R2P, NATO and the Problem of Who Should Intervene?

One of the most challenging question concerning the R2P effectiveness is “who should intervene” in case of gross violations of human rights. Indeed, there are significant ambiguities surrounding the major issue regarding who in the international community should discharge the responsibility to protect. Recently NATO has been considered a legitimate actor to fulfil the duty to intervene for humanitarian reasons. Intervention in Kosovo in 1999 motivated Kofi Annan and the ICISS efforts to devise a doctrine of humanitarian intervention that resulted in the R2P. In 2011 in Libya NATO carried out the first military intervention inspired by the R2P. Furthermore, NATO ranks as the most legitimate international actor to live up to the duty to react enshrined in the R2P. The paper contends the idea that NATO could or should be interpreted as the best option to fulfil the R2P provisions. NATO is obviously an international actor that can effectively undertake multilateral humanitarian interventions. However, NATO’s constitutive nature comprises aspects that are at odds with the R2P normative scheme. The particularistic character of the Alliance, which is inevitably based on a line of enmity, collides with the R2P universalistic objectives. Similarly, NATO’s enlargement and openness should not neglect the fundamental difference between a military alliance and a project of collective security. Moreover, NATO still remains a military alliance and its members are interested primarily on security issues that rarely, or just occasionally, match with humanitarian concerns. The paper will look at the NATO internal divisions and difficulties encountered carrying out the intervention in Libya to assess whether and how the aspects regarding the inner nature of the Alliance conflicting with the R2P help to explain those difficulties.