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Brazil and R2P: Does Taking Responsibility Mean Using Force?
Abstract
This article traces the reaction of the Brazilian government to the emergence of the R2P norm. After an initial period of rejection, followed by a period of absence from UN debates, Brazil has recently engaged cautiously with R2P. The article gives a detailed analysis of the origins of the Latin American system of legal protections that resulted in an interpretation in the region that reduces sovereignty almost exclusively to the inviolability of borders. This interpretation is at the heart of Brazil’s rejection of R2P’s tenets regarding the use of force. It does not stand in the way, however, of its contributing decisively to the other two pillars identified in the Secretary General’s Implementation Report. The paper identifies two main factors that motivated the gradual opening of the Brazilian foreign policy establishment to R2P, one external and one internal. Externally, the strong endorsement of R2P in the World Summit Outcome Document did much to facilitate Brazil’s rapprochement with the concept. Concomitantly, Brazil’s rise as an emerging power has increasingly created tensions between regional traditions and still-dominant Northern views of the responsibilities that accompany Brazil’s global aspirations. Brazil is in the process of developing an approach to peace operations and intervention that defines responsibility separately from the use of force, obviating the effects of this perceived tension. As a result, Brazil has become an important peacekeeping troop contributor and is no longer a vocal detractor of R2P. It has begun adapting the non-military elements of the principle to its policy goals and looks set to be an active and important participant in the concept’s further implementation.
... Crucially, defining and attributing responsibility is de facto the premise of great powers, through institutions which clearly reflect extant constellations of power. On intervention in particular, emerging powers such as India (Destradi 2017b) and Brazil (Kenkel 2012(Kenkel , 2010 have historical normative commitments that are at odds with the proactive use of military force, especially in a remedial form applied to others and divorced from their own causal responsibility. Yet these states are strong supporters of multilateral institutions -first and foremost the United Nations -which increasingly link responsible conduct to the use of military force (Kenkel and Stefan 2016;Schweller 2011;Patrick 2010). ...
... Brazil's proactive role in international intervention debates coincides with its rise to emerging power status following the advent of Lula da Silva to its presidency in 2003. Its positions until 2016 reflected the tricky mission of reconciling its historical pacifism, adherence to systemic norms and non-interventionism with the attributes -above all the use of force in peace operations -ascribed to the global player status it has sought (Kenkel 2012). In essence, the outcome has been that Brazil has supported extant international norms and a general notion of remedial responsibility in principle, while exhibiting reluctance to endorse forms of implementation of that responsibility it feels are unrepresentative or intransparent. ...
... On the role of military poawer in rising powers' perception as "responsible," seePatrick (2010) andSchweller (2011). On how it is not the only possible route to responsibility, seeKenkel (2012) andCulp (2015).Explaining emerging powers' reluctance to adopt intervention norms: normative contestation and hierarchies of responsibility Rev. Bras. Polít. ...
Abstract We argue that emerging powers’ reluctance to conform to new norms at the global level is grounded not in rejection of norms’ content, but in contestation of norms’ implementation, and of the hierarchical manner in which responsibility is defined and attributed. The assessment of Brazil and India’s approach to the issue of intervention supports our argument.
... India's domestic debates on R2P largely kept its foreign policy steeped in the traditional values of nonviolence and the principles of nonintervention in domestic affairs and state sovereignty ( Mohan 2014 ;Bloomfield 2015Bloomfield , 2017. Brazil, finding itself deeply steeped in the traditional Latin American interpretation of sovereignty as identical to the inviolability of borders and being influenced by public opinions, quickly rejected R2P's tenet of the use of force, subsequently though it adopted R2P's nonmilitary elements ( Kenkel 2012 ). Similarly, post-apartheid South Africa's foreign policy is generally guided by a liberal agenda of advancing human rights, an agenda much influenced by domestic experiences of exclusionary and discriminatory state policies and practices under European colonial rule. ...
“Responsibility to protect” (R2P) emerged as a powerful moral and political norm in 2001 signaling a shift away from traditional state sovereignty to human sovereignty. North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 2011 R2P intervention in Libya, however, created controversies giving rise to sharp differences between the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the West over this new humanitarian norm. Major BRICS states officially support R2P to protect humans from mass atrocities but oppose military actions to implement it. This article examines the question why the BRICS states are resistant to R2P military interventions to protect humans at grave risk. In contrast to the general view that sovereignty exclusively lies at the heart of BRICS’ opposition to R2P, this article contends that, in addition to concerns for sovereignty, BRICS’ opposition to R2P military interventions is more accurately explained by the four interrelated factors of ideological rift between BRICS and the West, colonial domination of the Global South by the West, controversies over NATO's Libya episode, and the recent economic rise of the BRICS states. The article concludes that R2P, caught in the crossfires of West versus BRICS’ differing positions, portends little hope for its practical application in future.
... While Brazil was initially wary of the responsibility to protect norm, particularly before it was eventually adopted at the World Summit in 2005 (Stuenkel & Tourinho 2014), by the time the UN Dialogues started taking place in 2009, its overall support for the norm increased, with Brazil showing a growing willingness to engage in R2P debates in line with its preference for peaceful resolution of conflicts and preventive strategies (Kenkel 2012). Accordingly, Brazil has continuously showed support for the core of R2P spelled out in the 2005 World Summit, as a norm that articulates the idea that "the attribute of sovereignty does not exempt a State from its obligation to protect its population" (Brazil 2009). ...
Abstract This article analyzes the outcome of Brazil’s contestation of the responsibility to protect, adding to existing literature through an analysis that makes use of recent norms research on possible alternate endings of contestation. As revealed, differentiating between the natures of contestation allows for greater nuance and broader reflections on the possibility of contestation, serving as an avenue for future cooperation.
... O conceito de R2P deixa em evidência a necessidade de que os Estados soberanos promovam a proteção dos direitos individuais de sua população, sendo, então, sua obrigação evitar catástrofes humanitárias como, por exemplo, episódios de genocídio. Entretanto, caso a sociedade internacional julgue que o Estado em questão não está agindo de acordo com este princípio, intervenções podem ser invocadas com base nesse conceito, transferindo a responsabilidade de proteger à sociedade internacional (ICISS, 2001;KENKEL, 2012;BELLAMY, 2010 de critérios específicos que guiem a autorização de operações militares que não sejam auto interessadas, e, por fim; (iii) pouco envolvimento direto do Conselho de Segurança, que, constantemente, delegou funções cruciais à Estados terceiros durante a realização de intervenções baseadas na ideia de R2P. Essa preocupação brasileira, por sua vez, não abandona a necessidade de que os indivíduos sejam protegidos (TOURINHO, STUENKEL e BROCKMEIER, 2015). ...
As operações de paz das Nações Unidas são um mecanismo de promoção da paz e da segurança internacional criado em 1948, que se institucionalizou gradativamente no âmbito da organização. Com o passar dos anos, estas operações assumiram uma série de tarefas civis para adequar a resposta institucional das Nações Unidas à realidade dos novos conflitos que eclodiram, sobretudo, após o fim da Guerra Fria. Reconhecendo que as causas dos conflitos são estruturais e socialmente enraizadas, a atuação das Nações Unidas institucionalizou, em 1992, o mecanismo denominado como peacebuilding, que objetiva o alcance da paz por meio da promoção da reconstrução dos Estados pós-conflito. Baseada em teóricos da Escola Inglesa, esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar como as políticas traçadas durante o processo de peacebuilding das operações de paz das Nações Unidas podem ser associadas ao reforço do comprometimento do Estado com instituições e regras que sustentam a sociedade internacional. Para ilustrar o argumento supracitado, este trabalho consiste em um estudo de caso da Missão das Nações Unidas na Libéria (2003-2018).
... Considering as insufficient the dominant explanation that emerging powers face a "dilemma" (Kenkel, 2012) between old, regional and new, global norms, the research proceeded inductively by tracing the two countries' peacekeeping policies over roughly two decades. As the emerging pattern pointed to imbalances in the involvement in peacekeeping policy-making of civilians and the military, respectively, further research was directed toward exploring what Huntington (1957, p. 20) called "the [civil-military relations] problem of the modern state ... the relation of the expert to the politician." ...
Emerging powers from the global south have generally opposed the use of force in international politics. However, taking a closer look at the area of peacekeeping, the international community’s most institutionalized response to international insecurity, it is clear that the global south has been actively engaged in what has been described as peacekeeping’s coercive turn: the increasingly greater use of force. Building on the cases of Brazil and Indonesia, we argue that the peacekeeping policies of these emerging powers have been inconsistent with their declared reticence to use force. We explain the inconsistency by reference to knowledge imbalances between civilian and military actors, a gap in peacekeeping expertise and involvement in policy-making that allowed the armed forces to push the two countries into increasingly coercive peacekeeping. Moreover, civil–military knowledge imbalances prevented the emergence of alternative ideas more in line with Brazil’s and Indonesia’s traditional stance on the use of force.
... 88 Also, Brazil's engagement with the R2P concept from its adoption by the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document until the government shift in 2016 can be seen as an effort to alter the understanding of the instruments and scope of international responsibility. 89 Thereby it also serves as an example for its "graduation", understood as a process that "implies an ambition for international prominence, a role as rule-maker, a geopolitical vision and a commitment to regional integration." 90 Hereinafter, the statements of Brazilian diplomats given at the UN General Assembly's interactive dialogues on the implementation of R2P between 2009 and 2016 serve as a basis to contribute to these findings by scrutinizing the two basic ideas of the Brazilian government's elaborated notion of the concept: the restrictive approach to the use of force and the prioritization of structural conflict prevention over mass atrocity prevention. ...
... At the same time, it is essential to recognize the interest, particularly of the Brazilian Army, in keeping at least one battalion 28 See, for example, the Brazilian initiative to propose the concept of RWP ("responsability while protecting"), aimed at mitigating the use of force in UN peace operations (United Nations 2011). 30 The opposite is advocated by several authors, who completely disregard the political context in which the Brazilian engagement took place (Hirst and Nasser, 2014;Kenkel 2012). ...
This article aims to contribute to the analysis of Brazilian grand strategy and the place of UN peace operations (POs) in the context of this strategy. It deals with the political economy of POs and grapples with the trends of POs in the recent past, especially the increasingly robust mandates of peace operations and their implications. Brazilian participation in peace operations is discussed, focusing on its main characteristics and the consequences of an absence of consensus on the role of POs for the country´s grand strategy. Finally, suggestions are proposed that might create synergies between participation in POs and Brazil´s grand strategy.
... With notable exceptions (Bellamy 2011;Luck 2011), research looking specifically at state engagement with the RtoP has offered only cursory analyses of logics for such behaviour. There has been a rapid growth in literature on the role of rising powers and implications for global order (Narlikar 2013;Gray and Murphy 2013), and a recent wave of scholarship examining the role and rationales of emerging powers in the formation and application of norms such as the RtoP (Rotmann et al 2014;Stuenkel 2014;Almeida 2014;Brosig 2012;Kenkel 2012;Thakur 2013). It is nevertheless important to identify the incentives and deterrents that frame and shape the different rationales at play across a variety of rising powers when engaging in discourse and practice relating to the RtoP. ...
The perceived clash of norms associated with the emergence of rising powers is nowhere more pronounced than in relation to the responsibility to protect (RtoP). However, attempts to explain rising powers’ engagement with norms such as the RtoP are often limited and limiting in what they can tell us. Orthodox models portray predominantly linear and diffusionist logics of norm evolution that underplay the complex interaction implicit in unpredictable outcomes at the systemic level. This article identifies a range of factors that drive participation (or generate hesitation) amongst emerging powers in the development and application of the RtoP. It proceeds to illustrate how changes in normative behaviour emanate from top-down and bottom-up processes as well as the feedback between them. It argues that norm evolution is consequently a unique and emergent outcome of complex international society and therefore argues for using complexity thinking as a heuristic to augment current models and explanations of the evolution of norms in the international system.
... The first four years of R2P's existence were marked by Brazil's suspicion of R2P, with the foreign minister at the time, Celso Amorim, calling R2P a 'droit d'ingerence … in new clothes'. 63 Brazil's position later changed, and the country stopped being a 'vocal detractor of R2P'. 64 Brazil was serving as the President of the UN Security Council in February 2011, when Security Council Resolution 1970 on Libya passed unanimously. ...
Drawing on a notable example of a non-Western normative initiative, Brazil’s ‘Responsibility while Protecting’ (RwP), this article contributes to broadening the scope of the norm dynamics literature beyond its common Western-centric focus. Post-2011 Libya intervention, Brazil proposed RwP to clarify what ‘using force’ means under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) banner, but then withdrew from visible norm sponsorship, only to return to this as part of a collective exercise to institutionalise R2P at the United Nations. First, the article highlights the significant role of non-Western agents whose contributions usually go overlooked, yet carry the highest potential to address the legitimacy deficit of norms like R2P. Second, the article proposes adding a new conceptual tool when investigating the role of agency in norm dynamics, one that incorporates a wider range of norm ‘shaping’ processes and highlights enabling, contingent circumstances. The latter, is argued, best captures the anomalies in contemporary norm contestation. This is illustrated through an empirical analysis of the conditions under which Brazil was able to advance RwP, despite the subsequent emergence of unfavourable circumstances. This article emphasises how significant an alignment of enabling circumstances is to non-Western agents in terms of shaping norm contestation and normative exercise completion.
... Por outro, ela expõe as fraquezas do Brasil quanto ao apoio às intervenções internacionais no caso de violação maciça de direitos humanos. O Brasil sempre condenou tais violações, mas sua posição diplomática histórica defende a preservação dos princípios da não-intervenção e da resolução pacífica de controvérsias (HAMANN, 2012b;KENKEL, 2012). ...
Este artigo situa a proposta brasileira de uma Responsabilidade ao Proteger (RwP) à luz dos objetivos de longo prazo da política externa brasileira, revelando uma coerente atuação política do país como um global player. A Política Externa Brasileira (PEB) se caracteriza historicamente pelo uso da diplomacia, o respeito ao direito internacional e o uso de meios não-violentos para a resolução de conflitos. A inserção internacional brasileira tem sido marcada, nesse sentido, por uma tensão entre elementos normativos e capacidades não-materiais de poder para alcançar seus objetivos de autonomia e relevância internacionais. O maior envolvimento do Brasil no cenário internacional, em especial no que se refere a temas de segurança, enquanto por um lado fez ressaltar as limitações do país nas suas capacidades de poder material, por outro lado encontrou relevância em uma agenda de política externa que é coerente com seus princípios e capacidades. Composto assim o cenário de convergência entre a valorização do multilateralismo e da perspectiva da segurança sob a ótica dos temas não-materiais de política internacional e os princípios e estratégias da PEB, o Brasil encontra condições propícias para a sua participação mais ativa na política internacional.
... Both issues have played a pivotal role as normative linchpins for the country's growing pains; 4 Brazilian diplomats' navigation of these tensions can be mapped neatly using their reactions to the operationalization of R2P at the UN. 5 Despite frequent election to the Security Council, prior to the submission of the RwP concept note, Brazil did not consistently play a prominent role in peace operations or in UN debates on intervention. The country's representatives often either abstained or shared the nonaligned preference for nonintervention. ...
This article examines Brazil’s responsibility while protecting (RwP) initiative as an example of norm sponsorship available to nonpermanent members of the Security Council. After setting the stage with Brazil’s historical engagement with intervention issues, it discusses the reasons behind the Brazilian initiative. It examines RwP’s key proposals and the reactions they generated. RwP’s normative implications are discussed, together with an examination of the main reasons why Brazil’s sponsorship of the initiative waned following its exit from the Council. Brazil’s withdrawal from sponsoring RwP highlights the need for ongoing support for initiatives that seek to revive the international community’s intervention practices by tackling the basic tenets of discord over R2P’s implementation.
... The proposal suggested that RtoP action must have stronger assurances of proportionality and adhere to safeguards against unwarranted coercion, and be tied to the strict remit of mandates and limits established by the Security Council. It also argued for better monitoring of the manner in which resolutions are interpreted and implemented, and stronger accountability of those who are granted the authority to use force while protecting (see also Kenkel, 2012). ...
As a near-universal political commitment to prevent or address atrocities the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) supports the idea of common humanity, even though the operationalization of the principle is uneven and controversial. However, the RtoP agenda has become problematized by the political frictions of the shifting international order. This is reflected in normative contestation between liberal states and those - including rising or resurgent powers - which promote a more conservative, pluralist vision of international society and which increasingly resist Western control of the political agenda. The transitional international order has also generated geopolitical tensions which - even if unconnected to humanitarian norms - obstruct the RtoP agenda. This article explores these themes and considers if RtoP, as an expression of common humanity, can achieve progress in this context.
... On the one hand, the norm is accepted as part of existing international law and acceptance that civilians at times may need protection from atrocities. On the other hand, Brazil has expressed concerns about the third pillar as offering a pretext for Western powers to interfere in the domestic affairs of other states (Kenkel, 2012). To reconcile these two positions, the government in Brasilia has suggested that the RtoP should be considered a preventive concept with a strong emphasis on multilateral agreement, non-violent measures, and part of peacebuilding mandates. ...
What is the view of the BRICS countries regarding the international community's Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) against civilian atrocities? This article revisits the debate on international humanitarian action in Libya and Syria in 2011-2012; a time with BRICS states as members of the United Nation Security Council. While BRICS countries from the outset had different views on RtoP, the experiences of the Libyan intervention led to a unanimous reluctance to initiate any humanitarian action in Syria. We find, however, that all BRICS except Russia in general are positive to the RtoP concept and are willing to participate in further developments to specify how and when it applies. On the basis of our analysis, we expect that RtoP will continue to be an important feature of international relations but that it primarily will be used against non-state actors and that the behaviour of the interveners may be subjected to UNSC scrutiny.
... O flerte brasileiro com as questões do Oriente Médio, indo de seu posicionamento frente à questão palestina até as palavras aparentemente reconfortantes endereçadas a autocratas como Gadafi e Assad, é visto como uma excentricidade inexplicável, embora relativamente benigna. Discriminar entre "Responsabilidade de Proteger" e a ideia de "Responsabilidade ao Proteger" convertem-se em interessantes debates filosóficos que são discretamente apartados dos cálculos sérios sobre questões de poder e interesse econômico (Patriota, 2011;Kenkel, 2012). Mais perto de casa, as tentativas de marginalizar grandes componentes do sistema interamericano, principalmente a OEA e o processo da Cúpula das Américas, substituindo-os por alternativas como a Unasul e a Celac são toleradas porque, em termos práticos, os custos implicados num protesto veemente partindo dos Estados Unidos e do Canadá, acusando o Brasil de tentar afirmar sua liderança no continente, pesam menos que a probabilidade de que essas iniciativas não venham a ultrapassar o nível sub-regional, permitindo que as responsabilidades do gerenciamento das grandes questões sejam devolvidas ao Brasil ou a uma coalizão liderada pelo Brasil. ...
The purpose of this paper is to identify The New World Order and its relationship with Brazil's Sustainable Development theory about the possibility of the country achieving the SDGs by 2030. Brazil has a mature economy and the country has completed most of its modernization process and changed from an agriculture-based country to a modern one. This research uses a qualitative method. The data analysis method used in this study is by using descriptive analysis technology, which is the most basic and absolute technology. Researchers also use data collection techniques through literature (library research), which is an activity that uses library data collection methods. The emergence of a new world order was the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a quarter of a century ago, forcing geographers and policymakers to tear up their maps. No longer divided into "west" and "east", the world order has lost many of its long-standing certainties. The global expansion of Brazilian companies is happening at an accelerated pace in the 21st century and setting a level of interdependence. Brazil has shown consistent growth and if it continues, the country will eventually join the world's leading economies. Resources such as energy, food, and raw materials are also abundant and are factors supporting sustainable national growth. The various targets contained in the newly developed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) often intersect and refer to more than one sustainable goal, indicating the need to consider potential synergies and analyze the nature and level of exchange. The SDGs make Brazil follow new action targets that explicitly intersect and refer to different goals and resources (e.g., water, energy).
The Role of Business in the Responsibility to Protect closes the gap between research on the Responsibility to Protect and the private sector, as previous research has focused only on state responsibilities and state actors. This book examines in detail the developing research on the significant role that private sector actors can play in promoting peace and stability. Contributors to this volume explore the key arguments for where, why, and how private sector actors can contribute to the prevention and cessation of mass atrocity crimes; and how this can inform and extend the UN policy discussion around Responsibility to Protect. The contributors include lead voices in the Responsibility to Protect discourse as well as central voices in business and peace literature.
This article explores why, by 2005, most Latin American countries supported the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a doctrine modifying limits on the use of force to address atrocity crimes. I group existing explanations of why Latin American countries apparently changed their long-standing defence of non-intervention following the main explanatory factor they focus on: power asymmetries, government preferences or coalition politics. I find that these accounts downplay a fundamental dimension informing the approaches of Latin American supporters: how to limit interveners. Drawing on Republican security theory (RST), I argue that Latin American supporters faced a dilemma in the R2P debates, especially after the intervention in Iraq in 2003. Latin American supporters favoured crafting solutions to humanitarian problems that simultaneously addressed crises and prevented arbitrary uses of force. I use the Brazilian and Chilean case studies to explore this argument. Brazilian and Chilean governments concluded that their conventional interpretations of limits on the use of force did not offer answers for both humanitarian emergencies and arbitrary uses of force. As a solution, they modified but did not abandon their diplomatic traditions. These governments calculated that humanitarian-intervention norms could be constraints, even if imperfect, on interveners arbitrarily using military force.
Many postcolonial or critical scholars are rather sceptical of the Responsibility to Protect principle. In most of the critical literature, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is presented as a product from the West, whose liberal ideal relies on a perception of Southern states being potentially dysfunctional, which in turn justifies an interventionist discourse with neocolonial overtones. The problem with this interpretation of R2P is that it essentially ignores non-Western, particularly Southern, inputs on the concept, falling precisely into the trap that, many authors claim, vitiates Responsibility to Protect: its West-centrism. Building upon a mix of critical, decolonial, postcolonial and Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship, this article proposes a number of additional steps to decolonize R2P in an effort to avoid what Pinar Bilgin describes as ‘conflating the critiques of the particularity of universals with critiques of the idea of having universals’. What successive decolonizing layers expose is a negotiation process in which the agency of states from the global South in shaping the – still controversial – principle has proved particularly obvious. Decolonizing Responsibility to Protect, this article argues, requires critical scholars to engage in a contrapuntal analysis in order to acknowledge the concept’s mutual constitution by the West and the ‘rest’ and the deeper struggles over universals hiding underneath.
Neste capítulo nos debruçamos sobre a política externa brasileira para destacar o histórico de predileção pela ação multilateral do país nas suas estratégias de inserção internacional. Mostramos que a ação, conjunta ou isoladamente, de agentes brasileiros estatais e não-estatais contribuiu não apenas para o fortalecimento de fóruns internacionais, mas também promoveu nos planos doméstico e internacional princípios consagrados constitucionalmente, como o desenvolvimento e os direitos humanos, inclusive na questão sanitária. As ações empenhadas pelo Brasil aspiram à construção de uma sociedade internacional justa, igualitária e fundamentada na cooperação e no respeito às normas internacionais. Concluímos destacando que ações que promovem o desenvolvimento doméstico e internacional alavancam a inserção internacional brasileira e são fundamentais para que o Brasil retome seu papel de protagonismo e referência na política internacional.
This article highlights the domestic effects of the ongoing changes in United Nations peacekeeping practice on troop contributing states from the Global South. It juxtaposes scholarship on stabilization, the specific motivations of Global South troop contributing countries, and in particular the effects on civilian control of armed forces of peacekeeping participation. It argues that the “diversionary peace” hypothesis—which posits beneficial effects on civilian control for peacekeeping—has not obtained, and that current developments in United Nations peace operations will negatively affect civil–military relations in postcolonial sending countries. The text suggests avenues for future inquiry. One is the notion that stabilization may lead to a net negative effect on civilian control in unconsolidated democracies. This is due to stabilization's increased militarization, and its turn towards objectives that mimic the counterinsurgency mandates associated with military rule in the Global South, rather than a focus on the socioeconomic well-being of local populations.
Peace operations, as well as humanitarian intervention and its attendant debates, constitute a key element of Brazil’s foreign policy project as an emerging power. This chapter situates Brazilian participation in peace operations, atrocity prevention and the surrounding normative debates, and highlights the key issues this activity has raised for Brazil as it navigates its shifting global role. The analysis lays out the patterns of Brazilian participation in intervention operations and debates has followed, as well the distinctiveness of their contribution and its changing weight in the way the country constructs its narrative of global participation. The role of status seeking as a determinant of that participation is a guiding focus throughout the chapter.
This chapter has as a point of departure the enquiry into the drivers for Brazil’s engagement with South-South cooperation (SSC). Nonetheless, instead of taking SSC as a tool always already available for the foreign policy community, it enquires (i) into the process of manufacturing SSC as a foreign policy tool and, (ii) on its role in shaping the moral claims that Brazilian policy networks brought to the international arena while seeking a new status. The analysis is mainly on the “golden period” of Brazilian SSC from 2003 to 2014. During this decade, the Brazilian foreign policy community strove to change the perception the international community kept about Brazil. This process entailed establishing moral authority in some specific areas of international policymaking, particularly on issues like inequality, poverty, and hunger. During that period, Brazil started to be recognized as a kind of social policies powerhouse. Through a systematic bottom-up analysis, the chapter briefly presents the policy networks related to public health, food and nutrition security and agricultural innovation. These three sectors have played a germane role in shaping Brazil’s moral authority and its international standing as a champion for eradicating hunger, providing access to a universal health system and medicines and feeding the world’s growing population.
In this paper, we apply the concept of entrepreneurial powers to analyze Brazil’s participation and influence in international crises. Following Ravenhill (this journal issue), we consider three dimensions of entrepreneurship: (a) the intention to convince others according to an actor’s interests; (b) the use of skilful politicians and bureaucracies to persuade partners; and (c) a proactive foreign policy that “sells” its position regarding the issues at stake. We argue that two other factors should be considered for a more encompassing view of entrepreneurial powers. First, the position of the involved great power on the crisis or in its negotiation. Second, that regional politics matter to entrepreneurial powers. We develop our argument using two case studies of success and failure respectively: the 1995 Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador mediated by Brazil, and the 2010 Iranian nuclear deal sponsored by Brazil and Turkey.
This article assesses the normative resistance to Responsibility to Protect adopted by Brazil and Russia against the backdrop of their international identities and self-assigned roles in a changing global order. Drawing upon the framework of Bloomsfield’s norm dynamics role spectrum, it argues that while the ambiguous Russian role regarding this principle represents an example of ‘norm antipreneurship’, particularities of Brazil’s resistance are better grasped by a new category left unaccounted for by this model, which this study portrays as ‘contesting entrepreneur’.
This article illustrates how Brazil responded to the policy challenges its foreign policy activism posed for its engagement with a fundamental question of the international order: the tension between the protection of human rights and the prohibitions on intervention and the use of force. Leading the military component of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) implicated accepting the mission's robust mandate that contradicted Brazil's traditional foreign policy positions. Notwithstanding this apparent contradiction, the country's diplomats also tried to shape UN debates on intervention norms, resulting inter alia in the ‘responsibility while protecting’ initiative. By analysing diplomatic efforts and military actions on the ground, we argue that since the watershed moment of becoming the most influential troop contributor to MINUSTAH, interests and actions of the armed forces increasingly contradict the efforts of Brazil's diplomatic establishment. The influence of Brazil's diplomacy in shaping intervention norms has proved to be rather elusive, compared with its military's palpable role in developing robust approaches for peacekeeping mandates revolving around the protection of civilians. Yet we argue that this apparent contradiction should not be seen as inconsistency. Instead, the case of Brazil shows typical signs of the ‘graduation dilemma’, in which both diplomats and military behaved in an eminently rational fashion.
‘Responsibility to protect’ (R2P) is an ‘emerging norm’ of international relations, which has been invoked with the intervention in Libya in 2011. Even though this intervention was demanded by several Third World countries and organisations, these have subsequently had second thoughts about the matter and have come to regard R2P as Western neo-imperialism. This article seeks to explain this apparent paradox, with a special focus on India. It also identifies possible compromises by advocating a broader approach to R2P, stressing the responsibility to prevent and to rebuild. It also draws attention to ‘R2P lite’, including the protection of civilians in armed conflicts.
Chapter 3 explains the evolution of the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm, as a distinct model but still contingent to the notion of humanitarian intervention. It also discusses how the R2P is articulated in separate discursive coalitions, which makes its meaning contested and unfixed. In this part, a literature review of both critical and pro-R2P is presented. The chapter also makes references to the discursive practices. Moreover, the chapter introduces how the term entered into the Turkish discourse.
Rising powers gain economic and political clout and challenge the post-Cold War world order. Located in a relatively peaceful region away from global conflict zones, Brazil has fought no war with its neighbours in 150 years, and with limited military capabilities, Brazil differs from its BRICS peers as a non-militarised emerging power. Based on Nye’s soft power concept, this article examines Brazil’s soft power characteristics (preference for diplomacy, peaceful conflict resolution, use of force as a last resort; actions as agenda-setter, bridge-builder, Southern interests’ supporter, pro-multilateralism, etc.). This paper compares Brazil’s role conception to its role performance to conclude that Brazil projects itself as a soft power broker.
Rising powers gain economic and political clout and challenge the post-Cold War world order. Located in a relatively peaceful region away from global conflict zones, Brazil has fought no war with its neighbours in 150 years, and with limited military capabilities, Brazil differs from its BRICS peers as a non-militarised emerging power. Based on Nye’s soft power concept, this article examines Brazil’s soft power characteristics (preference for diplomacy, peaceful conflict resolution, use of force as a last resort; actions as agenda-setter, bridge-builder, Southern interests’ supporter, pro-multilateralism, etc.). This paper compares Brazil’s role conception to its role performance to conclude that Brazil projects itself as a soft power broker.
This paper outlines the development and evolution of the normative positions of China, Brazil and India on issues surrounding the responsibility to protect (R2P) by charting their engagement in the ‘institutionalized conversation’ within the United Nations. In doing so, it seeks to dispel characterizations of these states as having adopted individual or common positions that either wholly reject or accept R2P. The nuances of the adaption and adoption of their postures need to be appreciated. Indeed, of the three component ‘pillars’ of R2P, they find themselves in general accord regarding Pillar One (state responsibility) and Pillar Two (prevention and assistance). It is on Pillar Three (reaction and response) that they diverge from each other and find themselves most at variance with ‘Western’ agendas of intervention and regime change. This divergence is most sharply drawn at present, in light of the Libyan and ongoing Syrian experiences.
This article questions the still broadly accepted notion that the global debate about Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is divided into a Western (or Northern) ‘pro-R2P’ camp and a non-Western (or Southern) ‘anti-R2P camp’. In the same way, the relatively broadly accepted assertion that R2P is a Western concept overlooks the important contributions developing countries have made in the creation of the norm. Brazil’s stance vis-à-vis R2P, analyzed in this article, is a powerful example of this reality, and the country has, in the past years, temporarily assumed leadership in the discussion about how to strengthen the norm. Paradoxically, Brazil’s move was widely seen as obstructionist. This points to a broader bias that tends observers not to grant non-Western powers the same agency in the creation of rules and norms. The ongoing multipolarization will force observers to correct this vision, as countries in the Global South such as China will be increasingly able to ‘act upon’ R2P, a capacity that so far has been reserved for established powers.
The perceived clash of norms associated with the emergence of rising powers is nowhere more pronounced than in relation to the responsibility to protect (RtoP). However, attempts to explain rising powers’ engagement with norms such as the RtoP are often limited and limiting in what they can tell us. Orthodox models portray predominantly linear and diffusionist logics of norm evolution that underplay the complex interaction implicit in unpredictable outcomes at the systemic level. This article identifies a range of factors that drive participation (or generate hesitation) amongst emerging powers in the development and application of the RtoP. It proceeds to illustrate how changes in normative behaviour emanate from top-down and bottom-up processes as well as the feedback between them. It argues that norm evolution is consequently a unique and emergent outcome of complex international society and therefore argues for using complexity thinking as a heuristic to augment current models and explanations of the evolution of norms in the international system.
Over the course of the last decade, countries commonly designated as ‘emerging powers’ have taken on an increasing role, not only in contributing materially to international efforts at keeping, building and enforcing peace, but — more primordially — in giving conceptual contours to what vision of peace underpins these efforts. The IBSA countries — India, Brazil and South Africa — combine political and material factors (such as democracy, participation in peace operations and an openly revisionist diplomatic agenda) to provide the most cogent example of rising powers’ behaviour in this area. As each state is grounded in its own national and regional traditions, the present analysis focuses on those common factors in their approach to peace that derive from their condition as emerging powers. When placed in this context, therefore, their interaction with the concept of peace will here be primarily viewed through the lens of their relative position in the international system.
Tocci starts off by recalling that values, prime amongst which human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and free market capitalism, have traditionally been the lynchpin of the transatlantic bond. Based on this broadly shared bedrock of liberal values, her chapter gauges the effectiveness of the transatlantic partners to enshrine individual human rights in the global governance architecture. In particular, it concentrates on a political norm in-the-making—the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). To what extent are the European Union and the United States, in partnership and/or independently, succeeding in entrenching R2P as an accepted political norm at the global level? In particular, to what extent are non-Western powers, notably the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) endorsing R2P? How did the international response to the conflicts in Libya and Syria affect the global conversation over R2P?
The rise of new powers and attendant shifts in the global balance of power have led to calls for UN Security Council reform. Established powers have often responded by linking increased influence in the international system with the assumption of more international responsibility by aspirant powers. Based on ethical and philosophical approaches from the individual and state levels, and a case study of Brazil, this article analyses the way in which the notion of responsibility is discursively constructed, demonstrating the manner in which it has been used as an ever-shifting goalpost to deny emerging powers participation at the highest levels of global strategic decision-making. Most often, this is done by equating “responsibility” with the ability and willingness to use robust military force.
This article assesses the BRICS’ position on the emerging global norm of the Responsibility to Protect, analyses the year 2011, when all the BRICS occupied a seat on the UN Security Council, and asks how the rise of the BRICS will affect R2P’s prospects of turning into a global norm. It argues that while it is generally thought that ‘non-Western’ emerging powers are reluctant to embrace R2P, rising powers’ views on the norm in question are far more nuanced. Common accusations depicting the BRICS as ‘irresponsible stakeholders’ are misguided, as emerging powers have supported R2P in the vast majority of cases. The BRICS are in fundamental agreement about the principle that undergirds R2P, and their support for R2P’s pillar I and II is absolute. Regarding pillar III, the BRICS at times diverge from Western countries not about the existence of the norm, but about when and how to apply it.
This paper assesses the extent to which the recently formulated Chinese concept of “Responsible Protection” (RP) offers a valuable contribution to the normative debate over R2P's third pillar following the controversy over military intervention in Libya. While RP draws heavily on previous proposals including the 2001 ICISS report and Brazil's “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP), by amalgamating and repackaging these earlier ideas in a more restrictive form the initiative represents a new and distinctive interpretation of R2P. However, some aspects of RP are framed too narrowly to provide workable guidelines for determining the permissibility of military intervention for humanitarian purposes, and should be clarified and refined. Nevertheless, the Chinese proposal remains significant because it offers important insights into Beijing's current stance on R2P. More broadly, China's RP and Brazil's RwP initiatives illustrate the growing willingness of rising, non-Western powers to assert their own normative preferences on sovereignty, intervention, and global governance.
In the last decade, Brazil has engaged with the idea of an international responsibility to protect (R2P) in a notable fashion. As a frequent member of the Security Council in the post-Cold War era, the country resisted suggestions of a responsibility to intervene in humanitarian crises, fearing it would serve to justify military action outside of the scope of the UN Charter and international law. Following the adoption of R2P in the 2005 World Summit, Brazil engaged with the concept more closely. This culminated in the ‘responsibility while protecting’, a proposed addendum that would ensure clearer criteria and greater accountability of UN-authorised military interventions. This paper describes Brazilian foreign policy perspectives through this period and analyses their contribution to the political and normative development of R2P. It argues that while Brazil has become more vocal and proactive in relation to the norm in recent years, its positions remained driven by some of its most traditional foreign policy arguments: the strengthening of the authority of the UN Security Council and the establishment of a multilateral order in which all states are treated equally.
This article combines both international practice and analytical contributions into a systematic and synthetic presentation of the evolution of peace operations from their modern inception in 1948 to the present. It seeks to serve a didactic purpose in proposing a basic structure for Brazilian scholars' burgeoning debate on peace operations and intervention, rather than a definitive characterization of blue helmet practice. Peace operations' progression is traced through five analytical "generations," each adding a crucial factor distinguishing it from its predecessors. Each generation is placed in relation to changes in the nature of conflict and in the interpretation of the foundational principles of peace operations, and links to broader theoretical issues in International Relations are made explicit at each stage.
Brazilian foreign policy demonstrates an interesting double aspect in the changing global system. Its rhetoric and overt positioning is framed around the idea of Brazil as a value-creating actor, while in reality there are significant value-claiming characteristics at the core of its approach to regional and global affairs. The key for Brazil is its position as a ‘bridge’ between the South and the North, which allows its diplomats to establish the country as a critical coalition organizer and ideational leader for southern actors looking for major changes in global governance systems, and a central interlocutor for northern actors trying to cope with pressure from the South. Brazil's ambitions are simple: focusing more on an improved relative position, rather than a complete reformulation of the international system, which serves it well in economic, political and security terms. To explain this argument the article focuses on Brazilian engagement with Africa and South America, as well as the country's approach to major negotiations such as the WTO's Doha round, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the evolution of regional governance mechanisms such as the Organization of American States and the recently created Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. The pattern that emerges is one of Brazil working to create a consensus around its position, using its consequent leadership to improve Brazilian leverage in the regional and global arena.
A compelling analysis of the correlations between internal political form and economic development, and the propensity to adopt 'sovereignty as shield' is given in Martin B
- Jr Travis
A compelling analysis of the correlations between internal political form and economic
development, and the propensity to adopt 'sovereignty as shield' is given in Martin B. Travis, Jr.,
'Th e Political and Social Bases for the Latin American Doctrine of Non-Intervention', Proceedings
of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law), 53: 62-65 (1959).
Dever de proteger ou nova forma de intervencionismo?
- Gelson Fonseca
Gelson Fonseca Júnior, 'Dever de proteger ou nova forma de intervencionismo?', in Nelson
A. Jobim, Sérgio W. Etchegoyen and João Paulo Alsina (eds.), Segurança Internacional: Perspectivas
Brasileiras (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2010).