Spider Man thinks there should be more (just) war, and so should you: Responsibility to Protect and its extraordinary possibilities

Thomas Britton
Apr 23
12 min read

Updated: May 6

The General Assembly of the United Nations — Image Credit: azugaldia, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

“With great power comes great responsibility”

is an iconic line, whichever version of Spider Man is your favourite. It is one of the first moral instructions that many children will take to heart, and definitely one of the ones they will remember. I’m no Marvel super-fan, but it impacted me so much, I had it written on the frame of my bedroom mirror.

If Spider Man isn’t your cup of tea, though, fear not! The same message is Abrahamically sanctioned, appearing in the Bible, in Luke 12:48- “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required”- and in the Hadith, in Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 212- “All of you are shepherds, and each of you is responsible for your flock”.

But we don’t really need these authoritative references to feel instinctively that this is true- that those with power have a duty of care not just for themselves, but for others too. It feels a very natural compromise, an ingrained part of our social contract, a rather uncontroversial, non-partisan moral statement.

Which is perhaps why the UN saw fit in 2005 to essentially integrate it as a pillar of the ideal approach to international diplomacy, even using its very language, calling the doctrine “Responsibility to Protect”. Indeed, the moral rationale behind it was so universal, so irrefutable, that it was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly, an occurrence that is obviously rare and significant.

This doctrine, while little-known, has profound implications and effects that are even-littler understood, but reshape almost everything we know about Just War (the age-old moral debate about the conditions under which war can be justified) and the legality of military intervention.

How the UN’s version differs from Uncle Ben’s

Kofi Annan (then-Secretary General) spearheaded Responsibility to Protect (R2P) during his tenure, and it bears all the hallmarks both of post-Cold War, ‘End of History’ era utopian thought on international relations; and of contrition for the fuck-ups in Rwanda and Yugoslavia (where unimagineable atrocities were allowed to occur without timely intervention by the international community) it was designed to prevent happening again.

It is worth reading the full text of the doctrine (for such a pivotal part of the global system of international relations, it is remarkably short at just a few paragraphs):

“Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.”

The doctrine thus boils down to three key points:

States have a responsibility to their own citizens to prevent ‘mass atrocity crimes’;
States have a responsibility to help other states in living up to that responsibility;
If states fail to meet their responsibilities, the international community has a responsibility to take timely, appropriate (i.e. proportionate and effective) and legal (i.e. meeting the requirements of the UN Charter and international law) action to prevent such crimes.

Smashing the Sovereign Idols

There are two revolutionary aspects to this relatively simple idea, before which there existed only a loose and highly contested understanding of humanitarian intervention and the role of UN peacekeepers. The first is that it provides a formalised, legitimate, and legal method of infringing on sovereignty: the traditional rules of respecting sovereignty and leaving nations to govern their own become null and void if the state is unable to protect its own citizens.

While in practice sovereignty had frequently been ridden roughshod over through the course of the Cold War, in theory, it was as close to sacrosanct as a principle of international relations could get, second only, perhaps, to the safety and immunity of embassies and diplomats.

Why else, for example, would the two Great Powers, free to act almost at will across the globe, nonetheless frame all of their proxy conflicts as protections of existing state’s sovereignty? In Korea, Vietnam, Germany, virtually anywhere there was a Cold War conflict, it was framed as a Great Power stepping in to protect the infringed sovereignty of a helpless, violated nation. This was clearly not necessary for creating coalitions of support- there were very few nations on the fence about their ideological allegiances, and it’s not like either the US or USSR needed anyone’s assistance or approval to carry out their proxy wars: the UN was toothless in the face of their vetoes and both could blow up the rest of the world several times over with their arsenals.

So why the fastidious attempts to maintain the illusion of sovereignty? Because sovereignty was one of the few things both powers could agree on: their sovereignty was absolute, divinely-ordained by their respective Gods of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and any perceived weakening of that notion anywhere in the world might cause them no end of trouble within their own borders. If it became accepted that countries were not, theoretically, allowed to do what they liked within the comfort of their own sovereignty, then people might start to question the US’ horrific racial policies, or ask awkward questions about the Holodomor.

Given this context of a cult-like adherence to the Temple of Sovereignty, to effect a change within a decade and a half after the USSR’s collapse to a system whereby sovereignty was conditional, not simply to be enjoyed, but to be earned, is a remarkable and underappreciated sea-change in the diplomatic ecosystem. As stated later, the reason for this is due to the inherent limitations of what R2P can realistically achieve (and America can still be relatively secure in her own untouchability by these new regulations), but nonetheless this change, even just in theory, is a revolutionary departure from the post-Westphalian consensus of international relations.

The UN sets homework for nations

The other major facet of R2P is the letter R: Responsibility. In other words, the mechanism for overriding sovereignty is not an optional right, but a compulsory responsibility. This doctrine (again, in theory) is not meant to be a convenient excuse for aggressors to handily justify attacks when and if they see fit, as it would be if phrased as a right. It is, rather, a moral compulsion, the international equivalent of Nelson’s message at Trafalgar: England expects every man to do his duty; the UN expects every nation to do theirs. By couching it in the terms of compulsion, both to help nations protect their citizens, and to enforce protection if needed, it (notionally) removes the opportunity for it to be used as an excuse for a single nation to enact their foreign policy aims with impunity, but instead intends to create a collaborative international force to resolve the issue. This not only creates trust among the international community that their sovereignty will not be violated under a pretext, that R2P will not be exploited for the same neocolonialist ends that defined the latter half of the 20th century; but also trust that any intervention will be multilateral and thus more likely to be altruistic.

There once was a merchant in Baghdad

Thus we come to the often extraordinary implications of R2P if applied to past cases. R2P was passed in 2005, and so was not legal at the time of Iraq, but there is a strong argument to be made that had it been passed in 2002, the Iraq War would be nowhere near as controversial as it is today. In the same way that the merchant in Baghdad sealed his own fate when, seeing the figure of Death, hastened hundreds of miles to Samarra only to encounter Death again, surprised to have ever seen him in Baghdad, knowing their appointment was in Samarra; the Iraq War also bolted too soon, sealing its own fate as a failure, yet ironically posthumously providing the framework that would have prevented its own illegitimacy.

Think about it: the criteria for R2P were present in Iraq. Far from protecting his own citizens, Saddam Hussein had perpetrated genocide (as recognised by the Iraqi High Court subsequently) against the Kurds in the Anfal campaigns in 1988, with at least 50,000 Kurds being killed between February and September of that year alone, and the Kurdish Regional Government estimating that 1 million Kurds were ‘disappeared’ between the 1960s and 2003 as a result of the Ba’athist policy of Arabisation. This was a genocide, and has been recognised as such, and thus Iraq failed in its responsibility to protect its own citizens. Given that it was also failing to respond to diplomacy or sanctions in the lead-up to 2003- we must at least ask the question: would R2P not have applied?

The rationale and justification for the invasion of Iraq was hotly debated then, and has only intensified since, but had R2P already been established, there is at least a plausible case that it would have provided legitimate grounds for intervention in Iraq, including potential regime change. If that was so, the WMDs discussion would be moot, and more countries might have joined the force, limiting the contemporary perception as a neo-imperialist Anglo-American adventure for oil, and thus potentially improving the subsequent efficacy of the peacekeeping and rebuilding aspect of the mission.

We are deep into hypotheticals here, but nonetheless this is important to consider, because the principle that might have justified the Iraq War is legitimate now, and could thus legitimise future missions of a similar nature. In other words, the same intervention that the UN did not approve in 2003, it would have to consider much more fully in 2025. And while the seeds of R2P were sprouting before 2003, do we have to float the possibility that its adoption in 2005 was a tacit acknowledgement that they made a mistake in not approving the 2003 mission?

If you find any of this even remotely probable, or even possible, then what we are looking at is a complete 180 on the current consensus about Iraq. Conventional wisdom says that it was a blunder, a stain on Bush and Blair’s legacies, an ill-contrived expedition that left a festering sore on the already infected body of the Middle East’s geopolitical landscape. Yet if we can apply R2P to Iraq, or see that it was in part a reaction to Iraq, then we have to see it as a legitimate mission gone wrong, a lost opportunity to the whims of the fate that caused it to happen two years too early. Just like the apocryphal merchant in Baghdad with an appointment in Samarra, perhaps the Iraq War was a good idea which just happened to meet its maker too early.

The dry runs have been bloody

This all begs the question- if R2P has been around since 2005, how come I haven’t heard of it? And the honest response is that it hasn’t had the most successful first tests.

Libya in 2011 (where Qaddafi’s forces had attacked civilians in the course of the civil war) might be considered one of the first significant applications of R2P since it was the first UN military action that cited R2P as its basis. This alone can be considered a major moment in the history of peacekeeping, with the UN officially authorising military action within defined limits delegated to member states and regional organisations- a remarkable piece of international cooperation and proof of concept that the military step of R2P could be agreed upon and used in a real case.

Alas, the convincingness of chalking Libya up as a win in R2P’s tally is undermined by its legacy: it’s all very well authorising the deposition of a dictator committing potential crimes against humanity, but if the doctrine doesn’t allow for a successful rebuild, then how useful is it? The fact that Libya even now, a decade and a half later, is still in the throes of civil war and humanitarian disaster means that while R2P was shown to be a viable route for initial intervention, it worked far less well for peacebuilding.

However, it is probably more the cases where R2P hasn’t been applied that highlight the drawbacks of R2P more clearly. In Syria, despite clear evidence of the use of chemical weapons against civilians by Assad’s regime, R2P was never successfully applied, as Cameron and Obama both opted to pass on any major intervention, and Russia and Turkey have sought to instead do what R2P was meant to prevent: intervene in the conflict for selfish, strategic purposes, Russia gaining naval bases on the Mediterranean, and Turkey occupying a buffer zone miles into the Syrian side of the border.

More recently, the war in Gaza has seen many accusations of war crimes and genocide by the Israeli Defence Forces against the people of Gaza, and yet there has not been any meaningful international coordination of diplomatic pressure or sanctions against Israel, let alone talks of intervention.

In both these cases, the institutional structure of the UN has not helped. Russia vetoed 17 resolutions in the Security council seeking to protect Syrian civilians from Assad’s regime between 2011 and 2022, and the US has adopted a similar policy of blocking any UN-sponsored action against Israel. The human rights abuses that China is committing against the Uighurs is hardly likely to result in a UN-coordinated sanctions regime anytime soon. In these circumstances, R2P is severely weakened, becoming not a universal principle that binds all nations as was intended, but a tool to be used or discarded at the whims of the veto-wielding P5 nations. In such conditions, how can a future R2P-based intervention be seen as anything but a creature of the most powerful nations? A rule that doesn’t apply to bullies or their friends is not a rule at all, but a tool for bullying those who don’t have vetoes or alliances with those who do.

Vetoes beget vetoes, inconsistencies beget inconsistencies, and the failure to apply R2P as was intended by the short-termist thinking of primarily Russia and the US has potentially critically wounded what could have been the UN’s most effective tool for international peacekeeping, the results of which are so positive as to transcend any hypothetical gains from safeguarding access to Syrian ports or arms contracts with Israel. If R2P isn’t rescued and resuscitated soon, it might be gone forever, and with it the possibility of a genuinely multilateral, collaborative, altruistic method for peacekeeping. If R2P fails, nations will be emboldened to flout their citizens’ human rights more blatantly and horribly than ever, since they will see no repercussions: abandoning it will result in more genocides, more war crimes left unaccountable, more overwhelming preventable misery.

Planning the 21st Birthday Party

Perhaps R2P can never be perfect in the current geopolitical environment. Perhaps there is no way to realistically hold China accountable for human rights abuses. Nevertheless, this does not mean there is no further use for R2P as a working idea. After all, the League of Nations didn’t work as intended and was abused by the great powers of the day, yet it would have been foolish to cite that as evidence that global organisations could never be effective.

One possible, though unlikely, solution would be to exempt R2P resolutions from veto powers, and subject them to a straight majority vote in the Security Council (or even more radically… the General Assembly). While it seems implausible the P5 would agree to this (and they almost certainly won’t), it could be pitched as a cost-neutral endeavour: for every Israel that America wouldn’t be able to shield, there would be a Syria that was no longer under Russian protection. After all, the collaborative ideal of R2P fits well with the current US administration’s rhetoric of encouraging allies to pull their weight in security and defence matters.

Another is to simply accept the imperfections of R2P as the unfortunate realities of an imperfect world. Even if applied inconsistently and at the whims of giants, every instance in which it achieves peace is a success that might not have happened without it, and we should not let the pursuit of the perfect prevent the celebration of the good. R2P has had tangible successes, albeit in its very early years, in Kenya and the Ivory Coast, with both cases resolved before military intervention was necessary. Those are both potential sources of misery that R2P prevented, and maybe that is where R2P can thrive, in working to solve the abuses that fall between the spheres of the great powers, in solving the conflicts that no one cares about enough to veto. If it can replicate those successes now, then it can continue to serve a very useful function.

Spider Man’s guiding philosophy has provided us with the most promising tool for preventing war, atrocities, and suffering in human history. We must understand this new power, and its limitations, and we must use it responsibly.