Analysis: Sending in troops to curb dictators no longer the best option

WHEN should states intervene militarily to stop atrocities in other countries? The question is an old and well-travelled one. Indeed, it is now visiting Syria.

In 1904, US president Theodore Roosevelt argued that, “there are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror” that we should intervene by force of arms.

More recently, after a genocide that cost nearly 800,000 lives in Rwanda in 1994, and the slaughter of Bosnian men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, many people vowed that such atrocities should never again be allowed to occur. When Slobodan Miloševicć engaged in large-scale ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999, the United Nations security council adopted a resolution recognising the humanitarian catastrophe, but could not agree on a second resolution to intervene, given the threat of a Russian veto. Instead, Nato countries bombed Serbia in an effort that many observers regarded as legitimate but not legal.

In the aftermath, then-UN secretary-general Kofi Annan created an international commission to recommend ways that humanitarian intervention could be reconciled with Article 2.7 of the UN Charter, which upholds member states’ domestic jurisdiction. The commission concluded that states have a responsibility to protect their citizens, and should be helped to do so by peaceful means, but that if a state disregarded that responsibility by attacking its own citizens, the international community could consider armed intervention. The idea of a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) was adopted unanimously at the UN’s world summit in 2005, but subsequent events showed that not all member states interpreted the resolution the same way.

Until last year, many observers regarded R2P as at best a pious hope or a noble failure. But in 2011, as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi prepared to exterminate his opponents in Benghazi, the security council invoked R2P. But Russia, China, and other countries felt that Nato exploited the resolution to engineer regime change, rather that merely protecting citizens in Libya.

There are other reasons why R2P has not been a success in the Syrian case. Drawn from traditional “just war” theory, R2P rests not only on right intentions, but also on the existence of a reasonable prospect of success. Many observers highlight the important physical and military differences between Libya and Syria.

Recent large-scale interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, though not primarily humanitarian, have eroded public support for military action. But we should recall Mark Twain’s story about his cat. After sitting on a hot stove, it would never sit on a hot stove again, but neither would it sit on a cold one.

Interventions will continue to occur, though they are now more likely to be shorter, involve smaller-scale forces, and rely on technologies that permit action at greater distance.

• Joseph Nye is a former US assistant secretary of defence and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council.