In Defense of the Responsibility to Protect: A Response to Weissman

• Published in: Criminal justice ethics 2016-01, Vol.35 (1), p.39-67
• Main Author: Davenport, John J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alain Badiou; Anne Orford; Carl Schmitt; Doctors Without Borders (MSF); Eric Reeves; Fabrice Weissman; human rights; Humanitarian aid; humanitarian intervention; humanitarianism; Imperialism; Jürgen Habermas; Michel Foucault; Morality; Norms; Responsibility to Protect (R2P); Rhetoric; Syria
• ISSN: 0731-129X; 1937-5948
• DOI: 10.1080/0731129X.2016.1157981

This article defends the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine (adopted by the United Nations in 2005) against critiques by Fabrice Weissman in this journal, and against similar criticisms of humanitarian intervention and human rights norms made by postmodern thinkers in the Nietzschean tradition, such as Alain Badiou and Anne Orford. I argue against Weissman that R2P can be effective in stopping or preventing mass atrocities, and in particular that opposition to military intervention in Syria during the 2013 debates was a terrible mistake. Moreover, the moral ground for humanitarian aid efforts is the same as the basis for forceful rescue from mass slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and persecution (when other conditions of just war can be met). Weissman's critiques misinterpret just war theory on key points and rely on inflated rhetorical strategies inspired by extreme forms of cultural and moral relativism that are intellectually bankrupt-both in blaming "Western imperialism" for most crimes against humanity committed by tyrants, and in leaving hundreds of thousands without the only protection that could prevent their murder and exile. These extreme positions and the strained rhetorical devices used to defend them do not deserve the wide respect they command in some parts of academia.