Justin Morris

How Great is Britain? : power, responsibility and Britain’s future global role

Hedley Bull argued that for a state to be classed as a great power it must be in the first rank in terms of military strength but also recognised by others to have, and conceived by its own leaders and peoples to have, certain special rights and duties. Adopting this approach, this article argues that Britains great power credentials are far stronger than commonly appreciated and that, while the term is no longer in vogue, within government the idea that Britain is a great power remains an influential factor in determining British foreign and defence policy.

The responsibility to protect and the use of force : remaking the procrustean bed?

The emergence of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) owed much to the need to enhance the UN’s ability to act forcibly in the face of the most extreme cases of gross human suffering. Too often in the past such responses were emasculated or thwarted by the necessity to successfully navigate the UN Charter’s prescriptions over the use of force, by the unwillingness of member states to provide military forces, or by a combination of the two. In accepting that certain types of inhuman activity can lead to the legitimate use of force within the UN Charter framework, the adoption of R2P appeared to resolve at least some of these problems, and as such it offered hope to those wishing to see the UN adopt a more assertive response to the grossest of human rights abuses. But, using stalemate over Syria as its backdrop, this article demonstrates the dubiousness of the claim that such a normative development can ever trump the hard edged political and strategic factors which determine when states will accept and/or participate in the use of force, and it suggests a radical solution to the dangers inherent in R2P’s intimate association with military intervention.

Force and democracy: UN/US intervention in Haiti

The restoration to power of Jean‐Bertrand Aristides government in Haiti in September 1994 appears at first sight to be a victory for democracy over the evils of authoritarian dictatorship. It also suggests the continued willingness of the UN Security Council to intervene in the domestic affairs of states in order to promote human and political rights. However, the resolutions emanating from the Security Council belie a deep unease within the institution, as its Western members pursue an agenda predicated upon the particularist conceptions of human and political rights which lack consensual backing. This article demonstrates that many states, notably veto‐bearing China, are beginning to criticize in ever more strident terms the interventionist approach advocated by the United States and its Western allies. With Russia no longer acting as a foil to US ambitions, a propensity to use the Security Council as an agent for promoting and legitimizing Western ideals has developed. Such a trend threatens the minim...

The responsibility to protect and the great powers : the tensions of dual responsibility

Since the UN’s 2005 adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) the five permanent members (P5) of the organisation’s Security Council have been burdened with a special dual responsibility, entailing a special responsibility to maintain international peace and security, and a special responsibility to assist those imperilled by the mass atrocity crimes of their home state. The tensions which can arise within this dual responsibility is a largely under-explored aspect of the R2P literature. But consideration of it helps explain why, despite differing views over how best to balance individual and state rights, at times accentuated by clashing interests, the P5 have nevertheless found common R2P ground, most particularly in their largely concerted opposition to the idea of a ‘responsibility not to veto’ R2P-related resolutions within the Council.

From ‘Peace by Dictation’ to International Organisation: Great Power Responsibility and the Creation of the United Nations

This article examines the attitudes of US, British, and Soviet policy-makers as they planned for the forthcoming peace during the Second World War. It charts how they moved from planning a ‘peace by dictation’ of the great powers, to planning one which would be based on a model of collective security involving all members of the United Nations alliance. The latter plan would reflect both the great powers’ special responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security and the stake which lesser powers had in such a venture. In addressing these historical developments the article employs two concepts familiar to International Relations scholarship, namely concert and hierarchy. It shows how the understandings which the principal post-war planners had of these concepts – and crucially of their inter-relationship - changed over time and the consequences of these changes. The article makes two core claims: firstly, that as post-war planning progressed, the attitudes of the Big Three towards the acceptable nature of the great power–lesser power hierarchy changed radically; and secondly, that the structure and nature of todays United Nations Organisation is in significant part a consequence of these changes.

Human Welfare in a World of States: Reassessing the Balance of Responsibility

The welfare of people and their division into states are inextricably linked. As Robert Jackson observes, about at least one thing most political theorists agree: