Abstract
The U.S. position on preventing mass atrocities and on the “responsibility to protect (R2P)” has developed over the course of nearly fifteen years. As a matter of policy, the United States has begun to articulate a policy and doctrine that supports a greater international role in preventing and stopping mass atrocities. As a practical matter, however, U.S. efforts have been sporadic. Concerns about how changing notions of sovereignty and international obligations affect U.S. freedom of action have remained a constant throughout the Democratic and Republican administrations of the past fifteen years. Surprisingly, formal support for an active U.S. role in preventing mass atrocities has weathered steadily declining public support for the war in Iraq. To understand the development of the U.S. position on the responsibility to protect, it is useful to go back to U.S. policy toward the genocides and mass atrocities in the years immediately following the end of the cold war, when the United States repeatedly grappled with the question of humanitarian intervention. Washington’s response to crises in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Kosovo shaped its response to the concept of the responsibility to protect years later.
Lee Feinstein is visiting fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, and Erica De Bruin is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
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Notes
Clifford Krauss, “US Backs Away from Charge of Atrocities in Bosnia Camps,” New York Times, August 5, 1992, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4D81531F936A3575BC0A964958260.
White House, “Presidential Decision Directive 25: U.S. Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations,” May 3, 1994.
U.S. Department of State, Cable No. 099440 to U.S. Mission to the United Nations, New York, “Talking Points for UNAMIR Withdrawal,” April 15, 1994; U.S. Department of State, Cable No. 127262 to U.S. Mission to the United Nations, New York, “Rwanda: Security Council Discussions,” May 13, 1994.
U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East/Africa Region, “Discussion Paper: Rwanda,” May 1, 1994.
William J. Clinton, “Remarks by the President to Genocide Survivors, Assistance Workers, and U.S. and Rwanda Government Officials” (Kigali Airport, Kigali, Rwanda, March 25, 1998).
U.S. Department of State, “African Crisis Response Initiative,” fact sheet, May 2000.
See UN Doc. S/PV.3988 (1999) 2 and S/PV.3989 (1999) 6.
William J. Clinton, “Remarks by the President to the KFOR Troops” (Skopje, Macedonia, June 22, 1999).
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Muted and Mixed Public Response to Peace in Kosovo,” June 15, 1999.
Madeleine Albright, “Remarks,” speech, Council on Foreign Relations, June 28, 1999.
Author’s notes.
William J. Clinton, radio address to the nation, Washington, DC, March 27, 1999.
U.S. Department of State, “U.S. and NATO Objectives and Interests in Kosovo,” fact sheet, Washington, DC, March 26, 1999.
See, for example, Kofi A. Annan, “Secretary-General’s Annual Report to the General Assembly,” September 20, 1999; Tony Blair, “Doctrine of the International Community” (speech, Economics Club of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 24, 1999).
William J. Clinton, “Remarks to the 54th Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” U.S. Press Release 59 (99), September 21, 1999.
Nicholas J. Wheeler, “Legitimating Humanitarian Intervention: Principles and Procedures,” Melbourne Journal of International Law and Politics 2, no. 2 (2001): 550–68.
William J. Clinton, “Remarks to the 54th Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” September 21, 1999.
Interview with Sam Donaldson, ABC News This Week, January 23, 2000.
Alex J. Bellamy, “Whither the Responsibility to Protect? Humanitarian Intervention and the 2005 World Summit,” Ethics and International Affairs 20, no. 2 (2006): 143–69.
S. Neil Macfarlane, Carolin J. Thielking, and Thomas G. Weiss, “The Responsibility to Protect: Is Anyone Interested in Humanitarian Intervention?” Third World Quarterly 25, no. 5 (2004): 977–92.
White House, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” September 2006, 14–15.
U.S. Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR),” February 6, 2006, 91.
National Association ot Evangelicals, letter to President Bush, http://www.nae.net/images/darfurbush2.doc.
Declaring Genocide in Darfur, Sudan, H. Con. Res. 467, 108th Cong., 2d Sess. (June 24, 2004) and S. Con. Res. 124, 108th Cong., 2d Sess. (July 13, 2004).
Newt Gingrich and George Mitchell, American Interests and UN Reform: A Report of the Congressional Task Force on the United Nations (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2005), 29.
R. Nicholas Burns, “On United Nations Reform,” testimony as prepared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, DC, July 21, 2005, http://www.state.gov/p/us/rm/2005/49900.htm.
U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Priorities for a Stronger, More Effective United Nations,” June 17, 2005, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/scp/2005/52982.htm.
Radzi Rahman, “Statement of the Chairman of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement at the Informal Meeting of the Plenary of the General Assembly Concerning the Draft Outcome Document,” June 21, 2005, http://www.un.int/malaysia/NAM/nam210605.htm1.
Stafford Neil (chairman of the Group of 77), “Statement on the Draft Outcome Document of the President of the General Assembly for the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly,” June 21, 2005, http://www.g77.org/Speeches/062105.htm.
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John R. Bolton, letter sent to UN member states conveying U.S. amendments to the section on the responsibility to protect of the draft outcome document being prepared for the September 2005 High-Level Event, August 30, 2005.
Ibid.
See, for example, Radzhi Rahman, Statement by the Chairman of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement, June 21, 2005, http://www.un.int/malaysia/NAM/nam210605.html.
These were the seriousness of the threat, the proper purpose of the proposed military action, whether means short of force might reasonably succeed in stopping the threat, whether a military response is proportional to the threat, and whether the intervention had a reasonable chance of success.
UN General Assembly, Sixtieth Session, 2005 World Summit Outcome, UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 2005, para. 138.
UN General Assembly, Sixtieth Session, 2005 World Summit Outcome, UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 2005, paras. 138–39.
Lee Feinstein, Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities (NewYork: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2007).
The outcome document provides a more expansive range of actions than the ICISS, High-Level Panel, or even the Gingrich-Mitchell report provided.
The following analysis has informed the authors: Tod Lindberg, “Protect the People,” Washington Times, September 27, 2005, http://todlindberg.net/?p=404.
John R. Bolton, “Challenges and Opportunities on Moving Ahead on UN Reform,” statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, October 18, 2005.
Kristin Silverberg, “U.S. Priorities to Strengthen the United Nations,” on-therecord briefing, Washington, DC, December 20, 2005.
Condoleezza Rice, “Remarks at the United Nations Security Council Ministerial on Sudan,” New York City, May 9, 2006; ibid., interview with Jon Karl, ABC News, Stellarton, Nova Scotia, Canada, September 12, 2006.
UN Security Council, Resolution 1706 (S/RES/1706), August 31, 2006.
Ibid.
White House, “Fighting Genocide in Darfur,” fact sheet, May 29, 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070529–2.htm1.
National Defense University (NDU), “U.S. Support for UN Peacekeeping: Study on Possible Areas for Additional Assistance from the Department of Defense,” October 12, 2006, 18.
U.S. Department of Defense, “Directive Number 3000.05: Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations,” November 28, 2005, http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300005p.pdf.
White House, “National Security Presidential Directive 44: Management of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization,” December 7, 2005, http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-44.html.
U.S. Department of Defense, “QDR,” 90.
“In Sweeping Overhaul, DOD Reorganizes Policy Office,” InsideDefense.com, August 28, 2006.
U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Peacekeeping: Cost Comparison of Actual UN and Hypothetical U.S. Operations in Haiti,” GAO-06–331, February 2006, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06331.pdf; James Dobbins et al., The UN’s Role in Nation Building: From the Congo to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2005).
U.S. Department of Defense, “QDR,” 90.
Better World Campaign, “U.S. Funding to the United Nations System: Growing Arrears,” May 2007.
Nina Serafino, “The Global Peace Operations Initiative: Background and Issues for Congress” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, October 3), 2006, 4–5.
U.S. Congress, 109th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Report 109–277, p. 92.
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in association with the Council on Foreign Relations, America’s Place in the World 2005 (New York: Pew Research Center, 2005).
NDU, “U.S. Support for UN Peacekeeping,” 34.
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© 2009 Richard H. Cooper and Juliette Voïnov Kohler
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Feinstein, L., Bruin, E.D. (2009). Beyond Words. In: Cooper, R.H., Kohler, J.V. (eds) Responsibility to Protect. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618404_12
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