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The feasibility of an expanded regime on the use of force: the case of the responsibility to protect

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Abstract

This article addresses the question of whether an expanded regime on the use of force, based on the report The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) of 2001, would be feasible. The formula of the R2P has since found its way into the United Nations machinery via the final resolution from the World Summit in 2005 and can be seen as an emerging and more permissive norm on the use of force in cases of humanitarian catastrophes. The question of whether or not the theoretical framework of the norm is feasible is therefore urgent. Our analysis of feasibility is based on three logics of human action: the logic of consequence, logic of appropriateness and logic of arguing. We argue that each of these logics contains aspects that must be observed before a regime can be considered feasible. These logics are coupled with three mechanisms of socialisation of norms: strategic calculation, role-playing and normative suasion. We construct a minimal standard for a feasible regime by deducing requirements from the logics and their mechanisms, and then apply that standard to the content of the ICISS report. The empirical results show that the report must address the fact that it lacks qualities in regard to all three logics, before the expanded regime can be considered feasible.

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Notes

  1. We are well aware that the status of R2P as a norm is disputed (e.g., Stahn 2007). However, we argue that it is reasonable to regard R2P as a norm. Following Barbour and Gorlick (2008: 535), we think that ‘its unanimous acceptance at the 2005 World Summit, and subsequent endorsement by both the UN General Assembly and Security Council, provides evidence of the widespread approval of R2P as a developing legal norm’ and that the ‘2005 World Summit Outcome document … demonstrated broad acceptance of a new norm referred to as the “Responsibility to Protect” ’. For a study on the advancement of this norm, see, for example, Thakur and Weiss (2009). See also Wheeler (2005), who describes the R2P as a new norm.

  2. However, the doctrine of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’, which forms the base for the moral imperative of ‘R2P’, can be traced to Francis M. Deng (Deng et al. 1996).

  3. The wording, ‘expanded regime on the use of force’ implies that we already have a regime on the use of force. This regime is based not only on Chapter 7 in the UN charter, but also on other charter provisions. One argument for why we claim that the international community could be said to move beyond this original regime relates to the question of right vs responsibility. While Chapter 7 is based on a right to use force in situations that threaten international peace and security, the R2P is literally based on a duty to react in certain situations. Since a duty to act in a certain way is stronger than a right to act, we would therefore see an expanded regime with a new normative base, compared with the existing regime on the use of force, if the full potential of the R2P were to be institutionalised. Until then, however, we can only talk of the R2P as a possible or emerging expansion of the already existing, but more limited, regime on the use of force.

  4. According to the political philosopher Kok-Chor Tan (2006: 84), relatively little attention has been paid to whether or not humanitarian intervention under some circumstances is obligatory. Rather, the question of the permissibility of such interventions has been at the centre of the debate (for overviews, see Smith 2006). Considering this, it is no surprise that the literature discussing the implications of the shift from a (possible) right to a duty to intervene on a general level is in an early phase and still limited (e.g., Bagnoli 2005; Tan 2006; Peters 2009) and that the literature specifically discussing the feasibility of this shift is more or less absent.

  5. Eclecticism in international relations is sometimes associated with the lack of coherence and sometimes even with incoherence. As the German constructivist Harald Müller (2004: 396) concludes: ‘Theories based on contradictory ontologies are incoherent’. However, we have no ambition to synthesise components from different theories; rather, our aim is to keep the three different logics of human actions separate in order to test the feasibility of a potentially expanded regime in an exhaustive way. Still, the mere fact that we do not exclude the logic of appropriateness and the logic of arguing implies that our framework is incompatible with a strict rationalistic perspective, and the mere fact that we do not exclude the logic of consequences implies that our framework is incompatible with thick constructivism. Nevertheless, this means that our approach is compatible with, as Thomas Risse (2000: 12) puts it, ‘sophisticated rational choice and moderate constructivism’.

  6. Her determinants of political feasibility, which are ‘discerned from the literature’, reflect this dependence on rational choice (Skodvin 2007: 2). However, this is not only limited to studies of feasibility; regime theory in general is ‘premised on rationalist assumptions’ (Checkel 1999: 84).

  7. It can be noted that Checkel does not explicitly connect normative suasion with the logic of arguing; rather, there are indications that he locates this mechanism in the realm of the logic of appropriateness (Checkel 2005: 812). However, he conceptualises the mechanism behind normative suasion in a manner that suits well the ‘logic of arguing’ (ibid.). See Pouliot (2008: 257–88) for a similar interpretation.

  8. In this article, the logic of bargaining is seen as an action within the logic of consequence; see, for example, Müller (2004: 396).

  9. It can be noted that Gallya Lahav (2004: 1158) explicitly justifies the relevance of examining public opinion with the argument of the logic of appropriateness.

  10. ‘ “[v]alidity claim” … refers to any claim that can be criticized and defended’ (Rehg 2005: 97).

  11. Admittedly, coherence and consistency are not synonymous in a technical sense. As Laurence Bonjour (1985) notes, consistency only implies adherence to the law of non-contradiction, which is obviously not sufficient for making an argument. However, coherence and consistency are sometimes used interchangeably (e.g., Haack 2004). According to us, this is the most appropriate way to interpret Risse, which is also illustrated when he applies his own assessments criteria (e.g., Ulbert and Risse 2005).

  12. For objections to the possibility of a common lifeworld, see, for example, Grobe (2010). Our claim of the existence of a universal ideal of coherence raises the question of whether our operationalisation of the logic of arguing in terms of coherence in fact results in a formalistic logic of appropriateness: only a coherent regime will be considered as appropriate. We will argue against such an interpretation. First of all, it must be noted that the ideal of coherence is substantively empty. This ideal is therefore a ‘criterialess criterion’ (Alexy 1998). It is substantively compatible with all kinds of ideas — as long as they are coherent. This obviously differs from ideals associated with the logic of appropriateness (e.g., March and Olsen 1998). Furthermore, in contrast to ideals of logic of appropriateness but in line with the logic of arguing, the ideal of coherence implies a conscious process of looking for the better argument. This also constitutes a line of demarcation between the ideal of coherence and the logic of appropriateness.

  13. However, as Neta C. Crawford (2002: 35–7) notes in Argument and Change in World Politics, other factors than the strength of the argument determine the efficiency of an argument. For example, the credibility of the arguer is important, as well as whether the arguer is being emotionally appealing or not (ibid.). However, the general and hypothetical nature of our approach makes it hard to consider those factors in our analysis.

  14. We have not found the distinction between incoherence within and between inferences, respectively, in the literature. However, this distinction corresponds to a large extent with the distinction between horizontal and vertical coherence, which is used in legal contexts (e.g., Vila 2001: 149–50). The distinction between incoherence within and between inferences is, however, narrower and therefore more precise than the one between vertical and horizontal coherence, since it explicates the nature of incoherence in terms of (lack of) inferential connections.

  15. The study includes 18 countries — China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Russia, France, Thailand, Ukraine, Poland, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Israel and Armenia — plus the Palestinian territories. Not all questions were asked in all countries.

  16. Information about the positions of the states before the World Summit 2005 also reveals a widespread scepticism towards the norm of R2P, particularly among Asian countries. A list of these positions has been collected by the organisation Reform the UN and can be downloaded from the following website: http://www.reformtheun.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=56 (accessed 7 March, 2011).

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Acknowledgements

We want to express our gratitude to the Swedish Research Council for a generous grant that made the research reported in this article possible. We are furthermore grateful for excellent comments from the reviewers and the editorial team of JIRD together with several colleagues at the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg, the School of Social Sciences at Linnaeus University and various discussants at conferences where we have presented earlier drafts of this article.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Lund University, Box 52, Lund, 221 00, Sweden

    Douglas Brommesson

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Box 711, Göteborg, 405 30, Sweden

    Henrik Friberg Fernros

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Brommesson, D., Fernros, H. The feasibility of an expanded regime on the use of force: the case of the responsibility to protect. J Int Relat Dev 16, 138–166 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2012.9

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