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As though they are Dr. Frankenstein and R2P is a monster they created but can’t control, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have run from a newborn principle that not only needs a strong and sincere guardian, but that counts on it to be one such guardian. In doing so, Liberals are allowing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to appear as though it, by comparison, acts on the principle’s behalf.

Like any grand idea — like any new idea — R2P is vulnerable to deliberate misinterpretation and naïve misapplication. Liberals witnessed its kidnapping by the Bush administration, which veered the young norm off in the shifting directions of whatever might entice the public to go along with a war that the White House wanted to wage anyway. (This way to the WMDs, that way to the evil dictatorship.)

Now Liberals want the guns down (or at least want Canada’s guns down). An understandable reaction, and almost in the spirit of R2P: the heart of the principle is conflict prevention. But its military arm can’t possibly be severed from the norm that stands between sovereignty and mass murder; nor can it be severed from liberal internationalism, a traditionally cross-partisan Canadian approach to foreign policy that emphasizes cooperation and diplomacy but doesn’t rule out joint military operations.

“Canada’s involvement (in Iraq) is similar to what any recent Canadian government, Liberal or Conservative, would have considered doing,” the University of Ottawa’s Roland Paris tells me. “In that sense it’s broadly consistent with the Canadian liberal internationalist tradition.”