Conclusion

This essay has attempted to identify some of the most pressing ques-

tions around the emerging doctrine of R2P, especially those relating to

when and why the churches failed to discern moral hazard. There is no

doubt that the Church must continue to stand alongside people in times

of oppression, injustice, attack, and subjugation. Worryingly absent from

the churches support for R2P between September 2003 and September

2008, however, were difficult questions about the merging of humanitar-

ian intervention with security and other political agendas, the acceptabil-

ity of violence that has increasingly accompanied R2P, the fact that

militarized humanitarian aid has often worsened situations of conflict

rather than hastened their resolution, how the ideology of human rights

norms functions in the doctrine developing around R2P, and more.

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