The spear point and the ground beneath: territorial constraints on the logic of Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) faces considerable criticism, of both its inefficacy – its failure to describe an effective pathway around the obstacles to humanitarian intervention in the sclerotic global security system – and its overreach, especially the risk that it enables pretextual agendas of intervention and regime change. Yet neither defenders nor critics have paid much attention to another possibility or risk incumbent in R2P: the likelihood, once intervention is undertaken, that the interveners themselves will be involved in a conflict over territory, whose likely solutions will include, not simply regime change, but partition. The doctrine as we now have it, built thoroughly on a state-centric logic, does not engage with this question, and indeed there are strategic reasons for ignoring the issue: acknowledging such a quality would be too much for R2P’s supporters to admit or its critics to accept. But whatever our normative orientation toward this rising or stumbling doctrine, we ought to be clear about where taking it seriously is really likely to lead us: sooner or later – and more often than we might wish to acknowledge – R2P interventions will force us to confront the logic of partition.