Description
This paper challenges the assumption that the "Responsible Sovereignty" of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a democratic or cosmopolitan transformation of international sovereignty. Relying on the young Marx's critique of liberal rights discourse, I show how this "Responsible Sovereignty" similarly obscures it's anti-democratic implications by shifting the discursive terrain and attempting to resolve a structural cosmopolitan issue. I then build on Garret Brown and Alexander Bohm's critique of R2P in light of this Marxist critique in order to think against the cosmopolitan defense of responsible sovereignty offered by Jean Cohen. I hope to show how the normative discourse surrounding "responsible sovereignty" needs to push "responsibility" in ways that demand states bear responsibility for the consequences of their actions abroad, rather than merely invoke "responsibility" to blame states for problems within their borders.
