A special responsibility to protect: the UK, Australia and the rise of Islamic State

Abstract

In the summer of 2014 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged as a threat to the Iraqi people. This article asks whether the UK and Australia had a ‘special’ responsibility to protect (R2P) those being threatened. It focuses on two middle‐ranking powers (as opposed to the US) in order to highlight the significance of special responsibilities that flow only from the principle of reparation rather than capability. The article contends that despite casting their response in terms of a general responsibility, the UK and Australia did indeed bear a special responsibility based on this principle. Rather than making the argument that the 2003 coalition that invaded Iraq created ISIS, it is argued that it is the vulnerable position in which Iraqis were placed as a consequence of the invasion that grounds the UK and Australia's special responsibility to protect. The article addresses the claim that the UK and Australia were not culpable because they did not act negligently or recklessly in 2003 by drawing on Tony Honoré's concept of ‘outcome responsibility’. The finding of a special responsibility is significant because it is often thought of as being more demanding than a general responsibility. In this context, the article further argues that the response of these two states falls short of reasonable moral expectations. This does not mean the UK and Australia should be doing more militarily. R2P does not begin and end with military action. Rather the article argues that the special responsibility to protect can be discharged through humanitarian aid and a more generous asylum policy.

What Should Be Done? Pragmatic Constructivist Ethics and the Responsibility to Protect

“…131 Ralph and Souter 2015, 2017. 132 Ralph and Souter 2015;Coen 2017. constructivists to defend claims that theirs was a progressive social science and to steer empirical research in ways that could sustain that vision. The follow-up essays Price published as Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics were criticised for adopting a division of labor whereby substantive normative ends were fixed by abstract theoretical reasoning and the constructivist contribution was limited to offering empirical guides to implementation.…”

Is R2P a Fully-Fledged International Norm?

“…It is hard to argue that outside states were culpable of creating the Syrian population's situation of vulnerability. This stands in contrast to the role of outside states such as the UK and Australia in creating the vulnerability of Iraq to Islamic State (Ralph & Souter, 2015). Of course, there was a greater level of previous external intervention there than there was in Syria.…”

How can a ‘Responsible’ European Union Contribute to the Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect?

“…However, the first question that requires an answer is why should the EU assume such a responsibility to protect populations? Based on the responsible Europe framework, 4 which puts forth six principlesnamely the contribution, beneficiary, community, capacity, legitimate expectations, and the consent principleswe first assess the 'special responsibility' 12 of the EU to protect populations from atrocity crimes with a special focus on the capacities of the Union. 13 Capacity principle suggests that if the EU has the capacity to alleviate the problem, then it should assume R2P.…”