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26 Int'l J. Hum. Rts. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/ininllh26 and id is 1 raw text is: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 2022, VOL. 26, NO. 1, 1-29 https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13642987.2021.1988933 Routled e Taylor & Francis Group Norms of protection in IR: humanitarian wars and the ironic creation of pre-Westphalian states Oana-Cosmina Mihalache* The Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Humanitarian interventions and state sovereignty are hard to Received 26 May 2020 reconcile and have long been regarded as mutually exclusive. Accepted 28 September Disciplinary approaches dedicated to their relation focus on a 2021 changing meaning of sovereignty, no longer understood as KEYWORDS absolute power within a delimited territory, but rather as Humanitarian intervention; responsibility. This article argues that two ideas of sovereignty norms of protection; clash in instances of humanitarian intervention. This normative Westphalian sovereignty; and conceptual overlaying has the ironic result of a sovereignty responsibility to protect void. The process of delegitimizing absolute sovereignty happens by constructing legitimacy around norms of protection. After the existing sovereign structure is delegitimized we temporarily witness a 'before the state' political intermezzo. Until a new organisational unit is settled, these temporarily 'widowed' sovereignties can be regarded as pre-Westphalian arrangements, about to morph into states. In the process of restructuring the state, there are three types of arrangements that result when the new authority is installed - (1) a new state, by coupling a new authority with a new territorial delineation, (2) a new authority structure over the same territory or (3) status-quo exits. Humanitarian interventions since the nineteenth century until R2P are analyzed, looking for evidence provided in the documents preceding intervention - like protocols, treaties and resolutions concluded by the intervening powers. Humanitarian interventions were long seen, in doctrine and practice, as a breach of state sovereignty. Defenders of intervention in the name of protecting human rights contrasted a traditional or Westphalian type of sovereignty to one equated with the idea of responsibility.1 The former was associated with absolute control and exclu- siveness in matters of domestic decision making, a protective shield condoning domestic abuse and preventing other actors from acting against it. On the other hand, 'sovereignty as responsibility'2 entails, according to its proponents, a concep- tual flexibility dictated by the duty of the state to abide by international human rights norms. The relationship between state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention became a subject of increased debate in the 1990s, but instances of humanitarian intervention CONTACT Oana-Cosmina Mihalache oana.mhl@gmail.com *Present address: National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Faculty of Political Science, Bucharest, Romania © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group