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Trust or Perish? The Responsibility to Protect and Use of Force in a Changing World Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2021

Adrian Gallagher Open the ORCID record for Adrian Gallagher [Opens in a new window]  and
Nicholas J. Wheeler
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Abstract

As part of the roundtable, “The Responsibility to Protect in a Changing World Order: Twenty Years since Its Inception,” this essay asks the reader to consider the role that trust, distrust, and ambivalence play in enabling and constraining the use of force under pillar three of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). Drawing on interdisciplinary studies on trust, it analyzes the 2011 military intervention in Libya for evidence on how trust, distrust, and ambivalence help explain the positions taken by member states on the United Nations Security Council. In so doing, it challenges the mainstream view that the fallout over Libya represents a shift from trust to distrust. We find this binary portrayal problematic for three reasons. First, it fails to take into account the space in between trust and distrust, which we categorize as ambivalence and use to make sense of the position of Russia and China. Second, it is important to recognize the role of bounded trust, as those that voted in favor of going into Libya did so on certain grounds. Third, it overemphasizes the political fallout, as six of the ten elected member states continued to support the intervention. Learning lessons from this case, we conclude that it is highly unlikely that the Security Council will authorize the use of force to fulfill the RtoP anytime soon, which may have detrimental implications for the RtoP as a whole.

Keywords

Responsibility to Protecttrustdistrustambivalenceuse of forceLibya
Type
Roundtable: The Responsibility to Protect in a Changing World Order
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 181 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this article was presented as part of the joint roundtable organized by the British International Studies Working Group on Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect and the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect on “The Responsibility to Protect in a Changing World Order” (September 17, 2020). We would like to thank participants for comments and questions. We would also like to thank Alex Bellamy and Justin Morris for feedback on earlier versions of this article. Finally, we thank those involved in the review process at Ethics & International Affairs for their close reading and constructive comments.

References

NOTES

2 United Nations General Assembly, “2005 World Summit Outcome,” A/RES/60/1, October 24, 2005, p. 30.

3 Wheeler, Nicholas J., Trusting Enemies: Interpersonal Relationships in International Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Mayer, Roger C., Davis, James H., and Schoorman, F. David, “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust,” Academy of Management Review 20, no. 3 (July 1995), pp. 709–734CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For a discussion of the different positions in this debate, see Bigley, Gregory A. and Pearce, Jone L., “Straining for Shared Meaning in Organisational Science: Problems of Trust and Distrust,” Academy of Management Review 23, no. 3 (1998), pp. 405–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayer et al., “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust”; Saunders, Mark N. K., Dietz, Graham, and Thornhill, Adrian, “Trust and Distrust: Polar Opposites, or Independent but Co-Existing?,” Human Relations 67, no. 6 (June 2014), pp. 639–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Lewicki, Roy J., McAllister, Daniel J., and Bies, Robert J., “Trust and Distrust: New Relationships and Realities,” Academy of Management Review 23, no. 3 (July 1998), pp. 438–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 448. In their two-dimensional model, Lewicki and colleagues identify four relationship possibilities in terms of trust and distrust. One of these is what they call the “Low Trust/Low Distrust model,” which they explain as a condition where “an individual or actor has neither reason to be confident nor reason to be wary and watchful” (p. 446). See also Guo, Shiau-Ling, Lumineau, Fabrice, and Lewicki, Roy J., “Revisiting the Foundations of Organizational Distrust,” Foundations and Trends in Management 1, no. 1 (February 2017), pp. 1–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Saunders et al., “Trust and Distrust,” p. 660. We are grateful to Mark Saunders for discussions around the concept of ambivalence.

8 See Bellamy, Alex J. and Williams, Paul D., “The New Politics of Protection? Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and the Responsibility to Protect,” International Affairs 87, no. 4 (July 2011), pp. 820–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Kurtz, Gerrit and Rotmann, Philipp, “The Evolution of Norms of Protection: Major Powers Debate the Responsibility to Protect,” Global Society 30, no. 1 (2016), pp. 3–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adler-Nissen, Rebecca and Pouliot, Vincent, “Power in Practice: Negotiating the International Intervention in Libya,” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 4 (December 2014), pp. 889–911CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Garwood-Gowers, Andrew, “China and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’: The Implications of the Libyan Intervention,” Asian Journal of International Law 2, no. 2 (July 2012), pp. 375–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellamy and Williams, “New Politics of Protection?”

10 Adams, Simon, “Libya,” in Bellamy, Alex. J. and Dunne, Tim, eds., The Oxford Handbook on the Responsibility to Protect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 768–85Google Scholar, at p. 773.

11 Michael W. Doyle, “The Politics of Global Humanitarianism: R2P before and after Libya,” in Bellamy and Dunne, Oxford Handbook on the Responsibility to Protect, pp. 673–92, at p. 686.

12 It is also interesting to follow the positions of the abstainers post Libya, as India, Brazil, and South Africa did not side with Russia and China on Syria.

13 Vitaly Churkin, in S/PV.6491 (statement, United Nations Security Council, 6,491st meeting, February 26, 2011), p. 4.

14 Vitaly Churkin, in S/PV.6498 (statement, United Nations Security Council, 6,498th meeting, March 17, 2011), p. 8.

15 Susan Rice, Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019), p. 283.

16 Joe Biden, quoted in ibid., p. 283.

17 Li Baodong, in S/PV.6491, p. 4.

18 United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1973, S/RES/1973 (adopted at the 6,498th meeting of the UNSC, March 17, 2011), p. 3.

19 Li Baodong, in S/PV.6498, p. 10.

20 Jason Ralph and Jess Gifkins, quoted in Rosemary Foot, China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 148.

21 Ibid.

22 United Nations Security Council, S/PV.6650 (meeting minutes, 6,650th meeting, November 9, 2011), p. 25.

23 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot, “Power in Practice,” p. 903.

24 Jason Ralph and Adrian Gallagher, “Legitimacy Faultlines in International Society: The Responsibility to Protect and Prosecute after Libya,” Review of International Studies 41, no. 3, pp. 553–73, 562–63.

25 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot, “Power in Practice,” p. 901.

26 “Remarks by Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, Permanent Representative at an Informal Interactive Dialogue on the Report of the Secretary General on the Responsibility to Protect: Timely and Decisive Action,” September 5 2012, pminewyork.gov.in/pdf/uploadpdf/13040ind2058.pdf. See also Hardeep Singh Puri, Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos (Noida, Uttar Pradesh: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2016).

27 Susan Rice, quoted in Ben Rhodes, The World as It Is: Inside the Obama White House (London: Bodley Head, 2018), p. 113.

28 Whereas the ABI model uses “benevolence,” we are of the view that this is too demanding a standard for the international level. Instead, we use “intent” to substitute for benevolence. For further discussion on this point, see Wheeler, Trusting Enemies, pp. 52–53.

29 Baso Sangqu, in S/PV.6498, p. 10.

30 Joy Uche Angela Ogwu, in ibid., p. 9.

31 Néstor Osorio, in ibid., p. 7.

32 William J. Burns, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal (New York: Random House, 2020), p. 318.

33 Reflecting on the crisis, an African Union chairperson claimed the P3 acted with a “sense of superiority.” Jean Ping, quoted in Alexander Beresford, “A Responsibility to Protect Africa from the West? South Africa and the NATO Intervention in Libya,” International Politics 52, no. 3 (May 2015), pp. 288–304, at p. 301.

34 Kurtz and Rotmann, “The Evolution of Norms of Protection,” p. 18.

35 United Nations Security Council, S/PV.6491, p. 4; UNSC, S/PV.6595 (meeting minutes, 6,595th meeting, July 28, 2011), p. 5; and UNSC, S/PV.6620 (meeting minutes, 6,620th meeting, September 16, 2011), p. 6.

36 Gareth Evans, “Libya 2011: The Real R2P Story,” July 10 2020, www.gevans.org/opeds/oped216.html.

37 Jason Ralph and Jess Gifkins, “The Purpose of United Nations Security Council Practice: Contesting Competence Claims in the Normative Context Created by the Responsibility to Protect,” European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 3 (September 2017), p. 633.

38 UNSC, Resolution 1973, p. 3.

39 Ralph and Gifkins, “The Purpose of the United Nations Security Council Practice,” pp. 630–53, at p. 633 (emphasis added).

40 Alex J. Bellamy and Stephen McLoughlin, Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention (London: Red Globe Press, 2018), p. 203.

41 Ralph and Gallagher, “Legitimacy Faultlines in International Society,” p. 554.

42 Security Council Report, quoted in Sarah Brockmeier, Oliver Stuenkel, and Marcos Tourinho, “The Impact of the Libya Intervention Debates on Norms of Protection,” Global Society 30, no. 1 (2016), pp. 113–33, at p. 125.

43 For an analysis reaching such a conclusion, see Puri, Perilous Interventions.

44 Kai Michael Kenkel and Cristina G. Stefan, “Brazil and the Responsibility while Protecting Initiative: Norms and the Timing of Diplomatic Support,” Global Governance 22, no. 1 (2016), pp. 41–58, at p. 45.

45 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, December 2001), pp. 29–39.

46 Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 191–92.

47 Muammar Qaddafi, quoted in “Libya Protests: Defiant Gaddafi Refuses to Quit,” BBC News, February 22, 2011, www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12544624.

48 Power, Samantha, The Education of an Idealist (London: HarperCollins, 2019), p. 304Google Scholar.