by Mitchell Reynolds

Created on: July 08, 2010

Like most situations that arise within the UN, the United States of America is called upon to be the police of the global community. The Responsibility to Protect doctrine (Rtop or R2P) is a set of principles that call upon the fact that sovereignty is a responsibility, not a given right. While the doctrine does support a humanitarian effort to stop genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, an involvement of any fashion by the US would provide another situation to which American soldiers would be the police force for the world. One war that would fall under the domain of this doctrine is the Gulf War (1990). US troops consisted of 74% of the military force, a clear example that when the UN uses military force that the majority of the manpower is American. In this particular instance, the UN gave 16 warnings to Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein to disarm and to exit Kuwait. 16 warnings is enough to know the UN has little physical power against him. An example is a misbehaving child. If he acts up and a disciplinary action is threatened against him, he may settle down, but if he gets threatened after about 5 or 6 times he knows the authority figure is going to do little but verbal actions to stop him. The same situation is displayed in Iraq. The UN was verbal, but had no physical plans to do anything. When a plan of attack was engaged, 74% was American men and women risking their lives as soldiers of a UN invasion.

Incidents like this one are as to why America cannot afford to support the Responsibility to Protect doctrine proposed by the UN. Any intentional military attack is invading the sovereignty of the country being attacked, which contradicts the definition of being sovereign. If the independent overruling authority was granted to a governing body, the conditions in which it should be taken away are unclear and undefined. The incident in Rwanda provides a definite example of this. The 1994 genocide of over 800,000 people (20% on the population) in the state of Rwanda was a landmark event of the civil war that devastated the African country. A peacekeeping mission was launched to subdue the murders, lead by none other than the country of Belgium. The UN did provide concrete action to stop the genocide, but didn't succeed and notably did not use American aid.

Such examples as the Gulf War and the Rwandan Genocide are categorized under the domain in which the UN Responsibility to Protect doctrine is to address. The support of this document though could endanger countless American lives. The Gulf War, which was handled in under 6 months and causalities of less than 300 were reported was lead by an American majority and is contest to how America has become the muscle of the UN. In contrast, the Rwandan Genocide had Belgium as the backbone and killed 800,000 people in less than 100 days. Every situations were the US is involved in results in American lives lost of a cause that we are not responsible for. Therefore, any US support of the UN Responsibility to Protect doctrine would be juvenile.

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