9 Humanitarian Intervention in World Politics

The problem: may (must?) states use force to stop mass atrocity in another state without its consent — sovereignty vs. humanity? History's pendulum: the 19th-century "standard of civilization" interventions; the Cold War's paralysis; the 1990s' morality tests — Somalia (1992, UNOSOM), Rwanda (1994, the abandonment), Bosnia (Srebrenica 1995), Kosovo (1999,NATO without the Council — "illegal but legitimate" in the Independent Commission'sfamous verdict) — producing the doctrine's heyday and its backlash. The synthesis: the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS, 2001) reframed sovereignty as responsibility; the 2005 World Summit endorsed the Responsibility to Protect(R2P): (i) each state's responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity; (ii) international assistance; (iii) timely-decisive collective action through the UN where the state manifestly fails. Libya (2011) — Security Council- authorized civilian protection morphing into regime change — froze R2P's third pillar credibility; Syria proved the veto's return; Myanmar (2021–) the doctrine's untestable case. The standingdebate: selectivity and double standards; the slippery slope from protection to regime change; the Global South's sovereignty anxieties (R2P as the white man's burden redux?); and the legal answer — intervention remains unlawful absent Council authorization or invitation; R2P's genius is to relocate the question from a right to intervene to a responsibility to protect. Nepal's line: protector of the sovereignty norm…