Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Military Intervention

Yves here. This post describes the framework for international humanitarian military intervention, as in military action to stop genocide, war crimes, crime against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. It explains why no such activity has been launched to save Gazans (the US veto on the UN Security Council). Although there are alternatives to the responsibility to protect authorization, they are subject to abuse and can all too readily intensify internal political rifts, in the end making matters even worse for the inhabitants.

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, Ex-University Professor, Vilnius, Lithuania; Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade, Serbia

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is one of the most important features of the post-Cold War global politics and international relations (IR) regarding the relations between war and politics. It was formalized in 2005, focusing on when the international community (the UN) must intervene for human protection purposes.

The R2P was officially endorsed by the international community by the unanimous decision of the UN General Assembly as a principle at the UN World Summit in 2005. This agreement was regulated in paragraphs 138−140 of the documents of this World Summit. There are three crucial decisions concerning the principle of the R2P:

• Every state is responsible for protecting its population, in general, that means not only the citizens but more broadly all residents living within the territory of the state, from four crimes: a) genocide, b) war crimes, c) crimes against humanity, and d) ethnic cleansing.
• The international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist states for the sake that they will realize their fundamental responsibility to protect their residents from the four crimes defined in the first decision.
• In the case, however, that the state authorities are “manifestly failing” to protect their residents from the four crimes, then the international community has a moral responsibility to take timely and decisive action on a case-by-case basis. In principle, those actions include both coercive and non-coercive measures founded on Chapters VI−VIII of the UN Charter.

The R2P was, for instance, invoked in some 45 Resolutions by the UN SC, like Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on Libya in 2011. Nevertheless, the R2P principle is directly connected with the principle of Responsible Sovereignty, that is, in fact, the idea that a state’s sovereignty is conditional upon how state authorities are treating their own residents, founded on the belief that the state’s authority arises ultimately from sovereign individuals.

As a very complex principle, from the international community’s viewpoint, it is, however, generally accepted that the mainstream consensus is that the R2P is best understood as a multifaceted framework or a complex legal and moral norm that embodies many different but related components.

Regarding this issue, in 2009, the UN Secretary-General divided the R2P into three pillars, which had important traction in the further discourse:

1. Pillar I refers to the domestic responsibilities of states to protect their own residents from the four crimes.
2. Pillar II regards the responsibility of the international community to provide international assistance with the consent of the target state.
3. Pillar III is focusing on „timely and collective response“ in that the international community is taking collective action through the UN SC to protect the people from the four crimes, but without the consent of the target state, i.e., its governmental authorities.

Nevertheless, although states did not formally sign up to this structure of the three-pillar approach, they, however, help distinguish between different forms of the R2P action. Among other examples, international assistance in Mali or South Sudan was provided within the framework of the R2P and the consent of the governments of Mali and South Sudan (reflecting the Pillar II action) but the military intervention in Libya in 2011 was done without the consent of the Libyan government (reflecting the Pillar III operation).

Nonetheless, the widest justification for humanitarian intervention within the internationally recognized legal framework of the R2P is to stop or prevent the genocide that is seen as the worst possible crime against humanity – the “crime of crimes”.

Nevertheless, in practice, it is very difficult to provide a consistent and reliable “just cause” reason for the international humanitarian intervention within the legal framework of the R2P. This is for the very reason that the phenomenon of genocide is usually understood as a deliberate act or even a planned program of mass killings and destruction of the whole human group or a part of it based on ethnic, ideological, political, religious, or similar background. Probably, the most regarded attempt to fix the principles for the international military intervention concerning the R2P is given by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (the ICISS), proposed in 2000 by Canada:

• Large-scale loss of life. It can be, nevertheless, real or propagated, with genocidal intent or not, that is the product of several causes like deliberate military-police action, state neglect or inability to act, or a failed state situation (the so-called „failed/rogue state“) (the 1994 Rwandan genocide, for example).
• Large-scale ethnic cleansing. Actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forcible expulsion, acts of terror, or raping (for instance, the current Palestinian holocaust in Gaza).

Nonetheless, once the criteria for humanitarian intervention are fixed, the next question immediately is on the agenda: Who should decide when the criteria are satisfied? In other words: Who has the “right authority” to authorize military intervention for humanitarian purposes?

From the general point of view, accepted worldwide answer to these questions is that the only UN SC as a global security body is authorized to give “green light” to the international military intervention (what was not done, for instance, in the case of NATO intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 and, therefore, this intervention of 78 days is a pure example of military aggression on the sovereign state). This conclusion reflects, in fact, the UN’s role as the focal source of international law, followed by the UN SC’s responsibility for the protection of international security and peace.

However, one of the crucial problems became that it may be in practice very difficult to obtain the UN SC’s authorization for the military intervention for the very reason that there are five great powers with veto rights (for instance, the USA always used a veto right to bloc any anti-Israeli action by the UN SC). Some of them or all may be more concerned about the issues of global power, their geopolitical or other goals, etc., than they are concerned with real humanitarian concerns.

Nevertheless, the principles on which the R2P idea is founded recognized such problem by requiring that the UN SC’s authorization has to be obtained before the start of any military intervention, but at the same time accepted that alternative options must be available if the UN SC rejects a proposal for the military intervention or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time.

Under the R2P, these possible alternatives are that a proposed humanitarian intervention should be considered by the UN GA in an Emergency Special Session or by a regional or sub-regional organization (for instance, the African Union).

However, in the very practice, for example, NATO was (mis)used in such matters by serving as a military machine that carries out military interventions, like in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 or Afghanistan in 2001, and later in keeping the order in those occupied territories.

From one viewpoint, the value of the R2P is still contested, especially among the theoreticians of global politics and IR. However, its supporters defend the principle of the R2P for the reason of its seven crucial (positive) features:

• The principle is re-conceptualizing the notion of sovereignty for the very reason that it requires that state sovereignty (independence) is, in fact, a moral responsibility rather than a practical right. In other words, the state has to deserve to be treated as a sovereign by maintaining all international duties, including the R2P.
• The principle is focusing on the powerless rather than the powerful people by addressing the rights of the victims to be protected, but not the rights of the state’s authorities to intervene.
• The principle of the R2P is establishing a quite clear red line, as it is identifying four crimes as the signal for international action and intervention if necessary.
• The consensual support for the R2P among states is very significant, as such consensus is helping international understandings of rightful conduct, especially what concerns the issue of the „Just War“ in the case of the international military intervention.
• The principle is broader regarding the operational scope compared to the pure form and understanding of the humanitarian intervention, which poses a false choice between two extremes: to do nothing or to go to war. However, it is argued that the R2P is overcoming such simplistic choice by outlining the broad range of coercive and non-coercive measures which in practice can be used for the sake of encouragement, assistance, and, if necessary, force states to realize their responsibility based on international law and standards.
• Although it does not add anything new to international law, the principle of the R2P is drawing attention to a wide range of pre-existing legal responsibilities and, consequently, is helping the international community to focus its attention and responsibility on the real crisis.
• Concerning the case of Iraq in 2003, the R2P became at least in the eyes of Westerners, an important principle in restating that the UN SC is the primary legal authorizer of any Pillar III use of force. However, the same policy did not work in the case of NATO aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999. Why the R2P as a principle is not used by the international community against the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Gazan Palestinians is for the very reason that the West Bank of Israel is the USA.

What is a Humanitarian Military Intervention (HMI)?

 

The principle of the R2P is in direct connection with the question of practical humanitarian military intervention, if necessary. According to the widely accepted academic concept of humanitarian military intervention (HMI), it is a type of military intervention with the focal purpose of humanitarian but not strategic or geopolitical reasons and ultimate objectives. Nevertheless, the term itself became very contested and extremely controversial as, basically, depends on its various interpretations and understandings. In essence, it is the problem of portraying military intervention as humanitarian to be legally legitimate and morally defensible.

In practice, the use of the term HMI is surely evaluative and subjective. Still, some HMIs, at least in terms of intentions, can be classified as humanitarian if they are motivated primarily by the desire to prevent harm to some group of people, including genocide and ethnic cleansing. We have to understand that in the majority of cases of HMI, there are mixed motives for such intervention – declarative and hidden. The evaluation of HMI can be done in terms of pure outcomes: HMI is really humanitarian only if it is resulting in practical improvement in conditions, and especially a reduction of human suffering.

There are three deconstructing attitudes regarding HMI:

• Presenting HMIs as humanitarian gives them a full framework of moral justification and rightfulness, which means legitimacy. The term HMI itself, therefore, contains its own rationale as it has to be the intervention that is serving the interests of humanity by reducing death and crucial forms of physical and mental suffering.
• The term intervention itself is referring to different forms of interference in the internal affairs of others (in principle, states). Therefore, the term conceals the fact that the (military) interventions in question are military actions involving the use of force and violence. Consequently, the term humanitarian military intervention (the HMI) is more objective and, therefore, preferred.
• The notion of the term humanitarian intervention can reproduce significant power asymmetries. The powers of intervention (in practice, NATO and NATO member states) possess military power and formal moral justification, while the human groups who need protection (in practice, in the developing world) are propagandistically presented as victims living in conditions of chaos and the Middle Ages. Consequently, the term HMI, in fact, is supporting the notion of westernization as modernization or even, in fact, Americanization.

More precisely, HMI is entry into a foreign state or international organization by the armed forces with the declarative task to protect residents from a real or alleged persecution or the violation of their human (and in some cases minority) rights. For instance, the Russian military intervention in Chechnya in the 1990s was necessary to protect the rights of the Russian Orthodox minority in the Chechen Muslim environment.

However, the legal and political lines of HMI are ambiguous, especially in the cases of moral justification for armed incursions in crisis-affected states for the sake of realizing some strategic and geopolitical aims, as was the case with NATO military intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. All counter-HMI supporters are quoting the Charter of UN which clearly states that all member states of the United Nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. However, on the other hand, the UN SC is authorized with specific interventions. The justification of HMI in order to protect the lives and rights of the people is still under debate over when it is right to intervene and when not to intervene.

Finally, concerning HMI, the focal questions still remain like:

1)    Balancing of minority and majority rights;

2)  The amount of death and damage that is acceptable during HMI (the so-called “collateral damage”);

3)    How to reconstruct societies after HMI?

In fact, both concepts, the R2P and HMI, are in direct connection with the concept of human security. The origins of the concept are traced back to the 1994 UN Human Development Report. The report stated that while the majority of states of the international community secured the freedom and rights of their own residents, individuals, nevertheless, remained vulnerable to different levels of threats like poverty, terrorism, disease, or pollution.

The concept of human security became supported by academic scholars as an idea that individuals, as opposed to states, should be the referent object of security in IR and security studies. In their opinion, both human security and security studies have to challenge the state-centric view of international security and IR.

Does Humanitarian Military Intervention (HMI) Work in Practice?

Regarding any kind of humanitarian military intervention (HMI) within the moral and legal framework of the R2P, the focal question became: Do the benefits of humanitarian military intervention outweigh its costs? Or to put the question in a different way: Does the R2P, in fact, save lives?

Basically, the crucial issue is to judge HMI not from the side of its moral motives/intentions, or even in terms of international legal framework but rather from the side of its direct (short-term) and indirect (long-tern) outcomes from different points of view (political, economic, human cost, cultural, environmental, etc.). However, this problem to be settled requires that real outcomes have to be compared with those outcomes that would happen in some hypothetical circumstances. For instance, what would be on the ground if the R2P did not occur?

However, such hypothetical circumstances cannot be proved in reality like arguing that earlier and effective HMI in Rwanda in 1994 would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives or without NATO military intervention in the Balkans in 1999, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo would experience massive expulsion and above all ethnic cleansing/genocide by the Yugoslav security forces.

Nevertheless, in practice, the NATO military intervention in the Balkans in 1999 became the trigger for Serbian retaliation against the Albanian population in Kosovo. In other words, NATO aggression in Kosovo in 1999 succeeded in the initial goal of expelling Serbian police and Yugoslav army from the province, but at the same time helped a massive displacement of the ethnic Albanian population (however, a big part of this “displacement” was arranged by the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army for the purpose of a TV show in Western corporative media) and giving a post-war umbrella for the real ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Serbs by the local Albanians for the next 20+ years. In this particular case of the HMI, the R2P military action resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe, which means it has absolutely counterproductive effects compared with its initial (humanitarian/moral) task.

Still, it can be said, at least from the Western points of view, that there are examples of the HMI that resulted to be beneficial like the establishment of a “no-fly zone” in North Iraq in 1991 which not only prevented reprisal attacks and massacres of the Kurds after their uprising (backed by the USA and her allies) but at the same time allowed the land populated by the Kurds to develop a high degree of autonomy (but not like as Kosovo Albanians enjoyed in Yugoslavia from 1974 to 1989). In both cases, Iraq in 1991 and Yugoslavia in 1999, both operations were NATO airstrikes involving a significant number of civilian casualties on the ground and a minimal number among the aggressor’s side. For instance, estimates of the civilians and combatants killed in Kosovo in 1999 are 5,700 according to the Serbian sources (the casualties in Central and North Serbia are not taken into consideration on this occasion). The Western academic propaganda claims that Western HMI in Sierra Leone was, in essence, effective as it brought to an end a 10-year civil war which cost up to that time some 50,000 lives, followed by providing the foundations for democratic parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007.

There are many other R2P military interventions that, in fact, failed or were much lesser effective and, therefore, raised questions about their purpose. The HMI under the legal umbrella of the UN peacekeepers, on some occasions, failed as humanitarian catastrophes happened (Kosovo after June 1999, the Congo), while some HMI were quickly left as being unsuccessful (Somalia). However, several R2P interventions ultimately resulted in a protracted counterinsurgency fight (Iraq or Afghanistan). That is the crucial problem that is rising concerning the effective results of the HMI/R2P: such military interventions in practice may result in bringing more harm than benefits.

One of the classic problems is that to change some authoritarian regimes by the use of foreign occupying forces only increases political tension and provokes real civil wars. That subjects ordinary people in the country to the effective breakdown in government. So foreign interventions of any kind may make internal political things worse.

While political stability, governance founded on democratic principles, and respecting human universal rights are theoretically and morally all desirable goals, in practice, it cannot always be all the times possible for outsiders to impose them or to enforce them.

Therefore, the HMI has to be understood from a long-term perspective results and not as a result of the pressure from the public opinion or politicians that something has to be done. It is known that some HMI simply failed as a result of badly planned reconstruction efforts or an insufficient supply of different types of resources for the purpose of reconstruction. Consequently, the principle of HMI/R2P places stress not only on the responsibility to protect but as well as on the responsibility to prevent and the responsibility to reconstruct after the intervention.

 

Is the Humanitarian Military Intervention (HMI) Justified?

 

The HMI has become, during the last 30+ years, one of the hottest disputed topics in both IR and world politics. There are two diametrically opposite views of the HMI practice:

1) It is clear evidence that IR affairs are guided by new and more acceptable cosmopolitan sensibilities; and

2) The HMIs are, in principle, very misguided, politically and geopolitically motivated, and finally morally confused.

The focal arguments for the HMI as a positive feature in IR can be summed up in the next five points:

• The HMI is founded on the belief that common humanity exists, which implies the attitude that moral responsibilities cannot be confined only to own people, but rather to all entire mankind.
• The R2P is increased by the recognition of growing global interconnectedness and interdependence, and, therefore, state authorities can no longer act like to be isolated from the rest of the world. The HMI, consequently, is justified as enlightened self-interest, for instance, to stop the refugee crisis, which can provoke serious political problems abroad.
• The state failure that provokes humanitarian problems will have extreme implications for the regional balance of power and, therefore, will create security instability. Such an attitude is providing geopolitical background for surrounding states to participate in the HMI, with great powers opting to intervene for the formal sake to prevent a possible regional military confrontation.
• The HMI can be justified under the political environment in which the people are suffering, as not have a democratic way to eliminate their hardship. Consequently, the HMI can take place with the sake to overthrow the authoritarian political regime of dictatorship and, therefore, promote political democracy with the promotion of human rights and other democratic values.
• The HMI can show not only demonstrable evidence of the shared values of the international community like peace, prosperity, human rights, or political democracy but as well as it can give guidelines for the way in which state authority has to treat its citizens within the framework of the so-called „responsible sovereignty“.

However, the focal arguments against the HMI are:

• The HMI is, in fact, an action against international law, as international law only clearly gives the authorization for the intervention in the case of self-defense. This authorization is founded on the assumption that respect for the state’s independence is the basis for the international order and IR. Even if the HMI is formally allowed by international law to some degree for humanitarian purposes, the international law, in this case, is confused and founded on the weakened rules of the order of global politics, foreign affairs, and IR.
• Behind the HMI is, in fact, national interest but not real interest for the protection of international humanitarian norms. States are all the time primarily motivated by concerns of national self-interest, and, therefore, their formal claim that the HMI is allegedly motivated by humanitarian considerations is an example of political deception. Nevertheless, if the HMIs are really humanitarian, the state in question is putting its citizens at risk for the sake to save strangers, violating its national interest.
• In the practice of the HMI or the R2P we can find many examples of double standards. It is the practice of pressing humanitarian emergencies somewhere in which the HMI is either ruled out or never taken into consideration. It happens for several reasons: no national interest is on stage; an absence of media coverage; intervention is politically impossible, etc. Such a situation is, in fact, confusing the HMI in both political and moral terms.
• The HMI is, in the majority of practical cases, founded on a politicized image of political conflict between “good and bad guys”. Usually, it has been a consequence of the exaggeration of war crimes on the ground. It at the same time as well as ignores the moral complexities which are part of all international and domestic conflicts. In reality, the attempt to simplify any humanitarian crisis helps explain the tendency towards the so-called “mission drift” and for interventions to go wrong.
• The HMI is seen in many cases as cultural imperialism, based on essentially Western values of human rights, which are not applicable in some other parts of the globe. Religious, historical, cultural, social, and/or political differences are making it impossible to create universal guidelines for the behavior of the state’s authorities. Consequently, the task of establishing a “just cause” threshold for the HMI within the framework of the R2P is made to be unachievable.

© Vladislav B. Sotirović 2025