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R2P and Pragmatic Liberal Interventionism: Values in the Service of Interests
- Human Rights Quarterly
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 35, Number 1, February 2013
- pp. 69-90
- 10.1353/hrq.2013.0012
- Article
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Supporters of the humanitarian intervention component of the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) have been guided by what the article refers to as pragmatic liberal interventionism. In the name of viability they propose legalization of a regime in which the United States and its allies exert a disproportionate influence and are guided by a mix of values and interests. This article confronts this perspective through scrutiny of the underlying premises. Through a close review of US military-security policies and their detrimental impact on past US-led interventions, this article demonstrates the perils of an R2P-enabled regime of humanitarian intervention. Besides being poorly suited for genuine mitigation of human rights atrocities, such a skewed regime will buttress a persistently aggressive US militarism and reinforce structural inequalities. This article concludes by sketching an alternative framework of moral responsibility and global solidarity, one that links human rights advocacy to resistance to the dominant order, not accommodation.