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international “responsibility to protect.” If these are some of the the theoretical considerations
about this new doctrine, the practical problems are equally daunting.
The most obvious obstacle to prevent mass internal violence through humanitarian
intervention, however it is justified, is the prevailing temptation to advance state interest for
short-term gain instead of the preferable collective security or human security in the long run.
States may choose to act in the name of international security to protect in so far as it politically
benefits them. The failures to act to prevent or protect mass violence have been attributed to lack
of political will since the debacle of the beginning of World War II when the very idea of
collective security was sacrificed at the altar of the League of Nations by power politics. The
“rational” calculations of realists to minimize cost in the short run either precipitate inaction or
policies of double standard. These practical difficulties will pose the same kind of resistance
against the responsibility to protect as those that arrayed against the eventual establishment of the
International Criminal Court.
The best feature of the responsibility to protect is that it encourages action to prevent
mass human rights violations or crimes against humanity before it is too late to act as was the
case of the 1994 Rwandfa genocide and the international debate on Darfur. This initiative
addresses positively the reasons for the growing demand of apologies for inaction.
Responsibility to Protect is a step forward (legitimacy based/horizontal social contract); but it
involves humanitarian intervention on juridical/collective security grounds and not on moral
grounds.
State Actions/Inaction and Responsibility
The responsibility to prevent violence and to protect, I contend, is related to the legal
collective responsibility to human security, the distance between those who are directly or
indirectly responsible for avoidable violence and its victims, and finally, to the moral dimensions
of responsibility to others. I will first consider the more difficult moral challenge to a modern
Convention