1. science
2. social science
3. philosophy
4. ethics

Constructing liberal responsibilities and the Syria crisis.
Jason Ralph
University of Leeds and University of Queensland
This is work in progress. Please do not quote or cite.
Paper for Panel SD74
The R2P and the Syrian Crisis: Constructivist scholarship and International Practice
International Studies Association
New Orleans, February 2015
Introduction
Between March 2011 and April 2014 an estimated 191,369 people were killed in the conflict in Syria. 1 It
is difficult to discern how many of these casualties were non-combatants, but the 7th Report of the United
Nations (UN) Independent Commission of Inquiry, which was published toward the end of this period,
provided evidence of continuing acts of unlawful killings by both state and non-state actors. In addition,
the Commission of Inquiry reported continuing acts of arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention, hostagetaking, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, and
violations of children’s rights. Approximately 250,000 people remained besieged at the time of the
Report. 2 In August 2014, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated that three million Syrians had
registered as refugees outside of their country, while a further 6.5 million people are displaced within
Syria. Almost half of all Syrians had been forced to abandon their homes due to the conflict. 3 The
purpose of this paper is to examine what constructivist International Relations theory tells us about how
the liberal state should respond to this situation.
How states should act is of course a normative issue and for this reason the author might be accused of
asking the wrong question. Constructivism, it might be claimed, is a social not a normative theory. It
focuses on the ‘is’ without commenting on the ‘ought’. It can explain why the situation in Syria was a
‘crisis’ for liberal states even if their material interests were not at stake. Constructivists, at least in the
conventional or positivist version, would argue that complying with humanitarian norms like the
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) would be consistent with self-images of the liberal state and they would
Price, et al. 2014
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 2014
3 Anonymous 2014
1
2
explain (non-)compliance in terms that referenced how well those norms had been ‘internalized’. 4
Constructivists as social scientists would not advocate a particular response to the Syrian situation nor
would they judge state behaviour. That task would be left to normative theorists. 5 Recently, however, a
number of well-known constructivist theorists have taken up Richard Price’s call to unite normative and
social theory with the dual aim of substantiating the constructivist’s claim to explain ‘moral progress’ and
to better inform ethical reasoning. 6 The objective here is to build on this work and to consider what kind
of ethics emerge from constructivist theory of International Relations.
The paper is structured in three sections. The first develops the argument that constructivism can, in
present times, support a cosmopolitan ethic of protection. However, the constructivist emphasis on
social and historical contingency of morality forecloses ‘foundationalist’ and ‘impartialist’ accounts of this
kind of cosmopolitanism. A constructivist cosmopolitan position therefore is only ‘anchored’ in these
‘weak’ foundations. This encourages a degree of ‘fallibalism’, or an appreciation of the moral claims of
other communities (national and international), as well as a recognition of the moral value contained in
honest attempts to reconcile normative dilemmas, including attempts to reduce the necessity of tragic
choice.
Building on the theme of normative contingency, the second section draws on ‘critical’, ‘post-positivist’,
‘consistent’ or ‘reflexivist’ conceptions of constructivism to say something about the R2P as a norm.
Drawing in particular on the work of Antje Weiner, and relating it to Jennifer Welsh’s recent articles, this
section observes the significance this shift to a reflexivist approach has for the foreign policy of the liberal
state. 7
Specifically, the paper argues that liberal states should be aware of the need to constantly
(re)establish the normativity of the norm in a deliberative process at the international level. The danger of
taking the meaning of the R2P norm as fixed is that the views of those opposing liberal states at the UN,
for instance, are dismissed (variously) as rejectionist and obstructionist. Efforts to ‘socialize’ these
positions by labelling them ‘hypocritical’ risks a backlash that undermines the international consensus on
which certain aspects of the R2P norms depends.
A reflexivist constructivist approach can inform a
progressive approach to R2P, whereas a conventional constructivist approach promises a potentially selfdefeating and regressive policy.
To illustrate how this informs a normative assessment of state behavior, the third section focuses on
liberal state responses to the Syrian crisis. Much attention has been given to the Russian and Chinese
The concept of internalization originates from norm life-cycle theory set out in Finnemore and Sikkink 1998.
For a similar observation see Weber 2014, 520-1.
6 Price 2008a, b, c, d. See collection of essays building on this agenda in Price 2008e; also Price 2012a and Price
2012b. For an earlier call along these lines see Price and Reus-Smit 1998. On the ‘conventional’ (Weber 2014
prefers ‘mainstream’) constructivist shift away from its ‘critical’ origins see Hopf 1998. See also Reus-Smit 2008, 72,
who notes how early constructivism shared with critical theory ‘a normative commitment to bettering the human
condition’. He quotes Wendt 1995, 71 who argued it would ‘it would be irresponsible to pursue policies that
perpetuated destructive old orders’ it constructivism demonstrated that change is possible. See also Hurd 2008;
Fierke 2013.
7 Wiener 2004, 2009, 2014; Welsh 2013, Welsh 2014.
4
5
vetoes of the resolutions proposing international responses to the crisis and whether they were somehow
provoked by liberal overreach during the Libya crisis. 8 This paper takes a slightly different track. It
offers as a hypothesis the argument that the Security Council has failed to meet its responsibilities in part
because Russia and China have been framed as R2P obstructionists, especially after the Libya
intervention, and because liberal states have reacted to this by trying to shame them into reversing their
approach. This is consistent with a conventional constructivist playbook but it is potentially counterproductive. This argument, should it be proven, by no means justifies the Russian and Chinese vetoes.
The motives behind the vetoes are complex, as is their relation to R2P. The argument does, however,
show how a reflexivist constructivist approach can lead to normative assessments of liberal state practice;
and specifically in this instance, how it can lead to criticism of the liberal state response the Syria situation.
‘Embedded’ cosmopolitanism.
Why should liberal states risk the lives and welfare of their citizens to protect vulnerable non-citizens like
those caught in the Syrian conflict? Cosmopolitans would answer this question by insisting that national
boundaries are morally arbitrary and should have no bearing on how this question is answered. The
Syrian people are of equal moral value to those peoples residing in liberal states; and, as ‘citizens of the
world’, the leaders of liberal states have a right and a duty to protect ‘foreign’ peoples just as they would
protect their own. This ethical cosmopolitan position is commonly rejected by communitarians in three
ways: epistemologically (how do we know morality?), sociologically (how is moral community
constructed?) and normatively (what kind of morality is preferred?). From the communitarian position,
cosmopolitans incorrectly assume that morality can be divorced from social settings to provide ‘impartial’
(and therefore authoritative) views of right behavior. Moreover, cosmopolitans are said to exaggerate the
extent to which the moral boundaries of the state can be transformed, as well as to devalue the role
particular communities, such as the nation, play in enabling the individual to live a fulfilling life.
It is argued in this paper that constructivism lends support to the first of these points but it does not
necessarily support the second or third. Accepting that morality is bounded by conceptions of the
community does not mean accepting that a community’s moral boundaries are fixed around the nationstate.
By demonstrating the processes by which these boundaries are socially (re)constituted,
constructivism reveals how, at least in contemporary international relations, the liberal state and its
citizens are in fact situated in various communities including, national, international and global
communities. Each of these potentially has equal claim to moral value and authority. The pursuit of the
fulfilling life is thus complicated by the existence of multiple social identities.
Russia and China have exercised the so-called ‘double veto’ on four separate occasions: 4 October 2011; 4
February 2012; 19 July 2012 and 22 May 2014. Bellamy 2014b; Morris 2013; Ralph 2014; Ralph and Gallagher 2014.
8
The argument that constructivism poses a problem for ‘impartialist’ conceptions of cosmopolitanism is
drawn from Toni Erskine’s criticism of Price’s attempt to unite social and normative theory into one
ethical position. 9 For Price, constructivists have to engage with normative theory if they are to justify the
claim that their approach illustrates the possibility of normative progress and not simply normative change. 10
An international intervention to protect the human rights of the Syrian people could only be classed as
moral progress, for instance, if human rights were proven to be of moral value. This requires an
argument grounded in normative theory.
Erskine’s criticism is not that the constructivists who
responded to Price’s call failed to do this. Rather, her criticism is that they did this but failed to remain
committed to a key insight of constructivism, which is that moral agency is ‘radically situated and socially
determined’. 11
To illustrate this, Erskine focuses mainly on Kathryn Sikkink’s response to Price’s challenge. For
Erskine, Sikkink fails to articulate a constructivist ethic because she ‘outsourced’ the normative theorizing
and defended her normative commitment to human rights by ‘borrowing from Rawls’. 12 Erskine’s
concern here is not with this ‘division of labour’. Her concern instead is that Sikkink’s Rawlsian
foundation is based on a thought experiment (the veil of ignorance), which assumes moral agents can
detach themselves from their social settings and engage in moral reasoning from impartial standpoints.
Sikkink’s approach addresses the call to provide a normative foundation, and it may even substantiate the
claim that movement to a human rights culture is a form of moral progress, but it is not a constructivist
ethic. This is because constructivism demonstrates that moral reasoning is inevitably influenced by the
kind of social structures that deny the possibility of impartialist approaches. In those accounts (like
Sikkink’s) that ‘outsource’ ethical reasoning to abstract normative theorists (like Rawls), constructivism
remains a social theory concerned only with the process of implementing a progressive policy. It does
not build the moral foundations that establish the ‘good’ toward which society should move. 13 This
‘ethically attenuated account’ is problematic for the claim to identify an ethic that is specifically
constructivist.
Indeed, the way that liberal cosmopolitan positions tend to appeal to impartialist starting points
does seem radically at odds with constructivism’s own assumption that the identities of actors
are defined by the institutionalized norms and values of their social contexts, making political
agency (and arguably moral agency) radically situated and socially determined. This apparent
obstacle to establishing an internally generated constructivist ethic deserves attention. 14
Erskine 2012
Price 2008c
11 Erskine 2012p.461.
12 Erskine 2012p.456.
13 See also Weber 2014.
14 Erskine 2012 p.461.
9
10
The obstacle Erskine refers to is recognizable to normative theorists as communitarianism; and of course
Erskine’s work prior to her engagement with Price’s constructivist project explored this problem in great
depth. 15 Specifically, Erskine examined ways in which a cosmopolitan commitment to the moral equality
of outsiders could be reconciled with, or embedded within, a communitarian approach that situated
morality within the context of a particular community, which in International Relations was often
discussed in terms of the nation-state. She does this by drawing on feminist theory, specifically the
concepts of the ‘dislocated’ community (i.e. communities that are not identified by territory), and the
‘complex’ self (i.e. a moral actor with multiple identities). This offers the possibility that a cosmopolitan
ethic that insists on the moral equality of outsiders can emerge within a global community and that
cosmopolitanism is not therefore reliant on abstract and impartialist theoretical notions that constructivist
theory cannot sustain.
Indeed, this insight suggests that constructivists like (and especially) Sikkink need not have outsourced
their normative theorizing. Their work demonstrating the sociological significance of transnational
advocacy networks can also be used to address Erskine’s concern that the constructivist’s commitment to
human rights is internally inconsistent because it is not ‘radically situated or socially determined’. 16 The
moral position taken by human rights advocates may not be situated in, or determined by, the nation but
that does not mean it is inconsistent with the communitarian position that a constructivist understanding
of norms requires. Human rights advocacy can be normatively anchored in transnational communities, the
existence of which constructivist scholarship has charted. 17 Constructivist scholarship mapping the
existence of these communities gives so-called 'norm-entrepreneurs' the moral authority to at least
criticise those exclusionary conceptions of right conduct that would deny international assistance to
vulnerable populations like the Syrian people. 18 The critical moral agency that is sometimes missing from
communitarian approaches is thus generated in this account at the point where multiple identities
produce and expose conflicting responsibilities.
The idea that a moral position is ‘anchored’ in the shifting sands of contingent social structures rather
than ‘grounded’ on the concrete foundations of impartialist standpoints is the concession a constructivist
informed ethic must make if it is to remain true to its roots in social theory. The ‘anchor’ metaphor is
used by those taking a ‘pragmatic’ approach to normative International Relations theory. 19 This does not
mean a constructivist informed ethic of embedded cosmopolitanism lacks any foundation, it merely
insists that its foundations are ‘weak’ because they are historically contingent. 20 This might be an
unsatisfactory situation because it potentially leads to historical (if not cultural) relativism.
It can be
difficult for some liberals to accept that a cosmopolitan ethic has no foundation if the sociological
Erskine 2002, 2008.
Erskine 2012p.461.
17 Keck and Sikkink 1998
18 On norm entrepreneurship see Finnemore and Sikkink 1998
19 Cochran 1999. See also Booth 1995 119.
20 Cochran 1999. See also Hoffmann 2009, pp.241-3.
15
16
conditions are not realized, but that conclusion surely follows on from a constructivist ontology. 21 As
Erskine reminds us: ‘[a]n inclusive moral purview is possible when the moral agent assumes a particularist
starting point (a concession denied by assumptions underlying both communitarian realist and impartialist
cosmopolitan positions); however, it cannot be guaranteed’. 22 Yet constructivism does defend liberal
cosmopolitanism against the cultural relativist’s claim that there is not, never has been, nor can there ever
be, a global community of humankind that demands the state’s moral concern. 23 Indeed, cosmopolitan
liberals can take encouragement from the contemporary historical situation. Bukovansky et. al argue that
communitarian realists ‘cannot deny that the processes of globalisation have reshaped and expanded
social relations and the idea of moral and political community, along with the expansion of obligations to
others and the spread of cosmopolitan norms, such as human rights (if typically thinly and unevenly).’ 24
Moral pluralism, contestation and international society
Because constructivism shares with communitarianism the understanding that identity and morality is
‘radically situated and socially determined’ 25 it cannot necessarily dismiss as immoral the unwillingness of
citizens to endure the costs and risks of humanitarian intervention. Nor can it discard the other side of
the coin: the insistence that citizens should endure greater costs out of a duty to humankind. One might
argue, however, that a moral standpoint can be found (to use Erskine’s phrase) at the ‘point where the
circles [multiple identities] intersect’. 26 This poses the question of how a state reconciles the moral
dilemmas that arise from the multiple social identities that embed this kind of cosmopolitanism. That is
the subject of an alternative version of this paper. The focus here is on the specific dilemmas that arise
from the state’s identification with a world society of humankind and an international society of states.
The idea that constructivism cannot prioritize a cosmopolitan ethic of protection over a communitarian
ethic of the national or international interest is potentially problematic for R2P advocates. These
cosmopolitans tend to claim that constructivism is an ally of what they see as progressive change. R2P
advocates have for instance adopted conventional constructivist language to explain the processes by
which the ethic of protection can be ‘insititutionalized’ in the practices of states. 27 Here the 2005 World
Summit Outcome Document is held up as the moment when R2P was adopted by states as a standard of
appropriate behavior and, following constructivist social theory, a source of leverage over government
practice. Because states are said to be guided by the logic of appropriateness, that is, cosmopolitan ‘norm
Hoffmann 2009, p.246.
Erskine 2008 p.178.
23 For a critique of this kind of ‘presentism’ see Booth 1999.
24 Bukovansky, et al. 2012. See also Linklater 2001; Linklater 2011; Bray 2013.
25 Erskine 2012p.461.
26 Erskine 2002.
27 Badescu and Weiss 2010; Badescu 2011 pp.101-35; Contarino, et al. 2012; Knight 2011; Shawki 2011.
21
22
entrepreneurs’ can compel R2P-consistent behavior by exposing inappropriate practice as ‘hypocrisy’. 28
There is from this cosmopolitan constructivist perspective linearity to moral progress. The definition of
appropriate behavior (i.e. the normativity of the norm) remains fixed, and progress is judged by how close
states are to fulfilling their responsibility to protect as a matter of course or habit (i.e. the normalness of
the norm).
This approach to constructivism, however, is now labelled ‘conventional’, ‘mainstream’, ‘behaviourist’ or
‘positivist’.
A ‘critical’, ‘reflexive’ ‘consistent’ or ‘post-positivist’ approach has emphasized the
intersubjectivity of the norm and the role language and discourse plays in repeatedly constructing its
meaning. 29 This latter approach opens up the possibility of what Thomas Risse identified as a third logic
of state behavior. In addition to the instrumentalist ‘logic of consequentialism’ and the rule based ‘logic
of appropriateness’, state’s are said to act according to the ‘logic of arguing’, which implies openness to
being persuaded by the better argument.30
It also implies that the meaning (or prescription if not
proscription) of a norm is not always fixed, Furthermore, the logic of arguing does not ‘infantilize’ agents
by reducing them to ‘cultural dupes’ with little impact on society. 31
As Risse noted, rule-guided
behaviour rarely occurs as matter of course or habit. It is often a conscious process
whereby actors have to figure out the situation in which they act, apply the appropriate
norm, or choose among conflicting rules. The more norms are contested, the less the logic
of the situation can be captured by the statement “good people do X” than by “what does
‘good’ mean in this situation?” or even “what is the right thing to do?” But how do actors
adjudicate which norm applies? They argue. 32
More recently, Antje Wiener has developed this approach. 33 Writing against the backdrop of the US war
on terror and the Bush administration’s interpretation of norms such as the Convention against Torture,
Wiener noted how a ‘reflexive approach’ presupposes ‘that meanings – while stable over long periods of
time and within particular contexts – are always in principle contested’. 34 The potential for contestation
increases as the norm is transferred between different contexts. This is because
differently socialized individuals – for example politicians, civil servants, parliamentarians,
lawyers, lobbyists, journalists and so on – who have been trained in a variety of traditions and
For constructivist analysis of hypocrisy, including the possibility that ‘it can also perform positive social functions,
enabling the medium- to long-term achievement of seemingly incompatible goods’, see Reus-Smit 2008 pp.78-9.
See also Gurowitz 2008; Lynch 2008.
29 Fierke 2013. See also Zehfuss 2001; Epstein 2013.
30 Risse 2000. See also Müller 2004; Deitelhoff and Müller 2005.
31 Barnett 1999, p.7. See also Doty 1997; Wiener 2004; Epstein 2012.
32 Risse 2000 p.6.
33 Wiener 2004, 2009, 2014; Wiener and Puetter 2009.
34 Wiener 2004, p.200. Although Wiener does not address the contested character of the anti-torture norm, Wiener
and Puetter 2009 introduces a special issue that does. See in particular Liese 2009, Venzke 2009.
28
been socialized in different day-to-day circumstances seek to interpret them. While the potential for
misunderstandings and conflicts can be kept at bay by adding a deliberative dimension to
facilitate arguing and ultimately persuasion that one meaning should legitimately trump
another, it is important to keep a key limitation of this approach in mind: Arguing takes place
within a limited context of negotiation, say within one particular committee. It is hence
conducive to establishing social recognition of a fundamental norm, say human rights, within
that specific and limited context only. To warrant social recognition of human rights in
another context, arguing would need to resume anew, and so on. 35
In her earlier work, Wiener does not elaborate on the normative implications of this insight, limiting her
conclusion to the argument that constructivists should engage in discourse analysis, which can expose the
way norms accommodate various ‘meanings-in-use’. 36 However, she has more recently developed the
argument that contestation is a normative concept to be encouraged. 37 This stems from a concern that a
norm lacks legitimacy (and thus stability) if stakeholders (i.e. those impacted by its social power) are
denied an opportunity to contest it. Thus, creating the opportunity for regular contestation can help preempt conflict and the outright rejection or instrumental use of a norm. 38
This clearly has implications for the way the liberal state should respond to situations like Syria. From a
critical or reflexive constructivist point of view, the liberal state should expect, accept and indeed
encourage the contestation of norms like R2P, and this fits with the above argument that the
cosmopolitan ethic on which R2P rests is necessarily fallible. To be sure, contestation does not mean the
outright rejection of the cosmopolitan claim that the liberal state has a responsibility to end mass atrocity
in any given situation. Rather, the normative concept of contestation insists that the cosmopolitan
argument be tested by processes of deliberation that are inclusive of different arguments. It is not
unreasonable to expect the liberal state to meet this standard of behavior. This is because deliberation
‘reflects the central assumption that is common to the range of approaches to democratic
constitutionalism, namely, that in principle, the norms, rules and principles of governance ought to be
contestable at any time by those governed by them.’ 39
Wiener 2009, p.181. Emphasis added. See also Wiener 2008. This can help explain some of the frustration with
R2P as a norm, to the extent advocates cite the increased frequency of R2P references within the limited context of
UN discourse while recognising international society’s wider failing to respond in a timely and decisive way in Syria.
See Bellamy 2014b.
36 Wiener 2004, 2009; Wiener and Puetter 2009.
37 Wiener 2014.
38 Wiener 2014. See also Acharya 2013; Weber 2014. Price 2008c p.11 hinted at this when he wrote: ‘rather than
simply ordain an ethical evaluation from a perspective one might defend on deontological or utilitarian grounds,
constructivism would additionally encourage the empirical embodiment of a dialogic ethic to open up and buttress
the grounds of such assessments’.
39 Wiener 2014, p.4.
35
What is valued in this commitment to deliberation is a procedural ethic; and to the extent that is outcome
neutral (impartial) one could argue that it remains consistent with the moral agnosticism of constructivist
social theory.
It does insist that those who hold substantive moral positions (communitarians,
cosmopolitans) approach deliberation as a ‘truth seeking exercise’ and this of course requires openness to
moral compromise. 40 But then this too fits with the constructivist argument that these positions are
necessarily fallible and that the state will inevitably engage in some form of a deliberation because of the
ontological imperative to construct a coherent conception of its essential Self. It also remains consistent
with the pragmatist argument that normative value is found in the manner in which a substantive argument
is offered. 41 In other words, an arguing position that tries to persuade should also accept the possibility
that it will be persuaded. In terms of assessing the liberal state’s response to situations such as Syria this
involves governments encouraging deliberation in, for instance, the legislative chamber and Security
Council, participating in that process and then accepting the outcome. 42 To be sure, the argument here is
not that ‘the better argument’ will prevail, or that moral ‘truth’ will emerge from this process. Critical
constructivism recognises that power can still influence access, and participants may not deliberate in the
spirit demanded by Habermasian discourse ethics. 43 The argument instead is that this process is a factor
in understanding and assessing the policy response of states to normative questions.
Assessing the response to the Syria vetoes.
The purpose of this section is to illustrate how the reflexivist constructivist position of Wiener and Welsh
makes us look differently at the liberal state’s response to the Syria crisis.
The commitment to
deliberation as a means of testing the normativity or appropriateness of a norm (and norm-inspired
action) is crucial to this approach; and in this respect reflexivist constructivists would welcome the
apparent commitment to coordinating an international response to the Syria crisis through the UN. Of
course, there have been moments – especially August 2013 – when a coalition of liberal states (the US,
UK and France) appeared willing to use force without Security Council authorization; but they ultimately
pulled back from this to pursue the disarmament of chemical weapons through a diplomatic process
coordinated through the UN. Recognizing the importance of the United Nations to ending the violence
and atrocity in Syria, these states have sought to pass Security Council resolutions on numerous
occasions.
On four of these occasions Russia and China have exercised a double veto. On the 4 October 2011,
France, Germany, Portugal and the UK proposed a resolution that recalled ‘the Syrian Government’s
primary responsibility to protect its population’, condemned the ongoing violence, demanded
Risse 2000
Cochran 1999
42 See also who finds a ‘a responsibility to consider’ how best to respond to mass atrocity in ‘post-positivist’
constructivism. Welsh 2013.
43 Risse 2000.
40
41
accountability and humanitarian access, and called upon all states ‘to exercise vigilance and restraint over
the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to Syria of arms and related materiel’. 44
On 4 February 2012, 19 states proposed a resolution that did not refer to R2P, reaffirmed ‘its strong
commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Syria, emphasizing its
intention to resolve the current political crisis in Syria peacefully, and noting that nothing in this
resolution authorizes measures under Article 42 of the Charter’. It demanded that Syria act in accordance
with the Plan of Action of the League of Arab States, and fully supported the League’s decision ‘to
facilitate a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal
regardless of their affiliations or ethnicities or beliefs’. 45
On 19 July 2012 France, Germany, Portugal, UK and US proposed a resolution that again did not refer to
R2P and again reiterated ‘its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial
integrity of Syria’. Acting under Chapter VII, it demanded ‘the urgent, comprehensive, and immediate
implementation of all elements of the [UN] Envoy’s six-point proposal’; and it decided ‘that, if the Syrian
authorities have not fully complied with paragraph 4 above within ten days, then it shall impose
immediately measures under Article 41 of the UN Charter’. 46
And finally, on 22 May 2014, the French proposed referring the Syrian situation to the International
Criminal Court. 47 On each occasion, the resolutions commanded healthy majorities but were blocked by
the Russian and Chinese votes. 48
The majorities at the Security Council have normative significance. It suggests Russia and China lost the
argument. They certainly added to the French, UK and US frustration. What is important here, however,
is how these states responded to the vetoes at the Security Council; and the point being made is that this
response looks as if it emerged from a conventional constructivist playbook. As noted, the argument
among conventional constructivists is that norm outliers can be socialized into pursuing norm compliant
behavior if their actions are exposed as being hypocritical or shameful. Norm-entrepreneurs are therefore
advised to engage in the public shaming of norm-outliers and this, it appears, is how the UK and, in
particular, the French and the US responded to the double vetoes. To be sure, the responses at the
Security Council did not explicitly refer to state responsibilities under the R2P doctrine, and one might
argue that the US, UK and France did not necessarily see themselves in any specific sense as defenders of
the commitments made at the World Summit Outcome Document. Nevertheless, it is clear that they all
made the argument that the Security Council had a special responsibility to do what it could to end the
humanitarian crisis in Syria, and they all claimed that the double veto had prevented the Council from
meeting that responsibility.
http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2011/612
http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2012/77
46 http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2012/538
47 http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2014/348
48 Only during on the 19 July 2012 proposed resolution was the majority less than 13. Pakistan and South Africa
abstained.
44
45
The public shaming of Russia and China is evident in the following quotations taken from the S/PVs of
the above votes.
“Let me be clear. The United States believes it is past time for this Council to assume its
responsibilities and impose tough, targeted sanctions and an arms embargo on the Assad regime,
as we have done domestically. Yet today, the courageous people of Syria can now see clearly who
on this Council supports their yearning for liberty and universal human rights, and who does not.
… Those who oppose this draft resolution and give cover to a brutal regime will have to
answer to the Syrian people and, indeed, to people across the region who are pursuing the same
universal aspirations.” US Ambassador Susan Rice, 4 October 2011 (S/PV.6627).
“Others claim that strong Security Council action on Syria would merely be a pretext for military
intervention. Let there be no doubt: this is not about military intervention; this is not about Libya.
That is a cheap ruse by those who would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime than stand with
the Syrian people.” US Ambassador Susan Rice, 4 October 2011 (S/PV.6627).
“We cannot and must not overlook the harrowing conclusion that two permanent members of
the Council have systematically obstructed all its action. They do so in the full knowledge of the
tragic consequences of their decisions for the Syrian people. And in so doing, they are making
themselves complicit in the policy of repression being implemented by the Damascus
regime. … Whatever they may claim, they have de facto taken the side of the Al-Assad regime
against the Syrian people.” French Ambassador, Gérard Araud 4 February 2012 (S/PV.6711).
“History will judge harshly those countries that have prevented the Council from offering its
support to the courageous efforts of the Arab League to implement its plan. In so doing, they
have without scruple aligned themselves with a regime slaughters its own people. In so
doing, they have judged that their presence in the Middle East now depends on the future of the
Al-Assad. That presence and that regime will endure the same fate.” French Ambassador, Gérard
Araud 4 February 2012 (S/PV.6711).
“The United States is disgusted that a couple of members of this Council continue to
prevent us from fulfilling our sole purpose here, which is to address an ever-deepening crisis
in Syria and a growing threat to regional peace and security. … For months, this Council has been
held hostage by a couple of members. Those members stand behind empty arguments and
individual interests, while delaying and seeking to strip bare any text that would pressure AlAssad to change his actions. That intransigence is even more shameful when we consider that at
least one of those members continues to deliver weapons to Al-Assad.” US Ambassador Susan
Rice, 4 February 2012 (S/PV.6711).
“Yet some Council members argued that the draft resolution imposed regime change. It said no
such thing. But in an attempt to reach consensus, we provided further assurances in the text. The
same minority argued that the text could somehow be used to authorize military intervention. It
did no such thing. It was a Chapter VI resolution. But in an attempt to reach consensus, we
provided further assurances in the text. The same minority argued that very modest language
expressing concern about weapons was somehow tantamount to an arms embargo. It was not.
But we took it out. They said that mere mention of Arab League sanctions was tantamount to
United Nations sanctions. It was not. But we took it out in an effort to reach consensus. The facts
speak for themselves. There is nothing in this text that should have triggered a veto. We removed
every possible excuse. The reality is that Russia and China have today made a choice to turn their
backs on the Arab world and the support tyranny rather than the legitimate aspirations of the
Syrian people. They have failed in their responsibility as permanent members of the Security
Council, and they have done so on the most shameful of days of the Syrian killing machine’s
three hundred days of oppression.” UK Ambassador Sir Mark Lyall-Grant, 4 February 2012
(S/PV.6711).
“I had hoped not to have to go through this ghastly list. By 4 October 2011, repression in Syria
had already claimed 3,000 lives and Russia and China vetoed the Council’s action for the first time
(see S/PV.6627). By 4 February, 6,000 Syrians had been cut down by the regime, and Russia and
China exercised their second veto on the Council’s action (see S/PV.6711). Today, 19 July, we
now count 17,000 men, women and children dead. We mourn their memory alongside the Syrian
people, and Russia and China have just exercised their veto of the Council’s action for the third
time.” French Ambassador Gérard Araud 19 July 2012 (S/PV.6180).
“It is to Russia and China’s shame that they have chosen to block efforts to achieve justice for
the Syrian people. It is disgraceful that they have yet again vetoed the Security Council’s efforts
to take action in response to the appalling human rights violations being committed every day in
Syria. Russia and China will have to justify their behaviour, not only to those States and
organizations, but to so many of the Syrian people who continue to suffer under Al-Assad’s brutal
regime”. UK Ambassador, Sir Mark Lyall-Grant, 22 May 2014 (S/PV.7180).
One can clearly see from these quotations that the response of the liberal states among the P5 was to
frame the double veto as a shameful betrayal of the Syrian people. It should be noted, to be fair to these
states, that this was not their starting position. They did, in other words, (at least from the public
statements) seek consensus. As the statement from the UK Ambassador on the 4 February makes clear,
those proposing the resolutions made concessions to reassure the Russian and Chinese by meeting their
concerns. It may also be significant that the reference to R2P that appeared in the proposed resolution of
4 October 2011 was dropped from subsequent resolutions on this topic. 49 To argue that France, UK and
US did not approach the deliberations in the right way would therefore be unfair. The reflexivist-inspired
criticism, however, is this: by setting out to shame Russia and China, these liberal states (potentially)
reinforced the view that there was only one appropriate way to meet the Security Council’s responsibility,
and that in turn (potentially) reinforced the distrust that the Chinese and Russians were carrying over from
the Libyan intervention.
Informed by the insights of the reflexivist approach, Tim Dunne and Katharine Gelber note that ‘arguing
matters’ to how R2P is understood and received. What is being suggested here is that there is a way in
which states can responsibly argue. The manner in which an argument is offered is important for its
ability to command consensus. This means three things: first, trying to persuade; second, being open to
persuasion; and third, accepting that a failure to persuade is not always because a state has acted
unreasonably. It may well be the case, for instance, that Russia’s Syria policy has been dictated by a desire
to protect its naval base in Syria. But that does not exclude the possibility that the normative arguments it
makes against regime change are unreasonable. Liberal interventionists regularly argue that interests and
values merge. To be sure, the argument here is not that Russia was right to veto these specific resolutions.
As noted, the majorities for the resolutions suggest Russia had lost the debate in the Security Council.
The argument instead is that Russia may have had reasons for voting against the resolutions that were not
necessarily unreasonable and did not necessarily demand the kind of response recommended by the
conventional constructivist approach. The fact that China voted against this resolution reinforces this
This is not insignificant. While Bellamy 2014a Bellamy 2014b can argue the Security Council has continued to
reference R2P, these references tend to be where there is not a threat of military force for the purpose of externally
imposed regime change. In the Syria situation there was, rightly or wrongly, a perception that this was possible.
Hence, R2P became problematic.
49
point. It does not have a particular interest in seeing the Assad regime survive and might therefore be
deemed to be voting alongside Russia for reasons that are not necessarily unreasonable. More to the
point, even if these votes were shameful, the reflexive constructivist would question why the US, UK and
France would risk alienating states like Russia and China – neither of whom are necessarily responsive to
public opinion – by using the kind of language that appeared in the Security Council debate.
There is a final point to add. The strategy of shaming Russia and China on the Security Council has not
worked in the way conventional constructivism suggests. This might be expecting too much of a theory
which is supported by examples demonstrating how the power to shame works over a much longer
timeframe, such as the Helsinki process, or the response to the Rwandan genocide. But it is noticeable
how the dominant narrative surrounding the Syrian crisis has shifted in ways that reflect what Russia and
China were saying at its beginning. This became glaringly apparent in the summer of 2014 when the US
began airstrikes against ISIL and the Obama administration was forced to clarify that the US was not
colluding with the Assad regime against their common enemy. 50 Indeed, by the beginning of 2015 reports
emerged that western capitals were coming round to the view that the Assad regime was part of the
solution to a more pressing counter-terrorism problem, and others, including the Syrian opposition, were
coming round to the view that the solution to the Syrian problem lay in Moscow. 51 This does not mean
Russia and China were right in vetoing the resolutions. Events may have unfolded very differently had
they taken a different approach and had the Security Council been united and able to act purposefully to
end the violence. The fact, however, that western governments have been forced to shift narratives, and
in ways that in some respects reflect what Russia and China have been saying about the region, is
significant. It suggests that the reasons given for the vetos were not entirely unreasonable and it suggests
the shaming strategy adopted by the US, UK and France was not entirely warranted.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper has been to explore how constructivism can inform an ethic that can, in turn,
be used to provide a normative assessment of the liberal state’s response to the Syrian crisis. There are
two approaches to this question. One is to hyphenate constructivism e.g. liberal constructivism. Here
constructivism is reduced to a method of studying change and progress toward a liberal world order. The
justification of liberal values is contracted out to normative theorists. Another approach is to recognize
that constructivism says something significant about the substantive character of a value and not merely
the social and political process of change. Informed by Toni Erskine’s critique of recent attempts to
identify a constructivist ethic this paper explore some implications of this latter approach. The key point
is that constructivism recognizes the historical and social contingency of all moral knowledge and an
acknowledgement that norms rest only on weak normative foundations. That, in the pragmatic tradition,
50
51
Gearan 2014
Barnard 2015
encourages a sense of fallibalism and openness to deliberation, including a willingness to be persuaded by
reasonable argument.
This emphasis on contingency problematizes the normative guidance that is implied by the conventional
constructivist approach and its tendency to sees norms as social facts with fixed meanings. It stresses the
importance of the critical or reflexivist view that the meaning of norms is in a consistent process or
iteration and contestation, which opens up questions about the normativity or legitimacy of a norm.
Drawing on Antje Wiener’s theory of contestation the paper argued that there is normative value in
regularizing the process of contestation and making it inclusive of those who are impacted by the norm’s
social power.
The third step in argument was to apply this insight to assess the liberal state’s response to the Security
Council deliberations on Syria. The application of reflexivist constructivism offers a nuanced assessment
of liberal state behavior. One has to be conscious here of the possibility that China and particularly
Russia were using the veto to construct enmity between the great powers, and this of course makes it
virtually impossible for liberal states to act in ways that encourage consensus. Indeed, one might also
argue (as I have done in other context) that the veto loses legitimacy when it is exercised in the face of an
overwhelming majority (and 13 votes on a 15 state council surely counts as that). 52 The majority is a sign
that Russia and China’s arguments failed to persuade and one can understand US, UK and French
frustrations in this context. The argument here, however, is that the use of shaming language used by
these states has failed in two ways: first, it did not change Russia and Chinese policy, and in fact events
have seemingly forced a change in the western perception of approach to the crisis; and second, by
following the conventional constructivist approach and calling Russian and Chinese positions shameful
(even ‘disgusting’) the US, UK and France entrenched division in the Security Council. Because aspects
of R2P rely on the Security Council being united this is potentially a regressive step and what that could
possibly be avoided had a reflexivist, instead of conventional, constructivist ethic informed liberal state
practice.
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