R2PAQ (‘Responsibility to Protect Al-Qaeda’)

In the absence of any evident national interest justification for bombing Libya, the Obama administration is said to have been motivated by the so-called responsibility to protect — or “R2P” per the wonkish English acronym. In American discussions, “R2P” has quickly come to be associated with Obama advisor Samantha Power. But “R2P” did not emerge full-grown from the brain of Samantha Power. Rather, it grew out of the pseudo-legal doctrine of “the right of humanitarian intervention,” which was developed by mostly European academics in the 1990s in order to justify the NATO interventions in the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts.
It was undoubtedly in recognition of his role in promoting “humanitarian intervention” – or “l’ingérence humanitaire” in the French original — that the “French doctor” Bernard Kouchner would be named the first head of the UN protectorate in Kosovo, following the conclusion of the 78-day NATO bombing campaign that drove Yugoslav forces from the then province. The point of the “right of humanitarian intervention” was to qualify several fundamental guarantees and prohibitions enshrined in the UN Charter: namely, the respect of state sovereignty and territorial integrity and the fundamental prohibition on the use of force in international relations.

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