Naslov
Civil war in Syria: a first step toward the end of the liberal interventionism paradigm?

Autori
Zgurić, Borna

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, pp prezentacija, znanstveni

Skup
Diversity of Human Rights: Human Rights and Violence

Mjesto i datum
Dubrovnik, Hrvatska, 24.08.2014. - 30.08.2014

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
Civil war ; Syria ; liberal interventionism ; realism

Sažetak
The end of the Cold War marked the victory of liberalism as an ideology over communism, but also the victory of liberalism as a theory of international relations over realism. The “third wave” of democratization, as Huntington described it, affected the most remote corners of the world. Fukuyama defined this new world order as the “end of history”. This new “liberal” or “post-historical” world was also not without its faults. Democratization led to the rise of an entire palette of “illiberal” democracies, as described by Zakaria, which were more inclined to different forms of violence and extremism compared to the formerly stable authoritarian regimes, while some parts of the world almost completely avoided the influence of the “third wave”. Mansfield and Snyder’s research on violent behavior of “democratizing countries” showed similar results. In this “brave new world” new security issues rose up including genocide, ethnic cleansing and other grave violations of human rights. With the aim of tackling these issues several “humanitarian interventions” were launched in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. There were also cases of ethnic cleansing that did not provoke military reaction, such as the case of Rwanda. These cases initiated the great debate on the issues of “humanitarian interventions” versus state sovereignty. To give a clear answer to this debate, in the year 2001, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine was formulated by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, based on the idea of sovereignty as responsibility. According to this doctrine every state has the responsibility to protect the human rights of its people. So when the state cannot or will not protect the human rights of its people, this responsibility is transferred to the international community. This transfer can only happen in cases of grave violations of human rights and the use of military force, with the mandate of the Security Council, is the last resort for when all other options have been depleted. This idea is based on the universality of human rights and is liberal in its nature. But the rationale behind it is to protect against violence with violence. We can also argue that there are no universal human rights without the coercive mechanisms of the international community to enforce them. Realism, on the other hand, stresses the importance of state sovereignty, and realists are against such interventions on principle. In other words, realism states that an authoritarian regime, or a civil war, is the internal affair of a certain state. Intervention can also further destabilize the state or the entire region, so there is no true reason for international community to intervene. When it comes to Syria, these two concepts are in a conflict within the international community. States such as Russia and China are guided by a realist policy toward Syria, looking at the war as Syria’s internal matter, while Western democracies tried to initiate another intervention, guided by the idea of responsibility to protect. The aim of this paper, drawing from the IR scholarship on liberal interventionism and structural realism, will be to show how the power struggle between EU countries and USA on one side, and Russia and China on the other side, took place in case of the civil war in Syria.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Politologija

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