Commercializing Cosmopolitan Security ─ Safeguarding the Responsibility to Protect

This book analyses two key topics within international politics: the responsibility to protect (R2P) and the commercialization and privatization of security. Raising a normative and theoretical criticism against the existing scholarship, it argues that for the effective and ethical conduct in humanitarian interventions in R2P crises, 'the contractor should become the liberal state’s cosmopolitan agent'. The author develops a normative philosophical argument about the moral worth of the contractor as a cosmopolitan security provider and asks the question: should the contractor become the liberal state’s cosmopolitan agent to provide security as a global good in humanitarian intervention? Krieg argues that this normative judgment will eventually be made based on two factors - firstly on an ethical assessment of the compatibility of the conceptualized nature of civil-combatant relations with the combatant’s cosmopolitan role, and secondly on the evaluation the moral worth of the combatant defined - on basis of his conduct, operational effectiveness and ethics. This book is essential reading for researchers and post-graduate students of R2P, International Security Studies and privatization, as well as Peace and Conflict studies and International Relations more broadly.

Dr Andreas Krieg is an Assistant Professor at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, UK, and is a founding member of the Private Military and Security Research Group (PMSRG) at King’s College London promoting the study of, and raising awareness around, the issue of security privatization.