The Responsibility to Protect
According to the UN, “the Responsibility to protect embodies a political commitment to end the worst forms of violence and persecution. It seeks to narrow the gap between Member States’ pre-existing obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law and the reality faced by populations at risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) came into being as a reaction to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In both places the West accused one group of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing on another group. The causes for these tragic events were explained by the West as being ethnic and religious in Yugoslavia and tribal in Rwanda. Both explanations were based on Western clichés about the areas, the Balkans perceived as unstable and undemocratic, and Africa as eternally tribal. The Western explanation of the events prompted the UN and humanitarian community to start implementing a plan to standardize the procedure for helping countries in trouble. In 2000, the UN drew up guidelines for humanitarian intervention and their report, released in December 2001 was called “The Responsibility to Protect”. If finally became a standard for international law in 2005 at the U.N. World Summit in which it was adopted as the guiding principle for the prevention of atrocity crimes.
The Responsibility to Protect ends up being a brilliant strategy which allows the West to wage unnecessary and destructive wars, while getting the approval of the liberal sectors of society
Human rights are at the center of Western values, so R2P appears to be a commendable action by the International community. In reality, human rights are used as pawns in a war game to justify manufactured humanitarian interventions whose aim is not to protect human rights, but to protect the interests of the most powerful countries and their corporations. The Responsibility to Protect ends up being a brilliant strategy which allows the West to wage unnecessary and destructive wars, while getting the approval of the liberal sectors of society. The UN guidelines sound very draconian in their mission to prevent atrocities, yet the R2P has not been invoked to prevent the horrific humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The reason is that the US, UK and France are aiding and abetting their Saudi ally in Yemen, so there is no need to point out the atrocities happening there. The US considers Yemen an oil strategic area and doesn’t tolerate rebellious governments that won’t do the bidding of the US.
In contrast to the lack of response to a real humanitarian crisis like the one in Yemen, the West has had no qualms in manufacturing fake human rights excuses in order to destroy countries like Libya and Syria. In all of these cases, the West’s real interests are clear to see, the victim country was guilty of interfering with a pipeline or wanted to exert their sovereignty by threatening the supremacy of the Petrodollar. Once it is convenient to Western interests, the R2P is quickly invoked by the US ambassador at the UN and a whole campaign of media propaganda is waged until there is enough consensus to bomb and destroy the countries. R2P is very helpful, since it is a type of virtue signaling loved by the West’s international community. It provides the fastest way for the US Military Industrial Complex to set their war machine into gear, creating handsome profits for the defense companies, their lobbyists and the politicians who cater to them.
In order to understand the origins of R2P it is useful to look at the two cases that led to its creation: Yugoslavia and Rwanda:
In Yugoslavia, the real cause for intervention wasn’t the genocide, but the need of the US to assert its power in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yugoslavia was ruled by Tito until his death in 1980. Under Tito, Yugoslavia was one of the communist countries with the best economic results, education and health care were provided to all citizens. Though a very diverse country with many ethnicities and religions: Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim, it was a tolerant country where divisions weren’t encouraged. Tito’s death created a power vacuum and Yugoslavia slowly fell prey to international economic intervention.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan started NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, which contrary to its name, was designed to create interventions in countries to suit the interests of the US. The first target of NED was Yugoslavia, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was enlisted to set draconian economic rules that included austerity and currency manipulation in exchange for much-needed loans. In 1989, George H. Bush became president and he accelerated the wheels for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the IMF was told to apply even more pressure on Yugoslavia’s economy in order to cause higher unemployment and discontent that would lead to ethnic tensions.
In November 1990 the US Congress passed the Bush Administration’s Foreign Operations Appropriations Act 101–513. The new US law dictated that any part of Yugoslavia failing to declare independence from Yugoslavia within six months of the act would lose all financial support. A vulnerable country in dire economic circumstances is usually prey to the ethnic or religious scapegoating of certain groups, as happened in Germany in the 30s. The US demand for balkanization of the country created even more alienation and the seeds of discord were sown. Sir Alfred Sherman, a Balkan expert and a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher remarked in 1997, “The war in Bosnia was America’s war in every sense of the word. The United States administration helped start it, kept it going, and prevented its early end.” The first regions to secede, pushed covertly by US interests, were Croatia and Slovenia which became independent in 1991. The US push for dismemberment of Yugoslavia had as an aim to increase US power in the region after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The casus belli for the intervention happened in 1995 when the West accused Bosnian Serb forces of the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. What the Western media didn’t mention was that in the preceding year, Islamist fundamentalist fighters were brought by the US to attack Serbs in Bosnia, starting a brutal war that was not reported by the media. The tactic of using Islamic fighters was inherited from the British Empire in the 19th century, when it was useful to destabilize areas and dissuade rivals from nearing the Empire’s prized colonies. This strategy, was also used by the US in Afghanistan and in many former Soviet Republics.
The Bosnian Serbs were being massacred by Islamist fighters, but the media wasn’t acknowledging it. When the Serbs finally retaliated, the media made a big deal of the massacre, complying with the US need to demonize the Serbs. The media propagated the outrage at this ‘ethnic cleansing’ and created a consensus so that NATO could bomb Bosnia. Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, who had tried to keep the Yugoslavian republic together, was accused of innumerable crimes and tried in the Hague, without even being allowed to defend himself. This demonization accompanied by the dreaded ‘genocide’ word, set a precedent to be used in many other places in order to justify deadly interventions. In the case of Yugoslavia, the real cause for intervention wasn’t the genocide, but the need of the US to assert its power in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Rwanda provided the next event that was used to justify Responsibility to Protect. In 1994, the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was downed and this caused chaos in the two countries, especially in Rwanda. The West accused the Hutu and ruling minority of committing ethnic cleansing on the Tutsis. Rwanda had been ruled by the Hutus for many years and this had prompted many Tutsis to move to Uganda, where they created an in-exile resistance movement to the Hutu government in Rwanda. They were helped in this endeavor by Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, who allowed them to start a Rwandan army within Uganda led by Paul Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi.
Before the onset of the Rwanda conflict, the US had been covertly helping the army of Paul Kagame, whose job was to go into Rwanda, attack civilians and perpetrate massacres of Hutus. This illegal aggression against Hutus wasn’t reported by the media. The open conflict was ignited with the downing of the presidential plane, action that has not yet been attributed with certainty to any party. The disorder created the opportunity for the Hutus to revenge the atrocities that the Kagame Tutsis had been committing for a long time. Just then, the media suddenly noticed what was going on, claimed genocide and audiences were bombarded with atrocious images from Rwanda.
The conflict in Rwanda was used to mask the West’s intervention for access to Congo’s natural resources
After the atrocities were stopped, Paul Kagame became president of Rwanda and continues to be to this date. He has been instrumental for the continuation of war in the area, which easily moved to rich in natural resources Congo. Congo was the real aim of the destabilization campaign in Rwanda. When the Hutus fled to Congo, Kagame and his army followed them, committing massacres and extending the chaos. Congo is blessed with a large number of minerals essential for the manufacturing of electronics, plus gold and other materials that make it a perfect place for the operation of many mining multinationals. In this case, the real reason for R2P would have been about the importance of protecting corporate access to essential raw materials. It had nothing to do with the protection of any human rights, once more.
Libya incurred the ire of the West for efforts to create an African currency
Since it was implemented, R2P has been used as a way to facilitate interventions in countries without much scrutiny about their validity. Libya and Syria are the most recent examples. The modus operandi of most interventions is very similar, in 2011, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice invoked R2P as justification for intervention and NATO bombing of Libya.
The real problem with Libya had nothing to do with R2P, Libya was a thorn on the side of the US and France for several reasons. Libya’s GDP was the highest in Africa and this was allowing it to have influence in Africa by providing aid and by trying to implement an African currency so Africa could trade oil at better prices. This move annoyed the DC Establishment because it appeared as a threat to the dominance of the Petrodollar, and in the case of Sarkozy, the dominance of CFA (African Franc) in francophone Africa.
The CFA is based on the former French Franc which in turn is based on the Euro, which means that the African currency ends up being a Euro-based currency, under the dictates of the European Central Bank. The economies of francophone Africa are very different from the European ones, so having a currency that responds to European needs instead of African ones is not a recipe for economic growth. This is why Libya’s government wanted to extricate CFA countries from that distortive yoke on their economies. Alas, it was not to be, neither Western country could allow it, so they convinced NATO to bomb Libya. In this case, the real R2P was to protect the dominance and currencies of powerful countries and had nothing to do with human rights.
A little bit later, it was Syria’s turn, this time it was Samantha Powers, US ambassador to the UN, who had the role of the girl who cried wolf and invoked R2P. In this case, the Syrian leader was accused of attacking his own people, though it was never proven by independent entities, unless proven means endlessly repeated by the media. It was also an illogical claim, since Assad is a well-liked ruler in decent terms with his people. In order to justify a demand for regime change, all that was needed was to turn the Syrian leader into a superhero villain who is so evil, he doesn’t even need any reason to destroy anything in his sight. If you look at what was really going on in the area of the time of the accusations, you find the real reason for this vilifying: Qatar and the US were planning a pipeline from Qatar to the Mediterranean passing through Syria. Assad denied the permission, arguing that there was another pipeline already, which was owned by Russia. Samantha Powers went in full gear invoking R2P, this time for protecting oil and pipelines, not the human rights of people.
Country after country has been destroyed by the capriciousness and bullying of the US and the advent of R2P made it easier than ever. The DC Establishment, the Military Industrial Complex, the media that serves them and the audiences who believe in that media are happy thinking that all those interventions are justified because there was an R2P that was invoked and therefore human rights were preserved. In reality, there is such a deep divide between what the media reports and what happens in those countries, that it is impossible not to blame the media for their subservience to the warmonger powers that be. The media creates a consensus that allows for atrocities to be committed on the name of protecting human rights and nobody notices. The people in the victim countries notice, but the ones who dare to report what is really happening are never presented in the media, they are invisible to the West.
The main stream media has lied so many times before, but their audiences continue to give them the benefit of the doubt time and again. The government and the media lied repeatedly in order to invade Iraq and they were never held accountable. That war has caused the death of hundreds of thousands and destroyed the country, but the culprits reacted as though it were just a blip in history. The lie was disproven, and yet, most people were ready to believe the same liars when they started pushing wars in Libya and Syria. Their lies allowed for those countries to be destroyed, while millions of well-meaning people in the West have been hoodwinked into feeling they support the right causes.
In former days, people believed what was said in the pulpit as the truth, but with time and the spread of the scientific method through education, there was a secularization of the culture and the pulpit lost its power over many. The main stream media is the new pulpit and though we are thoroughly used to basing our assessments on empirical evidence, we are easily distracted by the right words like the ones involved in the Responsibility to Protect. The evidence of the destruction of the countries intervened is everywhere, while the promises of bringing democracy and quality of life have never been fulfilled. It is high time to reassess the tricks used by the Military Industrial Complex in their eternal war quest. The only way to stop it is for people to make the media and the government accountable for their repeated lies. Lack of accountability allows for errors to be repeated over and over, just as the results of the numerous US foreign interventions prove.
