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This article reflects on Hardeep Singh Puri's approach towards the responsibility to protect (r2p) in Perilous Interventions, and, in so doing, also on the approaches generally taken in the Indian debate on the subject. It looks, in particular, at issues that both tend not to consider, limiting their contribution to the discourse on r2p. In this regard, the book is characteristic of critical Indian assessments of r2p, which have a narrow focus on the norm's interventionist pillar and a further tendency to view it through a West/non-West, interest-based lens. This, in turn, contributes to an internal discourse that pivots on selected, individual cases of intervention – as does the book – while precluding a richer and conceptual engagement with the norm. The book is also preoccupied with the negative consequences of military intervention and the lessons of failure, so much so that it misses an opportunity to consider more fully how the use of force for human-rights protection might be made less perilous or less necessary.

Military intervention to halt atrocities is one of the most contentious aspects of R2P and with which India has often expressed disagreement in the past. Since the 2005 World Summit, however, there has been an apparent softening in that opposition. This article takes a close-up look at the empirical record, revealing ambiguity in Indian attitudes from the outset that militates against categorizing them as either 'for' or 'against' humanitarian intervention. The portrait that emerges is of a reactive actor driven incrementally away from a default preference for sovereignty as autonomy, whilst harbouring deep concerns about armed intervention. This article suggests that cautious and reluctant accommodation offers the best description of India's still unresolved stance on humanitarian intervention. That fits in with a broad preference for pragmatism in foreign policy, which has struggled to balance traditional concerns with a 'new' ambition to acquire and sustain greater power-political influence in a changing world.

AbstractIn 2010, Pakistan was struck by devastating floods, the latest in a series of disasters to strike the country in recent years. As it had during the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, the Pakistan military played a significant operational and co-ordination role in the humanitarian response that followed. Its role raised important questions about civil–military relations between humanitarian actors and national (as opposed to international) militaries. This article looks at the interaction between the humanitarian community and the Pakistan military in responding to the 2010 floods in order to identify key successes and challenges. It also highlights a number of issues that emerged in the context of Pakistan but that may also be relevant to civil–military relations – particularly between the humanitarian community and the national military of an affected state – in other natural disaster and complex emergency settings.

This handbook offers an up-to-date analysis of the African agenda for conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding; the challenges and opportunities facing the AU and RECs? efforts in achieving a Pax Africana; and the role of external actors including the United Nations (UN) and former colonial powers Britain and France, but also key (non-African) troop contributing countries in these efforts. Building on the late Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui?s concept of Pax Africana - Africans taking responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security on their own continent - the authors argue that the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the AU in 2002, was a concrete step towards the realisation of an African-wrought vision of continental peace and prosperity, and has since witnessed the creation of a set of institutions - together known as the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) - for more robust conflict management