Kurt Mills’ International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa: Responsibility to Protect Prosecute and Palliate is a fabulous contribution to the study of human security. The author has written extensively on human rights, security, international justice, and international organizations, and this book extends his previous work to assess major international responses to atrocities in the African continent. Mills provides an amalgam of three approaches—protection, prosecution, and palliation—to address the world’s most intractable conflicts. His book is also a trenchant reminder of how difficult it is to solve the problem of mass atrocities.

Mills raises an interesting question: How should we understand different kinds of international responses with an eye toward ending mass atrocities? The norm is now famously called the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). The book deals with three primary methods of R2P intervention: protection, palliation, and prosecution (3Ps hereafter). Protection refers to peacekeeping activities with the primary goal of protecting civilian lives. Palliation refers to humanitarian actions to aid the victims in conflict zones with the aim of reducing suffering. Prosecution refers to the application of international justice through international tribunals, and more recently, via the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This is a welcome addition to the list of books on international responses to civil conflicts. The academic culture of publish or perish often pushes scholars into narrowing their focus to just one response, be it peacekeeping, or humanitarian action, or prosecution. Looking at them as a whole provides a novel view of international responses to atrocious conflicts.

The book’s key contribution is to subvert the assumption that the three international responses to atrocities (protection, prosecution, and palliation) reinforce each other. In fact, Mills forcefully argues and convincingly demonstrates that, at times, the 3Ps undermine each other’s efforts. The three responses have the same goal: saving lives. Yet, as Mills shows, employing those three methods at the same time might be infeasible and may produce trade-offs and moral quandaries.

The trade-offs among protection, prosecution, and palliation, are starkly described. Palliation, for example, decreases the motivation for protection. The pressure to “do something” might motivate politicians to rely solely on humanitarian assistance and nothing more. In this case, protection might not occur. Mills claims that this what happened in Darfur and Rwanda. Similarly, the prosecution effort might reduce the incentive to protect. International actors supported the ICC’s involvement in the DRC, but it might have hindered the protection efforts via peacekeeping. These tradeoffs are important lessons for protectors, prosecutors, and palliators—the key protagonists in R2P efforts.

Moral conundrums also abound in employing the three responses. Palliation via humanitarian action might prolong conflict. When humanitarians co-opt rebel elements, they may inadvertently reduce the incentive for protection, and thereby, lengthen the war. Also, humanitarians might be averse to participating in prosecution activities and refuse to take the stand as witnesses. Injecting international justice into the middle of a conflict could also upset the conflict dynamics. Many previous observers have noted that prosecution might undermine the peace process, usually termed as the issue of “peace-versus-justice.” When the ICC is involved, there is a possibility that the peace process might be derailed, as belligerents negotiate hard for amnesty. Mills presents such an example in the case of the ICC’s involvement in Uganda. Policymakers, humanitarians, and international justice lawyers will agree that they all face these difficult moral quandaries.

The empirical scope of the book covers four cases: Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Sudan/Darfur. These are cases that involved all 3P efforts. To this reader’s mind, detailed and well-researched descriptions come at the price of a more analytical lens of the 3P tradeoffs. For example, the chapter on Uganda reads as a summary of the ICC involvement in Uganda rather than a discussion of how the 3Ps cohere. Despite this quibble, readers will still learn a great deal about how the conflicts of these four countries progressed and how 3Ps manifested in each conflict. It is however worth asking how the findings travel to other conflict regions beyond Africa. The situations in Libya and Syria are discussed briefly in the book, and I believe the author’s main arguments about the key trade-offs and moral quandaries will apply to international responses in other parts of the world. However, we will have to see, primarily because international justice efforts (one of the 3Ps) are primarily in Africa.

The book leaves this reader with three main observations and critiques. The first is about other intervention methods beyond the 3Ps. It is true that protection, palliation, and prosecution are dominant modes of outside engagement in conflict zones, but how about other methods, such as diplomatic efforts to mediate, aiding rebels (or governments) as an outside intervener, sanctioning by powerful countries or the United Nations Security Council, or engaging in state-building efforts? How do these interact with the strategies Mills describes? These questions are of utmost importance in forging international responses to conflicts, and I hope this question will be addressed in future research.

The political preferences of the main actors are also underdeveloped in this work. It is important to recognize the disparate political preferences of these political actors (protectors, prosecutors, and humanitarians). Protectors are usually serving membership at the United Nations or regional organizations (African Union in the African context). Prosecutors’ principal aim is achieving justice. Although the Rome Statute preamble states the goal of world peace, the ICC is, after all, an institution of justice. Lastly, humanitarians work within the bounds of their organizational means and ends. The recent divergent tactics of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Doctors without Borders is one such example. Although the book’s author recognizes various political preferences as constraints, the implications of these preferences are not explicated thoroughly enough for this reader.

My third and last observation is with regards to “what to do.” I put down the book with a heavy heart. We now better understand how different methods (3Ps) interact and we have learned that three methods might go hand-in-hand. How “should” they cohere in practice? Coordination seems to be the insurmountable task, given the (sometimes) divergent political interests of humanitarian actors, the ICC, the UN peacekeeping forces. More importantly, who has the ultimate say? World politics is run without a central executive body. This means that nobody can decidedly choose among the menu of palliation, protection, or prosecution.

Also, when should we opt for protection over palliation, when we are forced to choose one over the other? Under what conditions should the three methods (or pair of methods) be substitutes or complements? The author’s conclusion to these matters is not often satisfying: “The issue…comes down to political will to choose and implement the most appropriate response(s)…” (p. 52) or “I am not sure, but it does seem clear that all the actors involved could act in a manner that better contributed to protection, however imperfect that protection might be” (p. 173). Some prescriptions for how to balance intervention in conflict would be worthwhile, and maybe it is the job of other international relations scholars to answer this question.

No one book can answer all the important questions. Mills’ effort to examine the three international responses together and not separately is in itself enough to be highly lauded and celebrated. His book starts with great questions and leaves important questions behind. Readers will learn a great deal, and be left with important questions of their own to ponder.