Question 1
Meaning
R2P means responsibility to protect. It is a United Nation Initiative that was put in place in 2005. It is a doctrine that provides responsibility for the sovereign states and international community in large to protect their respective civilian against mass atrocity crimes. The doctrine consists a set of principle that is anchored to thought that sovereignty is a responsibility not a right.
In the situations that the sovereign state is unwilling and unable to implement these responsibilities, the international community intervenes with their collective responsibilities. The international communities take whatever action necessary to enhance the responsibility to kill. Above all, the main concern of R2P is to enhance preventive measures or actions. These actions include assistance for the state that is invaded by potential crisis and for efficient transformation after a conflict or a crisis to mitigate its fundamental causes. The fundamental tools for R2P are support and persuasion but not military and other oppressions.
Scope
There have been many misunderstandings regarding the scope and limit of the R2P. There have been question raised over the scope of R2P. The basic and most significant issue is the question whether this doctrine should be applicable to more than four specified crimes. These crimes involve crimes against humanity, genocide, ethnic cleansing and genocide. For instance, there has been issue whether the R2P should be applied to protect civilians against peril that are as a result of natural disasters. Generally, the scope of R2P should be maintained at well-defined and narrow level. In the debate conducted in 2009 at the General Assembly, many Member States supported the narrow and well-defined scope of R2P. They argued that expansion of the applicability of R2P could deteriorate effectiveness.
Question 2
According to Barry Buzan, can be categorized into three groups; migration, horizontal competition, and vertical competition. The integration of the countries and states has resulted to nations being more vulnerable to threats. This is because nations are faced by threats that are as a result of immigrations, and foreign products and ideas.
In case of migration, if people from X country are being diluted by the arrival of Y people, the X community will never be the same again. This is because others will constitute the population of that community. As a result the identity of X community is being changed by the shift in the population’s compositions. Example of this scenario is Russian migration to Estonia and Chinese migration to Tibet. (Barry, Ole & Jaap, pg. 121)
In case of horizontal competition, the change in linguistic influence and prevailing culture from the migrants will definitely change the ways of the local people in competition. “Although it is still X people living here, they will change their ways because of the overriding culture and linguistic influence from neighboring culture Y” (Barry, Ole & Jaap, pg. 121)
In case of vertical competition, the local people will stop seeing themselves as X community. This is because there is either secessionist project or an integrating project. The example of integrating project is Yugoslavia and EU. On the other hand, examples of secessionist project include Catalonia and Kurdistan. The vertical competition pulls the local community towards either narrower or wider identities. These projects are associated to vertical competition because the “struggle is over how wide the circles should be drawn”. There are various concentric circles of distinctiveness to which they provide the fundamental emphasis.
Question 3
The relationship between the armed forces and environment is closely connected to the adjacent society. In a democratic state, the military is assumed to have a close connection to its environment and is considered to be a subset of society at large. However, the connection between the society and armed forces is determined by the socio-political system under which the military is operating as well as the existing political system. The military, just like any other organization, is subject to the social change and the surroundings as well. For instance, military conducts preservation of humanitarian by conducting relief activities to the civilian such as Iraq and Afghanistan (Barry, Ole & Jaap, pg. 162).
The armed forces are critically concerned about the weather apprentice. For instance Air Forces requires monitoring weather to enable them to fight and fly in air and coordinate with the force on the ground. For instance, the US Air Force is delegated to analyze, monitor, tracking and forecasting weather patterns. The weather apprentices are able to use satellite telemetry, computer technology and radar to track the weather.
The armed forces in some cases uses environment itself as a weapon, by causing an environmental effect to generate direct damage to their enemies. In order to deliberately generating these environmental effects, the military applies technical capability and scientific know how. An example of the environmental weapon is winter mountain warfare that was conducted in Alps during the First World War. Both Australian and Italian forces applied artillery to trigger snow landslide s on their enemies, killing thousands of people.
Barry Buzan; Ole Waever; Jaap H. Security: a new framework for analysis. de WildPublisher: Boulder: Rienner, 1998.
