Heather Roff takes Kant’s moral, legal and political philosophy into largely new territory here by examining Kant’s practical philosophy in relation to the novel doctrine of a ‘Responsibility to Protect’ recently developed by a number of United Nations institutions (pp. 36–9). Broadly speaking, the doctrine spells out the conditions when it is proper for other nations, at the behest of the UN, to intervene in the affairs of another state. The object of the intervention would be to prevent and correct gross abuses of power and the neglect of human rights. The doctrine is controversial in that it involves interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, but none the less plays a large part in thinking about the deployment of UN forces in the early twenty-first century. The background against which the doctrine was developed was the outbreak of intense refugee and ethnic conflicts which occurred in Rwanda and Kosovo in the 1990s, where it was felt that the UN had done less than was necessary to preserve international standards of right. Indeed the genocide in Rwanda caused grave moral concern amongst world leaders and their subjects. The UN established a Commission to look at the problem which produced a report (R2P) recommending a responsibility to protect.

Roff first argues that a notion of what she describes as ‘Kantian provisional duties’ can be derived from Kant’s practical philosophy. Roff believes that the category of provisional duty can be added to ‘his second-order classifications of “perfect” and “imperfect”’. She believes that commentators have missed this ‘third kind of duty’ (p. 11). She draws support for this third type of duty which she finds in Kant’s writings from the concept of provisional right. Kant draws attention himself to this concept in the Metaphysics of Morals when he asserts that individuals can take possession of things in the state of nature in anticipation of the founding of civil society. In other words individuals have a right to property in the state of nature only in the provisional sense that it is assumed that a civil society may later be founded which can make the assertion of the right into a positive law whose infraction is punishable. Whether or not the concept is sufficiently pliable to allow us to draw the conclusion that ‘provisional duties are a necessary feature of Kant’s moral system’ (p. 30) must remain a concern for the reader if not the author.

The second line of Roff’s argument is to seek to establish how this hard-won notion of provisional duty should be applied to international society. Roff makes a great deal of the fact that international relations as they presently stand are in a state of nature. There is neither a functioning state of states nor an ‘international civil society’ (p. 54) that can bring full legal protection to the population of the world. Whether all Kantians would want to make this an all or nothing matter, and say that in the absence of a ‘state of states’ we can look to no institutions to safeguard law in the international sphere, is questionable. To my mind Kant in his political writings gives the impression that within the international sphere there is an emergent system of law with which political leaders should work and seek to enhance. And so Roff’s assertion that ‘the international state of nature is like living in Wyatt Earp’s Tombstone: private enforcement at the OK Corral is always a viable option’ (p. 55) is, I believe, out of keeping with Kant’s evolutionary approach.

Along with the stark emphasis on the acute state of nature to be found in the international sphere the author takes a very firm view that from a Kantian perspective ‘all legal duties require, for their very nature, legislative, executive and judicial authorities backed by a public coercive force’ (p. 56). Again, it is not at all clear that the latter properly represents Kant’s position. Kant thinks that very many things count as rights without there necessarily being a state to enforce them. These rights, such as the right to be counted as innocent before having committed an act, and the right to equal treatment with others, flow from the one basic innate right to freedom. For Kant humans are the bearers of certain rights even if there is no state present to enforce them.

A third leg of Roff’s argument is to be found in her treatment of the lex permissiva. Roff argues that the principle of lex permissiva comes into play for states in periods of ‘supreme moral emergency’ where the ‘entire purposes of morality or right’ in the world are under threat (p. 62). For Roff ‘what is fundamental to Kant’s use of permissive laws is that it provides an opportunity for an agent to choose amongst various obligating reasons for action, and thereby extricate oneself from conflicting commands’ (p. 70). As far as I can tell from Roff’s exposition, this permits one to act in a way that – exceptionally – would contradict moral commands. This loosening up of Kant’s moral position is necessary for Roff in order that states can be put in a position to act in a way that may run counter to law when faced with extreme conditions. The key bone of contention in current international law for Roff is the prohibition against states breaching the sovereign integrity of other states. An important requirement of international law up until the present is that states should grant all other states sole jurisdiction over their own internal affairs. In other words international law grants states sovereign independence. Roff believes very many states in the contemporary world (up to 70 per cent) do not merit this privilege. And she wants to argue from Kant’s practical philosophy (or those elements that are favourable to her point of view) that under certain circumstances dispensing with this presumption of sovereign independence can be allowed.

A fundamental difference I have here with Roff is that she wishes to deduce Kantian principles for acting within the international realm from the consideration of exceptional circumstances. This becomes clear in her fourth chapter on permissible coercion. Instead of sifting through Kant’s views on morality and right in their normal systematic use (and then applying them to the international realm) – as they are laid out as principles in his moral and legal philosophy – she overlooks the general system in favour of the extreme points of ambiguity and uncertainty. In his Doctrine of Right and Towards Perpetual Peace Kant attempts to minimize the possible unilateral use of force by states against each other, regarding this as the best way forward to advance international peace. His federation of states is intended to be exemplary and defensive only: aiming at the consent of other states to widen eventually to cover the whole globe. Roff scans Kant’s work for emergency conditions where the use of force may be endorsed and argues that Kant gets his account of an emerging peace entirely wrong. She believes Kant’s empirical assumption that states can be forces for peace in the world is undermined by the experience we now have of the mendacity and cruelty of actual states (p. 100). Thus Kant’s permissive law must be deployed and adapted to allow intervention within states by an unspecified international body (albeit it with UN support) in order to uphold the responsibility to protect.

Roff is not happy merely to deploy Kant to sustain a doctrine of active intervention as a duty for states; she wants to make the provisional duty into a peremptory one. This notion she pursues in her penultimate chapter. ‘Throughout this book’, she fearlessly says, ‘I have suggested that the duty to protect must be institutionalized. Institutionalization is required because it is a duty of justice in a state of nature which renders it provisional, and provisional duties must become peremptory. The requirement is not prudential, nor is it expeditious, but it is a logical requirement of a universal theory of justice’ (p. 111). She goes on to discuss what institutions would for her do the trick. She looks for an institution that would be independent, but reporting to the United Nations, and would have the power to deploy military force at short notice anywhere in the world. Roff does not mention how the necessary consensus would be achieved to bring about this short-notice world peace force (in her terms, ‘a rapid-reaction volunteer military force’, p. 111) but establishing its authority would bring up precisely those problems of cooperation and the forming of alliances which Kant sought to address with his notion of a voluntary federation put forward in the Second Definitive Article of Towards Perpetual Peace. And in terms of maintaining international peace in the present world it is with this article, I believe, that Kantians should begin.

In the Conclusion to the book Roff shows that she is well aware of the difficulties inherent in her interventionist position. In her view there is a ‘provisional duty to protect’ in the current international ‘state of nature’. However, ‘possible or potential interveners must self-select to fulfil their duty, and there is no enforcement mechanism to coerce agents to do so should they fail to act’ (p. 137). The current condition of world politics does not allow the full moral implementation of her principles. ‘Thus politics and prudential considerations will continue to provide the lion’s share of considerations because of the incomplete nature of the international system of justice. A state of nature means that each is judge in his own case, and due to this, it is only when one deems it within one’s power (and interest) that one acts’ (p. 137). Roff then has a conventional realist view of the international scene which, in my view, differs markedly from the more mixed picture Kant presents. Kant of course recognizes the realist dimension in international politics but also works with the elements of law that are already in place (including the domestic civil societies that have up until now emerged) and the economic prerogatives and pressures that lead to closer world cooperation. For Kant international law is partially to be found in the present arrangements amongst states – though hampered by the deficient institutionalization of law and the failure of states to adopt republican constitutions and so meet the need to create a peaceful federation – and partly to be created by reform-minded political leaders. Thus the international sphere is not a state of nature as Roff depicts it. Kant looks to the evolution of an improved system of international law and an increased role for morality in politics to ameliorate the situation.

Contrary to Kant’s desire to see cosmopolitanism embedded in law, Roff’s case for the responsibility to protect ends up on the (dubious) philanthropic end of the spectrum of proposals for reform. She concludes that,

Here Roff abandons traditional international law and puts in its place the unilateral moral legislation of states’ leaders. Where these leaders are sufficiently moved by the plight of those who are deprived of rights in other weak and poorly governed states they can decide for themselves to seek to rectify the position. The international realm here gets divided into the spheres of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ states, which is a portrayal of the style and nature of protagonists more reminiscent of a 1950s Western movie than the current mixed international realm.