MARO as the Partial Operationalization of R2P

Introduction

The authors of MARO: Mass Atrocity Response Operations; A Military Planning Handbook, Sarah Sewall, Dwight Raymond, and Sally Chin, emphasize more than once in their proposed manual that while MARO is not currently US military doctrine "it should be." Clearly favoring the idea that the US military should be prepared to carry out missions other than traditional warfare and counter-terrorism, MARO's authors give us a reasonably solid first crack at how military force might be profitably used to deter and stop genocide and other atrocities. Although the authors contend, correctly, that the MARO project is different from many elements of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, the rationale for and content of the handbook are in fact grounded firmly in R2P's overarching principle of protecting populations at risk of serious harm. It is more accurate to say that MARO, while not the operationalization of all of the R2P doctrine, is the operationalization of one specific aspect of R2P: the responsibility to react through military intervention.

While the step from principle to planning is an important and worthwhile exercise, we should not assume that this step will necessarily lead to effective intervention when the world is confronted with mass atrocities in the future. Instead, MARO simply offers a preliminary blueprint for how the United States and other would-be coalition forces could carry out different kinds of humanitarian missions to stop or deter atrocity crimes should they be asked to do so by their political masters. And the latter, of course, is the rub. Without the political will to live up to their international responsibility to protect, the United States and other governments will not assign to their armed forces the mission of saving lives in distant places, thus leaving the prospects for effective intervention and prevention as uncertain as ever. In the most optimistic but unlikely scenario, the adoption of the MARO project or something like it into US military doctrine might serve to embolden political leaders to sanction humanitarian military missions. With a plan in the drawer, so to speak, political leaders might feel more confident that they can use military force to protect vulnerable populations since they would have a set of options for how to use that force effectively available to them from the start. Having this capability may in turn reduce the fear of failure or of being drawn into a humanitarian quagmire.

Whether or not MARO will become US military doctrine or serve to deter and stop atrocities, the handbook is worthy of serious consideration. The present commentary will begin by briefly suggesting that MARO is the operationalization of some of the principles underpinning military intervention formulated in the R2P doctrine and then discuss the degree to which Sewall, Raymond, and Chin have succeeded in this task. On the positive side, they have produced a nuanced document that takes into consideration many of the complexities of mass atrocity crises including the differing and at times competing roles of the various actors involved in such crises and their possible resolution, the complexity of different kinds of humanitarian military operations, the possibility of reversals, and the likelihood that MAROs will not always be perceived in the same way in the United States, in the area of operations, and internationally. Given the clear-eyed view with which the authors have considered much of what would be required for humanitarian military missions, the weakness of the proposed handbook is essentially a failure to extend that critical capacity to a few key omissions and assumptions. These include the historical lack of enthusiasm for US military cooperation with the United Nations and other forces and peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations in general, a lack of adequate consideration for exactly how coalition forces might work together, insufficient concern over the ability to collect accurate intelligence and appropriately analyze that intelligence, and a perhaps unwarranted assumption that the US military, powerful though it may be, will always be successful on the battlefield.

MARO and R2P

In establishing the need for mass atrocity response planning and operations, the authors argue that MARO is closely related to...