Conceptualizing Great Power Perpetrators

For over a decade, shifting geopolitics, a changed global security environment, and countless failures of diplomacy have raised important questions on how to collectively grapple with a widely-perceived “crisis of multilateralism,” and reignited debate on the fitness of the UN Security Council to deliver on its mandate under these circumstances. Among other issues, ongoing polarization when not outright “gridlock” among the Permanent Members (P5) has fueled the Council’s apparent inability to respond to threats to civilian life and to countless mass atrocities around the world. Even worse, as this article argues, some P5 today possess both the willingness and unprecedented means to themselves commit atrocity crimes virtually unchallenged. Scholarship, however, has yet to systematically examine how this might be affecting prevention and response efforts, particularly though not exclusively at the UN. Against this background, this article makes a first attempt at conceptualizing what I call Great Power Perpetrators, and their challenge to the furthering of human-protection and prevention objectives. Anchoring my analysis in current geopolitics, I draw from Barnett and Duvall’s “taxonomy of power” to highlight how Great Power Perpetrators possess unique “institutional,” “compulsory,” “structural,” and “productive” forms of power that may not only defy traditional approaches to atrocity prevention and response; but, when used in combination to perpetrate abuse, also pose a “system-level” challenge to international security and cooperation. To illustrate this, I empirically analyze how the Russian Federation (which I consider to be the best contemporary illustration of the notion) wields its power with respect to other states and institutions on atrocity prevention and response issues, while also extending my analysis to other P5 as relevant. In light of said analysis, I conclude that leveraging alternative mechanisms within the prevailing multilateral system might be the best—if not currently the only— viable approach to confronting, curbing, and countering great power abuse.