The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All
by Gareth Evans
Brookings, £16.99
GARETH EVANS, Foreign Minister in Australia’s last Labour Government and a key mover in the Cambodian peace process, has attempted to establish an operational mechanism for humanitarian interventions around the world. For him, the US right to interfere was a precursor of pre-emptive deterrence poisoned with colonial overtones and designed to serve the interests of the West rather than the rest. It underpinned the invasion of Iraq and the seizure of its oil in the name of humanitarianism while standing aside and closing eyes and ears to the tribal butchery of millions in Rwanda.
Instead of a right to interfere he proposes a responsibility to protect or R2P – a duty to intervene to stop genocide and mass murder undertaken by sovereign governments or allowed by them through indifference or the incapacity to act. Sovereignty can no longer, he argues, be a licence to kill on an industrial scale.
It is a responsibility to react to prevent, protect and rebuild; a little appreciated task for, done well, it is barely noticed. Evans argues that R2P type actions have already proved a success. For example, Burundi in 1994 was teetering on the brink of a Rwanda but a huge – and ongoing – effort by South Africa and others dragged them back from the abyss. Closer to home, George Robertson and Javier Solana, Nato general secretary and EU high official for foreign and security policy, used tough love and the presence of 35,000 Nato troops over the hill to save Macedonia from the tragedy that engulfed the rest of the Balkans.
Yet if the concept is clear the institutions within which it is to operate must be found. Otherwise R2P can become an excuse rather than a mission. It was Putin’s argument re Georgia. Even if US encirclement and Georgian adventurism were provocations to the Russians it is impossible to describe it as an R2P action. Ideally, it should be for the UN security council to act, but here self-interest can force a veto by the US, Russia and China. The court of global public opinion isn’t entirely satisfactory, either. True, Kosovo worked despite the failure to win security council backing. Yet will the voices of Middle America sing in harmony with China let alone the Dar al Islam?
Lastly, political will is required. It is criminal, as we proved in Srebrenica, to promise the undeliverable. It was declared a safe haven and then the world did nothing as the Serbs pulverised it and killed those seeking sanctuary. Europe needs an independent capability to intervene. Not because we want to use it, but as a last resort whose very availability acts as a catalyst to force flexibility on reluctant adversaries. The EU is the world’s number two for military expenditure. But duplication and a lack of inter-operability are compounded by plans to fight the last war we never had rather than those that loom on the horizon today. The EU needs a common foreign and security policy and if Ireland continues to say “No” it will come from a two speed Europe where the Eurozone countries take on foreign policy responsibilities leaving those outside to jump on board or get left behind.
Gareth Evans, now head of the International Crisis Group in Brussels, has done humanity a service. The world now has a duty to ensure it’s not R2P RIP.
Glyn Ford
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