Though its inception since 2005 has been a benchmark in creating cooperation on mass atrocity crimes, the R2P doctrine faces significant limitations in achieving global security. R2P has been called upon by critics to be an imperialist doctrine, which would justify overextension of the dominant states into domestic affairs of smaller states. The inability of the P5 states to act in the interests of global peace and security reflects the weight of this criticism. Conversely, alternative implementations of R2P face their own limitations, in the case of the ICC being the nature of accountability, and in the case of political persuasion being the limits of ever-increasing resource demands.
R2P can give rise to the use of force through ‘third pillar’ measures, however critics of have often called upon the possibilities for its perversion in justifying imperialist state behaviour. For instance, a speech given at the General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect 2009 outlined the issues in R2P as the notions of ‘manifestly failing’ significantly sharpen the UN Charter Article 42. The issue raised in this was that the Security Council could not be considered a ‘neutral arbiter’ of international law whose members’ own sovereign interests were often vested from global security. For instance, the US is not party the Rome Statute 1998, its political will is likely to be vested to unilaterally respond to mass atrocity crimes as to not see the deterrent value of the ICC and the pressures for the US to ratify it heightened. The parallels of an R2P in the charters of IGOs reaffirm the disapproval for unilateral intervention from ‘hegemonial’ states. For instance, the Organisation of American States Doctrine bars intervention ‘for any reason whatever’ due to the membership of the ‘superpowers of the north’ that may infringe on its sovereignty, whilst The