we've covered at length here before but i hope that we have you back to break it all down again in the future and this is certainly an important story thank you so much reporter elise fung with the republic report about work but absolutely that's it for now we'll be back here quite soon. liz.

liz. taking the stairs. to. live. alone welcome to cross talk i'm futile about the right to protection for the right to penetrate as syria continues down the path of destruction and civil war there are loud voices on the international stage the mending some form of outside intervention to end the violence and death is international are moving from sovereignty is right to sovereignty as responsibility the same can the same. cross-talk the possible intervention into syria i'm joined by philip khan left in london he is a lecturer in international conflict at the university of kent

a member of the international studies association and the british international studies association also in london we have eight in his hair he is director of the security and international relations program at the university of westminster and in geneva we crossed the steven heine's he is an international lawyer and a professor at the geneva center for security policy all right gentlemen crossed libros in effect that means you can jump anytime you want and if i can go to you are two key right to protect our right to penetrate nation states what is it because we saw libya and we have syria on the agenda ok and i think we all would agree that syria and libya are not great powers. yes well it is usually used to refer to the responsibility to protect right and the right to protect possibly the right to protect as is a better way of understanding this principle because. what or to be essentially stands for is a discretionary entitlement the security council may intervene if the time and sort

of political situation constitutes a threat to international peace and security but the problem with ought to pity is that it's under no obligation to do anything and essentially what r.g.p. has done is very very little it's created a slogan and certainly it's entered into political discourse and many people refer to it in academia and international politics but it has changed absolutely nothing really comes through international relations and particularly the international community's response to intrastate crises and the situation in syria i think is very obvious evidence to back that up it's a classic case of the great powers choosing when and where to intervene and the humanitarian situation on the ground you know plays very little role in that determination you know i thought i was right you know with my first question i mean strong nations have sovereignty we're under this doctrine but we've nations are made to be made responsible it seems to me that it's there's not a double standard in play right here if you're not a strong country then other people can tell you how to behave. now i'm going to i'm

going to let the sales of that one go ahead oh yeah yeah i mean i think that's right and i would go further i think that the responsibility the idea of sovereignty is responsibility does not only mean that effectively we countries have less of rinty but also that it would say it undermines democracy and accountability within all countries themselves because the idea of the responsibility to protect i think means that states are effectively responsible for their people rather than responsible to their people and that's the distinction which the responsibility to protect introduces so those states and are seen to be responsible to the international community rather than accountable to their own people and to meet the interests of their own people and so for that reason i think it's. the idea that the responsibility to protect can offer anything to the people of syria or that it stands in support of an idea of accountable popular representative for democratic

syrian government is totally ridiculous ok stephen where do you dissenting voices here how do you come out on this here because there are so many examples out there what about bahrain why why can't they and outside countries say you know you've been invaded by your neighbor here you have an ok government why don't we have a humanitarian intervention to save the people of bahrain what about gaza wipe can we have a country to go in there and protect gazans when israel attacks them i mean it seems to be full of double standards go ahead. well there are double standards here in a sense if you look at them and not why but can i just go back to responsibility versus rights there is no i as an international lawyer i look at the the way that this particular so-called norm has developed over the last thirteen years or so and it was really kicked off by a commission that met after the nato intervention over kosovo in one thousand nine hundred nine what was interesting about that was of course that intervention was conducted without a u.n. security council mandate. and the way that international law works and that's.

specters that the u.n. security council is in effect the authority under un law that can grant approval give a mandate to a state or a group of states to intervene in the way that we're discussing up until up until the responsibility to protect report there was no doubt that this was based on the idea of sovereign states having the right to intervene if they felt it was necessary or appropriate i think what power to pay as it's evolved since nineteen ninety nine and certainly the two thousand and one commission process the way that it's are involved is that the jurist credential underpinnings now of the u.n. security council reaching a deliberate reaching a mandate to intervene has shifted from the basic understanding that a collection of states have a right to do something to the idea that states are actually in

a position of having some measure of responsibility to do something so i don't think one can dismiss it is as well i mean i will call whatever if i get a name i still feel i'm very suspicious of this because i see geopolitical politics behind it i mean the united states invaded iraq without any kind of u.n. mandate ok in it it's about eight it was applying sponsibility and protect in some form or another but it's just the picking it's the west taking on people who doesn't like ok and if they're using these great words of responsibility protecting civilians i mean it's easier to swallow maybe for western audiences what do you think. well in principle i don't have a problem with the idea of states having responsibility to protect their own citizens and nor do i have a problem with the idea of the international community having a responsibility to intervene if necessary to protect citizens who are suffering egregious human rights violations under committed by their states that to me seems a perfectly logical premise however my problem with responsibly to protect isn't that it fundamentally disrupts the relationship between states in

a citizen sort of facilitates great power intervention we've always had great power interventions long before to be the problem i have what it is that in situations like this in syria and in other situations since or two peoples first launched in two thousand and one we've had a catalogue of intrastate crises where there has been no international reaction of any kind precisely because or to be does not change anything in international law or international politics and simply reaffirms the existing privileges that the p five have and so long as the international community's response to international crisis is predicated on a national interests of the p five then we would have the erratic record of intervention that we had prior to or to be when in the one nine hundred ninety security council significantly expanded its understanding of its chapter seven powers and that's the part about increasing it's not that it has created a new school print dimension of previously didn't exist a great powers have always abused humanitarian claims and asked directly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century that's nothing new the problem is the selective

implementation of r.t. in the fact that for all the noise that it has generated in the last ten years it has achieved very very little but he figured out that philip i mean it's a pretty spotty record i mean if you still if you look at what happened in libya it's when nato started bombing when the death rate started to decline dramatically i mean again i mean this is the law of unintended consequences i mean it was nato went in there are under the guise of. the mandate to start death and destruction but it actually accelerated it and it wasn't given a mandate to change the regime which it did in and this is what again this kind of mission creep with syria under the r two p. they're going to try to get rid of assad using nice words. i agree i mean and i disagree with aiden in terms of the idea that the responsibility to protect has had no effect or is insignificant or doesn't change anything politically legally i think it does and it does so for the worse if you take for it mean while it's true that great powers have always been able to have their own way i don't see in the

past i don't see that that's an argument for abolishing whatever legal barriers stand in their way to make intervention easier and having those legal barriers and political barriers in place is one way of making it easier to hold power to account rather than allowing for the less restrained and unaccountable exercise of power by the permanent five members of the security council or by any other large major military power so i do think the responsibility to protect and along the lines that you've said in relation to what happened in libya were a mandate for civilian protection gave enormous scope for the nato powers to effectively mount a campaign of regime change and i should also add to mean a very similar thing happened at the same time in ivory coast and code of war where a mandate a u.n. mandate for civilian protection effectively allowed un peacekeepers who were stationed there to overthrow an incumbent to overthrow the incumbent government so

it's a much it's a much wider field of what's actually happening and i do think it has significant and important consequences i mean in the past perhaps while great powers can still intervene in the affairs of smaller states they had to disguise the way in which they did by pretending to support client regimes or claiming that they were intervening because they'd been invited in or supporting rebels covertly whatever it was there was always some they had to pay homage to the principle that intervention was seen to be a negative thing and that it was seen to be dictatorial interference in the affairs of other states now the responsibility to protect with the rise of the responsibility to protect and ideas of humanitarian intervention it makes it much easier. for intervention to take place and for it to be seen as legitimate rather than something that's illegitimate and corrosive of international order it's very interesting theme it sounds like to me to same song but it's a do it's the same song with a different dance that's that's a still it's a i want to. thank you for asking me to do so because i i actually don't believe

that the evidence so far suggests that this is giving great powers a. car loan approval to intervene this is simply nonsense the idea that iraq was conducted the invasion of iraq was conducted under a responsibility to protect his just perverse it wasn't that was that was not the argument put forward by you know you know what you know is a cake walk you know they're going to reassess the raiders i mean come on they did use these poor people after a decade of sanctions need to be liberated and were democracy very very serious middle east and really that was firing and well i am look i am looking i am looking at the international lore of this and i'm telling you in fact likely that our troop a was never part of either the british or american justification for the invasion of iraq now as it happens i opposed that in from that intervention i thought that it was unlawful and strategically unnecessary but i'm afraid that it's wrong to

suggest that if i can intervene if i can i don't think you gentlemen we're going to get to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the contradictory situation in syria state r.t. . if you can. download the official and see how the condition until i phone the i pod touch from the i choose our still. see life on the go. video on demand on t.v.'s mine comes an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the column.

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market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much cause or run no holds the global financial headlines tune into a report. see a story. so you think you understand it and then something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything is ok. i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. the can you see. the the. welcome back across town kid you were talking about syria and outside military intervention. the key to.

ok filthy far into the break you want to jump in there respond to something that stephen said in geneva go right ahead. yeah i don't i mean it might not have been in the black letter of the security council debates or in the legal justifications given thaw the anglo american invasion of iraq but the idea that humanitarian intervention the responsibility to protect had no role to play in iraq i think is deeply disingenuous it systematically lowered the barriers their political barriers to noun interventions of that kind and both george bush and tony blair repeatedly invoked the idea of overthrowing saddam's tyranny a very strong humanitarian argument that has been made in many other cases where military intervention has been launched and in turn implies memoirs very made very clearly makes the case that he saw the intervention in iraq along the lines of a responsibility to protect so i'm not sure that the strict legal criteria in

relation to what happened in iraq are as important as the political question and the fact that it was politically legitimated on the grounds on largely humanitarian grounds as well as the invisible now the diff never found weapons of mass destruction ok to knew we were all right stephen you want to reply and then i got it and i i'm coming back to this or goes ahead we've got this one we've got this one right there on the legal justification from both the united states and united kingdom had nothing whatever to do with our troops it related in particular in the british case it related to a supposed security council mandate dating back to ninety ninety and the the idea that our troops he had anything to do with our two story with iraq is i think completely false i'm not saying that they there were certain post conflict post invasion justifications based on humanitarian arguments there certainly were but

they had nothing to do with the legal justification i'm going to come back to this whole business of wary but no i just want to finish on this because think it's quite important to make the point but nothing in the art evolvement process from the international. nations report in two thousand and one through the high level panel report that was subsequently commissioned by kofi annan through kofi annan a report to the world summit in two thousand and five and nothing in there recommended anything other than the decision to intervene in these circumstances militarily should rest with the security council within the united nations and so in some sense is i would argue. he has in some ways strengthened the role of the security council and made it less likely although it may be may be a trade it's created a lot more paralysis even if i can go to you because russian chinese get a good maybe even a lot of criticism in the world for its vetoing of any more intervention into syria and the russians and the chinese will go back and say look what you did in libya

you abused that mandate because of this new doctrine in the in the russians and the chinese are going to not budge on this one or if there is it'll be much more nuance now what i'm getting at is it out this doctrine is finding itself dead in the water because it was abused in libya. and i don't think so i mean russia and china's position on this the resolution that was put to the security council that russia and china vetoed made no mention of military intervention it's very important regime change is mentioned in there and they need to change the political order on the ground so it's under the same we are sending them and slaughters its own people like that in his own elected and has ruled to radically for forty years and i don't think it's unreasonable to discuss regime change with the people on the ground in syria i mean we have always and we have to continue to have some understanding of the situation on the ground in syria and the suffering of the people. during their in a situation like this were

a government totally on elected government engages in this kind of atrocity against its own people of course to begin to not eliminate them you know again clearly you know like this doctor and so what would you suggest doing ok. i don't like our two people seriously because of what steven said strengthen the security council and we have the shariah every now and again in new york were members fall into the room we all know how they're going to vote and nothing really is resolved or to pay has as stephen said strengthen the security council the power of the security council is precisely the problem in these situations we've always had great power interventions with or without security council approval philips idea of sovereignty is being inviolability is totally out of date and has been for at least twenty years the notion that states consider themselves to be beyond any external interference i mean we have the genocide convention in one thousand forty five myriad international treaties since then recognizing some role for the international community in interesting affairs and that's that's a rule i welcome a problem i was soon as i say it's really hard to see with what i've been saying. i

disagree with this oh disagree with this idea that the sovereign impunity is purely there to protect government so that they can slaughter their own people and have no international accountability the idea of noninterference isn't about protecting genocidal governments the idea of not interference in sold in the affairs of other states is to protect the idea of representative government so that the role of the people in determining their i was a syrian on how representative government should behave is the point so i think regime change what is it just addressed by france is all this is you know as a judge or a female representative by external powers. and you kind of the question is preserving if the question is preserving the rights and that's a question i asked you a couple times when i was over in the sense of is there's actually a syrian people there and you're seeing here is new generation are going to want. you to reply go right ahead. you know how representative is the assad government

how can the people in syria exercise this idea of this right of self-determination that's precisely what they're attempting to do it seems the government is slaughtering them now what we do in that context sovereignty has unfortunately is the dark side of sovereignty as provided with the means to engage in these kind of activities and for us to say well it's sovereign inviolability provide enables independence and starting from a nation of course in most situations it does but in this situation there has to be limits it would be ridiculous to claim otherwise and it's also a position that's talking of this that with international political understanding of seventy and international legal understanding something it's a totally outdated seventeenth century notion of sovereignty all right gentlemen i said i thought even i like to go to stephen go ahead stephen you want to jump in there go ahead yes they are i think one of the biggest problems and i'm sure that your viewers will be confused by this but one of the one of the biggest problems of course you've got if you've got legal issues on one side and political issues on

the other and these two these two different dimensions to the problem do tend to conflict with one another i mean i i have some sympathy what i what i knew saying about the desirability of being able to do something and his frustration with the security council having apparently been strengthened which is which is my tentative view at the moment by r two p. the trouble is with this is that back in one nine hundred forty five when the charter was drafted there had to be a realistic assessment of the importance the sheer importance of great powers the five that were originally put there are still worth the importance of ensuring that nothing would create such catastrophe with an interest an international system that the great powers would end up in conflict again this is the diameter particularly those with her international lawyers with some sympathy with the notion of human security and intervention in the circle. stances have to confront we cannot

intervene in every set of circumstances because to do so would be political that's not realistic let me look at give me an example phil before i can go to you ok let's say iran is watching what's going on in syria and it invokes r two p. and there's an intervention ok i mean if the west does it it's ok because they're western powers they're good guys but if iran does something like that using the same doctrine it will be called invasion well it can do that if i may jump from going to war so you think old city right. no i think i mean i think there's one thing if you take the example of the russian intervention in georgia which was defended initially at least in humanitarian grounds it was roundly sneered at by western states and western commentators the idea that the russians would dare to invoke a humanitarian justification there when clearly the only states which are expected to be allowed to you know polis the discourse if you materialism western powers so i think it's very right there there's talk of universalism in this talk as if these

rights free floating and belong to anybody in principle but in reality we know that it's going to be the great powers they decide how they're applied the great powers on the security council in particular the western powers western powers can i can i come back here because you said what about if iran wanted to invoke this are to play well equipped of course you can try taking the issue to the security council which is the body that is in a position to make those if you think of the region as we can any traction will get any traction what you just be sneered out right well it probably would be the salicylate new true but at the site but in the same sense do acknowledge that the very fact that there appears to be a problem at the moment is caused by both the russians and the chinese indicating that they will veto so you can have it both ways you can say that this is a this is a means for the west to intervene all the time when clearly in the case of syria both russia and china are making it very clear at the moment but i have no truck

with nato or anybody else for that matter intervening in syria there are checks here and the tracks we have to accept but they are uncomfortable tracks they do produce the source and guy limits but they are clearly tracks and they exist not only for iran but also for the western powers as well what is the future of our tepee where is this doctrine going to go because it seems like it was really cheered on for libya and now i now i notice western media doesn't like to cover libya too much because it is. one big mess ok with militias running around in what not ok but it's still a victory for nato and it's justified true this doctor here i mean we're just we go from here because it doesn't look like it's going to work with syria and unfortunately given the limited reports we have coming out of syria the situation on the ground there is quite dire. well i mean the responsibility to protect is as i've said elsewhere i slowed and it's a very good slogan it's a very patchy slogan and like a lot of slogans like that i'm sure it will have a future in you know the chattering that goes on amongst politicians at the

security council but in actual practice it would have very little practical influence and as you said a lot of people in two thousand and eleven welcomed the intervention in libya as being all chimpy an action it's important to remember that in the security council resolution sanctioning action in libya there's no mention of the international community's responsibility to protect the bases for action was struck for seven the responsibility to take as mentioned once all in the context of that after his responsibility to protect his own people has no sense that this was the international community recognizing its collective responsibility to act on behalf of the libyan people. i would have you know rather fascinating conversation many thanks to my guest today in london and in geneva and make sure viewers for watching us to see you next time and remember. it.

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