Neorealism In International Relations

From the realist perspective of international relations, states responsibility to protect civilians is the legitimating of military intervention by strong states against weak ones. According to Hans J. Morgenthau, one of the assumptions of classical realism is that all human beings inherently seek to increase their power . The power-seeking human nature creates a situation where statesmen struggle for power over other states: “Politics is a struggle for power over men…the modes of acquiring, maintaining, and demonstrating it determine the technique of political action.” In international politics, states are always concerned about national interests such as security and wealth. To preserve their interests, intervention could be an option.

K.Waltz argues that in a self-help international system, the state’s foreign policy is determined based on its national interests . States continuously make efforts to preserve their interests and to ensure their survival because in the self-help system, “no one can be relied on to do it for them.” S.Tucker claims that states’ interests expand as they gain more power in international politics. Similar to H.Morgenthau, K.Waltz argues that success means preservation and reinforcement of the state’s

This idea was initially formulated by J.Locke, who stated that individuals are embedded naturally “in a State of Perfect Freedom”, who order themselves in a freely way. For that reason, international assistance is necessary in order to make sure that human rights are not violated by, for example, brutal and repressive regimes articulated by dictators in the failing states. The intervention is thus inevitable, in case there is a state which is not able to provide the civilian population with basic human rights. This idea was used as a ground for the United Nations Charter Chapter VII, according to which, the international community has the responsibility to assist states build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”. Similarly, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty claims that if a state fails to safeguard civilians, or is harming them, it will lose “the minimum consent of good international citizenship”