The responsibility to protect is often mistakenly understood to be a doctrine governing the use of military force for humanitarian protection. It is not. The responsibility to protect, instead, implies a responsibility of the broader international community to “react” when states are unwilling or unable to protect those living within their borders from grave harm. The international action that is implied can be political, diplomatic, economic, or military. In truth, options that fall well short of force are almost always preferable. They are politically easier to initiate and sustain; they avoid the inherent risks of war; and they can often be more effective, especially if pursued early and shrewdly.(1) The most effective actions, in fact, may be those undertaken cooperatively, with the government of concern, rather than against it. The United Nations has relevant capacity to “assist” governments in a broad range of areas, including building more effective judicial systems and law enforcement, demobilization of combatants, short- and long-term economic assistance, and human rights education and training. The Office of the Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide has initiated a study to identify the specific types of assistance that might be provided. The advantage of a cooperative approach is that it sends a clear message to the state of concern by setting an expectation of proper behavior. A state’s response to offers of assistance would give a clearer indication of state complicity and, if necessary, build a case for more robust international action later.

When a cooperative approach does not sufficiently mitigate the risk of mass atrocities, international action, including the threat or application of sanctions, may be appropriate. Sanctions fall into three broad categories: political and diplomatic, economic, and military. Sanctions that target leadership groups, individuals, and organizations have emerged as an increasingly important alternative to the blunt instrument of broad-gauge sanctions.

Political and diplomatic measures might include restricting or limiting diplomatic representation. They may include restrictions or the threat of restrictions on travel, particularly against specific leaders and their families. Suspending a government’s membership in an international or regional body is another option. The threat of legal action against individuals and leaders responsible for war crimes is another effective policy tool.

Economic sanctions might include targeting the foreign assets of a country, rebel movement, or terrorist group, or the foreign assets of a particular leader, including members of his or her family.Restrictions on income-generating activities, such as oil, diamonds, logging, and drugs, are another important type of targeted sanction because it is often easier to get at the activities than at the hidden funds they generate.

Military measures can include ending military cooperation or military training; arms embargoes on weapons, ammunition, or spare parts; military cooperation with regional organizations or neighboring armies; preventive military deployments to stanch the spread of a civil conflict; enforcement of no-fly zones; and naval blockades, among many others.

In extreme cases, or to stabilize a situation after a peace is established, some kind of military action may be needed. The far end of that spectrum is “forcible humanitarian intervention.” The UN Security Council may be asked to authorize such military interventions, but the United Nations is itself unsuited to conduct them, and they are appropriately shunned by its Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The difficulty and inherent risks of high-intensity combat operations generally require leadership by a single nation, militarily competent group of nations, or regional organizations, rather than a UN force.

UN operations, however, can be and are often essential to the atrocity prevention mission. There can be no exit for combat forces deployed to stop or prevent mass atrocities without competent forces to conduct stabilization and reconstruction following closely behind. This is precisely the role that UN troops filled in Kosovo, and UN troops performed a similar role in East Timor.

Other UN operations that can be relevant to the genocide prevention mission include the “preventive deployment” of troops, such as the 1995 deployment of blue-helmeted peacekeepers (mostly American) to contain the spread of war and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and the deployment of “interposition” forces, such as the French and UN troops sent to patrol a buffer zone between Côte d’Ivoire’s warring parties in 2004.

If Darfur is the first test case of the “responsibility to protect,” there is no point in denying that the world is failing its entrance exam.(2) By the end of 2006, an estimated 250,000 people had died as a result of the conflict, and nearly 3 million out of a total population of 6 million Darfuris were displaced. The UN estimates that 40 percent of Darfuris now depend on outside assistance for their survival.

Summoning the political will to take risks is the main obstacle to converting the responsibility to protect into a program of action. Although the responsibility for atrocities against the African minority in western Sudan rests with the Khartoum government, the failure to stop the killing is a collective one.

Some have blamed the United Nations, and the presence of non-democracies on the Security Council, including veto-holding members, for the failure to apply the responsibility to protect in Darfur.(3) Nonetheless, the Security Council has succeeded in producing a series of resolutions on Darfur since 2003, including resolution 1706, passed August 31, 2006, which specifically connects the responsibility to protect to Darfur -- the first time the Security Council invoked the principle in relation to a particular conflict. The Security Council has also authorized a ban on Sudanese military flights, referred indicted war criminals to the International Criminal Court in March 2005, and created a pathway for sanctions on certain financial interests of the Sudanese leadership.

Criticism of the United Nations is a form of self-criticism. The United Nations system was designed by its American framers not to be able to act decisively without great power consensus. Structural sloth is a built-in protection against a UN that acts without the consent of its most prominent members. These structural impediments both frustrate and serve larger U.S. interests.

Neither the United States nor the other democracies on the Council is pressing to carry out the un-enforced Security Council resolutions. In the case of Darfur, the world’s militarily capable and prosperous states, generally democracies, have been unwilling to take risks for a humanitarian principle that does not touch their vital national security interests. As Newt Gingrich and George Mitchell wrote recently, “On stopping genocide, all too often ‘the United Nations failed’ should actually read ‘members of the United Nations blocked or undermined action by the United Nations.’”(4)

The evidence of the past three years is that the world is not prepared to use force or even concerted pressure to force the government of Sudan to end its military campaign in western Sudan. In the absence of international will, Khartoum will retain the capability to act with impunity, opening the possibility of further war crimes in Darfur, and deepening the possibility that a conflict that is seeping across borders will engulf the region. The weak international response to date is discouraging. The question is whether the prospect of a second wave of atrocities will compel governments to act.

Darfur illustrates the difficulties in converting the principles of the responsibility to protect into a program of action. Focusing on diplomacy now will be read by Khartoum as a permission slip to do as it pleases. Military action may be the only way to get Sudan to relent, yet it is dangerous, not guaranteed to succeed, and, as a consequence, unlikely to receive broad international political support.

The long-term goal is to avoid the stark options of “Doing Nothing” and “Sending in the Marines.” That requires establishing a pattern of early and effective international response at the first signs of concern. The place to start is with concrete steps to build capacity -- diplomatic, economic, legal, and military -- in support of the principle of humanitarian protection.

In adopting the responsibility to protect last year, the United Nations accepted the principle that mass atrocities that take place in one state are the concern of all states. The new Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, should begin by taking the General Assembly’s endorsement of the responsibility to protect as a mandate and a mission statement. The goal, as the Secretary-General himself said, should be to "operationalize" the responsibility to protect by building up the UN's capacity to respond early and effectively at the first sign of concern. Economic and militarily capable states and organizations including the United States must also take steps to bolster UN action and to be available when the UN is not.

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