History in Motion
Responsibility While Protecting
Gareth Evans
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NEW YORK – Ten months ago, the United Nations Security Council, with no dissent, authorized the use of “all necessary measures” to protect civilians at imminent risk of massacre in Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libya. Those lives were saved – and, if the Security Council had acted equally decisively and robustly in the 1990’s, so might those of 8,000 others in Srebrenica and 800,000 in Rwanda.
I and many others hailed the agreement to intervene in Libya as the coming of age of the responsibility to protect (“R2P”) principle, unanimously embraced by the world’s governments in 2005. Its core idea – countering centuries of treating sovereignty almost as a license to kill – is that states must protect their own people from genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. If they manifestly fail to do so, the international community has the responsibility to act – by persuasion, if possible, and by coercion, if necessary.
Now, ten months later, the Security Council is paralyzed over Syria, unable to agree not only on the extreme step of military force, but even on lesser coercive measures like targeted sanctions, an arms embargo, or referral to the International Criminal Court. That inaction comes despite a death toll of well over 5,000 and an outlook even worse than in Libya early last year.
The hesitation partly reflects the very different geopolitics of the Syrian crisis: potentially explosive regional sectarian divisions, no Arab League unanimity in favor of tough action, a long Russian commitment to the Assad regime, and a strong Syrian army, which would make any conceivable military intervention difficult and bloody.
But there is more to it than that. Security Council consensus about when and how to apply R2P, so evident in February and March 2011, has evaporated in a welter of recrimination about how the NATO-led implementation of the Council’s Libya mandate “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack” was carried out.
Leading the critical charge have been the “BRICS” (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Their complaints are not about the initial military response – destroying the Libyan air force’s infrastructure, and air attacks on ground forces advancing on Benghazi. Rather, they object to what came after, when it rapidly became apparent that the three permanent Security Council’s members driving the intervention (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) would settle for nothing less than regime change, and do whatever it took to achieve it.
In particular, concerns have been raised that the interveners rejected ceasefire offers that may have been serious, struck fleeing personnel who posed no immediate risk to civilians, and attacked locations that had no obvious military significance (like the compound in which Qaddafi’s relatives were killed). More generally, the Western powers, along with Arab states like Qatar, comprehensively supported the rebel side in what rapidly became a civil war, ignoring an explicit arms embargo in the process.
The US, the UK, and France are quick with some answers. Protecting civilians in areas like Tripoli that were under Qaddafi’s direct control, they argue, required overturning his regime. If one side was supported in a civil war, it was because a regime’s one-sided killing sometimes leads civilians (as in Syria) to take up arms to fight back (and to recruit army defectors). Moreover, military operations cannot be micromanaged with a “1,000-mile screwdriver.” And a more limited “monitor and swoop” concept of operations would have led to a longer and messier conflict in Libya, which would have been politically impossible to sustain in the US and Europe, and likely would have produced many more civilian casualties.
These arguments all have force, but the US, the UK, and France resisted debating them in the Security Council, and other Council members were never given sufficient information to enable them to be evaluated. Maybe not all of the BRICS are to be believed when they say that more common ground could have been achieved had a better process been followed. But the Western powers’ dismissiveness during the Libyan campaign did bruise them – and those bruises will have to heal before any consensus can be expected on tough responses to such situations in the future.
The better news is that a way forward has opened up. In November, Brazil circulated a paper arguing that the R2P concept, as it has evolved so far, needs to be supplemented by a new set of principles and procedures on the theme of “responsibility while protecting” (already being labeled “RWP”). Its two key proposals are a set of criteria (including last resort, proportionality, and balance of consequences) to be taken into account before the Security Council mandates any use of military force, and a monitoring-and-review mechanism to ensure that such mandates’ implementation is seriously debated.
Initial reaction among the US, the UK, and France was almost contemptuous: “These countries would want all of those delaying and spoiling options, wouldn’t they.” But that attitude has begun to soften – as it must. Brazil, for its part, has indicated willingness to refine its proposals to make them more workable and broadly acceptable.
Renewed consensus on how to implement R2P in hard cases may come too late to help in Syria. But everyone understands that the alternative to Security Council cooperation is a return to the bad old days of Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Kosovo: either total inaction in the face of mass atrocity crimes, or action outlawed by the UN Charter. After all that has been achieved in the last decade, such an outcome would be heartbreaking.
Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group, is the author of The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2012.
www.project-syndicate.org
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gamesmith94134 08:42 29 Jan 12
Gamesmsith94134: Iraq’s Politics, Iraq’s Problem
In preparation for the 2010 elections, the Iraqiyya (the Iraqi National Movement) is described as a national party that invites people of all orientations to participate. That vision has great appeal for US and foreigners who want to see a less sectarian-based form of politics in Iraq.
I could have sensed the significance of our Iraqi war removing Saddam while most Iraqis suffered, and most Iraqis tended to build its government based on democracy and freedom from suppression. I think the present Iraqiyya could have made a bad choice in drawing its line between Sunni and Shiite that democracy may not be best of it represents for Iraqis. It chilled my heart with many questions like, what about Kurds and Christians? For much doubts on the status after US troops left and bombs being casted in Iraq these days; it reminded me of Arafat after he sided with the French and talked with Israel and US, Hezbollah and Hamas were at his back; but they did not left him. He is a smart one with a less sectarian-based form of politics. Well it was Fatah kept Palestine alive, and Palestine entered UN to-day.
Through another occasion after US and the nationalist government in Vietnam, Nationalist lost itself to its communists in the north, because US backed nationalists often called puppeteer government instead of transitory one. But, the Communist used the Nationalists to run its government when they are in power. They know democratic society more than Nationalists, and they won. To-day, US and Vietnam are friends again.
It was not a good sign of a democratic government purported with only lesser sectarian-based form of politics that used suppression for freedom. Now, I am really questioning on if “Iraqiyya’s leaders would be well advised to demonstrate more competence in governance rather than inflaming tensions, as Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni hardliner, has been fond of doing by pronouncing Maliki another Saddam. (Shias, even those who dislike Maliki, do not appreciate hearing that from a Sunni.)” Perhaps, Mr. Maliki would learn well of Iraq’s politics that would solve Iraq’s problem and set Iraqis free of suppression and democracy for all Iraqis.
May the Buddha bless you?
gamesmith94134 04:03 13 Feb 12
gamesmith94134: How to set Syria free
I read someone said well in,“Remember : it is better a good dictator than a lousy democracy. For the average person at least and nor for the politicians.”
However, my impression of Syria by the Assad with most democratic rule that tolerated most of the Islamic and western that Shiite, Alawite, Kurdish and Christians can live among the Sunni over the years; and its regime was considered pro-western as compared to other Islamic nations. It always stood up and be counted in the western media whenever a crisis arose in Middle-east. As the Arab Spring brought on its blanket of democracy and freedom, many regimes with changes their leadership, like Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; but uncertainties are clouded with their replacements in the ruling classes or leadership that instability and corruption made their accomplishment questionable.
They are far off the original idea of democracy or freedom; and I may just say each result is less satisfactory just another haircut only. Are these revolutionists attempt to reconstructing their governments in a slap on and slap off manner like a Lego in a child’s play? I certainly did not see democracy or freedom after their restructuring. There were more problems with the confrontation with the parliament with the military in Egypt, Sunni and Shiite civil war in Iraq, and so on. Now, I doubt the choices representatives they made from the start as how the latter governments were formed. Was it the universal rules from the Western culture, or the non-secular portions of Islamic population that made the unity less favorable?
And, other said,” Anyone who is suspected of "pro-Qaddafi" is thrown in concentration camp style detention. We nary hear a beep from the Western media, but ordinary Libyans are left to float in their own plight. The only thing NATO countries care, and the only thing set free, were the oil infrastructures, which were privatized, divided, and to be "freely" controlled by some NATO countries.”
Perhaps, I see the imbalance of security in the region; how did Russian and Chinese veto against the intervention of the Syria’s civil war? Or, they were just not satisfied with the 700 protesters killed based on the genocide standard since there were 20,000 already in the Hamas Massacre, in 1982. Instead, Russian must insist to hold their naval bases in the region just to achieve their foothold to the region whether more protesters will be killed under the ironclad of King Assad. Is it the worst scenario to the region at present if the different views cannot be compromise or to deal with adequate with both sides must settle on the choices of parties to start, or Assad must step down voluntary?
Perhaps, the sanction of oil sale from Iran had already broken by India or China; will the Western Nations be intimidated? It is the round two in term of the imbalance of power, if the pieces of chess are on the board and they must participate or abandon. Will the non-proliferation policy of the nuclear bomb in Iran turn on the US/Russian naval war competition; if Iran do not back down in building the bomb or after Israel takes an initiate hit on Iran?
Are we busy enough on contemplating what is next? I think setting Syria free must take a little time off to cool down and let the French or Chinese to meet the delegations of The Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), under the scrutiny of the Arab Leagues. We must ensure the choice of democracy and freedom are not facetious as many described.
Another civil war in Syria is another genocide we cannot bear. The solution must come from within Syria itself and it must not be ones favorite, whether secular or not. Seriously, restructuring a government is a snap on and snap off Lego game a child plays. People die, genocide and civil war are alike.
May the Buddha bless you?
bkkopp 03:06 28 Jan 12
R2P and RWP are not supposed to be carte blanche to support one party in a civil war. We are compromising the UN if we let them be abused by self-styled French intellectuals, with the upright shirt collar, campaigning French politicians and/or Britisch politishans with a stiff upper lip.