Pushing the Boundaries of the Possible at the Margins of Peacekeeping: The Promises of ESDP–Russia Co-operation for Humanitarian Intervention1

While relatively little attention has been paid to the significance of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) as a newly emerged mechanism in the domain of international peacekeeping, even less research has been undertaken on the potential benefits of its external relations and co-operation with third countries. This article sheds light on such a potential by investigating the relations of the ESDP with the Russian Federation. The current debate on humanitarian intervention tends to reduce the analysis to a single plane of reality, namely the normative one, thus ignoring the material aspects of military intervention. The enlargement of the ontological horizon of research from normative to material factors uncovers the greatest advantage of ESDP–Russia co-operation for humanitarian intervention, namely their mutually complementary peacekeeping capacities. Whilst the European Union boasts a long-standing human rights culture, Russia could offer vast material resources both in terms of manpower and logistics. Ignoring this possible synergy between the ESDP and Russian capacities would be a considerable loss for the cause of humanitarian intervention. Joint operations conducted by the European Union, Russia, and NATO against genocidal governments, the “common enemies”, would not only enhance the cause of humanitarian intervention but also enable common actions and thus mitigate current tensions between the East and West. In many respects ESDP–Russia co-operation actually lags behind NATO–Russia relations.     

Norm compliance by proximity: explaining the surge of regional actors in responsibility to protect

International military interventions in Libya and Côte d'Ivoire in 2011 revealed that regional and sub-regional organisations are playing an increasingly active and important role in the implementation of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). However, the academic and policy analyses of RtoP have not thus far presented any comprehensive model to explain the emergence of regional actors in RtoP. This article develops and applies a four-fold taxonomy, according to which the unique powers of regional actors in initiating and implementing RtoP can be attributed to four types of compliance effects. First, regional actors themselves can directly promote RtoP for either normative or strategic reasons. Second, they can wield either normative or strategic compliance pull on other actors, such as the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which is an indirect but effective way to implement RtoP. As a benefit, this taxonomy reveals the diversity and depth of compliance effects wielded by regional actors in the RtoP process. The powers of regional actors in RtoP are realised on multiple fronts, rather than through a singular channel. This conclusion challenges the whole conception of RtoP by demonstrating that the traditional two-layered idea of RtoP developed in the mainstream literature, according to which RtoP is composed of the levels of international society and its member states, should be replaced with a tri-layered conception which also recognises the emerging middle level of regional actors.     

The Interventionist Turn of UN Peacekeeping: New Western Politics of Protection or Bureaucratic Mission Creep?

During recent years, the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping system has exerted robust interventions in the domestic jurisdiction of target states for human rights purposes. The existing literature attributes the explanation mainly to the “new politics of protection” pursued by Western governments and thus validates the realist hypothesis. This article analyzes the Côte d'Ivoire and Haiti cases to demonstrate that not only government policies (the realist hypothesis) but also independent bureaucratic powers exerted by senior UN officials (the social constructivist thesis) have contributed to the emergence of interventionist policies at the UN. Moreover, “bottom-up” initiatives stemming from the virtue ethics of senior UN officials have played a much more decisive role in generating the interventionist turn than “top-down” institutional guidelines and doctrines, such as the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) principle. Instead of RtoP, UN officials draw upon broad legitimating principles of the UN, notably human security, to justify their interventionist policies.     

McDonaldisation of Sovereignty: A Foucauldian Analysis of Responsibility to Protect

The importance of the principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has typically been attributed either to its character as a presumed new norm (normative ontology) or to its capacity to influence international politics by mobilising political actors to protect civilians through military interventions and other forms of intervention (causal ontology), as witnessed in the recent cases of Libya and Côte d'Ivoire. This article will argue for an additional model of explanation, according to which the main significance of RtoP might best be understood by reference to its character as a political statement of global policy networks (discursive ontology) calling for the reinterpretation of the sovereignty regime. The article will apply Michel Foucault's theory of discursive fields to demonstrate that RtoP beneficially introduces human security as an additional criterion of state sovereignty, thus contributing to the “humanitarisation of sovereignty”. However, RtoP also engenders “McDonaldisation of sovereignty” and “sovereignty-consumption” mentality in that it attempts to transform and homogenise pluralistic state sovereigns into a universal, seemingly humanitarian mould. As a drawback, this McDonaldisation process excludes some victimised groups from the remit of international concern.