Study title

Data as extended bibliography used for researching the article "Before the vote: UK foreign policy discourse on Syria 2011–13" Review of International Studies. For paper, see Related Resources. The insistence in some quarters that states live up to an international responsibility to protect foreign populations from mass atrocity has historically had a complex relationship with the 'realist' insistence that states have a primary responsibility to promote the interests of their citizens. This was exposed in contemporary history by the failure in the 1990s to prevent the crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Rwanda. UN reports indicated these failures stemmed from a lack of political will rather than an insistence that states did not have a responsibility to protect humanity. In response, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS, 2001) sought to clarify state responsibility and create a new norm (or expectation) that international society would intervene to protect civilian populations from mass atrocity if states 'manifestly failed' to do so. This became known as the Responsibility to Protect or R2P. Even then, however, a realist discourse that prioritises the security concerns of the state clashed with a humanitarian discourse, including attempts to widen state responsibility and build political capacity to prevent mass atrocity. Not only did the events of 9/11 divert attention from the ICISS report, the US War on Terror, which included interventions against 'rogue' states such as Iraq, revived a long-standing concern among non-western and post-colonial states. The concern that R2P would be used instrumentally to support unwarranted security interventions appeared justified when the US invaded Iraq in 2003. In the post-Iraq era the US and its allies remained committed to R2P and combating the al Qaeda threat. The violence in Syria, however, set these priorities on a collision course. The humanitarian situation clearly triggered...