Michael J. Butler is Chair of the Department of Political Science at Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts, USA). He has published six books and over 30 peer-reviewed articles on various topics related to international security and conflict management and resolution. His latest book is Reconstructing the Responsibility to Protect: From Humanitarian Intervention to Human Security (Routledge, 2024). Butler is a member of the Government of Sweden’s Folke Bernadotte Academy International Research Working Group on Dialogue, Mediation, and Peace Processes, a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Canadian Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, an affiliate with the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and the series co-editor of Routledge’s International Studies Intensives book series. His commentary on international affairs has appeared in numerous media outlets including ABC News, CNN, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, Reuters, The Conversation, UPI, USA Today, Voice of America, the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Correio Braziliense (Brazil), CBC (Canada), Expresso (Portugal), Business Times (Singapore), the Korea Times (South Korea) and 360Info (Australia).

Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

Some of the most exciting and generative research in security studies is oriented around expanding conceptions of threat – and, by extension, response. This agenda isn’t new, per se, but the effort at ‘broadening’ our threat horizon and ‘deepening’ our conception of what and whose security is at stake remains intriguing. In part this is due to the fact that we are now well into a second generation of scholars who aren’t afraid to push against the statist / militarist / materialist orthodoxy when it comes to thinking about security. As such we are moving into new terrain and the field looks like it is slowly but surely catching up to lived experience. Whether that’s with regard to the planetary implications of climate change, the multifaceted threat of pandemic disease, the structural violence of discrimination and injustice, the challenges of identity-based conflict, or the pernicious effects of weaponized information, to name a few.

This is undoubtedly exciting, at least if you accept the premise that one of the things we might want or even expect out of the field is a scope of inquiry and a set of findings that could meaningfully contribute to enhancing the security of our species and the world we inhabit. What comes along with this expanded conceptualization of what ‘security’ means is a greater recognition of spaces, places, and faces that for a very long time were subsumed under that orthodoxy I referenced before, or were pushed out of the security studies field altogether. The possible upshot of this is not only or just a human-centered approach to security thinking and practice, but an approach that has the potential to account for other species (non-human), other forms of intelligence (AI), and other domains of human activity (space).

How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

I have definitely undergone an evolution in my thinking about what is important, as well as in how to study those things. The result is a decided shift toward a more critical posture. Driving that evolution is a conscious desire to humanize and contextually ‘deepen’ my work, in order to better account for actors beyond the state as both subjects and objects of security thinking and practice(s) – and ultimately to push against the limits of that subject/object dichotomy. It’s hard to point to specific people or events that explain the genesis of that evolution; it’s been the by-product of a lot of inputs, and has been shaped by many brilliant people I’ve met along the way. I definitely do think this shift in my thinking has accelerated in recent years as a consequence of the intensity and ubiquity of the challenges confronting us on every level – personal, communal, national, global, planetary. Among other things I’d have to point to transnational social movements mobilized around climate change and racial justice as providing a ‘wake up call’ of sorts not only about my vocational obligations but also my own privilege and biases. I’m continually seeking ways to integrate this consciousness into my research and teaching.

How would you define humanitarian intervention, and what key challenges have arisen from its practice? How have these challenges influenced the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework?

Humanitarian intervention takes different forms; my work focuses largely on humanitarian military intervention, which I define as a direct coercive action by states and/or international organizations involving the use of armed force within the jurisdiction of a state without the consent of its authorities in order to prevent or alleviate widespread suffering or death. This action can be undertaken on a unilateral as well as multilateral or collective basis, and the action itself and its outcome(s) may not be entirely or even mostly humanitarian in character – but to qualify, its intent or motive........

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