The Responsibility to Protect and luxurious war

Publication Date

8-1-2013

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Since the creation of the Responsibility to Protect, many critics have focused on the risk that this doctrine creates a dangerous Western ‘right to intervene.’ This article argues that the ‘right to intervene’ thesis is only part of the story and that it fails to account for shifts in the practices of war that shape the Responsibility to Protect. Drawing on the work of Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, this article argues that the Responsibility to Protect emerges in response to the accumulation and intensification of global military force, and that this accumulation offers both new ethical possibilities for intervention and new dangers in the application of military force. If the forms of humanitarian governance envisioned by the Responsibility to Protect remain subordinate to these late developments in warfare, then supposedly limited episodes of intervention have the capacity to transform into explosive outbursts of political violence.

Publication Title

Critical Studies on Security

Volume

1

Issue

2

First Page

219

Last Page

237

DOI

10.1080/21624887.2013.824651

Publisher Policy

pre-print, post-print

This document is currently not available here.

Find in your library

Share

COinS