Emerging Norm and Rhetorical Tool Europe and A Responsibility To Protect

Conflict, Security & Development
ISSN: 1467-8802 (Print) 1478-1174 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccsd20
Emerging norm and rhetorical tool: Europe and a

responsibility to protect
Sarah Brockmeier, Gerrit Kurtz & Julian Junk
To cite this article: Sarah Brockmeier, Gerrit Kurtz & Julian Junk (2014) Emerging norm and
rhetorical tool: Europe and a responsibility to protect, Conflict, Security & Development, 14:4,
429-460, DOI: 10.1080/14678802.2014.930587
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2014.930587
© 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor &

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Conflict, Security & Development, 2014
Vol. 14, No. 4, 429–460, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2014.930587
Analysis
Emerging norm and rhetorical
tool: Europe and a
responsibility to protect
Sarah Brockmeier, Gerrit Kurtz and Julian Junk
European governments, parliaments and and 2013. The authors find that Paris and
civil societies belong to the most important London agree with Berlin and Brussels that
supporters of a ‘responsibility to protect’ R2P requires longer-term multilateral
(R2P). However, despite a shared positive norm-building. Yet, while Germany
attitude towards R2P and co-ordinated stresses military restraint and civilian
diplomatic efforts, major European crisis prevention, France and the UK
governments and therefore the European continue to view R2P through their pre-
Union (EU) have never reached a existing traditions of a droit d’ingérence and
consensual position on R2P. Based on 47 the ‘doctrine of humanitarian intervention’,
expert interviews and a review of official respectively. These differences are largely
government documents, the article analyses due to diverging strategic cultures based on
the positions of France, Germany, the different historical lessons on the use of
United Kingdom and the common EU force. Brussels’ efforts to co-ordinate a
institutions across a series of critical common EU position have been
junctures of the R2P debate between 2005 constrained by these diverging positions.
Sarah Brockmeier is a Research Associate with the Global Public Policy Institute’s peace and security programme
and Deputy Director of the German NGO Genocide Alert. Prior to assuming these positions she worked at the
United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office in New York.
Gerrit Kurtz is a Research Associate with the Global Public Policy Institute’s peace and security programme. His
main research interests are peace and conflict studies, international organisations, global norms and South
Asian politics.
Julian Junk is a Research Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and at the working group ‘International
Organisations’ of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Normative Orders’ at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.
q 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This is an Open Access article. Non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly attributed, cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way, is
permitted. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.
430 Sarah Brockmeier et al.
Introduction
The governments, parliaments and civil societies of Europe belong to the most important
supporters of a ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). They subscribe to the idea that
governments have a responsibility to protect their populations from large-scale violations
of international humanitarian law and that there is a subsidiary international
responsibility to support this protection effort. Indeed, Europe has been the only major
power of the twenty-first century to unambiguously support this concept, despite internal
divisions regarding its implementation. European ambassadors were crucial allies of those
states and individuals that sought to include a reference to a responsibility to protect in the
outcome document at the 2005 World Summit,1 where UN member states agreed to the
principle for the first time.2 Since then, European countries as well as the common
institutions of the European Union (EU) have been at the forefront of the global debate
over R2P.3
Given Europe’s support for the development of R2P, the lack of detailed studies on the
subject is striking. There are no systematic comparisons of the positions of major
European countries.4 Studies resort either to an analysis of the European Union as such,5
remain focused on a single country’s position on humanitarian interventions6 or examine
only a single crisis situation, such as NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya.7
This article, in contrast, analyses the interpretations, attitudes and practices8 of the
major players in Europe—France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the common EU
institutions—during a series of critical junctures with regard to a responsibility to protect
between 2005 and 2013. Even though other European countries—notably the Netherlands,
Slovenia and the Nordic countries—more actively support R2P than the ‘big three’, we
concentrate on the largest and most significant actors in European foreign policy, since
without their agreement European policy could not be coherent. The analysis is based on
47 semi-structured expert interviews in Berlin, Brussels, London and Paris and a review of
a wide range of primary sources.
We show that despite a shared positive attitude towards R2P, occasional common policy
positions and co-ordinated diplomatic efforts, major European governments and
therefore the EU have never had a truly consensual position on R2P. As we argue in the
following, this largely mirrored their diverging strategic cultures and prior ideas about
R2P’s conceptual predecessor, ‘humanitarian intervention’. All three countries and the EU
institutions express a supportive attitude towards R2P and a common desire for the
Emerging norm and rhetorical tool 431
concept to be universally accepted in the international community. In that regard they

understand R2P as a concept that is best promoted through support in multilateral fora
and by inserting references in speeches, statements and resolutions. We term this
interpretation of R2P a ‘norm-building’ approach to the concept. As we show in the
present paper, for Germany this was virtually the only existing interpretation until
the Libya intervention in 2011 triggered the German Government to broaden its idea of
the concept: it would now also interpret R2P as a moral principle that demanded practical
concepts and policies.
At the same time, France and the United Kingdom interpreted R2P from the beginning
as a rhetorical tool they could employ to suit their ideas of ‘humanitarian intervention’. As
will be shown, the two countries shared an interpretation of R2P that would neither
constrain their freedom of movement on the Security Council nor exclude their perceived
right to intervene militarily without the approval of the Council. Their desire to have R2P
at their disposal as a political tool that at the same time does not constrain their actions in
the face of mass atrocities was as crucial in their first reactions to the idea of a
responsibility to protect in 2002 as it was 10 years later in their opposition to the idea of a
‘responsibility while protecting’. Naturally, the EU interpretation of and practices
regarding R2P arose out of the limited aspects on which Germany, France and the UK
could agree. Thus, the EU almost exclusively understood the concept as an emerging legal
norm that needed to be supported and ‘built’ by referencing the concept in multilateral
fora. Its practices regarding R2P remained constrained by differences between its major
member states as the Libya intervention most powerfully showed.
The article is divided into two main parts. First, we briefly introduce those elements of
each actor’s strategic culture that we deem most relevant for the trajectory of its respective
positions on R2P. Second and based on this, we trace the interpretations, attitudes and
practices of the three countries and the EU institutions on R2P from the run-up to the
World Summit to the debates around the crises in Syria and the Central African Republic.
Traumas, myths and aspirations: the origins of British,

French and German R2P policies
Europe has many reasons to reflect on its role in world politics. It is a continent ravaged by
wars and genocide. It has spawned colonial conquests resulting in massive crimes against
humanity, exploitation and discrimination, sowing the seeds of civil war. Britain, France
and Germany have experienced this past very differently. These differences have
fundamentally shaped their strategic cultures in ways that influence their current positions
on R2P.
The British imperial legacy is a crucial aspect of Britain’s view and understanding of
the world. It underlies its position on R2P since it instilled a particular sense
of responsibility for international crises. Margaret Beckett, a long-serving Labour
minister, summarises this sentiment like this: ‘[i]f anything, it is that you’ve got your
hands dirty, that you have faced situations from which you could not walk away because
you were the responsible power’.9 Even though the war in Iraq has been strongly
contested domestically, the public remains more supportive of armed interventions than
in other European countries.10
The major British political parties have converged around liberal interventionism in
their foreign policy worldviews,11 as the dominance of Blair’s ‘Chicago Speech’ in British
political discourse over the past 15 years illustrates.12 Delivered at the height of the NATO
intervention in Kosovo in April 1999, the speech was a result of lessons learned from the
perceived failure of British policy in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. The Conservative
British Government of the time had for years prevented a military intervention by NATO
in Bosnia, where Serbian and Croatian militias were ethnically cleansing areas from
Muslim populations in the multi-ethnic state.13
In proposing ‘five tests’ for an intervention, Blair relied on the British pragmatic,
unilateral tradition as he underlined the importance ‘to have national interests involved’.14
Significantly, the legality of the intervention through a possible ‘UN test’ was not included
among these criteria.15 Blair argued that states formed a ‘community’,16 with rights as well
as obligations to each other. Reminiscent of the language associated with Britain’s imperial
legacy, he presented sovereignty as conditional on ‘responsible behaviour’ that could be
revoked, if necessary.17
Internationalist-minded Labour politicians like Robin Cook, Jack Straw and later David
Miliband supported what Cook termed an ‘ethical foreign policy’ in 1997.18 This was
picked up by Conservative leaders such as William Hague and David Cameron, who
largely shared Labour’s depiction of the international system.19 Despite these shared
principles, Hague and Cameron felt the need to distance themselves from the ‘messianic
moral fervour of the post-9/11 Blair’20 and the problems encountered in the Iraq war. The
tension between the support for humanitarian interventions and the perceived lessons
from Iraq remained important during their time in office.
Similar to Britain’s imperial legacy and despite lamentation over France’s decline on the
world stage by French intellectuals and politicians, the proud tradition of La Grande
Nation continues to influence French foreign and security policy-makers. Two important
but sometimes irreconcilable patterns of French strategic culture are relevant to the French
position on R2P.
First, France expresses a desire to be self-reliant in its actions, its zones of influence and
its capabilities.21 The fear of losing its place among the great world powers and of playing
second or third fiddle in an American dominated world or a German dominated Europe
was the trigger for the most influential foreign and security policy decisions in the recent
history of France.
Second, France—by virtue of its past as a colonizer—sees itself as the cradle of human
rights, the export of which is a central tenet of its continuing mission civilisatrice,22 a
secular civilising mission to spread and institutionalise the universal principles of the
French Revolution. Having originated in a sense of cultural superiority during the
imperialism of the Third Republic between 1870 and 1940,23 it continues to influence
today’s foreign and security policy by lowering the threshold for interfering abroad in the
name of these universal principles.
While the first pattern informs an approach to international institutions that allows
unilateral missions if deemed necessary, the second pattern provides a reason for French
willingness to consider military intervention abroad for humanitarian goals. More
generally, French policy-makers regard military instruments as essential in their security
policy, especially when weighing options to exert influence in the francophone, former
colonial countries (like in Franc afrique).24 In line with a tradition of classical realpolitik
that is prominent in the bureaucratic apparatus of the French foreign ministry, France has
always decided on a case-by-case basis which institutional setting suits its preferences best,
and allows close and efficient co-operation with a small group of like-minded partners.25
In contrast to this strong realpolitik tradition in French strategic culture, public opinion is
swayed strongly by humanitarian justifications for interventions. References to R2P are
generally well received in the public,26 building on a long-standing activist, intellectual and
political debate on the issue that runs deeper than in the case of Germany or Britain: France
views itself as the inventor of both a right and a duty to intervene on humanitarian
grounds.27 Bernard Kouchner, the controversial and charismatic founder of Médecins sans
Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and later foreign minister under President Sarkozy,
popularised the term droit d’ingérence humanitaire (‘right to a humanitarian
interference’)28 in the 1980s.29 His experience was shaped by humanitarian crises from the
genocidal events in Biafra, Nigeria, in the 1960s to the famines in Ethiopia in the 1980s,
which is why his notion of humanitarian intervention was always centred on humanitarian
access, even without state consent.30 Powerful intellectual public discourses on
humanitarian intervention led by thinkers like the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy have
a lasting impact on French foreign policy in the tradition of Kouchner.31 Inevitably, the
public support for interventions on humanitarian grounds, but not necessarily strategic
ones, creates an incentive for French policy-makers to frame interventions in R2P terms.
German foreign and security policy is deeply rooted in the country’s sense of
responsibility for starting two world wars and committing the crimes of the Holocaust.32
After the end of the Second World War, widespread destruction of German cities and guilt
for the systematic slaughter of millions of Jews and others, policy-makers of the Allied-
controlled West Germany vowed not to take potential international leadership lightly. For
decades, its foreign policy was so closely aligned with its Western partners that it was hard
to detect at all.
Swearing to leave their belligerence in the past, the Germans strongly supported
a notion of ‘shared sovereignty’ and prefer a rules-based international order with a
commitment to multilateralism and international law.33 Germany’s basic law sets narrow
limits on the use of force by Germany, explicitly forbidding renewed aggression.34
The requirement of parliamentary approval for the deployment of the German armed
forces abroad has been an important feature of this system of checks on the executive since
a constitutional court decision in 1994.
In the early 1990s Germany’s pacifist tradition, reinforced by a vocal civil society,
came into conflict with the ‘multilateral reflex’35 and alliance politics as Western
partners asked the reunified Germany to contribute to the interventions of the 1990s.
The parliamentary debate over the Kosovo mission, Germany’s first active combat
mission since the Second World War, showed a shift in discourse—from interpreting the
German history of aggression as the reason why Germany should not use its military
abroad to precisely the reason why Germany should do so to save human lives.36 As then
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer from the Green Party summarised: ‘I stand on two
principles: War, never again; Auschwitz, never again—genocide, never again; fascism,
never again’.37 This re-interpretation of Germany’s lessons from the Second World War,
however did not take hold in the majority of German society or elite discourse.
After the German participation in the Kosovo intervention, some German

policy-makers and academics developed yet another more realist notion of German
foreign policy. They argued that the German participation in the Kosovo intervention
showed the ‘normalisation’ of German foreign and security policy—Germany might
become more like its main European allies in considering the use of force as a tool to
pursue its political objectives.38
With the Iraq war and discussions about the drawn-out intervention in Afghanistan,
however, policy-makers drew other conclusions from this development of a more
autonomous Germany. Chancellor Schröder stressed German ‘confidence’ when saying no
to Iraq,39 contributing to his narrow election victory in 2002. Being ‘more normal’ could
thus also simply imply a more independently minded foreign policy, including openly
disagreeing with traditional allies on important foreign policy issues.40
At the same time, the German Government started to expand its civilian crisis
prevention capacities in the early 2000s, by establishing, for example, a specialised office to
train civilian specialists for peace-building missions.41 The continuing aversion towards
the use of military force is a function of deep scepticism in German society. Contributions
to missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2006 and off the coast of Lebanon
since 2006 as well as resurgent debates about the nature of the mission in Afghanistan
reinforced this perception.42 The ‘culture of restraint’ remained a ‘cornerstone of German
strategic culture’.43 Despite the rhetoric of the new German Government in early 2014
regarding ‘more German responsibility’ abroad,44 this is unlikely to change any time soon.
The distinct strategic cultures of Britain, France and Germany ultimately result in a
patchy consensus on foreign and security policy in the EU. The recently created European
External Action Service (EEAS), which is headed by the Vice President of the Commission
and High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), has in practice
not altered the underlying divisions and competing priorities among the key European
states. The common EU institutions are thus largely limited to a co-ordinating role,
supporting those elements of the responsibility to protect that do not touch upon the
fundamental differences in strategic cultures between key member states.45
The evolution of European R2P positions

The preceding overview of key elements in the strategic cultures and worldviews in France,
Germany and the UK already suggests the principal reasons for differences between these
actors in their interpretations, practices and attitudes regarding the responsibility to

protect. The following part traces these interpretations, practices and attitudes in detail in
the European debate about R2P. We divide the narrative into eight interrelated phases in
which we observe either a pertinent illustration of the European actors’ interpretations of
the responsibility to protect or a change in those interpretations.
2001 to 2005—setting the stage
When in December 2001, the Canadian sponsored International Commission on

Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) published its report suggesting that the
international debates on humanitarian intervention be refocused on the responsibility of
states to protect their populations, the reception of the report in London, Paris and Berlin
illustrated the different starting points for the development of the positions on the
responsibility to protect of the three key European countries.
As prior proponents of humanitarian intervention, both France and the United
Kingdom supported the idea of a responsibility to protect put forward by the
Commission.46 Similar to the other permanent members of the UN Security Council,
however, they rejected any constraints on the powers of that body.47 Germany, in contrast,
barely took note of the ICISS deliberations despite having been represented in the
Commission by retired General Klaus Naumann, who was the lead drafter of a chapter on
military options of the report.48
The rift over the invasion of Iraq in 2003 dealt a blow to a superficial European unity
about R2P. Tony Blair’s use of humanitarian justifications for the war,49 in particular,
diminished British credibility as an advocate for humanitarian causes and left German
policy-makers much more cautious about R2P. When Blair tried to include the ICISS
criteria for the use of force in a declaration of a summit of social-democratic leaders in July
2003, German Chancellor Schröder rejected the attempt, fearing it would implicitly justify
the invasion of Iraq.50 David Hannay, a former UK ambassador to the UN in New York and
member of Kofi Annan’s 2004 UN reform panel, also found that Britain’s perceived
instrumentalist use of humanitarian justifications hampered an ambitious R2P agenda.
At one point he claims to have said to Blair: ‘I think the greatest help you can give me,
Prime Minister, is not making any more speeches like the Chicago speech just for the
moment, thank you’. (According to Hannay’s account, Blair laughed and said: ‘OK, I will
51
make sure I don’t’.)
While European statesmen sought to recover from internal rifts over Iraq, mass
atrocities in Darfur sparked the first attempt to apply the newly minted principle of a
responsibility to protect to a situation of ongoing mass atrocities. While UN Secretary-
General Kofi Annan used R2P language in regard to Darfur on as early as 2004,52 the
European powers remained largely aloof, not least because there were few feasible options
to stop the ongoing atrocities. Britain found itself overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan,53
France was more interested in neighbouring Chad,54 and German policy-makers felt
constrained by the lack of its public’s interest in Africa.55 Therefore, the very limited debate
over Darfur did little more than to demonstrate to policy-makers that a responsibility to
protect could matter in the real world.56
2005—World Summit
London, Paris and Berlin, the latter fresh from high-profile Security Council membership
in 2003 – 2004, found common cause again in supporting Kofi Annan’s effort to reform the
United Nations at the ‘World Summit’ meeting in September 2005. Not least as a result of
the advocacy of ICISS co-chair Gareth Evans, the preparatory report of Annan’s high-level
panel as well as Annan’s own reform agenda ‘In Larger Freedom’ included a suggestion to
adopt a commitment to the responsibility to protect. The point about R2P was just one
proposal among many, and not among the most important ones for most delegations.
With many key issues at stake, the end result would inevitably be a package deal, meaning
that not everybody would be satisfied in every respect.57 Yet the Summit was the first time
that many governments formulated an official position on R2P.
While the support of European governments was vital to see a responsibility to protect
adopted in the outcome document, France and Britain were much more active in pushing
for the concept than Germany. The German Government saw itself as ‘fully in agreement’
with the recommendations of the ICISS report,58 but it was consumed by its commitment
to Security Council reform. An undisclosed interviewee in a detailed thesis on the World
Summit ‘singled out [the Germans] as contributing “almost nothing” to the negotiations
because of their SC ambitions’.59 While R2P was referenced as an achievement in the
British and French statements at the high-level element of the actual Summit, the concept
did not make it into the speech of Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.60
In contrast, the French and especially the British were seeking international
confirmation of R2P as a political signal to mobilise and enable international (military)
action in the face of mass atrocities, according to their traditions of a droit d’ingérence and
liberal interventionism. For British diplomats, for example, ‘[a]greement on the
Responsibility to Protect populations from the worst human rights abuses, consistent
with the Prime Minister’s 1999 Chicago speech’61 was ‘among the first rank’ of their political
priorities during the Summit negotiations.62 The British delegation turned out to be the
most important European supporter of R2P at the Summit.
The final wording of the outcome document, however, only partially reflected the
French and British interpretations of R2P. In the document, member states emphasised the
primary responsibility of each state to protect its own population and affirm the exclusive
authority of the Council over any coercive action regarding four core crimes (genocide,
crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing).63 London and Paris supported
a wider scope for humanitarian intervention. However, there was widespread agreement in
the EU that the four core crimes would be sufficient. In any case, limiting the scope of R2P
was seen as a necessary condition to bring sceptical countries from the global south on
board.64
Both Britain and France said they were ‘flexible’ regarding discussions on criteria for the
use of force as proposed by the high-level panel.65 Having actively advocated for Tony
Blair’s Chicago speech criteria, the UK was open to having a discussion on such
principles.66 Yet both London and Paris shared the other P5 members’ resistance to any
possible language that would constrain their freedom of action in the Security Council.67
Criteria were therefore never seriously discussed during the negotiations, and the P5
maintained their right to still ‘go through every case by case’.68
Regarding authorisation of military interventions under the framework of R2P, Britain
and France initially pursued different approaches during the negotiations. The British
considered inserting the caveat that Security Council authorisation would be sought
‘wherever possible’,69 partially because they wanted to avoid language that would imply
that the Kosovo intervention was not in line with R2P.70 They soon realised, however, that
this was ‘a political non-starter’ and gave up the attempt.71 In contrast to the UK, France—
two years after opposing unilateral intervention by the United States and the UK in Iraq—
supported the positions of Russia and China with respect to language that did not allow
for any ambiguity on the exclusive authority of the Security Council.72
Regardless of the British or French stances in the negotiations, the language in the
outcome document giving the sole authority to the Security Council did not change their
support of their own doctrines of humanitarian intervention.73 In their analysis, however,
this was the only way that the concept was going to be included in the final document.74
(As one British diplomat put it, this was ‘as much as the market would bet’.)75
The statements by the European Union supported the concept throughout, using the
language agreed to by its member states. This meant, for example, that the EU also
started emphasising the exclusive authority of the Security Council after there was an
internal agreement among its members.76 Since the British held the rotating presidency
of the EU in the second half of 2005, their activism often translated into action by the
EU. The EU was a key supporter of the ‘president’s proposal’ prepared by the UN
Secretariat: when a day before the Summit there were so many elements in the outcome
document’s text that were not agreed upon—largely because of US opposition—it was
feared that the Summit would fail completely. The Secretariat, however, had prepared its
own draft. Supported by the EU, a British diplomat suggested to Jean Ping, the
President of the General Assembly, to leave only ‘a nanosecond’ between proposing the
text and taking it as consensually accepted, without letting any state speak in the final
meeting—a risky but successful sleight of hand.77 Ultimately, the EU was one of the
important supporters in favour of anchoring R2P in the World Summit outcome
document, but as then Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch-Brown remembers ‘not
because we won the argument’.78
2005 to 2008—nurturing language and avoiding controversy
The hit of the gavel by Jean Ping on the outcome document disguised differences in
European associations with R2P. France and Britain had pushed for a concept that they saw
mostly as a political tool. For Germany and the EU the two paragraphs in the outcome
document rather provided a reference point for further building of the norm. The years
immediately following the World Summit were characterised by low-key engagement that
avoided much controversy.
A 2006 German White Paper on security policy referred to R2P as an ‘international law
doctrine’ that would ‘in the long term [ . . . ] affect the mandating of international peace
missions’.79 This understanding of R2P as an emerging legal norm continues to
characterise the German position as of now. Yet between 2005 and 2008, the German
Government and German public largely ignored the concept.
The EU reacted in a similar way to R2P during those years. It ‘strongly welcome[d] the
endorsement’ of the responsibility to protect at the World Summit.80 Even though in 2005
the EU Council predicted that the principle would become ‘an important tool of the
international community for addressing the worst atrocities’, EU officials subsequently
understood the responsibility to protect as an emerging legal concept that needed the EU’s
full support and—like other human rights principles—constant nurturing of language at
the multilateral level to gain acceptance.81 The implicit EU interpretation of R2P
underlying this work was that of an emerging norm that needed norm-building.
Accordingly, in the years following the World Summit, the European Union took the
reference in the outcome document as a basis to start the ‘slow multilateral work’ that
would be necessary to increase its backing.82 The aim was to ‘safeguard’ the language that
was agreed upon, to ‘consolidate’ and to cautiously advance it from that basis ‘block by
block, stone by stone’.83 One EU official summarised this approach and the European
contribution by saying that the EU ‘built the policy from the beginning’.84
In line with this approach, the EU reaffirmed its commitment to R2P in its intra-
institutional document on a ‘Consensus on Humanitarian Aid’ in 2007 and started
including the concept as one of its priorities for the General Assembly at the UN in 2008.85
A reference to the responsibility to protect in the EU’s report on the implementation of the
European Security Strategy exemplified the EU interpretation of the responsibility to
protect as an emerging legal concept in contrast to a political tool: ‘[w]ith respect to
human rights’ the report reads, ‘the EU should continue to advance the agreement reached
at the UN World Summit in 2005’.86 Most of these references to R2P were included in
drafts by a handful of EU officials who supported the concept—reflecting a somewhat
independent role of the EU bureaucracy in the European position on R2P. Yet as one EU
official points out, these references were uncontroversial and ‘never debated by anybody’.87
At the same time, France and the UK tried to use R2P on the Security Council. The two
countries led the negotiations on resolution 1674 on ‘the protection of civilians’ (POC)
that for the first time referred to R2P and provided an important reference document for
both further Security Council debates on the protection of civilians and R2P.88 Yet the
fierce resistance to the R2P reference during the negotiations on resolution 1674 made
both countries reluctant to bring up R2P in resolutions on peacekeeping missions in the
following years.89 They subsequently concentrated on the POC agenda without specific
references to R2P. Among other missions, London and Paris pushed the authorisation of
the then largest peacekeeping mission ever mandated in Darfur (UNAMID) in July 2007
and refocused the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (MONUC) on the protection of civilians in 2008.90
While France and Britain were in the lead or very supportive in drafting the mandates of
these and similar missions, and though they—like Germany—financed a large part of the
peacekeeping missions, personnel contributions by these three states remained minimal.91
Two French-led missions conducted in the framework of the European Union’s Common
Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) included the implicit goal of the protection of
civilians around the elections in DRC in 2006 and in Chad in 2008. They were generally
seen as successful but proved controversial in the European Union—especially between
cautious Germany and activist France. The EU has largely focused on civilian and training
missions since then.92
In early 2008, diplomatic efforts by Kofi Annan to stop post-election violence in Kenya
were supported by the EU and major European governments.93 The French Foreign
Minister Bernard Kouchner called for support for Kofi Annan’s mediation process ‘in the
name of the responsibility to protect’ in January 2008.94 British threats to impose sanctions,
including asset freezes and travel bans, on leading Kenyan politicians helped maintain the
pressure on the negotiating parties.95 Germany sent a State Secretary from the Foreign
Office to explain to the parties how power-sharing agreements work in the German coalition
system.96 Advocates of R2P such as Edward Luck later hailed the prevention of further
violence in Kenya as the first successful case of the prevention aspect of R2P.97
2008 and 2009—changing gears in the debate
Due to crises in Myanmar and Georgia, the appointment of a UN Special Advisor on R2P and
the first General Assembly debate on the concept, European (and global) engagement with
R2P increased significantly in 2008 and 2009. In May 2008 French Foreign Minister Kouchner
referred to R2P with regard to a crisis in Myanmar, sparking a disagreement between France,
Germany and Britain on whether the concept applied to the situation. When cyclone Nargis
struck the Irrawaddy delta in Myanmar (also known as Burma) on 3 May 2008, national
authorities refused to let in foreign aid agencies, even though they were struggling to cope with
the situation. On 7 May, French Foreign Minister Kouchner told reporters in New York that
France was seeking an active role of the Security Council to deal with the crisis in Myanmar:
We are seeing at the United Nations if we can’t implement the responsibility to
protect, given that food, boats and relief teams are there, and obtain a United
Nations’ resolution which authorises the delivery (of aid) and imposes this on
the Burmese government.98
His suggestion was to use British and French navy vessels cruising off the coast of
Myanmar for this purpose. This move irritated British and German diplomats and
politicians actually involved in the negotiations in Myanmar and New York, as it undercut
their efforts to display international aid deliveries as non-forceful, non-military and with
no strings attached.99 Officials close to Kouchner understood that this was very much his
personal initiative, even somewhat isolated from the rest of the French Government100 and
the mainstream French media debate.101 It was perfectly in line, however, with the long-
established French understanding of the droit d’ingérence, which involves military
interference to provide relief items and had been the subject of considerable unease among
Kouchner’s fellow NGO activists.102As Britain’s tradition of liberal interventionism did not
share these roots in humanitarian assistance, this experience underlined the nuanced
differences in the positions between the British tradition and the French thinking.103 The
British Government, which was also chairing the Security Council in May 2008, was
opposed to invoking R2P and enforcing aid shipments.104
Kouchner’s proposal sparked a debate about the scope of R2P that also took place
among the British,105 German106 and European107 parliaments and foreign policy elites,
respectively, and heightened the profile of R2P. The European Parliament even passed a
resolution that echoed Kouchner’s sentiment.108 Some German politicians joined
Kouchner’s call, including the Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development
Wieczorek-Zeul.109 In the end, however, Kouchner’s attempt to link R2P to the
Myanmar crisis was widely rejected, including by other European governments and
policy-makers.
Amid this controversy, Germany slowly started to wake up to the concept of a
responsibility to protect. The head of the federal foreign office’s UN department at the
time, Peter Wittig, invited Edward Luck to Germany after the Columbia University
professor was appointed special advisor on the responsibility to protect by the Secretary-
General.110 In early 2008, Luck started a consultation process for a first report of the
Secretary-General, in which he sought to articulate the implications of R2P, as defined at
the World Summit, in greater detail.111 Just by preparing policy-makers for meetings with
Luck and by having him speak in front of parliamentary committees in the UK, Germany
and the EU, member states’ foreign ministries and legislatures began considering more
nuanced positions on the different elements of the concept.112
In July 2008 Secretary-General Ban held a speech in Berlin in which he outlined his
approach for implementing R2P for the first time.113 In the fall of 2008, Wittig published
a personal article about R2P in a cautious attempt to consolidate Germany’s position.114

Before Wittig wrote his article, the German foreign policy bureaucracy had not addressed
the issue in any detail.115 If official documents or speeches referred to R2P at all, they did
so with brief or vague language, largely repeating or citing the 2005 World Summit
outcome document.116 For a German strategic culture focused on multilateralism and
international law, it probably seemed logical to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach to R2P. Yet
thanks to Wittig’s and Luck’s efforts, Germany started to engage more with the concept
in 2008.
Two more crises reminded European diplomats of the controversy around R2P and the
limited consensus over a liberal human rights agenda. In August 2008, European
governments were united in rejecting the attempt by Russia to justify its military
intervention in Georgia by pointing to the responsibility to protect117 civilians from
‘humanitarian catastrophe’.118 From the perspective of those who supported a wide
interpretation of R2P, the use of R2P by Putin and Medvedev, contrary to the original
intention of countries such as France and Britain, emphasised the danger of Kouchner’s
activism with regard to Myanmar.
In early 2009, as a reaction to atrocities committed by the conflict parties in Sri Lanka
during the final phase of its civil war, where up to 40,000 civilians were allegedly killed in
just a few months,119 European governments lobbied for a special session of the Human
Rights Council.120 They tabled a draft resolution that condemned the Sri Lankan
Government. In an embarrassing defeat, however, the special session ended up passing a
resolution that supported the Sri Lankan Government’s counter-terrorism efforts—
thereby approving of the manner in which the Sri Lankan Government had conducted its
operations in the last few months of the civil war.121
As the first General Assembly debate on R2P drew closer in the summer of 2009, the
controversies over Myanmar and Georgia and the isolation of the West in the Human
Rights Council on Sri Lanka might have heightened the fears among European
governments and the EU foreign affairs bureaucracy of a backlash that might jeopardise
the language agreed to in 2005.122 Rather than focusing on bold language, European
diplomats were focused on maintaining the existing consensus: this illustrates their shared
interpretation that the concept had to be supported by maintaining and refining language
on R2P in multilateral resolutions.
The debate was based on the Secretary-General’s report on ‘Implementing the
Responsibility to Protect’. The report defined a ‘narrow and deep’123 approach focused on
the four crimes mentioned and based on the agreed-upon language of the 2005 World
Summit. By introducing the ‘three pillars’ of state responsibility, capacity-building and
intervention, Luck sought to broaden the debate beyond the question of military action
alone.124 Despite Luck’s efforts to reach out to sceptical countries, the Nicaraguan
President of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, circulated a highly
critical concept paper and hosted a panel discussion with the anti-interventionist public
intellectual Noam Chomsky at the start of the debate.125 To oppose these critics, the EU
delegation in New York co-ordinated a large diplomatic push by the EU, complete with
‘complex charts and burden sharing’ arrangements that laid out which member state
would lobby which group of UN member states.126
The respective statements of France, the UK, Germany and the EU Council
presidency were co-ordinated to support the key points of the Secretary-General’s
report: prevention as the most important aspect of R2P and the crucial role of capacity-
building in support of regional organisations.127 EU member states took care not to
appear too forceful to avoid R2P being viewed as a purely ‘Western’ concept.128 The UK
and France explicitly emphasised that the ‘principle of non-indifference’ was ‘enshrined
in the AU Constitutive Act’129 and recalled that R2P was ‘developed by prominent
figures from every continent’.130 After the debate, instead of getting behind a more
substantive resolution proposed by Guatemala, the EU supported a procedural
131
resolution that welcomed Luck’s report and mandated further debates in the General
132
Assembly.
The report was received positively by a large majority of states at the United Nations,
because it de-emphasised military means of enforcing R2P. Luck’s three pillars also allowed
the Europeans to focus their rhetoric on the prevention elements of a responsibility to
protect. For Germany and the EU, in particular, prevention presented a way to discuss R2P
without facing up to the controversy over military intervention. They could now relate the
principle to their general focus on prevention and civilian crisis management.133 A former
European official said that since 2009, in all internal discussions between member states in
the EU Council’s UN Working Group (CONUN), all countries agreed that the most
important element of the responsibility to protect was prevention. It was always left to
either Britain or France to note that ‘this is also about the use of force’.134 None of these
countries, however, launched any initiatives with the purpose of the prevention of mass
atrocities in 2009 or the following years.135
2011—Libya
The European R2P positions were thrown into the spotlight more than ever before by the
Libyan crisis in spring 2011. When in February 2011 the Libyan ruler Muammar
al-Gaddafi started to violently suppress protesters in his country and threatened to kill
members of the opposition showing ‘no mercy’,136 the Security Council dealt with the
crisis unusually early and forcefully. Resolution 1973 marked the first time the Security
Council authorised a military intervention against a functioning state to prevent
imminent mass atrocities.137 That decision has since been hailed by its supporters and
opponents both as proof that the responsibility to protect has become an established
international norm138 and—because of the controversies surrounding its implementation
by NATO which effectively ended up aiding the rebel forces overthrow the Gaddafi
government—as the beginning of its end.139
For the European position on R2P, the Libyan crisis is revealing for three reasons. First,
it demonstrated the way in which France and Britain understood R2P as a more acceptable
term than humanitarian intervention to justify their national priorities. Second, with
Germany just having taken its 2011 – 2012 seat on the Security Council, Libya woke up a
broader public in Germany to the existence of R2P and expanded the Government’s
interpretation of the concept. Third, the crisis showcased the extent of disagreement
between major European governments about R2P, and the resulting paralysis of the
European Union as a whole to support or implement R2P in practice.
At first, the European and international reaction to the crisis in Libya demonstrated an
unusual capacity and willingness to act together in the face of mass atrocities. Less than
two weeks after the outbreak of major violence in Libya, the UN Security Council passed
resolution 1970.140 Brought about jointly by the UK, France and Germany, the resolution
recalled the Libyan government’s responsibility to protect, imposed targeted sanctions and
referred the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court.141
When the crisis in Libya continued unabated, however, this common European position
fell apart. The deep division between the UK and France on the one side and Germany on
the other side over whether and how to use military force to address the situation in Libya
reflected the key differences between their strategic cultures. The diverging strategic
cultures also shaped their different interpretations of the responsibility to protect.
France and Britain led the charge for military intervention in Libya. For France, Libya
was a clear-cut case of an acute humanitarian emergency that screamed for intervention.
In addition, Libya’s location on the southern shore of the Mediterranean made it part of an
important zone of influence for France.142 Political analysts also wrote that Sarkozy might
have wanted to cover up his previously good relations with the Gaddafi regime, gain
popularity by showing international activism a year before the presidential elections or
distract from the fact that in the beginning of the Arab Spring, France had offered support
for the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali.143 It is possible that the public efforts of the French
philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy helped to tip the balance. Lévy flew the rebel leadership
from Libya to Paris and arranged meetings with Sarkozy, amid public demands for
action.144 After their meeting, Sarkozy started to compare the situation in Benghazi to
Rwanda and Srebrenica, employing powerful historical analogies that buttressed the moral
case for intervention.145 In parliament, Foreign Minister Alain Juppé stressed the
responsibility to protect in the context of resolution 1970.146
For London, the crisis in Libya passed the ‘five tests’ that Tony Blair had laid out in the
Chicago speech, including evidence, military feasibility and national interest. In addition,
the British Government’s experience from Bosnia and Iraq led to a concerted effort to seek
a UN Security Council mandate and regional support. Both efforts were successful; the
latter partly because of William Hague’s lobbying of Arab states to support a no-fly zone
over Libya.147 Especially in the week leading up to the decision on resolution 1973, ‘[t]here
was a very strong feeling at the top of this government that Benghazi could very easily
become the Srebrenica of our watch’, according to ‘a senior government source’.148 Quite
possibly, the moral fervour could have eclipsed the commitment to conducting a mission
in line with international law, i.e. with a Security Council mandate. Cameron later noted in
an interview: ‘I’ve always thought it odd the argument that because there’s a Russian veto
[at the UN], suddenly all the other moral arguments are washed away. I don’t believe
that’.149 Cameron swept aside internal critics, including Justice Secretary Kenneth
Clarke150 and Liberal Democrats, who were traditionally sceptical towards interventions
and were only persuaded by the perceived imminent threat to civilians in Benghazi.151
In contrast to Britain and France, Germany argued against military intervention in Libya
and abstained on Resolution 1973, joining Brazil, Russia, India and China on the Security
Council. While German officials were annoyed about what they saw as insincere French
activism on Libya, they did not assess the risk of a massacre in Benghazi as being lower than
their main European allies. In line with the German ‘culture of restraint’, however, the
German Government and the German public were much more sceptical about the chances
for success and afraid of the dangers of a military mission in Libya.152 Foreign Minister
Westerwelle—a staunch supporter of the ‘culture of restraint’153—played a key role in

opposing the intervention, as did the fear of all senior government officials to ask the
Bundestag for a mandate shortly before an important regional election.154 After the sudden
change of position in the US Administration155 that included the introduction of a
paragraph in the resolution that called for ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians and
thereby a much broader authorisation of the use of force than a no-fly zone would have been,
with less than 35 hours to decide on how to vote on the resolution and no time for a new
debate in the Bundestag again before the vote, the German Government decided to abstain
on resolution 1973.156 Foreign Minister Westerwelle and Chancellor Merkel portrayed the
link between the vote in the Security Council and the provision of troops to the operation as
inseparable,157 an idea for which they were widely criticised in Germany afterwards.158
The controversial German abstention led to a surge of discussions on the responsibility
to protect in Germany—both as a matter of emerging international law and, for the first
time, as a moral principle that demanded practical concepts and real-world action. In the
following year, opposition parties included the topic in parliamentary motions159 and
major national newspapers explained it to a larger public.160 In the fall of 2012, the foreign
office appointed a high-ranking ‘focal point’ on R2P and designated civilian conflict
prevention projects as related to R2P. In early 2013, the German focal point for R2P
referred to the concept as a ‘norm under construction’ and explained that it ‘takes several
decades to establish international customary law, until state practice and legal opinion are
sufficient to call it a binding norm’.161 Since the Libyan crisis, however, Germany’s
interpretation of R2P additionally demands practical projects to prevent mass atrocities.
For the European Union, the fundamental rift between the major European states about
military action left the EU only with rhetorical tools to act. Both High Representative
Ashton and Council President Van Rompuy referred on several occasions to the Libyan
Government’s responsibility to protect.162 Yet EU member states could not agree on joint
EU action to support the intervention.
Responsibility while protecting
While the crisis in Libya prompted a change in the German interpretation of R2P, debates
on the Brazilian proposal of a ‘responsibility while protecting’ soon afterwards
demonstrated that, in contrast, the key aspects of the French and British positions on
R2P had largely remained constant since 2001.
The perceived violation of the mandate of the UN Security Council by NATO forces in
Libya was more relevant for international debates on the responsibility to protect than the
agreement on the resolutions 1970 and 1973 themselves. Even promoters of R2P criticised
what amounted to the de facto assistance for a rebel movement to remove the Gaddafi
regime.163 Dissatisfaction over Libya motivated Brazil to present an amendment to the
responsibility to protect: its proposal of a ‘responsibility while protecting’ (RwP).164
The concept proposed a ‘chronological sequencing’ of the three pillars of responsibility of
the state: international assistance and enforcement measures; the consideration of a series
of criteria before the Council authorises the use of force; and the establishment of a
monitoring mechanism to oversee the implementation of military interventions
authorised by the Security Council in the context of the responsibility to protect.165
Reminiscent of their first reaction to the ICISS report in 2001, France and the UK, who
had been the political driving force behind the NATO operation, were vehemently opposed
to RwP, because they did not want to start discussions on any kind of criteria or
monitoring mechanisms that would have limited their freedom of action in the Security
Council.166 The French Government in particular saw this as an attempt to render R2P
more inflexible. It saw RwP as a direct criticism of the operation in Libya that France had
played a leading role in. The French opposition to RwP was so profound that the French
Government tried to prevent the inclusion of language supportive of RwP into a motion
by the European Parliament by writing a letter to every French member of the European
Parliament (MEP) on the Foreign Affairs Committee, asking them not to support the
motion.167
Given the strong opposition by London and Paris and the support of RwP by Portugal
and other Southern European countries, agreeing on a common European position on the
Brazilian proposal was very difficult—so much so that some EU officials feared the EU
would end its unbroken chain of common statements on R2P since 2009.168 The large
majority of states was critical on some of the suggestions but welcomed the Brazilian
initiative as such. They sought to encourage discussions on issues that the French and
British were strictly opposed to, such as the monitoring mechanism.169 After first being
equally sceptical of the Brazilian proposal, Germany joined those EU states and the EU
delegation in New York that argued for ‘embracing the concept’ and working
constructively with the Brazilians, giving weight to those states arguing for a middle
ground in Brussels.170 Since the Foreign Office in Berlin had just produced a strategy paper
arguing for more engagement with new emerging powers such as Brazil, officials there had
argued—initially against the opinions of their colleagues in New York—for a more

conciliatory approach towards the concept.171 Illustrating the persisting German legalistic
approach, the German mission produced a detailed analysis of the Brazilian proposal,
outlining those elements that were already part of international law.172
The European External Action Service managed to soothe heated differences sufficiently
for a common statement during an informal discussion on the concept in February
2012,173 illustrating the added value of the European Union bureaucracy on discussions on
R2P: without the institutional memory of the EU delegation in New York and its
moderator role in this process, a common EU statement would have been unlikely. Despite
the agreement on the common statement, however, the discussions in the EU Council’s
UN Working Group continued during almost every meeting of the following year without
yielding a truly common European position.174
Syria and the Central African Republic: confirming old patterns or new
opportunities for European cooperation?
The debates around mass atrocities after Libya and RwP on the one hand confirmed the
above described positions of the three major European states. On the other hand they may
provide a hint at a possible convergence of European positions.
Between the outbreak of violence in Syria in 2011 and the summer of 2013, all European
members of the Security Council (including Germany until the end of its two year
membership in 2012) acted in concert to table resolutions that threatened UN sanctions to
address the ever escalating crisis in Syria—where the initial crackdown of protests by the
Assad regime developed into a full-scale civil war. The European drive for sanctions and
diplomatic initiatives were blocked by Russia and China.175
When the United States threatened military measures against the Assad regime after the
use of chemical weapons in Syria in August 2013 old differences between the three major
European countries were once again highlighted. France supported air strikes in Syria
despite the lack of a Security Council mandate. The British Government demonstrated
that for them, R2P had never replaced or changed their interpretation of ‘liberal
interventionism’. The British Government explicitly argued that under ‘the doctrine of
humanitarian intervention’ the UK would ‘still be permitted under international law to
take exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian
catastrophe [ . . . ]’.176 By voting down the Prime Minister’s proposal for British
participation in airstrikes over Syria, however, the House of Commons sent a signal that
the British public was becoming wary of more interventions. In the eyes of some European
analysts, the British vote showed how the country in that respect became a bit ‘more
German’.177 While this might be an over-interpretation of a single decision, the growing
war-wariness of British citizens might indeed provide a space for closer alignment of
European positions.
Similarly, the German support for a European military mission in the Central African
Republic in early 2014 could be seen as a cautious shift towards a more common European
response to mass atrocities. Yet the German support to the mission was once again minimal,
leaving a big gap between the rhetoric of the country’s politicians and its actions.178
Debating prevention
While they were trying to mitigate differences between member states on RwP and a
response to the Syrian crisis, officials at the European External Action Service were
challenged by a group of academics and civil society actors that formed a ‘Task Force on
the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities’, launched by a Hungarian civil society organisation
in 2012.179 Confronted with the proposition that the EU was not doing enough to prevent
mass atrocities, EU officials argued that the European Union was strong on mass atrocity
prevention and R2P because of its focus on conflict prevention.180 Yet neither the EU nor
Germany—which have most emphasised the prevention aspects of R2P since 2009—were
very supportive of the EU’s prevention agenda in previous years. The EU’s High
Representative Catherine Ashton blocked the evaluation of the EU’s 2011 Göteborg
Programme on Conflict Prevention, which would have produced an update of the 10 year
old EU policy programme on conflict prevention.181 It was Hungary, supported by the UK
and not Germany that led an effort to adopt EU Council Conclusions on conflict
prevention in June 2011. Similarly, the establishment of a separate conflict prevention and
mediation unit in the EEAS was mostly supported by the European Parliament, the British,
Finish and the Swedes—not Germany.182
Conclusion
As our analysis has shown, while European governments have a positive attitude towards
R2P, they never shared a truly consensual interpretation of its most important properties
and functions. Based on their distinct strategic cultures, France and Britain, on the one
hand, have supported a much broader interpretation of R2P than Germany and the EU.
In this, France traces its own position to humanitarian assistance and the notion of a droit
d’ingérence as a legal right to interfere in sovereign territories for humanitarian reasons,
building on its imperial mission civilisatrice in its strategic culture. British policy-makers
have started to embrace a ‘bounded liberalism’, fusing their foreign policy with values-
laden rhetoric. R2P becomes a tool to convince others in a political argument in this view,
as was visible in the debate about the intervention in Libya. Germany and the EU, on
the other hand, viewed R2P mostly through the eyes of multilateralism and international
law. Through increased internal and public debates after Libya, German leaders and
officials started to accept that there are also practical implications to the concept. They
have since focused on the aspect of prevention and the establishment of a focal point in the
foreign office.
These persistent differences among some of the most important supporters of R2P
demonstrate the need to disentangle ‘the’ European position on R2P. Unsurprisingly,
differences in their strategic cultures mean that there are diverging interpretations and
practices regarding a responsibility to protect. These are not only important to take
into account when further investigating the EU’s engagement with the concept. They
are also vital to remember in further research and policy debates on the EU’s role in
engaging new global powers on this concept. France and Britain have been more
proactive than Germany in pursuing policies to prevent mass atrocities and in support
of R2P. And while the German Government and the European Union liked to highlight
the importance of prevention on every occasion, they have not been at the forefront of
new or qualitatively different prevention initiatives so far. Yet that the positions of
France and Britain have not changed at all since 2001 raises the question of whether
London and Paris have lived up to their own demands of open engagement with global
powers. A greater willingness of the two European powers on the Security Council to
engage in debates on criteria for the use of force or accountability mechanisms and to
discuss possible alternatives to military interventions in concrete crisis situations will
likely not only benefit a stronger common European foreign policy. It will also enable a
more constructive European role in engaging in a more meaningful and consistent
manner in the global debate on a responsibility to protect populations from mass
atrocities.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Philipp Rotmann, Oliver Read, Matthias Dembinski, Marcos Tourinho and the
two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback and excellent comments. This article is part of a
collaborative research project on Global Norm Evolution and the Responsibility to Protect (www.
globalnorms.net), generously funded by the Volkswagen Foundation through its Europe and Global
Challenges programme.
Endnotes
1. Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to Protect’, Ian Birrel, ‘This is the REAL Cameron—and his Battle
51, 246. with the Desert Despot may Define Him’. Daily Mail,
2. UNGA, ‘Resolution 60/1’. 20 March 2011.
3. Cf. Vlasic, ‘Europe and North America’. 14. Blair, ‘Doctrine of the International Community’.
4. Göler offers an exception, yet only with regard to the 15. Daddow, ‘Tony’s War’, 556.
Libya crisis in 2011 and without a major focus on R2P. 16. Blair, ‘Doctrine of the International Community’.
See, Göler, ‘Die Europäische Union in der Libyen- 17. Atkins, ‘A Renewed Social Democracy’, 184.
Krise’. 18. ‘Robin Cook’s Speech on the Government’s Ethical
5. See, Fiott, ‘The Responsibility-to-Protect’; Oxfam Foreign Policy’. The Guardian, 12 May 1997; Williams,
International, ‘The European Union’; Vincent and ‘The Rise and Fall’; Cf. Chandler, ‘Rhetoric without
Wouters, ‘The Responsibility to Protect’; Dembinski Responsibility’; Gaskarth, ‘Interpreting Ethical Foreign
and Reinold, Libya and the Future of the Responsibility Policy’.
to Protect; Vlasic, ‘Europe and North America’; Task 19. Dodds and Elden, ‘Thinking Ahead’, 348 – 350.
Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities, ‘The 20. Daddow and Schnapper, ‘Liberal Intervention’, 333.
EU and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities’; Wouters 21. Vaı̈sse, La Puissance ou l’Influence?.
and De Man, ‘The Responsibility to Protect and 22. Irondelle and Schmitt, ‘France’, 125.
Regional Organisations’. 23. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize.
6. For the UK, see Daddow, ‘Tony’s War’; Daddow and 24. Chafer and Cumming, ‘Beyond Fashoda’; Koepf, ‘The
Schnapper, ‘Liberal Intervention’; Davidson, ‘France, Problems of French-led Peace Operations’. Rwanda
Britain and the Intervention in Libya’. For France, see proved to be a turning point in its Africa policy though:
Allen and Styan, ‘A Right to Interfere?’; Charbonneau, ‘France became much more careful when weighing
‘France’; Konersmann, Responsibility to Protect; David- options to intervene—it now rather promotes and
son, ‘France, Britain and the Intervention in Libya’. For supports African capacities for intervention’. Interview
Germany, see Brozus and von Farks, ‘Germany and R2P’. with Jean-Marc Châtaigner, French Focal Point for
7. Stahl, ‘Die Deutsche Außenpolitik in der Libyen-Krise’; R2P, Paris, June 2013.
Brozus and von Farks, ‘Germany and R2P’; Seibel, ‘Das 25. Irondelle and Schmitt, ‘France’, 131– 132.
Deutsche Abstimmungsverhalten’. 26. In a transatlantic survey, 76 per cent of French
8. See for this three-dimensional analytical framework respondents, the second highest except for Sweden,
the introduction to this special issue. supported the notion that the international community
9. Interview with Dame Margaret Beckett MP, London, had a responsibility to protect civilians from violence,
June 2013. with 69 per cent of British and 66 per cent of German
10. See the survey conducted by Biehl et al., Strategische respondents replying favourably. German Marshall
Kulturen in Europa. Fund of the United States, ‘Transatlantic Trends’, 39 – 40.
11. One important exception of this convergence in foreign 27. Bettati, ‘Du droit d’ingérence’.
policy relates to Britain’s relation with Europe, see Self, 28. It is not easy to properly translate this into English. In
British Foreign and Defence Policy, 150– 151; Bevir et al., French, ‘droit’ has a stronger, legal connotation than
‘Introduction’. the word ‘devoir’ that rather describes a moral duty but
12. Interviews with policy-makers, London, June 2013. not a legal obligation. See Allen and Styan, ‘A Right to
13. Simms, Unfinest Hour. His former speech writer claims Interfere?’, 828. It is possible that this linguistic
that this book has influenced Cameron’s thinking: see problem adds to the frequent misunderstandings
between the European partners on the (legal) nature of 54. Junk, ‘Humanitäre Appelle, Humanitäre Interventio-
humanitarian interventions and R2P. nen?’, 150– 151.
29. Bettati and Kouchner, Le Devoir d’ingérence. 55. Interview with Bernd Mützelburg, then chief foreign
30. Allen and Styan, ‘A Right to Interfere?’. policy advisor of the Chancellor, Berlin, August 2013.
31. Interview Jean-Pierre Maulny, IRIS, Paris, May 2013. 56. Cf. Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to
32. Junk and Daase, ‘Germany’, 149. Protect’, 187– 188.
33. Ibid., 146. 57. Interview with Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, June 2013.
34. Art. 26 I of Germany’s Basic Law states: ‘Acts tending to 58. Auswärtiges Amt, ‘Siebter Bericht der Bundesregier-
and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful ung’, 143.
relations between nations, especially to prepare for a 59. Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to Protect’,
war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall 242.
be made a criminal offense’. 60. Fischer, ‘Address by Joschka Fischer’; Blair, ‘Speech to
35. Kaim and Niedermeier, Das Ende des ‘Muliteralen the General Assembly’; de Villepin, ‘Discourse de
Reflexes’?. Monsieur Dominique de Villepin’.
36. Smith, Genocide and the Europeans, 191. 61. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘The United
37. Fischer, ‘Auszüge aus der Rede beim Bielefelder Kingdom in the United Nations’, 7, emphasis added.
Parteitag’. The Chicago speech remains a crucial reference
38. Baumann and Hellmann, ‘Germany and the Use of document in the British discourse on R2P. Inter-
Military Force’; Roos, ‘Deutsche Außenpolitik nach der views with former British diplomats, London,
Vereinigung’, 29. June 2013.
39. Stahl, ‘Die Deutsche Außenpolitik in der Libyen-Krise’. 62. Interview with a former British diplomat, London,
40. For a full development of this argument, see ibid. June 2013.
41. The Centre for Peace Operations (Zentrum für 63. UNGA, ‘Resolution 60/1’.
Internationale Friedenseinsätze) based in Berlin. 64. Interviews with EEAS officials, Brussels, May 2013 and
42. See Stahl, ‘Die Deutsche Außenpolitik in der Libyen- with Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, June 2013.
Krise’. 65. Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to Protect’,
43. Baumann and Hellmann, ‘Germany and the Use of 317.
Military Force’, 62; Noetzel and Schreer, ‘All the Way?’, 66. Ibid., 317.
219; Junk and Daase, ‘Germany’, 148. 67. Ibid., 318.
44. Allison Smale, ‘Spurred by Global Crises, Germany 68. Interview with former British diplomat, London, June
Weighs a More Muscular Foreign Policy’. The New York 2013.
Times, 1 February 2014. 69. Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to Protect’,
45. Cf. Dembinski and Reinold, Libya and the Future of the 324.
Responsibility to Protect, 14 – 22. 70. Ibid.
46. Bellamy, The Responsibility to Protect, 67. 71. Ibid.
47. Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to Protect’, 72. See Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to
183. Protect’, 288.
48. Phone Interview with Klaus Naumann, June 2013 73. Ibid., 325. Indeed, the FCO continues to cite a legal
49. See, for example, Tony Blair, ‘Speech given by the reasoning based on this doctrine in discussions on R2P,
Prime Minister in Sedgefield, Justifying Military Action interview, FCO, London, June 2013. For the reasoning,
in Iraq and Warning of the Continued Threat of Global see Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, Kosovo.
Terrorism’. The Guardian, 5 March 2004. Further, see Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsi-
50. ‘British PM Urges Tougher Stance Against Brutal bility to Protect’. Interview with Aline Leboef, IFRI,
Regimes’. Agence France Presse, 14 July 2003. Available Paris, May 2013.
at: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_ 74. Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to Protect’,
0286-23840356_ITM [Accessed 30 August 2013]. 324.
51. Phone Interview with David Hannay, March 2013. 75. Interview with former British diplomat, London, June
52. See Pollentine, ‘Constructing the Responsibility to 2013.
Protect’, 187, for further references. 76. European Council, ‘Presidency Conclusions 16 and 17
53. Bellamy, ‘Responsibility to Protect or Trojan Horse?’, June 2005’.
32, 42, 45. 77. Interview with former British diplomat, London, June 2013.
78. Interview with Mark Malloch-Brown, London, June time in office, as ‘whenever [something] became a bit
2013. political [the Elysée] took it away from him’. Interview,
79. German Federal Ministry of Defence, ‘White Paper Jean-Pierre Maulny, Institut de Relations Internatio-
2006’, 44. nales et Stratégiques, Paris, May 2013.
80. European Council, ‘Council Conclusions on UN World 101. Badescu, Humanitarian Intervention, 141.
Summit’. 102. Allen and Styan, ‘A Right to Interfere?’, 835.
81. Interview with EEEAS officials, Brussels, May 2013. 103. Interview with Mark Malloch-Brown, London, June 2013.
82. Ibid. 104. Ibid.
83. Ibid. 105. UK, House of Commons, ‘Debate on Burma’.
84. Interview with EEAS officials, Brussels, May 2013, 106. The German debate took place more than a month
Emphasis added. after the disaster outbreak and was ‘put on record’
85. European Council, ‘EU Priorities for the 63rd United (i.e. the speeches were never actually delivered).
Nations General Assembly’; European Parliament and Deutscher Bundestag, ‘Stenografischer Bericht’.
European Commission, ‘The European Conensus on 107. European Parliament, ‘Debates’.
Humanitarian Aid’, para. 17. 108. European Parliament, ‘Resolution on the Tragic
86. EU, ‘Report on the Implementation of the European Situation’.
Security Strategy’, 12. Emphasis added. It should be noted 109. ‘Gegen die Junta. Deutschland will Hilfe für Birma
that the Report does not carry a lot of weight in Brussels. erzwingen’. Die Welt, 11 May 2008.
87. Phone interview with former European official, June 110. Interview with Edward Luck, Berlin, June 2013.
2013. 111. Ibid.
88. Bellamy, The Responsibility to Protect, 138. 112. Interview with German diplomat, Berlin, June 2013;
89. Ibid. The former German ambassador to the UN, phone interview with European official, June 2013.
Thomas Matussek, also remembered that the label R2P 113. UNSG, ‘Address at Berlin’.
was avoided in SC discussions on Darfur to decrease 114. Wittig, ‘Das Leiden der Anderen’.
controversy. Interview with Thomas Matussek, Berlin, 115. Interview with German diplomat, Berlin, June 2013.
22 March 2013. 116. See, for example, Bundesregierung, ‘Working Together’,
90. UNSC, ‘Resolution 1769’; UNSC, ‘Resolution 1856’. 96; German Federal Ministry of Defence, ‘White Paper
91. In the beginning of 2008, less than 10 per cent of 2006’, 44.
peacekeeping troops came from Western governments. 117. Putin even compared the situation in South Ossetia to
Cf. Bellamy, The Responsibility to Protect, 168. Srebrenica. See Nielsen, ‘The Kosovo Precedent’, 179.
92. Cf. Haine, ‘The Failure of a European Strategic 118. See Russia’s statement at the UN Security Council that
Culture’. also spoke about ‘scorched-earth Tactics’ by Georgia.
93. Babaud and Ndung’u, ‘Early Warning and Conflict UNSC, ‘Meeting Records’; Bellamy, ‘Five Years On’,
Prevention’. 151. Compare Kurowska in this issue for more analysis
94. Kouchner, ‘Violence in Kenya’. on the Russian position.
95. Xan Rice, ‘Rice Presses for Kenyan Power-sharing Deal’. 119. UN, ‘Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts
The Guardian, 18 February 2008. on Accountability in Sri Lanka’.
96. Dagmar Dehmer, ‘Keine Partei Darf Dominieren’. Der 120. UN, ‘Report of the Secretary-General’s Internal Review
Tagesspiegel, 16 February 2008. Cf. Haine, ‘The Failure Panel on United Nations Action in Sri Lanka’, 14.
of a European Strategic Culture’. Babaud and Ndung’u, 121. UN Human Rights Council, ‘Assistance to Sri Lanka’.
‘Early Warning and Conflict Prevention’. Kouchner, 122. Interviews with EEAS officials, Brussels, May 2013.
‘Violence in Kenya’. Rice, ‘Rice Presses for Kenyan 123. UNSG, ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect’.
Power-sharing Deal’. Dehmer, ‘Keine Partei Darf 124. Bellamy, ‘Five Years On’, 146.
Dominieren’. 125. UNGA, ‘Concept Note on the Responsibility to
97. Luck, ‘From Promise to Practice’, 98. Protect’.
98. Reuters, ‘France Suggested Invoking Responsibility to 126. Interview with EEAS officials, Brussels, May 2013.
Protect’, 7 May 2008. 127. Permanent Mission of Sweden to the UN, ‘Statement
99. Interview with Thomas Mattusek, Berlin, April 2013 on Behalf of the European Union’.
and interview with Mark Malloch-Brown, London, 128. For example, EU member states deliberately spread out
June 2013. their statements during the debate so not to appear as
100. Apparently, the French President had particularly one bloc highlighting the same message. Interview,
strong influence in foreign policy during Kouchner’s EEAS, Brussels, May 2013.
129. Permanent Mission of the UK to the UN, ‘Draft 154. Brockmeier, ‘The German Abstention on the Libya
Statement’. Intervention’.
130. Permanent Mission of France to the UN, ‘General 155. See Junk in this issue.
Assembly’. 156. For a detailed explanation of the abstention, see also
131. Interview with Edward Luck, Berlin, June 2013. Seibel, ‘Libyen, das Prinzip der Schutzverantwortung’.
132. UNGA, ‘The Responsibility to Protect’. 157. Bundesregierung, ‘Pressestatement von Bundeskan-
133. Compare, for example, European Council, ‘EU zlerin Angela Merkel’; Federal Foreign Office, ‘Federal
Priorities for the 64th United Nations General Foreign Minister Westerwelle on the Libya Resolution’.
Assembly’; Permanent Mission of Germany to the 158. Josef Joffe, ‘Eine Bundesregierung ohne Kiel und
UN, ‘Statement in the General Assembly Debate’. Kompass’ [A Federal Government without Keel and
134. Phone Interview with former European official, June Compass]. Die ZEIT, 25 March 2011; Müller, ‘Ein
2013. Desaster’.
135. Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities, 159. Deutscher Bundestag, ‘Schutzverantwortung Weiter-
‘The EU and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities’. entwickeln’; Deutscher Bundestag, ‘Die Internationale
136. Al-Arabiya News, ‘Gaddafi tells Benghazi his Army is Schutzverantwortung’.
Coming Tonight’, 17 March 2011. 160. See, for example, Michael Radunski, ‘Syrien und
137. Bellamy, ‘Libya and the Responsibility to Protect’, 263. Libyen—Schutzverantwortung für die Bevölkerung’
138. Bellamy and Williams, ‘The New Politics of Protection’; [Syria and Libya—Responsibility to Protect the
Weiss, ‘RtoP Alive and Well’. Population]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 April
139. David Rieff, ‘R2P, R.I.P’. New York Times, 6 November 2012.
2011. 161. Contribution by Otto Lampe at the Peace Congress
140. UNSC, ‘Resolution 1970’. of the German Protestant Church, Berlin, 14 June
141. Ibid.; Seibel, ‘R2P and German Foreign Policy’, 11. 2013.
142. Interview with Jean-Marc Chataigner, Paris, June 2013. 162. European Council, ‘Statement by Herman Van
Cf. Henry, ‘Sarkozy, the Mediterranean and the Arab Rompuy’; EU, ‘Statement by the High Representative’.
Spring’. 163. Interview with Gareth Evans, Delhi, April 2013.
143. Elliott, ‘Viewpoint’; Santini and Varvelli, ‘The Libya 164. Benner, ‘Brasilien als Normunternehmer’. See also
Crisis’; interview with Mathieu Pellerin, Paris, May Tourinho and Stuenkel in this issue.
2013. 165. UNSC and UNGA, ‘Letter dated 9 November’.
144. Wallace-Wells, ‘European Superhero’. 166. Interview with German diplomat, Berlin, June 2013.
145. Dembinski and Reinold, Libya and the Future of the 167. Interview with a member of the European Parliament,
Responsibility to Protect, 21. Brussels, May 2013.
146. Assemblée National, ‘Première Séance’, 55– 56. 168. Interview with EEAS officials, Brussels, May 2013.
147. Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt, ‘David Cameron’s 169. Interview with German diplomat, Berlin, June 2013.
Libyan War: Why the PM felt Gaddafi had to be 170. Ibid.
Stopped’. The Guardian, 2 October 2011. 171. Ibid.
148. Ibid. 172. Interview with EEAS officials, Brussels, May 2013.
149. Niall Ferguson, ‘The British Prime Minister is Coming 173. Permanent Mission of the EU to the UN, ‘Elements for
to America’. Newsweek, 11 March 2012. a Possible EU Statement’.
150. Wintour and Watt, ‘David Cameron’s Libyan War’. 174. Interview with German diplomat, Berlin, June 2013.
151. Interview with a Liberal Democrat MP, London, June 175. Three draft resolutions were vetoed in 2011 and 2012
2013. by Russia and China, all of which were co-sponsored by
152. A poll published with the title ‘Germans do not want to the European members of the UN Security Council.
get involved’ by the magazine Stern on the day before the UNSC, ‘Draft Resolutions’, S/2011/612; S/2012/77; and
UN Security Council vote on resolution 1973 found that S/2012/538.
88 per cent of Germans opposed the involvement of 176. Prime Minister’s Office, ‘Guidance’.
German troops in an intervention in Libya. Stern, 177. Robert Leicht, ‘Vor dem Schießen erst das Parlament
‘Deutsche Wollen sich Nicht Einmischen’. befragen‘ [Before shooting, First Ask the Parliament].
153. Matthias Nass, ‘Der Anti-Interventionist’ [The Anti- Die ZEIT, 18 September 2013; von Ondarza, ‘Nach dem
Interventionist]. Die ZEIT, 9 February 2013. Nein zum Militäreinsatz in Syrien’.
178. Techau, ‘A New German Defense Minister’. Responsibility to Protect’. International Affairs 87(4),
179. Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities, 825 – 850.
‘The EU and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities’. Benner, Thorsten, 2012. ‘Brasilien als Normunternehmer: die
180. Phone interview with member of the Task Force, June “Responsibility While Protecting’’’ [Brazil as Norm
2013. Entrepreneur: the ‘Responsibility While Protecting’].
181. Schünemann, ‘EU Conflict Prevention’, 4. Vereinte Nationen 6/2012.
182. Interviews in Brussels, May 2013. Bettati, Mario, 2007. ‘Du droit d’ingérence à la responsabilité
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Emerging Norm and Rhetorical Tool Europe and A Responsibility To Protect

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Conflict, Security & Development

ISSN: 1467-8802 (Print) 1478-1174 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccsd20

Emerging norm and rhetorical tool: Europe and a

Sarah Brockmeier, Gerrit Kurtz & Julian Junk

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2014.930587

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concept to be universally accepted in the international community. In that regard they

Traumas, myths and aspirations: the origins of British,

After the German participation in the Kosovo intervention, some German

The evolution of European R2P positions

actors in their interpretations, practices and attitudes regarding the responsibility to

2001 to 2005—setting the stage

When in December 2001, the Canadian sponsored International Commission on

2005 to 2008—nurturing language and avoiding controversy

2008 and 2009—changing gears in the debate

a personal article about R2P in a cautious attempt to consolidate Germany’s position.114

Westerwelle—a staunch supporter of the ‘culture of restraint’153—played a key role in

Responsibility while protecting

argued—initially against the opinions of their colleagues in New York—for a more

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