In an irony of history, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are, in a probably unintentional way, operationalizing a principle the UN enshrined twenty years ago: the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).
The R2P doctrine dates back to the 2005 World Summit, establishing that when a state fails to shield its population from mass atrocities – genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity – the international community bears a moral obligation to act.
This emerged from the Rwandan and Srebrenica genocides, along with atrocities that exposed the failure of the international community to prevent mass killing, asserting that sovereignty isn’t limitless and comes with responsibility. When this breaks down, the world must try preventive and diplomatic measures, and as a last resort, coercive enforcement.
Seeking to prevent abuses of the principle, the Charter held that enforcement required Security Council authorization.
Since that gives the five permanent members vetoes, and Russia and China these days are devoid of any ethical constraints, this cannot work.
Interestingly, Russia and China agreed to R2P 20 years ago; it offered them a certain moral legitimacy with minimal obligation when it made sense.
Libya in 2011 constituted a rupture.
NATO intervention, ostensibly to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi, exceeded the narrow mandate and yielded chaos, convincing Russia and China that the West had weaponized R2P for regime change.
Syria also exposed the structural limits of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) system: Mass atrocities occurred, R2P language was invoked, and the Council was paralyzed as Russia vetoed repeated resolutions, often joined by China.
Clearly, coercive enforcement is blocked when a permanent member of the UNSC whose interests are involved. Yet R2P survives as a principle, even if enforcement under the initially-conceived system depends entirely on great-power alignment.
Iran, especially after the recent massacres of protestors, presents a scenario that clearly meets the threshold: killings, arbitrary detention, torture, and systemic repression constitute crimes against humanity. Pre-military efforts have been exhausted.
UN missions, investigations, sanctions, legal actions through the International Criminal Court, or universal jurisdiction have stopped no abuses. Diplomatic and humanitarian measures have failed to protect civilians or induce meaningful reform.
Iran brings instability across the Middle East
Moreover, Iran’s meddling in its region – via its array of jihadist militias that have brought and prolonged instability and war to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and the Palestinian areas – extends R2P to populations outside Iran’s borders. Such a country should not be enriching uranium at weapons-grade or developing long-range ballistic missiles, obviously.
In such a situation, it is fair to argue that R2P applies, even though Russia and China would veto anything brought to the dysfunctional UNSC.
The question becomes, other than the approval mechanism, one of feasibility: can intervention succeed where all else failed? Action would seem unwise – and even morally unjustified – if the likely result would be chaos that itself harms civilians, as in Libya.
The very first day of the new war shifted assessments dramatically. The swift decapitation of Iran’s regime, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has disrupted the central authority enforcing atrocities. Elements of the security apparatus that may want to save the country have more leverage now to negotiate a transition.
The situation is now fluid in Iran, even within the Islamic Republic’s structures. These are designed to survive the demise of individuals – but recent history offers no precedent for the sudden loss of so many top officials – including defense ministers in succession, top military and paramilitary figures, an ex-president, and top advisors
It is not fantastical to hope that after such a shock, a new leadership – even if still under the Islamic Republic level, and despite public bluster – will behave less badly.
One hope is that it can slowly be compelled to consider constitutional change. For example, allowing presidential elections in which any candidate can run in internationally monitored elections – not just those vetted by the clerics – and the restoration of real powers to the parliament.
A coordinated plan is needed, including quiet talks with elements in the military, paramilitary, and even Revolutionary Guards. And the attacking forces must prioritize keeping civilians out of harm’s way; indeed, it’s foundational to any R2P effort.
Might it work? Skeptics say there’s no way to convert anyone with vested interests, economic and other, in preserving things exactly as they are – and there are too many men with guns of whom this can be said. But history suggests that things are rarely preserved forever exactly as they are. Situations evolve.
Of course, there is great irony when world leaders are involved. Trump, an amoral aspiring authoritarian, is perfectly capable of declaring at any moment that the US needs access to Iran’s oil – as he did, outrageously, in the hours after the abduction of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. And it was wrong of Trump not seek Congress’s approval for war action; the two-month buildup of his armada had already eliminated much of the surprise. All he lost was systemic legitimacy.
As for Netanyahu, a man facing a bribery trial and elections in a few months who is trailing in the polls, he is widely believed by Israelis to be capable of almost any machination to prolong his rule. He has dissembled and reversed himself so often – including after declaring after last June’s war that Israel had beaten back the Iranian threat “for generations” – that he’s suspect by definition in almost anything he says.
Indeed, this duo would be the very embodiment of the concept of imperfect vessels – the bad doers of good, essentially. But stranger things have happened. Viewed a certain way, these cynical leaders, derided for unilateralism and indifference to norms, are acting in alignment with a UN principle crafted two decades ago.
So what may seem like vulgar warmongering might more charitably be understood as a rare moment when foreign policy intersected with a global moral commitment – when strategy, at least briefly, aligned with principle.
The writer is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.