Contending Perspectives on Managing Insecurity 297with Iraq and the war on terrorism. In May 2012, a massacre in the Syrian village of
Taldou of women, children, and even infants by the security forces of Syria’s Bashar al
Assad caused an international outcry, but China and Rus sia opposed UN- sanctioned
military intervention. Both countries issued statements asserting that any foreign mil-
itary intervention would only make the situation in Syria, and the region, worse. Rus-
sia’s and China’s positions on intervention ultimately failed to halt international military
intervention in the civil war in Syria (2012– pres ent). This outcome may be why Rus sia
later determined that its own military intervention in Syria was both necessary to reverse
the chaos caused by U.S. and allied interventions, and just.
So although support for R2P is an emergent norm, it remains the subject of ongo-
ing controversy. Because states do not intervene in all situations of humanitarian emer-
gency, state sovereignty remains intact. But when gross violations of human rights are
obvious, and when military intervention does not conflict with other national inter-
ests, states increasingly view humanitarian intervention as a justifiable use of force.
Contending Perspectives on
Managing Insecurity
Disparity in power between states, the inability to know the intentions of states
and individuals, and the lack of an overarching international authority means that
states— even power ful ones— are continually confronted by the need to manage their
insecurity.
Four approaches to managing insecurity are well tested in international politics.
Two of these approaches reflect realist thinking, requiring individual states themselves
to maintain an adequate power potential. The other approaches reflect the liberal the-
oretical perspective and thus focus largely on multilateral responses by groups of states
acting to coordinate their policies. Realists and liberals support dif er ent policy responses
to arms proliferation, the resulting security dilemma, and managing insecurity more
generally, as Table 8.3 on p. 300 describes.
realist approaches: balance of Power and Deterrence
Realist approaches to managing insecurity come from the fact that for realists, war is a
necessary condition of interstate politics: it can be managed but never eradicated. Clas-
sical realists, ranging from Thucydides to Machiavelli to Hobbes to Hans Morgenthau,
argued that human nature made transcending war unlikely. Neorealists replaced the
emphasis on human nature with an emphasis on structure, arguing that war will be a