Is the UN's Responsibility to Protect good in principle/bad in practice, bad/bad, good/good?

[pampango]

R2P was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005 and by the Security Council in 2006. The first attempt by the UNSC to use it was against Burma military junta's crackdown in 2007, but this was vetoed by both China and Russia and went no where. There has been no subsequent formal attempt to use it until now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect

The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP or R2P) is a norm or set of principles based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege, but a responsibility. RtoP focuses on preventing and halting four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.<1> The responsibility to protect can be thought of as having three parts.

1. A State has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing (mass atrocities).
2. If the State is unable to protect its population on its own, the international community has a responsibility to assist the state by building its capacity. This can mean building early-warning capabilities, mediating conflicts between political parties, strengthening the security sector, mobilizing standby forces, and many other actions.
3. If a State is manifestly failing to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures are not working, the international community has the responsibility to intervene at first diplomatically, then more coercively, and as a last resort, with military force.http://www.who.int/hiv/universalaccess2010/worldsummit.pdf"><2>

Threshold for military interventions

According to the International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) Report in 2001, any form of a military intervention initiated under the premise of responsibility to protect must fulfill the following six criteria in order to be justified as an extraordinary measure of intervention:

Just Cause
Right Intention
Final Resort
Legitimate Authority
Proportional Means
Reasonable Prospect

Criticisms

RtoP and National Sovereignty: One of the main concerns surround RtoP is that it infringes upon national sovereignty.

RtoP Scope too Narrow: The scope of RtoP is often questioned. The concern is whether RtoP should apply to more than the four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

Use of Military Intervention: The question of military intervention under the third pillar of RtoP remains controversial. Several states have argued that RtoP should not allow the international community to intervene militarily on States, because to do so is an infringement upon sovereignty. Others argue that this a necessary facet of RtoP, and is necessary as a last resort to stop mass atrocities. A related argument surrounds the question as to whether more specific criteria should be developed to determine when the Security Council should authorize military intervention.

There are other pros and cons at the R2P's wiki site.

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. There' no choice for the majority DU position....

...it's good in theory, good in practice, and good enough to use today -- by somebody else.

Checkbook pacifism.

[pampango]

2. Hadn't thought of that as an option.

Now that you mention it, there have been some posts along the lines of "R2P is good policy, needs to be done, but let someone else (Arab League, Europeans, African Union, etc.) do it."

I think such an opinion would fit into option 2 or 3 depending on whether the responder thought that the implementation of the policy war repairable or hopeless.

[Catherina]

3. Other. The reasons of the most powerful ones are always right

The historical record is worth recalling when we hear R2P or its cousin
described as an “emerging norm” in international affairs. They have been
considered a norm as far back as we want to go. The founding of this
country is an example. In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted
its Charter by the King, stating that rescuing the natives from their bitter
pagan fate is “the principal end of this plantation.” The Great Seal of the
Colony depicts an Indian saying “Come Over and Help Us.” The English
colonists were thus fulfilling their responsibility to protect as they proceeded
to “extirpate” and “exterminate” the natives, in their words – and for their
own good, their honored successors explained. In 1630, John Winthrop
delivered his famous sermon depicting the new nation “ordained by God” as
“a city on a hill,” inspirational rhetoric that is regularly invoked to this day to2
justify any crime as at worst a “deviation” from the noble mission of
responsibility to protect.


Excerpt from Statement by Professor Noam Chomsky to the United Nations General
Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect
United Nations, New York 23 July 2009
http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/protect/noam.pdf

Rec'd




"The strongest reason is always the best."