Abstract: How should the international community respond when states commit atrocity crimes against sections of their own population? In practice, international responses are rarely timely or decisive. To make matters worse, half-hearted or self-interested interventions can prolong crises and contribute to the growing toll of casualties. Recognizing these brutal realities, it is tempting to adopt the fatalist view that the best that can be done is to minimize harm by letting the state win, allowing the status quo power structure to persist. Indeed, this is how many commentators and states have responded to the tide of human misery in Syria. Could a policy of letting the state perpetrator prevail be a viable alternative to other options, including military intervention? This essay suggests not. It explains the logic behind the fatalist approach and shows that problems of recurrence, precedence, and rights mean that such an approach cannot offer a plausible alternative to measures designed to resist and increase the costs of committing atrocity crimes.
Keywords: atrocities, diplomacy, humanitarian, war, victory, Syria, states, protection
The full essay is available to subscribers only. Click here for access.
More in this issue
Fall 2018 (32.3) • Review
Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility: The Migrant’s-Eye View of the World, by Alex Sager
In this book, Alex Sager challenges the “methodological nationalism” that dominates debates in migration ethics and offers a new way to think normatively about mobility ...
Fall 2018 (32.3) • Essay
The Case for Foreign Electoral Subversion
In this essay Cécile Fabre argues that, under certain conditions and subject to certain constraints, foreign electoral subversion may be justified as a means ...
Fall 2018 (32.3) • Review
Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World, by Alexander Betts and Paul Collier
This book helps us to adopt a much broader perspective on the current refugee crisis and what it might take to adequately address it. It ...