Alex Bellamy has written what may well be the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the evolution of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine to date. This book will be of particular interest to the specialist, but also serves as a very agile introduction to the international community's efforts to prevent crimes against humanity in the current geopolitical context. Bellamy emerges as a defender of the R2P, though he acknowledges its shortcomings and the nature of political compromises which resulted in the final text adopted at a United Nations World Summit in 2005. The book is also another contribution to the ongoing debate in international relations studies over what, exactly, constitutes a “norm,” or expected mode of behaviour; Bellamy opts to describe the R2P as a “concept” before the 2005 summit, and a “principle” thereafter. This is safer ground than declaring a new norm without much empirical evidence of its manifestation.
It is a vexing question indeed. How can we justify intervening in the affairs of a sovereign state without its permission, even if we acknowledge that the norm of “absolute sovereignty” is largely based on a myth in the first place? Perhaps the answer offered by R2P—that is, when that state is not exercising its duty to “protect its own population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and from their incitement” (96)—is at once too permissive (beyond the scope of the Genocide Convention, for example), and yet too restrictive, both in terms of its heavy reliance on the notoriously self-interested permanent membership of the UN Security Council and in terms of the “mass atrocities” that qualify. (For a demonstration of the latter, the Burmese government's morally outrageous intransigence on foreign aid after the Cyclone Nargis of 2005 would not, according to most accounts, justify R2P intervention.)
On the one hand, it is a “short road from relaxing [the norm of] non-intervention to legitimizing colonialism” (17), and yet human rights violators will routinely accuse their critics of supporting such imperial ambitions. Thus, the challenge is to “distinguish the legitimate arguments from the self-justifications of tyrants” (19). Bellamy clearly believes the R2P principle strikes the necessary compromise note, though of course there are many who do not and many more who wonder what difference it makes if the Security Council, and in particular its leading states, are reluctant to act aggressively when such cases emerge. Bellamy champions R2P with great skill, but this book by itself will not convince opponents to join the camp.
The strength of the book lies primarily in its clear and comprehensive description and analysis of the current history of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), the World Summit Outcome Document, and various efforts to bring R2P closer to an animated state. Current history is not an easy prospect: one needs to balance the need for very recent credible sources, of which there are often few, against the need for providing proper context. This book would have easily needed another 100 pages in order to accomplish the latter. But when it comes to the play-by-play involved in breathing at least diplomatic life into R2P, Bellamy is particularly well-vantaged (and connected), thanks to his excellent prior work on humanitarian intervention (assuming we may still use this apparently outdated phrase today) and his role as executive director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the R2P.
I would have liked to see a bit more critical penetration in the book—or at least a more referenced treatment of voices that reject R2P as the old sovereign protection in clever disguise—and a more elaborate treatment of Security Council reform options and their impact on R2P scenarios was also in order. To be sure, Bellamy does a good job of introducing the importance of both these points, and at 250 pages the book is probably hefty enough. Importantly, Bellamy spends time on the often unwritten dimension of R2P's evolution and tangential application: the role and influence of civil society actors. But there are as many disgruntled voices from that sphere as there are potential NGO members of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (formed in late January 2009 with assistance from the governments of Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). The only other complaint is that the book is consciously bereft of the nuances of international relations theory, but this is no doubt more of a problem for some of us than others.
Canadian readers in particular will be interested in learning about the extent of Canadian involvement in the process, a legacy of Canadian multilateral inclinations and the periodic commitment to a human security approach. Indeed, despite the entrenchment in Afghanistan and a peculiarly unilateralist southern neighbour, Canada was instrumental in R2P's evolution, and the role of several individuals, such as Allan Rock, Lloyd Axworthy, Ramesh Thakur and Don Hubert was simply pivotal. (As an ICISS commissioner who initially supported the invasion of Iraq, Michael Ignatieff provided some complicated optics as well.) Of course, this hardly entails that successive Canadian governments have or will make R2P an actionable policy platform.
The brief spotlight on Canada raises another research opportunity. Though Bellamy could hardly have been expected to produce it here, it would be interesting to see more on the rhetorical and practical aspects of R2P as they apply to different foreign policies. In the end individual readers must decide if, as Bellamy suggests, R2P's “image is a realistic—and better—alternative to ‘humanitarian intervention’” (105).When R2P reaches the point where it is a major factor in many foreign policy designs, or, more in keeping with its tune, when it is a present factor in domestic policy thinking, then we may be able to call it a “norm.” Until then, it will either languish, or thrive, as an enlightened but politically charged, hotly contested, and yet frustratingly silent, principle.
