Luke Glanville | The Australian National University (original) (raw)

Books by Luke Glanville

This volume presents the first full English translation of four key texts from the dispute betwee... more This volume presents the first full English translation of four key texts from the dispute between Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de las Casas regarding the justice of Spain's invasion of the Americas, culminating in their famous debate in Valladolid in 1550-51.

An impassioned defence of the invasion, Sepúlveda's Democrates secundus (composed around 1544) amplified the controversy within Spain about the justice of its activities in the Americas. When Las Casas schemed to block publication of Sepúlveda's manuscript, Sepúlveda wrote an Apologia (1550) in its defence. Tensions were so high that Emperor Charles V called a temporary halt to undertakings in the Americas and convoked a meeting of theologians and jurists in Valladolid to address the matter. Here, Sepúlveda and Las Casas debated bitterly. Las Casas subsequently printed a composite record of the Valladolid deliberations (Aquí se contiene una disputa o controversia, 1552). Sepúlveda retaliated by penning a furious response (Proposiciones temerarias y de mala doctrina, around 1553-54) and strove to have Las Casas' text banned by the Inquisition.

The debate between Sepúlveda and Las Casas was a pivotal moment in the history of international legal thought. They argued over fundamental matters of empire and colonial rule; natural law and cultural difference; the jurisdiction of the Church, responsibilities of Christian rulers, and rights of infidel peoples; the just reasons for war and grounds for resistance; and the right to punish idolatry, protect innocents from tyranny, and subjugate unbelievers for the purpose of spreading the Christian faith.

With a detailed scholarly introduction that elucidates the complex story of these four controversial texts and reflects on the impacts of Sepúlveda's ideas, which continue to be felt in the theories and practices of war today, this book is a must-read for all those interested in the fields of history, political science, international relations, and colonial studies.

The idea that states share a responsibility to shield people everywhere from atrocities is presen... more The idea that states share a responsibility to shield people everywhere from atrocities is presently under threat. Despite some early twenty-first century successes, including the 2005 United Nations endorsement of the Responsibility to Protect, the project has been placed into jeopardy due to catastrophes in such places as Syria, Myanmar, and Yemen; resurgent nationalism; and growing global antagonism. In Sharing Responsibility, Luke Glanville seeks to diagnose the current crisis in international protection by exploring its long and troubled history. With attention to ethics, law, and politics, he measures what possibilities remain for protecting people wherever they reside from atrocities, despite formidable challenges in the international arena.

With a focus on Western natural law and the European society of states, Glanville shows that the history of the shared responsibility to protect is marked by courageous efforts, as well as troubling ties to Western imperialism, evasion, and abuse. The project of safeguarding vulnerable populations can undoubtedly devolve into blame shifting and hypocrisy, but can also spark effective burden sharing among nations. Glanville considers how states should support this responsibility, whether it can be coherently codified in law, the extent to which states have embraced their responsibilities, and what might lead them to do so more reliably in the future.

Sharing Responsibility wrestles with how countries should care for imperiled people and how the ideal of the responsibility to protect might inspire just behavior in an imperfect and troubled world.

The global crisis of forced displacement is growing every year. At the same time, Western Christi... more The global crisis of forced displacement is growing every year. At the same time, Western Christians' sympathy toward refugees is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about personal and national security, economics, and culture. We urgently need a perspective that understands both Scripture and current political realities and that can be applied at the levels of the church, the nation, and the globe.

In Refuge Reimagined, Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville offer a new approach to compassion for displaced people: a biblical ethic of kinship. God's people, they argue, are consistently called to extend kinship—a mutual responsibility and solidarity—to those who are marginalized and without a home. Drawing on their respective expertise in Old Testament studies and international relations, the two brothers engage a range of disciplines to demonstrate how this ethic is consistently conveyed throughout the Bible and can be practically embodied today.

Glanville and Glanville apply the kinship ethic to issues such as the current mission of the church, national identity and sovereignty, and possibilities for a cooperative global response to the refugee crisis. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they envision a more generous, creative, and hopeful way forward. Refuge Reimagined will equip students, activists, and anyone interested in refugee issues to understand the biblical model for communities and how it can transform our world.

In 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, authorizing its member stat... more In 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, authorizing its member states to take measures to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar Gadhafi’s forces. In invoking the “responsibility to protect,” the resolution draws on the principle that sovereign states are responsible and accountable to the international community for the protection of their populations and that the international community can act to protect populations when national authorities fail to do so. The idea that sovereignty includes the responsibility to protect is often seen as a departure from the classic definition, but it actually has deep historical roots.

In Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect, Luke Glanville argues that this responsibility extends back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that states have since been accountable for this responsibility to God, the people, and the international community. Over time, the right to national self-governance came to take priority over the protection of individual liberties, but the noninterventionist understanding of sovereignty was only firmly established in the twentieth century, and it remained for only a few decades before it was challenged by renewed claims that sovereigns are responsible for protection.

Glanville traces the relationship between sovereignty and responsibility from the early modern period to the present day, and offers a new history with profound implications for the present.

Articles by Luke Glanville

We are encouraged to think of refugees as resilient people with agency and capacity for flourishi... more We are encouraged to think of refugees as resilient people with agency and capacity for flourishing, rather than passive victims needing help. This framing purports to uphold and celebrate refugees’ humanity. But some scholars worry that it problematically serves to demand resilience from refugees, normalize their displacement, and legitimate state bordering practices. This article builds on this critique by examining how powerful actors have long attributed resilience to vulnerable others to legitimate domination and control. I focus on the deployment of resilience-talk by white enslavers and their supporters to justify Black enslavement in the American south. Their philosophical, climatological, and epidemiological arguments about the resilient Black slave were supplemented with a claim that Black people could not survive liberation in the American north. I probe the resonances of this resilience-talk with contemporary invocations of the resilience of refugees in the Global South, and their supposed non-resilience in the Global North.

The idea of international protection of vulnerable populations has imperial roots. Scholars of in... more The idea of international protection of vulnerable populations has imperial roots. Scholars of international history teach us that the idea of protection was routinely invoked to justify European colonial rule and some of its brutal violence. Their scholarship makes for sobering reading for anyone advocating international efforts to protect vulnerable people today. In this roundtable contribution, I describe how I have wrestled with R2P's colonial parallels in my recent book, Sharing Responsibility: The History and Future of Protection from Atrocities.

The responsibility to protect (R2P) is often referred to as a new concept on the basis that it pr... more The responsibility to protect (R2P) is often referred to as a new concept on the basis that it provides both states and the international community responsibilities, rather than merely rights, to protect populations from mass atrocities. As this article argues, this claim of novelty is overstated. And yet, R2P has comprised an important development in human protection over the past two decades: it has helped to generate a degree of consensus on how to prevent and address atrocity situations. If R2P is not as novel as is often suggested, why has it had such an impact on international discourse? After demonstrating R2P’s overstated novelty, this article advances four key factors that help explain its meaningful international impact: the importance of previous and contiguous normative developments, the role played by norm entrepreneurs, the emphasis placed on prevention over intervention, and the concept’s constructive mix of clarity and ambiguity. By doing so, it provides a stronger understanding of the norm.

At a time when renewed attention is being given to questions about obligations of reparation for ... more At a time when renewed attention is being given to questions about obligations of reparation for past injustices, it can prove fruitful to bring into this discussion past thinking about the implications of unjust victory in war. While some influential theorists such as Hugo Grotius argued that it was prudent to treat victory as a source of title regardless of the justice of the war, others such as Bartolomé de las Casas had earlier insisted that doubt should be cast on the moral standing of unjust victors and that the fruits of unjust victory be considered stolen goods. Indeed, writing almost 500 years ago, Las Casas advanced a compelling argument for why and how Spanish conquerors and settlers owed reparations to the peoples of the Americas. This short essay first outlines the reasoning of thinkers like Francisco de Vitoria, who sought to work around the problem of unjust victory, and Grotius, who claimed that unjust victory should be considered a source of legitimate title, before retrieving Las Casas’s argument for reparations and considering its usefulness today.

I am incredibly grateful to Susanne Karstedt, Uğur Ümit Üngör, and James Pattison for taking the ... more I am incredibly grateful to Susanne Karstedt, Uğur Ümit Üngör, and James
Pattison for taking the time to read and respond to Sharing Responsibility: The History and Future of Protection from Atrocities. What a privilege it is to receive such thoughtful and astute feedback from colleagues. Their essays provide compelling overviews of the book’s key claims, valuable reflections that have caused me to reflect anew on what I sought to do in the book, and provocative gestures toward what I might have done differently. Let me begin by addressing some points that Karstedt and Üngör raise about my treatment of the past and present politics of international protection before turning to Pattison’s comments about the concept of ‘imperfect duties’ that underpins the book’s ethical framework.

Given the multiple threats of atrocities in the world at any given time, where should states dire... more Given the multiple threats of atrocities in the world at any given time, where should states direct their attention and resources? Despite the rich and extensive literature that has emerged on the responsibility to protect (RtoP), little thought has been given to this question of how states and other international actors should prioritize when faced with multiple situations of ongoing and potential atrocities. In this contribution, we first demonstrate the importance of questions of prioritization for RtoP. We then delineate some of the issues involved in assessing the issue of prioritization, beginning with what we call the “basic maximization model,” before introducing additional atrocity-specific and response-specific issues that also need to be considered. We also emphasize the need to consider how the need to address mass atrocities should be weighed against other global responsibilities, such as those concerning global poverty, global health, and climate change. We thereby set an agenda for future discussions.

One of the justifications offered by European imperial powers for the violent conquest, subjectio... more One of the justifications offered by European imperial powers for the violent conquest, subjection, and, often, slaughter of indigenous peoples in past centuries was those peoples’ violation of a duty of hospitality. Today, many of these same powers—including European Union member states and former settler colonies such as the United States and Australia—take increasingly extreme measures to avoid granting hospitality to refugees and asylum seekers. Put plainly, whereas the powerful once demanded hospitality from the vulnerable, they now deny it to them. This essay examines this hypocritical inhospitality of former centers of empire and former settler colonies and concludes that, given that certain states accrued vast wealth and territory from the European colonial project, which they justified in part by appeals to a duty of hospitality, these states are bound now to extend hospitality to vulnerable outsiders not simply as a matter of charity, but as justice and restitution for grave historical wrongs.

Some Christian political theorists and theologians counter calls for greater generosity toward re... more Some Christian political theorists and theologians counter calls for greater generosity toward refugees by appealing to the prerogatives of state sovereignty, the preferential love for fellow-citizens, and the priority of loving nearby neighbours over distant strangers. This article responds to each argument, arguing that the right to exclude outsiders is not an immutable aspect of sovereignty, the construction of a social contract among fellow-citizens does not justify abandoning duties to non-citizens, and, in a highly globalized world, the obligation to love one's neighbour is not rightly circumscribed by geography. It further argues that Jesus's parable of the good Samaritan serves as a foil through which it can be seen that many sovereign states not only fail to love the displaced neighbour by providing refuge, but, like the priest and the Levite, go out of their way to keep refugees at a distance-and, like the robbers, even contribute to their vulnerability and suffering.

This article expounds the role played by Hugo Grotius in marginalizing positive duties for the pr... more This article expounds the role played by Hugo Grotius in marginalizing positive duties for the protection of vulnerable people beyond the sovereign state. In the sixteenth century, theorists writing within a range of traditions had posited solemn and demanding duties to assist and rescue vulnerable subjects of other rulers from tyranny and persecution. In the early seventeenth century, Grotius explicitly subordinated such duties to the duty to seek the preservation and advantage of one's own state. He claimed that, while the care of the vulnerable subjects of others was praiseworthy, it was not obligatory. No state was bound to accept trouble or inconvenience for the sake of vulnerable outsiders. Grotius turns out to be less of an exemplar for present day notions of the Responsibility to Protect and other international duties of human protection than he is often said to be.

This introduction to the special issue on Children and r2p lays out the parallel development of t... more This introduction to the special issue on Children and r2p lays out the parallel development of the r2p and Children and Armed Conflict agendas over the last two decades and surveys how key r2p documents developed during this period have engaged with issues of child protection. It then outlines the articles that follow.

While histories of human rights have proliferated in recent decades, little attention has been gi... more While histories of human rights have proliferated in recent decades, little attention has been given to the history of thinking about duties to protect these rights beyond sovereign borders. We have a good understanding of the history of duties of sovereign states to ensure the safety and well-being of their own citizens and of the right of other states to forcefully intervene when these duties are violated. But the story of the development of thinking about duties to assist and protect the vulnerable beyond borders remains to be told. This article defends the importance of excavating and examining past thinking about these duties. It then sketches key aspects of Western natural law thinking about such duties, from Francisco de Vitoria through to Immanuel Kant, claiming that such study holds the promise of exposing from where ideas that prevail in international law and politics have come and retrieving alternative ideas that have been long forgotten but that may reward renewed consideration. It concludes by briefly outlining how three such retrieved ideas might be of particular use for those seeking to push international law and politics in a more just direction today.

Mounting evidence suggests that non-consensual military intervention is most often a poor instrum... more Mounting evidence suggests that non-consensual military intervention is most often a poor instrument for alleviating mass suffering. Thus, a growing number of scholars and practitioners argue that the international toolbox for protecting populations should also contain non-coercive tools for assisting states and enhancing their capacities. But while studies of the history of military intervention proliferate, past thinking about duties of assistance and capacity-building remains relatively neglected. This article seeks to rectify this state of affairs by analyzing and seeking insights from the detailed treatment of non-coercive means of discharging duties to others offered by the eighteenth-century Swiss jurist and diplomat Emer de Vattel. Drawing on Leibniz’s conception of “perfection,” Vattel argued that states have duties to contribute to the perfection of those beyond their borders insofar as they can without doing an “essential injury” to themselves. While some of his claims about duties may be uncontroversial today, others remain subject to ongoing contestation, and still others have been forgotten and demand renewed attention. Crucially, while Vattel acknowledged the need for prudence, he also demanded that states be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of vulnerable strangers. He framed the cultivation of ever greater ability to assist others as a fundamental aspect of a state’s own self-perfection.

What interests do states have in assisting and protecting vulnerable populations beyond their bor... more What interests do states have in assisting and protecting vulnerable populations beyond their borders? While some political leaders and commentators promote a circumscribed understanding of the national interest that rules out accepting substantial risks and costs for the sake of the distant vulnerable, others endorse an “enlightened” conception of the national interest that recognizes the long-term utility to be gained by helping them. However, while this notion of “enlightened” self-interest gives states reason to act in some instances, it fails to prompt action in other cases where the suffering of strangers is less strategically important. Some leaders and commentators have responded to this problem by reaching for some other, less material conception of the national interest to justify assisting the distant vulnerable, but they have often struggled to find the language they need. This article finds a solution in the debates about self-interest waged in seventeenth-century Europe. Dissatisfied both with Hobbes's narrow understanding of self-interest and Pufendorf's more “enlightened” understanding, Leibniz defended a more generous and “disinterested” conception, grounded not in considerations of material utility but in the pleasure to be derived from helping those in need. This article demonstrates two ways in which this “disinterested” conception of self-interest can be of use today. First, it provides resources for explaining why states already sometimes act in “disinterested” and altruistic ways. Second, it provides leaders with a tool for persuading people to help the distant vulnerable, even when it appears to be in neither their narrow nor their “enlightened” interests to do so.

There is a curious tendency among some scholars and commentators to denigrate the impact of the R... more There is a curious tendency among some scholars and commentators to denigrate the impact of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Drawing on constructivist scholarship that illuminates both the regulative and constitutive ways that norms matter and that explains how the effects of norms can be interpreted, I argue that the R2P norm has a real and observable impact on the behaviour of states. I demonstrate that this impact can be detected not only in instances of compliance, such as in Libya, but perhaps even more clearly in examples of violation, such as in Syria.

Over the past two decades, International Relations scholars have highlighted the importance of ef... more Over the past two decades, International Relations scholars have highlighted the importance of efforts by hegemonic states and norm entrepreneurs to foster norm clarity when promoting the establishment, institutionalisation, and internalisation of norms. Yet, such analyses obscure the benefits of norm ambiguity in facilitating consensus, flexibility, and compliance. We offer a framework positing that hegemonic and institutional ambiguity can help create consensus and facilitate incremental reform necessary to sustain that consensus. Empirically, we then show how such ambiguity has facilitated the development of the Responsibility to Protect norm, tracing Rwanda-era debates over humanitarian intervention, Iraq-era backlash over interventionist abuses, and Libya-era norm implementation.

Sharing Responsibility wrestles with how countries should care for imperiled people and how the ideal of the responsibility to protect might inspire just behavior in an imperfect and troubled world.

Glanville traces the relationship between sovereignty and responsibility from the early modern period to the present day, and offers a new history with profound implications for the present.

The conventional story of sovereignty told in the discipline of International Relations (IR) tell... more The conventional story of sovereignty told in the discipline of International Relations (IR) tells us that there is a “traditional” or “Westphalian” meaning of sovereignty that has prevailed since the seventeenth century and that accords states the right to govern themselves free from outside interference. In recent years, the tale goes, this meaning has been challenged for the first time by notions of conditional and responsible sovereignty. This article argues that the supposed “traditional” meaning of sovereignty is not as foundational and timeless as is often assumed. Rather than a right of non-intervention, it was the right to wage (just) war that was first conceived by political theorists to be the external corollary of the internal supremacy of the sovereign. This included the right of war to punish tyranny and rescue the oppressed. This article examines the initial absence and then the gradual emergence of the “traditional” meaning of sovereignty, arguing that it was only firmly established by international society for the first time in the twentieth century. It concludes by considering some of the implications of this revised story of sovereignty for the study of IR.

The adoption of Resolution 1973 authorizing intervention in Libya represented the first time that... more The adoption of Resolution 1973 authorizing intervention in Libya represented the first time that the UN Security Council had authorized military intervention in a functioning and non-consenting sovereign state for the purpose of protecting civilians. A crucial factor prompting skeptical states to allow the passage of the resolution in the absence of sovereign consent was the fact that relevant regional organizations had consented to, indeed appealed for, such action. This article examines this possible shift away from reliance on sovereign consent and toward reliance on the consent of regional organizations in Security Council deliberations about the authorization of military intervention to protect civilians, and it considers what it might mean for the future of civilian protection.

It is increasingly well understood that concepts of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the ‘responsi... more It is increasingly well understood that concepts of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’ enjoy a long and rich history. Nevertheless, it is surprising how plainly the arguments offered by states seeking to justify intervention in Libya in 2011 echo those used by theologians, jurists, and philosophers to justify intervention in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Those advocating intervention in Libya drew not just on the language of ‘human rights,’ that emerged relatively recently, but on a wider and much older range of idioms and ideas to make their case. In this article, I identify three key arguments that were employed by states in support of the intervention and I demonstrate their parallels with three principal arguments that have been advanced to justify intervention in response to tyranny since the sixteenth century. The three arguments are: the need to protect ‘innocents’; the need to hold ‘tyrants’ to account; and the need to defend the will of a sovereign people. After exploring each argument, I conclude by noting that the claim often heard today, that intervention is under certain circumstances a responsibility rather than merely a right, also has deep roots in early modern thought.

This essay responds to Esther Reed's recent critique of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) princ... more This essay responds to Esther Reed's recent critique of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle in this journal. It argues that Reed fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents R2P. Her critique of R2P would have served well as a critique of the earlier concept of humanitarian intervention had it been penned in the late 1990s. But most of the problems and dangers that Reed identifies are in reality the very problems and dangers that R2P seeks to overcome, and I suggest that it does overcome them quite successfully. R2P does not impose Western ideals on the rest of the world, weaken the legal restrictions on the use of force, or promote abusive interventionism. Rather, it offers a bold but carefully constructed framework that holds the promise of promoting the protection of vulnerable populations from mass atrocities.

Scholars from a variety of perspectives stress the importance of norm clarity and precision for t... more Scholars from a variety of perspectives stress the importance of norm clarity and precision for the successful establishment, institutionalisation, and internalisation of norms. Norm ambiguity is commonly thought to be an impediment to norm construction and compliance. In this chapter, we argue that norm ambiguity can actually be crucial for facilitating consensus, flexibility, and compliance. We identify conditions under which norm ambiguity can be constructive and suggest that consensus around a norm can sometimes best emerge when the norm is initially articulated in ambiguous and flexible terms and then incrementally adjusted over time through a process that we call the ‘norm feedback loop’. We then show how ambiguity has facilitated the development of the Responsibility to Protect norm, tracing Rwanda-era debates over humanitarian intervention, Iraq-era backlash over interventionist abuses, and Libya-era norm implementation.

In Children and the Responsibility to Protect, Bina D’Costa and Luke Glanville bring together mor... more In Children and the Responsibility to Protect, Bina D’Costa and Luke Glanville bring together more than a dozen academics and practitioners from around the world to examine the intersections of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle and the theory and practice of child protection. Contributors consider themes including how the agency and vulnerability of children is represented and how their voices are heard in discussions of R2P and child protection, and the merits of drawing together the R2P and Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) agendas, as well as case studies of children’s lives in conflict zones, child soldiers, and children born of conflict-related sexual violence.
This collection of essays was first published in the journal Global Responsibility to Protect (vol.10/1-2, 2018) as a special issue.

Contributors are: J. Marshall Beier, Letícia Carvalho, Bina D’Costa, Myriam Denov, Luke Glanville, Michelle Godwin, Erin Goheen Glanville, Cecilia Jacob, Dustin Johnson, Atim Angela Lakor, Katrina Lee-Koo, Ryoko Nakano, Jochen Prantl, Jeremy Shusterman, Hannah Sparwasser Soroka, Timea Spitka, Jana Tabak, Shelly Whitman.

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a major new international principle, adopted unanimously i... more The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a major new international principle, adopted unanimously in 2005 by Heads of State and Government. Whilst it is broadly acknowledged that the principle has an important and intimate relationship with international law, especially the law relating to sovereignty, peace and security, human rights and armed conflict, there has yet to be a volume dedicated to this question. The Responsibility to Protect and International Law fills that gap by bringing together leading scholars from North America, Europe and Australia to examine R2P's legal content. The Responsibility to Protect and International Law focuses on questions relating to R2P's legal quality, its relationship with sovereignty, and the question of whether the norm establishes legal obligations. It also aims to introduce readers to different legal perspectives, including feminism, and pressing practical questions such as how the law might be used to prevent genocide and mass atrocities, and punish the perpetrators.

This edited collection has sought contributions from some of the foremost scholars of refugee and... more This edited collection has sought contributions from some of the foremost scholars of refugee and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) studies to engage with the conceptual and practical difficulties entailed in realising how the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) can be fulfilled by states and the international community to protect vulnerable persons. Contributors to this book were given one theme: to consider, based on their experience and knowledge, how R2P may be aligned with the protection of the displaced. Contributions explore the history and progress so far in aligning R2P with refugee and IDP protection, as well as examining the conceptual and practical issues that arise when attempting to expand R2P from words into deeds.

A short piece about how I wrestled with recent scholarship about the imperial/colonial roots of c... more A short piece about how I wrestled with recent scholarship about the imperial/colonial roots of contemporary international protection when writing my book, Sharing Responsibility: The History and Future of Protection from Atrocities (Princeton University Press, 2021).