The morality of responsibility

The concept of the “responsibility to protect” is of recent vintage. In considerable part it stemmed from the failure of the global community to prevent the Rwandan genocide and its slow motion response to the crises that beset the Balkans following the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The vast majority of democratic states, most notably the advanced industrial democracies, have rallied around this principle. India, however, has consistently shied away from endorsing it. Instead, it has sought to uphold the age-old norm of Westphalian sovereignty under which the internal affairs of states are not subject to external intervention.

The objections have come from two distinct quarters. The first stems from articulate members of India’s diplomatic community. When asked about India’s reluctance to support this emergent moral standard, its diplomats have deftly underscored the concept’s apparent sweep and malleability. Where would this principle, they argue, stop? What kinds of actions that states undertake, which are deemed to be reprehensible to other members of the international community, could not only come under scrutiny but also lead to foreign intercession in a sovereign land?
The diplomatic community might be forgiven for its attempts to dexterously fend off a movement that erodes the long-standing principle of state sovereignty, especially when it has been issued explicit instructions to do so from their political masters. The second challenge emerges from India’s growing attentive public. Many of Indian foreign policy analysts have levelled two very different charges against this nascent norm. The first holds that it reeks of a neo-imperial ethos designed to deprive weak regimes across the world of their rights to govern their own affairs. The second argues that it smacks loudly of Western hypocrisy. The West, it is alleged, has selectively chosen its targets but has conveniently chosen to overlook others. For example, it evinced few qualms about forcefully intervening in Libya and is now poised to do the same in Syria. However, it overlooked the harsh crackdown in Bahrain.
What credence, if any, do these allegations have? The diplomatic objections, quite frankly, amount to adroit sleights of hand, as the initial United Nations’ documents that sought to enshrine this new doctrine are really quite explicit about the particular conditions that would have to obtain within a country before external intervention could ensue. The terms really are not that elastic and instead refer to certain egregious acts against a vulnerable population that the state in question is either unable or, worse still, unwilling to end. More to the point, the documents explicitly state that other means to end state-sponsored violence must be exhausted before any intervention can take place. Consequently, the charge of intellectual fuzziness really lacks credibility. Nor can the principle be invoked without adequate effort to end
the violence through a variety of diplomatic means and strategies.
To wit, despite the seeming callousness and brutality of the Syrian regime, the pressures that have been brought to bear on it have been incremental and limited. Even the current sanctions which were imposed only after repeated exhortations to the Assad regime to end wanton violence proved to be inconsequential.
What about the claims that some within India’s foreign policy circles have advanced? Do the assertions of neo-imperialism and double standards have any significance? The first can be dispensed with fairly easily. It is mostly a slogan of convenience. The former imperial powers lack both the will and capacity to carry through any new imperial ventures, in any possible guise. Even those within the US, who had harboured imperial ambitions, are, barring a few unregenerate individuals, all licking their wounds after the Iraq fiasco. Consequently, the charge that the emergent principle has neo-imperial features is without merit.
Finally, one turns to the charge of hypocrisy. Admittedly, the standard has not been applied with equal force in every context. That said, the conduct of foreign policy is a not a morality play. Every state of consequence has had to weigh its national interests and priorities against its cherished ideals when formulating and implementing its foreign and security policies. In an ideal situation, ethical imperatives and national needs can be made to coincide. On other occasions, however, these competing demands pose tough choices and require tactical adjustments. Such compromises do not exculpate national leaders of their inaction when confronted with painful trade-offs. However, the quest for the universal and uniform application of a new principle should not lead to its abandonment, especially when it can save hapless individuals from a grim plight.
Having addressed these objections it is possible to turn to some real fears that both the diplomatic and foreign policy circles may actually harbour. Despite its constitutional commitment to the protection of human rights, on occasion, India has fallen short. No informed or educated Indian is unaware of the ethical shortcomings of the Indian state when dealing with insurgencies and containing ethnic and religious riots. Despite these very compelling failings, the country cannot be accused of abetting genocide under any circumstances. Consequently, it could not conceivably be placed in the dock because of its support for this budding principle. Instead, because it seeks to take refuge in specious arguments, its detractors can quickly charge that it is failing to uphold an ethical construct that should be enshrined on a global basis. It is time that its foreign policy establishment demonstrated that it has sufficient faith in the country’s domestic political institutions and arrangements to forthrightly rise to the challenge that it confronts.

The writer is a professor of political science at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia