Liberal vanguards and the sustainability of the solidarist international society typified by the Responsibility to Protect: The P3 states and the United Nations Security Council in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and Syria (2010 – 2012)

This thesis examines how the P3 states (France, the UK and USA) practically resolve tensions between their liberal preferences, practices of intervention, and the humanitarian solidarism of contemporary international society typified by R2P. It argues that where they behave as liberal vanguards, their practice threatens the sustainability of the solidarist international society typified by R2P. Using the cases of Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and Syria (2010-2012), it is argued that the P3 states either discursively advocated or attempted in practice liberal intervention which sought a change of regime or brought about actual regime change, contrary to the R2P normative framework which legitimates humanitarian intervention on a case-by case basis, subject to existing understandings of sovereignty, non-intervention, non-interference, limits on the use of force and multilateralism. In doing so, the P3 states’ approach to international legitimacy and attitude to international consensus was such that they behaved in practice as liberal vanguards: denying the gap between their practices and international norms; being unwilling to compromise over their goals; fostering and referencing alternative constituencies of legitimation other than the UN Security Council. These practices threaten the sustainability of the form of solidarist international society typified by R2P because they: confuse and potentially erode in practice the consensus understandings of the R2P normative framework; foster international discord among the great powers and between them and international society; mean that the Great Powers claim or even confer international legitimacy for themselves rather than having it conferred by the authoritative constituency of the UNSC; suggest that these powerful states do not believe themselves bound by the consensus principles that institute and constitute the society