Norms of protection in IR: humanitarian wars and the ironic creation of pre-Westphalian states

Abstract

ABSTRACT Humanitarian interventions and state sovereignty are hard to reconcile and have long been regarded as mutually exclusive. Disciplinary approaches dedicated to their relation focus on a changing meaning of sovereignty, no longer understood as absolute power within a delimited territory, but rather as responsibility. This article argues that two ideas of sovereignty clash in instances of humanitarian intervention. This normative and conceptual overlaying has the ironic result of a sovereignty void. The process of delegitimizing absolute sovereignty happens by constructing legitimacy around norms of protection. After the existing sovereign structure is delegitimized we temporarily witness a ‘before the state' political intermezzo. Until a new organisational unit is settled, these temporarily ‘widowed’ sovereignties can be regarded as pre-Westphalian arrangements, about to morph into states. In the process of restructuring the state, there are three types of arrangements that result when the new authority is installed – (1) a new state, by coupling a new authority with a new territorial delineation, (2) a new authority structure over the same territory or (3) status-quo exits. Humanitarian interventions since the nineteenth century until R2P are analyzed, looking for evidence provided in the documents preceding intervention – like protocols, treaties and resolutions concluded by the intervening powers.