The Geopolitics of Intervention ― Asia and the Responsibility to Protect

This book reviews the global dilemma and tensions over whether to intervene or not to intervene in severe civil conflicts which test the validity of the new doctrine of Responsibility to Protect or R2P. It particularly assesses R2P’s relevance for Asia, which is defined broadly in this book to include West Asia or the Middle East and the region’s emergence as the most severe threat to international order in the form of the Arab Uprisings. While East Asia and South Asia have their share of situations that warrant R2P-justified interventions, it is the conflicts in West Asia that have severely tested the viability of R2P. Has this new norm been effective as a tool for international law and diplomacy? Are there prospects for a tweaking or repositioning of R2P as advocated by some scholars and governments to make the concept more acceptable to the global community, including Southeast Asia? Has the Westphalian doctrine of state sovereignty and non-intervention become superfluous as a result of the rise of R2P? Will a new doctrine of “Eastphalia” or “non-intervention with East Asian characteristics” emerge in its place, led by China as well as like-minded Asian and other states?

Yang Razali Kassim is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. Prior to joining RSIS, he was a senior journalist with the Singapore Press Holdings, serving as Regional Editor at The Business Times and before that, Principal Assistant to the Editor as well as Senior Correspondent, The Straits Times, including a stint as Jakarta Correspondent. He was also a recipient of a Pan-Asia Award in Journalism by Citibank. Trained in Political Science at the then University of Singapore (now the National University of Singapore), he was a Wolfson Press Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge University and a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute, Sydney. At RSIS, he is also a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies where he researches on non-traditional security issues including the politics and diplomacy of climate change, human security, particularly in ASEAN, as it relates to socio-political transitions, internal and cross-border conflicts as well as state-civil society relations in Southeast Asia. As a journalist, he covered major ASEAN meetings of political, security and economic ministers as well as the summits of APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), ASEM (the Asia-Europe Meeting) and the WTO (World Trade Organization).