Regional Organizations and the Responsibility to Protect in the Context of the Arab Spring

Abstract

Normative constructions require, it would seem, common interpretation. Surely if interlocutors do not mean the same thing when they talk of crimes against humanity, for instance, or at least perceive themselves to be sharing a common understanding of the subject matter, negotiation and dialogue are unlikely to lead to results. Or is it instead the vagueness and indeterminacy of the terminology that makes it amenable to consensus? In other words, if you begin to clarify concepts and pin down argumentative inconsistencies, will you increase or lower the likelihood of resolving political disputes? Between normativity and concreteness, between constructive and destructive ambiguity, therein lies the complex reality of political practice. The “responsibility to protect” (R2P) is a case in point. Coined by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001, the idea was taken up by the United Nation’s World Summit Outcome Document in 2005, confirmed in UN Security Council (UNSC) Res. 1674, expanded upon in the UN Secretary-General’s (UNSG) Report on the R2P in 2009, and recently “applied” (to an extent) in UNSC Res. 1970 and 1973 on the situation in Libya. In an attempt to offer an alternative to the ill-reputed practice of “humanitarian intervention”, the UN version of the R2P stipulates that states have a primary responsibility to protect individuals on their territories against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and that, in cases where a particular state fails in this task, the responsibility to protect falls onto the international community, acting, in collaboration with regional organizations, through the United Nations. Needless to say, intervention constitutes far more than just the extreme case of military invasion, and entails a whole host of peacemaking, conflict management, capacity-building and other, “non-violent” coercive measures such as targeted sanctions. This was outlined in detail in the 2009 UNSG’s report, which asserted that the international community has a role in providing cooperation and assistance to states in order to strengthen their capacities to fulfil their protection responsibilities. Only in exceptional circumstances, when such capacity-building has failed, should the international community resort to collective (and possibly military) action. Philosophers might be inclined to remark that there are (at least) two different notions of responsibility at play in the R2P “construction”. To use David Miller’s (2007) terminology, the primary responsibility of states can be seen as an instance of outcome responsibility, i.e. the responsibility agents bear for their actions and decisions. The secondary responsibility of the international community, by contrast, would then constitute a case of remedial responsibility, i.e. the responsibility we may have to come to the aid of others who need help. The 2009 UNSG’s report has complicated matters further by stipulating that the international community has a role in capacity-building to assist states in fulfilling their primary protection responsibilities. If that is the case, then the international community may also be the holders of outcome responsibility, which in turn has a bearing on their ability to declare (objectively, from an neutral perspective) that a state has not fulfilled the responsibilities that are taken to be a conditionality criterion for sovereign prerogatives. Such distinctions, however, are generally not part of the political debate, and as Miller (2007: 82) himself laments, “[a]rguments founder as the protagonists slide from one sense of responsibility to another without noticing what they are doing”. Realpolitiker, in turn, will not take long to point out that such normative vocabulary will undoubtedly be applied selectively, prompting the international community to intervene unilaterally (without the consent of the “host” country) only in cases where there are no other “strategic” interests at play or where such strategic interests coincide with normative (moral or legal) recommendations. This view was clearly echoed in 2005 by the US Ambassador to the UN at the time, John Bolton, who asserted that “the responsibility of the other countries in the international community is not of the same character as the responsibility of the host... We do not accept that either the United Nations as a whole, or the Security Council, or individual states, have an obligation to intervene under international law” (cited in Welsh, 2006: 37). Norm entrepreneurs and adherents to global society, by contrast, continue to hope for the swift internalization and consolidation of the R2P by all concerned, echoed in recent initiatives by R2P advocates to move the debate “from principle to practice”. According to this view, interest-driven selectivity is an unfortunate but ultimately temporary phenomenon. Both perspectives, however, generally assume that everyone shares a common understanding of the key terms applied: “intervention”, “responsibility”, “protection”, “sovereignty”. Yet perhaps it is precisely the indeterminacy of such “thick concepts” that mark their traction. Take the term “responsibility” again: already cursory reflections lead to the observation that apparently the nature of responsibility differs from agent to agent, from situation to situation, and is dependent on the perspective from which responsibility claims are identified and the holder of the responsibility is assigned. That is the outsider’s view of the theoretical analysis. For the negotiator or decision-maker, however, responsibility may simply be a term that “feels right”, one that seems to resonate well with contemporary narratives about security, good governance, humanitarianism, climate change, and corporate accountability. Yet when the political stakes are high, calls for responsibility can also constitute an annoyance to some, and a convenient ambiguity to others. Thus, for better or worse, the R2P could be employed to lobby support for intervention in Libya, but not, so far, in Syria, although the recent statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the actions of the Syrian regime constitute crimes against humanity may now push the political discourse into the R2P’s direction. Coherent application – or, dare we say it, responsible use – of the R2P, however, has so far been missing. In a complex political setting in which negotiations take place on multiple levels and in a multitude of forums, conceptual indeterminacy can lead to concrete action in one case (Libya) and to discursive idling and procedural paralysis in the next (Syria). The recent and on-going uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa have once again brought the relationship between the individual and the state to the forefront. At stake is Thomas Hobbes’ basic dialectic between protection and obedience – and the observation that the population is only liable to obey the authorities for as long as the latter protect their basic rights, well-being and human dignity. When this is no longer the case, then the natural right to resistance is evoked, and with it, in today’s globalised world, the apparent “responsibility” on the part of the international community to get involved by not only offering protection to civilians, but even to instigate or support domestic regime change. The R2P articles of the 2005 UN World Summit Outcome Document state that collective action would be taken “in cooperation with the relevant regional organizations”, while the 2009 UNSG report speaks of “collaboration with regional and subregional arrangements”. In the context of the so-called Arab Spring, the most prominent regional organizations involved have, through dint of the geographical location of Libya and Syria, been the League of Arab States and the African Union (AU). Yet intervention has also brought in a second set of regional actors, namely the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which enforced the no-fly zone over Libya, and the European Union (EU), which has imposed a new set of sanctions on Syria. While all these organizations commit their membership to the maintenance of international peace and security, their capacity to resolve crises (both within their own region and elsewhere) varies considerably, as do their respective interests, ambitions and agendas. As a result, they add a further layer of complexity to UN negotiations playing themselves out in the Security Council and General Assembly. In the case of Libya, regional organizations each acted upon different interests and ambitions. It was the League of Arab States that adopted decisions that paved the way for UNSC Res. 1970 and 1973, arguably because it induced China and Russia not to use their veto. The League of Arab States was also instrumental in advocating the use of the R2P vocabulary in the resolutions, although the ultimate texts only mention the (outcome) responsibility of the Libyan state to protect individuals on its territory, and not the (remedial) responsibility of the international community to come to the aid of the Libyan population. The AU, on the other hand, had more difficulties in taking a unanimous stand towards Libya as many African governments had ties to the Gaddafi government. When its leadership took action, pushing for a negotiated outcome, it did so on the basis of organizational turf. The AU wanted to act in its own geographical area and was very upset that the UN seemed to rely on the League of Arab States instead. While to some analysts, UNSC Res. 1973 is thus the closest to an “R2P resolution” as the international community has come (and may, indeed, ever come); to others, its ambiguous and piecemeal application of the R2P is just another reminder of interest-based selectivity, conceptual confusion, and the woes of international regime complexity. In the case of Syria, multilateral diplomacy has so far led to a rather different outcome. Lebanon, the only Arab country on the UNSC, while pushing for a resolution to oust Gaddafi on behalf of the League of Arab States, continued to defend the Syrian government until December 2011, and also abstained from the vote to impose sanctions (both in the UN and in the League of Arab States). Over Libya, members of the League of Arab States had formed a common front; over Syria, there was internal dispute and thus institutional paralysis. With no competition over turf from another regional organization, the League of Arab States has so far refrained from major political steps. And the UN is also paralyzed when it comes to military intervention. China and Russia had accused NATO (which acted on behalf of the Security Council) of mission creep in Libya, and of over-stepping its original mandate of protecting civilians and delivering humanitarian aid. The White House, in turn, issued a Presidential Study Directive in August 2011, which states that the prevention of mass atrocities and genocide is “a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States” (US White House, 2011). For advocates of the R2P, this statement was evidence that the US was institutionalizing R2P into its foreign policy. But both Russia and China have since made it clear that they would veto any resolutions over Syria that invoked the R2P vocabulary. The R2P is an inherently ambiguous normative construction that is being selectively applied in a diffuse policy setting. While the philosopher may anguish over the complexity involved in determining causal chains and actor intentionality, and thus in assigning responsibility to agents, the theoretically-inclined Realpolitiker might simply point out that the R2P is another instance of a means-driven decision-making process. With common goals hazily defined and national interests at stake, negotiators will not construct maximizing policies but will instead assemble policies that suffice from a repertoire of existing policies, processes and legal perspectives. By resorting to notions such as the R2P, we make shortcuts in the way we conceptualize multifaceted issues such as intervention. In doing so, we simplify the decision-making process. Yet the Achilles’ Heel of conceptual ambiguity is the fact that it lends itself to instrumentalization – and thus to interest-based action (or inaction) both now and in the future. The institutional complexity that exists in today’s international realm, with its regional, sub-regional and universal organizations and arrangements, aggravates the issue. The application of the R2P over Libya is a reminder that an overarching concept can achieve consensus in a particular case, yet still carry the seeds of its own limitation for subsequent deliberations.