296 CHAPTER EigHT ■ War and Strife
occurring. As two UN officials put it, this “marks the coming of age of the imperative
of action in the face of human rights abuses, over the citadels of state sovereignty.”^25
Though this belief emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, it gained promi-
nence during the 1990s after humanitarian crises in Somalia and Rwanda, and follow-
ing widespread murder, rape, and devastation in Darfur, Sudan (2003–05). Recently,
Rus sia’s President Vladimir Putin invoked a version of R2P in his justification for
annexing Crimea in 2014. Putin argued a military intervention was part of Rus sia’s
responsibility to protect the lives and property of ethnic Rus sians in Crimea and parts
of Eastern Ukraine.
Questions about R2P remain. How massive do the violations of human rights have
to be to justify intervention? The Geneva Conventions specify that “genocide” is not
about how many people are killed, but about the intent to kill an entire group. Who
decides when to respond to the abuses? Might some states use humanitarian interven-
tion as a pretext for achieving other, less humanitarian goals? Should states have an
obligation to intervene militarily in these humanitarian emergencies? Why are some
interventions justified (e.g., Kosovo and Libya), while others, in which equally heinous
abuse is taking place (e.g., Rwanda and Syria), are ignored? As the same UN officials
warn, military intervention can often be “devoid of legal sanction, selectively deployed
and achieving only ambiguous ends.”^26
Given their experiences under colonial rule, many Asian and African countries are
skeptical about humanitarian justifications for intervention by Western countries. Other
states, such as Rus sia and China, have insisted that for a claim of humanitarian inter-
vention to be legitimate, it must be authorized by the UN Security Council, where
Rus sia and China are among the powers possessing a veto. In practice, humanitarian
interventions are often multilateral, although they do not always receive authorization
by the UN. For instance, when Western states sought military intervention in Kosovo,
as discussed in Chapter 2, Rus sia opposed the mea sure, so Western powers turned to the
North Atlantic Treaty Or ga ni za tion (NATO) instead. They also turned to NATO in
the case of Libya because of operational expediency.
States that have supported humanitarian interventions in the past do not always
support future interventions. This change in policy can occur for several reasons, includ-
ing the perception of the success or failure of previous missions, as well as the nature
of other interests at stake in the conflict. Having suffered a humiliating setback in
Somalia in 1993, for instance, the United States (and the UN) opposed increased use
of the military to protect civilians in Rwanda in 1994, despite clear evidence of geno-
cide. Similarly, only a small military contingent from the African Union was originally
mobilized for the Darfur region, despite 300,000 deaths and the culpability of the
Sudanese government. In the Darfur case, other national interests were deemed more
vital than support for humanitarian intervention: China cared about access to Suda-
nese oil; Rus sia cared about export arms markets; the United States was preoccupied