ABSTRACT
As the 21st century began, the international community, shaken by the humanitarian disasters in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere, began a conversation about the duty to protect people from genocide and other atrocity crimes. They were guided in this initiative by an emerging set of ideas known as the responsibility to protect. This introductory chapter sets out some of the basic dilemmas associated with the tension between sovereignty and humanitarian responsibility. It provides an outline of the chapters that follow and establishes the book’s basic argument that a sharpened understanding of the differences between various conceptions of responsibility helps to call attention to the power dynamics at play when powerful states frame themselves as ‘responsible’ agents untethered to social accountability, especially when it comes to the tricky topic of humanitarian intervention. It begins to outline some possibilities for envisioning a more authentic global politics based on a more authentic, fair, and egalitarian power relations of answerability.
