Abstract
There is nothing in international relations that dictates international society will naturally progress from one generation to the next. To understand such thinking one has only to go back to the scepticism found in Martin Wight’s view of progress in international relations. For Wight, the anarchical realm dictated that progress in the international sphere was inherently more problematic than in the domestic sphere.1 As a result, the reality is that just because the R2P was unanimously endorsed in 2005, it does not mean that the R2P is here to stay. Notably some went as far as claiming that the R2P was in fact dead in February 2011 because of the perceived slow response to the atrocities in Libya,2 only for the subsequent UN Resolutions (1970 and 1973) to lead advocates to conclude the R2P is actually ‘alive and well’.3 The relevance of this debate is that one can see that in a post-R2P world, policymakers will not only be confronted by the real life challenge of mass atrocity crimes but will also be bombarded by a variety of voices offering alternative ways for framing the R2P crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. As discussed in Chapter 1, this may lead policymakers to treat genocide as just another insoluble problem. Because of this, the chapter re-engages with the three traditions.
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Notes
M. Wight, International Theory, The Three Traditions, G. Wight and B. Porter (eds), (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1992)
See the roundtable discussion with contributions from J. Pattison, A. Bellamy, J. Welsh, S. Chesterman, and T. G. Weiss, ‘Libya, RtoP, and Humanitarian Intervention’ in Ethics and International Affairs (25, 3, 2011, 251–85).
The idea of a theoretical pluralism representing a conversation is taken from T. Dunne, Inventing International Society, History of the English School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), xiii.
Kissinger cited in R. Cooper The Breaking of Nations, Order and Chaos in the Twenty First Century (London: Atlantic Book 2004), 59–60.
H. Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 251–82.
J. M. Welsh, ‘Taking Consequences Seriously: Objections to Humanitarian Intervention’, in J. M. Welsh (ed.), Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)
R. Jackson, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 2–5.
Bellamy highlights that historically the limits of absolutism have always been evident, A. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 13.
This can be traced back to F. M. Deng, S. Kimaro, T. Lyons, D. Rothchild, and I. W. Zartman (eds), Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1996).
Kissinger cited in J. G. Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide, A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (London: Praeger, 2001), 142
N. J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
See G. F. Kennan, ‘Morality and Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs (64, 2, 1985, 205–18)
See K. Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
M. Williams (ed.), Realism Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
H. Suganami, ‘Understanding Man, The State, and War’ International Relations (23, 3, 2009, 72–388)
This is taken from R. Jackson, The Global Covenant, Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 20.
C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (London: The Bedford Historical Series, 1944), 11.
See N.J. Wheeler ‘The Humanitarian Responsibility of Sovereignty: Explaining the Development of a New Norm of Military Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes in International Society’, in J. Welsh (ed.), Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 29–51.
This is not to suggest that the question of unilateralism has been answered; A. L. Bannon, ‘The Responsibility to Protect: The UN World Summit and the Question of Unilateralism’, Yale Law Journal (115, 2006, 1157–65).
A. Hurrell, On Global Order, Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 192.
J. Morris and N. J. Wheeler, ‘The Security Council’s Crisis of Legitimacy and the Use of Force’, International Politics (44, 2–3, 2007, 214–31).
Although a Neoconservative rather than a realist, John McCain aptly summarised this point when he stated, ‘the lesson of Somalia is simple: it is clearly not in the interests of the US to subject US decision making on grave matters of state or the lives of American soldiers to the frequently vacillating, frequently contradictory, and frequently reckless collective impulses of the United Nations’. Cited in O. Ramsbotham and T. Woodhouse, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), 213.
Obviously such thinking can be traced back to J. Nye., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go it Alone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
I’m drawing here on the keynote lecture given by Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Done to Humans, Done by Humans’, presented at the 1st Global Conference on Genocide by the International Network of Genocide Scholars, at the Centre for the Study of Genocide and Mass Violence, The University of Sheffield (9 January 2009). This understanding can also be found in Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 1989)
R. Shapcott, ‘Anti-Cosmopolitanism, Pluralism and the Cosmopolitan Harm Principle’, Review of International Studies (34, 2 2008, 185–205)
See R. Jackson, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)
Jackson, ‘Human Rights Protection in a World of Sovereign States’, in R. Tinnevelt and G. Verschraegen (eds), Between Cosmopolitan Ideals and State Sovereignty, Studies in Global Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 135–47).
Although a critical theorist, Linklater’s engagement with the English School has seen him go ‘tfrom being the official dissident of the School to becoming the principle advocate of its Kantian wing’, see I. B. Neumann, ‘The English school and the Practices of World Society’, Review of International Relations (27, 3. 2001, 503–7)
A collection of Linklater’s essays on these themes has now been published, A. Linklater, Critical Theory and World Politics, Citizenship, Sovereignty and Humanity (London: Routledge, 2007).
A. Linklater, ‘Cosmopolitan Harm Conventions’, in S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (eds), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 255.
A. Linklater and H. Suganami, The English School of International Relations, A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 8.
This is taken from K. A. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: WW. Norton & Co., 2006), 51.
G. W. Brown, Grounding Cosmopolitanism, From Kant to the Idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 66.
This is taken from K. Booth, T. Dunne and M. Cox, How Might We Live? Global Ethics in a New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7.
A. Hurrell, ‘Keeping History, Law and Political Philosophy Firmly within the English School’, Review of International Relations (27, 3. 2001, 489–94)
P. Guyer (ed.), Kant and Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3.
See the first of an ongoing three-volume study, A. Linklater, The Problem of Harm in World Politics (New York, Oxford University Press, 2011).
R. J. Vincent, Human Rights in International Relations (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 126.
A. Linklater, Human Interconnectedness’, International Relations (23, 3, 2009, 481–97)
P. Allot, ‘Kant or Won’t: Theory and Moral Responsibility’, Review of International Studies (23, 2, 1997, 33957).
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© 2013 Adrian Gallagher
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Gallagher, A. (2013). The Three Traditions Revisited. In: Genocide and its Threat to Contemporary International Order. New Security Challenges Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280268_7
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