By invading Afghanistan, NATO took both political and moral responsibility for its future. It is possible that, at the end of the transition process, NATO will fail its test of responsibility
One can see why some would argue that the Annan plan has failed. However, it is important to retain a realistic perspective about how much a third-party mediator can hope to achieve given the circumstances.
Less coercive forms of intervention have been relatively neglected by politicians and academics. The case of Syria clearly demonstrates the pitfalls of this approach.
Syria surely demonstrates, in all too graphic detail, the limits of R2P and the pressing need for creative thinking about profound reforms of the UN which address the P5 veto in the Security Council and the absence of a UN standing army.
While foreign forces in Somalia that oppose al-Shabaab can help degrade its capacity, they cannot defeat al-Shabaab any more than al-Shabaab and its foreign jihadis can defeat the forces aligned against them.
The fact is that humanitarian intervention is here to stay. Instead of trying to get rid of it there is more prudence in allowing the lesser evil of a streamlined and legally-regulated form of humanitarian intervention to continue.
My most recent interview was with Madeleine Albright, the US foreign policy practitioner and policy-maker, the women’s rights implementer in foreign policy during her time as a US Ambassador to the UN and as Secretary of State, the daughter of a Czechoslovak dissident who was a recipient of US support during WWII and the Cold War, and finally as the academic examining foreign policy.
The UN-mandated intervention in Libya is now officially at an end. Perhaps only time will tell whether Libya turns out to have been a great case of international intervention or something rather less.
The moral imperative to intervene in a nation’s internal affairs where acts of genocide are threatened is a powerful one. That the UN is eager to push the doctrine of R2P and to re-define sovereignty to permit intervention in a state’s internal affairs is testimony to the fact that the Charter does not provide that legal authority. It should.
While the development of R2P as a concept has been the preserve of international relations theoreticians (albeit ones with large amounts of practical experience), its implementation rests on the practitioners of the day. And these practitioners deal in the world of realpolitik with all of its inconsistencies, relativities and competing national interests.
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