america and americans first.
The common criticism of this type of intervention is that the real goal is regime change. The professed humanitarian goal is just a coverup. Is that your take, JTT?
A Western intervention in Syria? Probably not.
During the month of August, there were 5,440 casualties in Syria, and 4,114 of those killed were civilians, a spokesman for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed for RAPSI Monday. These numbers were gathered by the group’s monitors on the ground throughout the war-ravaged country. As would be expected in the context of any civil war, each side has made a habit of blaming the other for those atrocities most offensive to international humanitarian law. And perhaps just as unsurprisingly, the major international super powers filling the ranks of the UN Security Council (UNSC) have been unable for months now to agree on a game plan.
If considering all of these points your mind just drifted off to Kosovo circa 1999 as ethnic violence reached the boiling point that prompted NATO to go rogue, you’re not alone. Speculation of a military intervention in Syria nearly predates the present conflict there. In light of Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and most recently Libya, some can’t imagine why the West wouldn’t intervene in Syria. In keeping with its usual role of shedding light on complex topics rather than picking sides, RAPSI has decided to take a closer look at the international legal issues at the heart of the Syrian intervention question.
Chapter VII of the UN Charter vests the UNSC with broad power to maintain or restore international peace and security in cases where such is sincerely threatened or breached. This chapter has served as the basis for some of the UN’s most high-profile international justice initiatives, from the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to last year’s Libya intervention. As suggested by the latter, Chapter VII goes so far as to explicitly provide for the use of force in certain, dire contexts.
According to Article 42 of Chapter VII: “Should the Security Council consider that [various economic and diplomatic sanctions] would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.”
While this provision is fairly straight forward, the key issue is clear: any action taken in accordance with Article 42 requires something of an agreement, at least between the five permanent members of the UN: Russia, China, France, the US, and the UK. Each of these five member nations has a veto power that can singlehandedly derail any substantive Chapter VII initiative.
The 1990s were replete with mass atrocities that endured unabated by the UNSC’s Chapter VII powers. Somewhere in the aftermath of the horrors that engulfed Rwanda, the Balkans, Darfur, and more through the course of the decade, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was adopted as an international legal norm meant to establish guidelines for the compromise of sovereignty in cases where national governments were unable or unwilling to protect their own people from atrocities.
While it is widely accepted that R2P was born of the international community’s many failures to act in the 1990s, experts have divergent views of its roots.
The Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG) published a memo last month entitled Humanitarian Intervention in Syria: the Legal Basis. According to PILPG experts, the codification of R2P—which had come to be recognized as a form of international customary law during the course of the 1990s—began in 2001, when the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) established a set of criteria by proposing the following six-part test for the use of force in the context of humanitarian crises:
1. There must be just cause
2. Use of force must be applied as a last resort
3. The intentions of the acting states must be good
4. Any action taken must be proportionate
5. There must be a reasonable chance of success
6. The action must be authorized by a legitimate authority
According to the memo, the UN General Assembly and the UNSC went on to endorse the R2P doctrine in various contexts, thus confirming its status as an important facet of public international law.
One such context was that of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document (WSOD), wherein the UN General Assembly recognized the R2P as an emerging international legal norm.
Two key paragraphs of the WSOD breathe life into the R2P. Paragraph 138 lays out the justification for compromising sovereignty, explaining that, “Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity…. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it.”
Paragraph 139 establishes options for R2P action, and imposes restrictions on their use by stating, “we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
The PILPG, that is, seems to interpret the R2P as providing a means for action in cases of Security Council inaction. In the memo, its experts explained, “If the Security Council is deadlocked…. as it was in Kosovo, R2P provides a framework for the international community to legally intervene without Security Council authorization.”
With regard to the Syria situation specifically, the memo points to the three Syria resolutions that UNSC members have failed to see eye to eye on in recent months, and explained that in light of this stalemate, “the international community—either through a regional coalition or a coalition of the willing—has a right under customary international law to use force in Syria for the limited purpose of stopping atrocity crimes, provided that the force is narrowly tailored to accomplishing this humanitarian goal.”
University of Rome International Criminal Law research fellow Joseph Davids argues to the contrary that the R2P section in the WSOD explicitly narrows the R2P as understood by the earlier ICISS document. He argued that the greatest flaw of the PILPG memo, “is that it presupposes what it desires to prove, the validity of R2P’s permissive stance on military intervention outside of the framework of the UN Security Council.” In Davids’ view, “The principle of R2P did not make the jump to [the] realm of real law (soft as it may be) until the [WSOD] where the UN General Assembly endorsed R2P’s main idea of sovereignty as responsibility. The prong providing for military intervention, however, was significantly modified. Intervention was limited to those situations where the UN Security Council authorizes military action.”
A look back at the text of the WSOD quoted above militates in favor of Davids’ interpretation. Paragraph 139 explicitly refers to the UNSC and Chapter VII should peaceful means prove inappropriate, not to military intervention in and of itself. As discussed above, Chapter VII arms the UNSC with broad powers, not any other authority—including those that might be deemed legitimate under the ICISS test.
If the latter interpretation is right, and the R2P does not in fact provide a means for sidestepping an indecisive UNSC, it would seem as though the norm does little more than serve as an outlet for the international community’s collective sense of guilt over the mass atrocities of the 1990s.
Speaking with RAPSI Monday, Davids argued however that the R2P creates accountability where it was so often lacking in the past, explaining that the norm “aims to create an international obligation to act in the face of atrocities. It aims to create obligations to prevent international crimes and to rebuild after they have occurred in addition to intervene to put them to an end. While it has failed to provide a separate legal basis for military intervention, R2P has created a new vocabulary for talking about how to deal with these kinds of situations through its language of preventing and rebuilding.”
Asked whether a nation or coalition interested in intervening in Syria might do so based on an alternative legal theory, Davids explained that this would only be realistic if the Assad regime were to request a military intervention, a fairly unlikely prospect. According to Davids, “The legal grounds for intervention are in this kind of case: (1) self-defense, (2) Security Council authorization and (3) invitation. The first two seem unlikely given the political deadlock at the council and the internal nature of the conflict. The third could happen if a State (not an armed group in a State) requests that another State come to its aid. Also seems unlikely if things hold the course they have been taking. Outside of these three possibilities, there is no legal justification for military intervention.”
International legal norms surrounding intervention, such as Chapter VII and the R2P are rapidly evolving. Military intervention has proven problematic under various theories of international law through the course of its existence. A great many critics still vehemently maintain that NATO should have stood trial at the ICTY for its intervention in Kosovo.
In light of this, Davids brought up a crucial point in stating: “R2P, unlike previous versions of ‘humanitarian intervention’ doctrines, was an attempt to create legally binding criteria to justify international action. The idea was to take intervention out of the realm of political action. The problem is that the determination of whether the legal criteria has been met turns into a political morass recreating the same problem at a later stage of the decision making process.”
Love it or hate it, the UNSC is by its nature a political beast. If you agree with the PILPG, it’s a beast that can be circumvented. Still, as explained by Davids, the text of the relevant law would seem to militate otherwise.
A lot has changed since Kosovo, and these changes have taken a significant toll on the likelihood that any interested nation or coalition thereof can legitimately intervene regardless of the horrific details emerging from the chaos.
Can you provide me with anything that would show that this isn't the case when it comes to the USA, JW?
Staying out of Syria
(Los Angeles Times Editorial, September 5, 2012)
Dismay over the continued violence in Syria is understandable and should impel the United States, other "friends of Syria" and the United Nations to support relief measures including, if necessary, the creation of safe havens for refugees. But the Obama administration is right to stop short of either arming Syrian rebels — who, according to U.S. intelligence officials, have been infiltrated by Islamic extremists from outside the country — or engaging in direct military intervention. Advocates of military involvement exaggerate the ease with which the U.S. could shape events in Syria and underestimate the dangers.
The civil war in Syria, an echo of the Arab Spring but also increasingly a sectarian struggle and a proxy battle between Sunni and Shiite Muslim nations, is a humanitarian disaster. In August as many as 5,000 people were killed, and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says that more than 100,000 Syrians fled their country during that month, doubling the number of refugees to 235,000. More than 1 million Syrians may need emergency food aid.
Advocates of arming the Syrian rebels or imposing a Libya-style "no-fly zone" — which, given Syria's air defenses, would probably require a major bombing campaign to be effective — suggest that altering the military equation is the best way to end the suffering of the Syrian people. After all, the interventionists note, China and Russia are determined to block any diplomatic attempt by the United States and the Arab League to bring pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad to step aside. Mediation efforts by the United Nations — recently assigned to a new special envoy, Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi — continue to founder. Without military pressure on the regime, the argument goes, plans by exiled Syrians for a post-Assad future for the country are an exercise in futility. Meanwhile, Syrians will continue to die and abandon their homes.
To be sure, some advocates of intervention have geopolitical motives for assisting the rebels, notably undermining the position of Iran, Assad's ally and patron. Still, the humanitarian argument for intervention is a serious one. The key questions are whether the threat to civilians has become dire enough to merit U.S. involvement in a war of choice on the other side of the globe, or whether other steps could be taken to minimize the loss of life without arming the rebels or attacking the regime. One alternative to war is to increase pressure on Assad — and here Russia might be supportive — to accede to requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross for measures to protect civilians (and thus slow and even reverse the tide of refugees). If necessary, civilian areas could be placed under the protection of international peacekeepers.
The time may come when the only alternative to a bloodbath in Syria is military intervention by the U.S. and other outside powers, with all the attendant risks. But it has not yet arrived.
Putin urges West rethink on Syria as battles rage
(Agence France-Presse, September 6, 2012)
Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Western and Arab governments to review their policy on war-torn Syria on Thursday, as battles raged between rebels and army forces in several districts of Damascus.
"Why should Russia be the only one reassessing its position? Perhaps our negotiating partners should reassess their position," Putin told Russia Today television.
"To us, the most important thing is to end the violence, to force all the sides in the conflict... to sit down at the negotiating table, determine the future and ensure the security of all the participants of the domestic political process," he said.
"Only then move on to these practical steps about the internal organisation of the country itself."
Putin has previously rejected providing asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and insisted that it still viewed either him or his representatives as an integral part of the negotiating process.
Moscow has stirred Western and Arab world anger by vetoing three UN Security Council resolutions that would have slapped sanctions on Assad during the nearly 18-month conflict.
The interview comes amid efforts by Putin to repair a foreign policy image hurt by Russia's refusal to back calls for Assad to go amid bloodshed since March 2011 that monitors say has claimed as many as 26,000 lives.
The Russian foreign ministry, meanwhile, said it had full assurance that the chemical weapons stockpile amassed by the regime was safe and would not be used against Assad's foes.
"We are fully confident -- and have the official assurance from Damascus -- that this country's government is taking all the necessary measures to guarantee the chemical arsenal's safety," said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
"We exclude the possibility of chemical arms being used for combat purposes," Ryabkov told Interfax.
On the ground, the two kidnapped brothers of a Syrian rebel commander were killed on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as battles raged between rebels and army forces in several districts of the capital.
The men were kidnapped on Wednesday night at an army checkpoint, said the Britain-based monitoring group. They were found dead in the Qadam district of Damascus amid a sharp increase in reports of abductions across the country.
Amateur video posted on YouTube by activists showed the bodies of the two men, identified as Mohammed and Ahmed al-Zakh, covered in blood. The bead of one of the victims had been partly blown off.
The Observatory also reported fierce battles and army shelling in Qadam in southern Damascus where anti-regime sentiment is strong, as well as shelling in nearby Assali.
Clashes also broke out elsewhere in the city, including in the Sayyida Zeinab area of the southeastern outskirts, home to an important Shiite Muslim shrine, said the watchdog.
Kafr Zeita in the central province of Hama, one of the main arenas of the 17-month revolt against Assad, also saw fierce shelling for the second consecutive day, activists reported.
"It is horrific that the towns that have seen the most consistent dissent by unarmed protesters should be subjected to such violence," an activist who identified himself as Abu Ghazi told AFP via Skype.
A preliminary toll compiled by the Observatory said that at least 17 people were killed in violence across Syria on Thursday, a day after 176 people -- most of them civilians -- died.
Rebels on Wednesday announced plans to reform and stem the proliferation of militias in the hope of winning support from the international community which has been reluctant to arm them.
Assad himself came under renewed diplomatic fire from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said Syria had become a "terrorist state," and from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who told him to go.
And at a meeting in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers condemned "the pursuit of violence, killings and ugly crimes carried out by the Syrian authorities and their shabiha militias against Syrian civilians."
They also condemned "violence and killings of civilians from any side" in a veiled reference to rebels battling the regime. "The crimes and massacres being carried out are crimes against humanity," said the ministers.
A rebel general said on Wednesday that the Free Syrian Army would soon adopt changes aimed at overcoming divisions and addressing the growing number of militias fighting on its behalf.
Following talks due to end in around 10 days, the FSA would go by the name of the Syrian National Army, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the military council grouping rebel chiefs, told AFP.
"After a long period, we must restructure the army because we fear the proliferation of militias in Syria and want to preserve the country's future," he said.
On the battle front on Wednesday, the insurgents attacked Hamdan military airport near Albu Kamal town in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, the Observatory said.
Having failed to persuade the international community to impose a no-fly zone, the FSA has increasingly targeted airports used by regime attack helicopters and warplanes.
U.N. finds wide consensus on Syria in General Assembly, but remains powerless as war worsens
(Pamela Falk, CBS News, September 5, 2012)
With "acrimonious fault lines" between members blocking action by the United Nations Security Council on Syria's escalating civil war, as a senior European diplomat put it to CBS News, the General Assembly came together Tuesday - for the second time - to shine a light on the issue and try to present a more unified front.
Diplomats accused both President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition of violating human rights. They pointed to the recent report that more than 100,000 Syrians fled their country in August alone. They called on nations to meet the appeals for humanitarian aid.
In the end, however, and with great frustration, they threw up their hands. There is, after all, not much that the General Assembly can do.
The U.N.'s hopes for diplomacy now rest with seasoned Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, the global body's new envoy to Syria, who has taken over Kofi Annan's role as negotiator-in-chief after the former U.N. secretary-general quit the position having accomplished little.
"The destruction is reaching catastrophic proportions," Brahimi told the General Assembly's 193 member nations. "The support of the international community is indispensable and very urgent."
Brahimi's pleas came two days after he told the BBC that his mission was "nearly impossible," comparing it to standing in front of a brick wall and looking for tiny cracks - a loosely veiled reference to the "acrimonious fault lines" between the U.S. and other nations which believe Assad has lost all credibility as a leader, and Russia and China, which continue to block any external intervention - be it military or via further sanctions.
"As we gather in this great assembly today, millions of Syrians remain in a state of huge uncertainty, fear and death in their own country," said current General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar. "U.N. agencies now estimate that some 2.5 million Syrians are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance."
In light of the stalemate in the Security Council, Al-Nasser beseeched the General Assembly to take action.
"The Charter places a responsibility on the General Assembly to take steps, where necessary, to promote and ensure international peace and security. This has become all the more necessary because of a deadlock and lack of unity in the Security Council."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, meanwhile, said "regional leaders have a key role to play in creating the conditions conducive to a solution."
His remarks came as The New York Times reported that, according to U.S. officials, Iran has resumed flying military equipment to the isolated Syrian regime via Iraq's airspace - shipments which would violate U.N. sanctions already in place. Iraq has demanded the U.S. government provide proof of the shipments, saying the Iranians have told them the flights are carrying food and other humanitarian supplies.
"It is the time for the international community to close ranks and to send a united message to the Syrian parties to walk back from their military approach and to embrace the only path to bring about an end to the violence and a sustainable peaceful solution through an inclusive political process," said Algeria's U.N. ambassador Mourad Benmehidi.
If presenting a more united voice on the Syrian crisis was the goalpost for the General Assembly, then it did its part on Tuesday.
But the overwhelming majority view of the 193 nations will do nothing to alter the deadlock in the Security Council, or to improve the outlook for the thousands of Syrians suffering a brutal civil war.
U.N. finds wide consensus on Syria in General Assembly, but remains powerless as war worsens
Only bombing Assad's forces will stop the slaughter now
(Amos Yadlin, Opinion Essay, The UK Independent, September 6, 2012)
President Bashar al-Assad continues to exploit the international community's propensity to turn a blind eye to the escalation in Syria, which now results in the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians each week. Thus in order to avoid a Syrian civil war, Western resolve to use its leverage beyond the weak condemnations, publicised summits, and ineffectual initiatives of the past months is likely to be tested.
Indeed, examination indicates that six arguments propounded by opponents of Western military intervention do not hold much water, and instead suggests that Western inaction is likely to hasten the very scenario that opponents of military intervention seek to avoid.
First, Syria need not become "another Iraq". Those who resist intervention warn that military intervention might end in the West becoming mired in another Muslim country, on the heels of the unsuccessful Afghan and Iraqi experiences. This argument belittles the West's successful experience in Kosovo 20 years ago and in Libya in 2011, where intensive airpower removed Gaddafi, stopped the bloodbath, and enabled democratic elections.
Moreover, a military intervention need not involve a ground invasion or even peacekeeping forces – which, in any case, would have little influence on Assad. The recommended model, built on the lessons of Iraq, is a Western aerial campaign that paves the way for regime change, as it did in Kosovo and in Libya. There are no "boots on the ground", at least initially (and should that become necessary, Turkish forces should be assigned to this mission).
The suggested strategy in Syria is to use gradual steps to convince Assad that an international campaign is a credible option: from moving aircraft carriers to the region and Turkish ground forces to the border, to reconnaissance sorties, no-fly zones, and humanitarian corridors.
Second, the Syrian military challenge can be met. Another argument postulates that the Syrian military presents a bigger threat to Western militaries than those confronted in Iraq and Libya. The Syrian defensive capability is not dramatically greater than Iraq's of 1991 or 2003, which already included advanced Russian systems. As the Syrian military has been preoccupied with internal uprisings over the past year and a half, it is likely that its capabilities have even eroded. Therefore, those who doubt the West's capacity to face the current Syrian defence ignore the fact that Western power was built to cope with much greater challenges.
Third, the lack of international consensus cannot justify passivity. Those who call for passivity in Syria claim that since there is no consensus among members of the UN Security Council and no explicit Arab League request, there is no legitimacy for foreign military intervention. These arguments ignore the moral obligation − the "Responsibility to Protect" principle − endorsed by the West.
This principle, formally adopted by the UN in 2005, declared the international community's obligation to halt and prevent mass atrocity crimes. In today's situation, it compels Western leaders to act with the Arab League to stop the massacre of Syrian civilians by the regime. It also obliges the Western powers to promote this campaign with their allies if Russia and China obstruct any broad endeavour under the UN framework. In any case, no Russian, Chinese, or Arab opposition justifies passivity while Assad's regime continues to slaughter the Syrian people.
Fourth, deterioration is not a risk of intervention, rather a result of non-intervention. Some contend that military intervention would result in social chaos and escalation of violence, as there is, thus far, no apparent force or future administration that could restore peace to the country. However, since events in Syria have already created the threat of full-scale civil war, this is not a risk of intervention, but of doing nothing. Every day that passes deepens the hatred between Syria's different ethnic groups and increases the challenge of restoring public order. As the ethnic issue is a regional ticking bomb, the deterioration in Syria might easily spill over its borders, with region-wide consequences. On a related note, military intervention also enables Western powers to cope with the potential use of chemical weapons – by the regime against the rebels, or by terror organisations against Western targets.
Fifth, the Syrian opposition presents an opportunity for cooperation. Another instance of faulty logic is that the West should avoid military intervention since there is no emerging leadership to leverage international support to exile Assad's regime and effectively manage the country "the day after" his fall. The Syrian opposition coalition, however, has scored both military and territorial achievements over the past months. Recent events indicate that the opposition has generated enough momentum to significantly challenge one of the strongest armies in the region. Accordingly, current conditions favour more successful cooperation between the West and the regime's opposition than those who oppose military intervention suggest.
Finally, action in Syria might support the international campaign against Iran. Those who oppose intervening contend that it would increase Middle East tensions, move Iran out of the international focus, and sharpen the rift between Russia and China and the other members of the P5+1 who lead the negotiations with Tehran.
Acting in Syria however, could weaken, if not break, the nexus between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Palestinian terror organisations, and therefore likely contain Iranian influence in the Levant. This would have a dramatic impact on the balance of power between radical and pragmatic forces in the region. And it would signal to Iran the West's resolve to back up its interests and threats with force. When the US used force in Iraq in 2003, Iran suspended its nuclear programme. This time, force might put additional pressure on Ayatollah Khamenei. A "Syria first" approach might complement international efforts and undermine Tehran's recalcitrance vis-à-vis the West.
A gradual military intervention along the lines of the Libyan model of a Western aerial campaign seems the most effective response to the Syrian crisis. Only if Assad assesses that Western intervention is a real threat might he abdicate and make room for leadership with better prospects for halting the violence. The West must not let unfounded fears guide its policy while atrocities in Syria continue.
Only bombing Assad's forces will stop the slaughter now
(Amos Yadlin, Opinion Essay, The UK Independent, September 6, 2012)
Clinton: Deep differences with Russia on Syria
(MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press, September 8, 2012)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday acknowledged deep differences with Russia over how to handle the crisis in Syria, saying she would continue to try to convince Moscow to back increased international pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad even if such a step is unlikely.
A day after Russia soundly rejected her call for U.N. sanctions to be imposed on Syria if Assad refuses to stop fighting and relinquish power, Clinton said she was "realistic" in her approach. She said that if the Russians refused to go along the United States and its friends would boost their support for the Syrian opposition.
"The United States disagrees with the approach on Syria," she told reporters at a news conference at the end of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit where she was filling in for President Barack Obama. "We have to bring more pressure to bear on the Assad regime to end the bloodshed and begin a political, democratic transition."
The Obama administration has been hoping to jack up pressure on Assad at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session and potentially introduce a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would include sanctions. Russia and China have blocked three previous similar resolutions because they could lead to sanctions.
In discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Clinton said she had underscored the resolution "will only be effective if it includes consequences for non-compliance."
"There is no point in passing a resolution with no teeth because we have seen time and time again that Assad will ignore it and keep attacking his own people," she said.
But, she allowed that convincing the Russians would be a tough, if not impossible sell.
"We have to be realistic," she said. "We haven't seen eye-to-eye with Russia on Syria."
"That may continue, and if it does continue, then we will work with like-minded states to support the Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls and to help prepare Syria for a democratic future and help it get back on its feet again," she said.
After meeting Clinton on Saturday, Lavrov said bluntly Russia opposes penalties against the Assad government, in addition to new ones against Iran over its nuclear program, in part because they harm Russian commercial interests.
"Our American partners have a prevailing tendency to threaten and increase pressure, adopt ever more sanctions against Syria and against Iran," Lavrov said. "Russia is fundamentally against this, since for resolving problems you have to engage the countries you are having issues with and not isolate them."
Unilateral U.S. sanctions against Syria and Iran increasingly take on an extraterritorial character, directly affecting the interests of Russian business, in particular banks, he said.
"We clearly stated that this was unacceptable, and they listened to us. What the result will be, I don't know," Lavrov said.
Clinton had told Lavrov that the Security Council needs to do more to send "a strong message" to Assad, given the escalating level of violence in Syria, said a senior U.S. official, adding that the council risks "abrogating its responsibility" if it fails to act. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.
Russia and China have blocked three Security Council resolutions that would have punished Syria if the Assad government did not accept a negotiated political transition. Clinton said in Beijing this past week that the U.S. was "disappointed" by the vetoes.
She had earlier called the actions "appalling" and said they put Russia and China on the "wrong side of history." That assertion was rejected by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at a news conference with Clinton on Wednesday, when Yang said history would prove China's position to be correct.
The question of sanctions against Syria and Iran will be a main topic of conversation among officials later this month at the U.N. General Assembly.
Despite Russia's refusal to join the U.S. and its allies in seeking more pressure against Syria and Iran, Clinton said the Obama administration wants Congress to remove Russia from a 1974 law that denies Russia normal trade relations with the U.S because of Soviet-era laws restricting the emigration of Jews.
Now that Russia has joined the World Trade Organization, membership that the United States long supported, Clinton said it would be "ironic" if American businesses were unable to do business in Russia because of U.S. law.
Egypt Hosts Meeting of 4 Nations in New Syria Push
(Associated Press - CAIRO - September 10, 2012)
Diplomats from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt held on Monday the first gathering of a quartet of regional heavyweights aiming to work out a resolution for Syria's civil war.
The quartet is an initiative put forward by Egypt's new president aiming to bring together key supporters of the Syrian rebellion — Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Egypt itself — with Iran, the biggest regional ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Syria's bloody 18-month conflict, which activists say has killed at least 23,000 people, has so far stymied attempts at international mediation.
The new U.N. envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, is heading to Damascus this week, tasked with brokering a diplomatic solution. The peace plan of his predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, collapsed, and Annan stepped down in frustration.
The new quartet may also have trouble reaching common ground. Sunni-led Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have called on Assad to step down; Shiite Iran has firmly stood by Assad. Saudi Arabia and Iran are also bitter rivals with longstanding disagreements over Gulf security issues.
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi appears to be hoping that bringing Iran into the quartet can eventually sway it to accept an alternative to Assad and put its weight behind a peace initiative. Last month, he went to Tehran for an international conference and gave a full-throated call for the world to back the Syrian opposition, startling his Iranian hosts.
The sessions that began Monday were among diplomats preparing for a possible higher-level meeting of the four country's foreign ministers later, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said.
Egypt is hoping the group can find consensus on an initiative calling for an immediate end to violence, maintaining the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria, supporting Brahimi's mission and launching a political process with various spectrums of Syrian society, the ministry said in a statement.
The quartet is aimed at "stopping the bloodshed by launching a political process designed to achieve the aspirations of the Syrian people for freedom and dignity," the ministry said.
Similarly, Annan's peace plan was centered on a cease-fire that was supposed to open the way to political dialogue. But the fighting never stopped.
In Cairo for talks ahead of his trip to Syria, Brahimi met with Morsi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr and Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby on Monday.
Morsi, who came to power as a result of his country's own Arab Spring uprising, proposed the four-nation contact group during a conference of Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia last month.
It’s the Syrians who will pay for murders of Americans in Libya
(By Juliette Kayyem, The Boston Globe, Opinion Essay, September 12, 2012)
The murder of a US ambassador is a shocking event, so rare that the last time it happened the Russians were in Afghanistan. The Libyan government has made all the right overtures in response to violence that was instigated by a shallow YouTube video by a self-described American-Israeli who calls Islam a “cancer.” But the larger implications of the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans won’t be felt in Libya. They will be felt in Syria.
The tragedy in Libya will put serious brakes on calls for international humanitarian intervention in Syria. The drumbeat for Western powers to end Bashar Assad’s regime once and for all had only grown stronger in the last weeks of August and into September. And for obvious reasons. Syria is now more prone to violence than Iraq was at the height of the war there. Russia and China continue to use their vetoes at the UN Security Council to void any international efforts to help the divided rebels. Iran is increasingly comfortable in propping up its Syrian friends in the Assad regime. Foreign militants converge on Syria in hopes that a post-Assad regime will be an Islamic government. Refugees continue to flee to Turkey and Jordan, creating levels of violence in two nations that have remained relatively stable in this era of Middle East unrest.
Arms are flowing to the Syrian government from Iran and Russia; arms flow to the Syrian rebels from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Amid this utter chaos, humanitarian interventionists challenged Western nations to step forward and save lives and end the brutality. Look at the success of humanitarian intervention in Libya, they said, and the evidence seemed remarkably hard to refute. The NATO mission in Libya, led by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, seemed to be a case study for how to get in, save lives, and get out.
After months of resistance, Western powers began to pay attention. The new French president, Francois Hollande, seemed to shift course and embrace the rebels after months of delay. He was prodded by none other than Sarkozy himself, who came out of post-election hiding to make the case that Syrian intervention could succeed like the Libyan mission. Hollande responded by giving a little ground.
It was the concession that Syrian activists were waiting for. Hollande, who won on a platform of mocking Sarkozy’s interventionist fervor, was now willing to recognize a provisional government made up of the Syrian opposition and send direct aid to support the rebels. It was Libya redux.
But there was always something careless about the Libya/Syria analogy, something that seemed to belie the facts on the ground. With few friends, Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy was expendable; he was the “crazy Arab” that other Arab nations viewed as such. Libya was no powerhouse, and intervention did not ignite a proxy war with Iran or Russia. The Libyan rebels were unified; the Syrian rebel groups are plentiful, and their actions are often grossly violent. (And, it is worth remembering, even in “easy” Libya, the air war took months longer than anyone anticipated.)
Nonetheless, Hollande’s statement marked a huge change of current. Syria, after all, had been a colony of France, and France’s absence in debates about intervention was telling. If France moved, maybe others would, too? And then came the killings of Stevens and the other Americans, a vivid reminder than analogies don’t really work in foreign policy. This flare-up of Libyan violence may prove to be an aberration, but murdered US ambassadors are not easily forgotten.
The argument for involvement in Syria can no longer hide behind the shadows of Libya. The tragedy will have tremendous consequences for how the United States can and will position its Syrian strategy. Libya is simply no longer a compelling piece of evidence in favor of Syrian intervention. Without the “easy” case to rely on, the more difficult case for intervention becomes that much harder.
With Libya and Egypt in violence, a US ambassador dead, and potential uprisings throughout the Muslim world, the only person who had a good day on Wednesday was Bashar Assad.
U.N. envoy to Syria holds first meeting with Assad
(By Babak Dehghanpisheh, The Washington Post, September 15, 2012)
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi held his first meeting with Syrian president Bashar al Assad on Saturday, a last-ditch attempt to find a political solution to the conflict as fighting raged in several cities around the country.
Brahimi, who has been blunt in his assessment of the difficulties of his task, told Assad that the solution could only come from the Syrian people, according to an account of the meeting published by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).
For his part, Assad claimed that there would be no resolution of the conflict until the flow of cash and arms to “terrorists,” the common term used by the president for the rebel fighters, is stopped.
“The success of the political work is linked to pressing the countries which fund and train the terrorists, confiscate weapons into Syria to stop such acts,” Assad said, according to SANA.
Brahimi’s visit to Damascus comes a little over a month after Kofi Annan bitterly resigned from the post, blasting members of the U.N. Security Council and the Syrian government — which he characterized as “40 years of dictatorship” in an op-ed in the Financial Times — for their unwillingness to follow his peace plan.
That peace plan may still be used as a blueprint for Brahimi to follow, analysts say, but the level of violence has ramped up dramatically since Annan’s departure, with more than 100 Syrians dying each day, according to tallies by opposition groups, and both the government and the opposition showing little interest in genuine negotiations.
Brahimi’s mission will be further complicated by the lack of U.N. observers on the ground who could give him an accurate assessment of what’s happening on the battlefield. Some 300 U.N. observers pulled out of the country in mid-August, citing the rising levels of violence, a move that may have sent a louder message about U.N. commitment to the country than the arrival of Brahimi, analysts say.
Still, Brahimi has expressed his intention to do his best, and met Friday with a handful of opposition figures tolerated by the government. “We will try to do our best to provide ideas and find what the situation needs to help the Syrian people get out of this disaster,” he said at a news conference after the meeting with Assad, according to SANA.
Brahimi also said that the conflict posed a “threat to Syria, the region and the entire world,” according to the Associated Press.
The Geopolitics of Refugee Crises
(Lionel Beehner, WorldPolicy.org, September 13, 2012)
Two hundred thousand Syrian refugees have poured into neighboring countries in recent months as their country descends ever deeper into civil war. In August alone, over 100,000 refugees fled Syria, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The flood of refugees has pushed Turkey to amplify its calls for a no-fly zone near Idlib along its border, not unlike the no-fly zone imposed on northern Iraq to protect Kurds from becoming refugees in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. All of which invites the question: Is there a magic threshold before outside powers intervene to stem the tide of asylum seekers?
The relationship between refugee crises and humanitarian interventions remains unclear. On one hand, the use of brute and indiscriminate force appears to be a deliberate tactic by the Assad regime to displace locals and create refugee flows, thereby raising the costs for outside powers like Turkey to either provide humanitarian assistance or intervene militarily. But this tactic could also backfire, prompting calls for greater military involvement by the West.
A look back at recent interventions is instructive on how the size and scope of refugee flows has swayed policymakers and the public to intervene militarily. One of the major motivations behind the northern Iraq no-fly zone, established in 1991 was to relieve the burden of an estimated million-plus Kurds seeking shelter in Turkey by creating a secure zone for them within Iraq. Ankara was particularly worried about the influx of refugees exacerbating tensions among its own Kurds in the southeast, creating a kind of “Kurdish Gaza Strip” that could become a lawless zone of instability. In Bosnia and Kosovo, similar spillovers of refugees and the threat they posed to regional stability provided the catalyst for greater involvement and eventual military intervention. As then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it, “Spreading conflict … could flood the region with refugees and create a haven for international terrorists, drug traffickers, and criminals.”
That being said, obviously not all refugee crises lead to international interventions. In fact, most don’t. The Great Lakes refugee crisis of 1994—when over 2 million Rwandans, most of them Hutus, fled during the aftermath of the genocide into neighboring countries—resulted in little humanitarian relief or interventions from outside parties like the U.S., just a few Dutch medics and nurses and a French field hospital. The biggest refugee crisis in recent memory—Iraq between 2003 and 2007—was the consequence of U.S. intervention, not the cause.
But refugees can create humanitarian crises and export instability, which in turn can ratchet up domestic pressure for military interventions. In Haiti, for example, the 1991 coup by General Raoul Cedras and an attack against pro-Aristide shanty towns two years later by forces loyal to him set off a chain of events that left some 500 Aristide supporters dead, over 300,000 Haitians internally displaced, and roughly 100,000 refugees, mostly forced to flee on ramshackle rafts heading for the U.S. coast. The coup and subsequent refugee crisis ratcheted up pressure on Washington to respond with military force. The intervention was preceded by an arms and fuel embargo against the Cedras regime by the UN Security Council, the deployment of international monitors to document human rights abuses, and the freezing of all government funds. The only real threat posed to the U.S. homeland was the boatloads of Haitians seeking refuge, but it hardly posed a vital national security interest. Still, the Black Caucus and pro-Aristide camp pushed President Bill Clinton to issue calls for a multilateral intervention in 1994. Peacekeeping responsibilities, however, were not handed over to the UN until March 1995, well after the 20,000-strong force, almost all of them American, landed in Haiti for Operation Uphold Democracy.
Similarly in Libya last spring, the flood of refugees to Europe’s southern shores created what the UN high commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres, described to The New York Times as a “logistical nightmare,” intensifying calls for a NATO no-fly zone. Over one million Libyans entered into Tunisia, Egypt, and other North African countries, while over a thousand refugees died en route to Europe by boat. Guterres also complained about Europe’s “grudging” response to resettle Libyan war refugees. Refugee crises also raise worries about health epidemics. But did the worsening refugee situation impede or hasten NATO’s eventual military intervention? As with Haiti, the first response was to free Libyan assets and tighten sanctions. There also was an airlift to repatriate workers. Yet, had there been no refugees, or looming threat of even greater refugee flows that could have unsettled Libya’s neighbors, it appears unlikely there would have been an intervention. After all, President Obama, in his March 28, 2011 address on calling for the intervention, said, “A massacre [in Benghazi] would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful—yet fragile—transitions in Egypt and Tunisia."
Despite their recurrent use, legal opinion is divided on whether interventions to prevent refugee crises are even justified under international law. Alan Dowty and Gil Loescher argue that customary law allows for some preventive action against refugee flows. They write, “A country that forces its people to flee or takes actions that compel them to leave in a manner that threatens regional peace and security has in effect internationalized its internal affairs, and provides a cogent justification for policymakers elsewhere to act directly upon the source of the threat.” Hence, the intervention would be both humanitarian and aimed at restoring peace, which could require removing the offending government and still be within the bounds of proportionality. Other scholars, however, dispute the notion that a refugee crisis provides any legal basis for military intervention. Peter Malanczuk has argued that the no-fly zones imposed in Northern Iraq in 1991 were illegal because the crisis did not sufficiently meet the criteria of posing “a threat to international peace and security in the region.” (Then-UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali also thought the no-fly zone was illegal). Other legal experts, such as Eric Posner, argue that refugee crises get lumped under the “responsibility to protect” mantle, which he worries is too “capacious a norm to regulate states” because “it can be cited to justify virtually any intervention in the type of country that the West might want to invade, while it can also be evaded on grounds that it is not formal law.”
The legality of interventions, however, is rarely a reliable barometer of the likelihood of outside intervention. The reason is that most interventions occupy a legal grey zone and fall under the category of what Judge Richard Goldstone, in his postwar investigation of Kosovo, described as “illegal but legitimate.” Nor is there a magic threshold of the size of refugee flows that prompts outside intervention: Libya’s crisis, after all, paled in comparison to Rwanda’s. Interventions occur when direct national security interests or those of allies, are thrown into question by refugee flows. The size, scope, and legality of such crises are important but insufficient predictors of military action.
Unfortunately for Turkey, it cannot act alone in Syria, as its hands are already full providing food and shelter to the 100,000-plus refugees already within its borders, not to mention its concerns that military action could spark a secessionist crisis among its own Kurdish population. Nor is the United States likely to come to Turkey’s defense and impose another no-fly zone as it did in 1991, given the lack of political will and fears of becoming bogged down in yet another sectarian civil war in the region. Even if Washington did intervene, there is little evidence such a humanitarian corridor would stem the tide of refugees out of Syria, and in fact, it could make the situation far worse for those not under its no-fly umbrella, thus exacerbating the refugee crisis on the borders of Jordan and Lebanon. Worse, the scholars Karl DeRouen and Michael Barutciski have found that the more displacement caused by civil war, the harder it is to keep the peace afterward, something that does not bode well for Syria's democratic future.
Hence, all sides of the Syrian crisis are in a kind of holding pattern. Refugees will continue to seek safety, while Assad’s forces will continue to pummel population centers. Turkey will plead for greater U.S. or NATO involvement, which will only grow louder as the humanitarian crisis on its border worsens. But the prospects for intervention seem dim. After all, it is not the size of the refugee flows that prompt the outside world to take action but rather self-interested geopolitics.
It’s the Syrians who will pay for murders of Americans in Libya
The murder of a US ambassador is a shocking event,
Investigators detail rights abuses in Syria
(Deutsche Welle, September 17, 2012)
Investigators have announced a list of Syrians suspected of war crimes. After his trip to Syria over the weekend, international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is in Egypt for talks with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi.
The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, led by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, announced "a formidable and extraordinary body of evidence" pointing toward war crimes and rights abuses in Syria that could be used against suspects should the situation arrive in the International Criminal Court.
"Gross violations of human rights have grown in number, in pace and in scale," Pinheiro told diplomats in Geneva on Monday.
The investigators also announced an "increasing and alarming presence" of Islamist militants in Syria, some joining the rebels and others operating independently. Their presence tends to radicalize the rebels who have also committeed crimes, according to investigators.
After meeting with President Bashar Assad in Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League joint special envoy, warned that the worsening conflict threatens the region and the world at large.
In Cairo on Monday, Brahimi is expected to attend a meeting of foreign ministers of a Syria "contact group" of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims the conflict has killed more than 27,000 people. The United Nations puts the figure at 20,000.
Regional Powers Discuss Syrian Crisis
(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 18, 2012)
Regional powers have met to discuss the crisis in Syria.
The so-called "contact group" brings together Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- who are all demanding that President Bashar Assad step down -- as well as Iran, which backs him.
They met in Cairo on September 17 to discuss ways to end the crisis.
For unclear reasons, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, however, did not attend and no one was sent in his place.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr said the contact group had decided to meet again in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said the four states have a "big role" to play in Syria.
"For us to expect a speedy resolution in this meeting is not realistic. We need to be patient," Salehi said. "However, I assure you that the cooperation outweighs the differences and all confirm the need to find a peaceful solution and specifically the influential countries in the region -- Egypt, Turkey, and Iran and Saudi Arabia -- they have a large role and can bring forward suggestions that in the end, God willing, will bring a result that will make everyone happy."
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke of the need for "regional ownership of the issues of our region."
"What we observed today [is] that there are certain principles we agree, but there are certain differences of opinion as you may expect," Davutoglu said. "And we also have the ultimate objective to have a strong Syria after this process, based on the legitimate rights and demands of the Syrian people and how to achieve these goals.
"We will continue to discuss -- nobody should expect from one meeting an immediate action plan which we agree upon and could be presented to others," he continued. "But [what is] important is regional ownership and regional initiative that we decided together."
Analysts, however, are doubtful of the group's chances of success given the distrust between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Analysts say Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi spearheaded efforts to form the group in hopes of bolstering Egypt's role as a regional powerbroker.
Meanwhile, the violence shows no sign of letting up inside Syria.
Syrian activists say nearly 5,000 people were killed in August, the highest monthly total since the crisis began in March 2011, bringing the overall death toll from the conflict to some 23,000.
Intervention, Please: the 'No-Fly Zone' Requests You Don't Hear About
(By Micah Zenko, The Atlantic Monthly, January 2012)
Last spring, the Arab League convened an emergency meeting at its headquarters in Cairo to discuss a certain government's air strikes against a certain Arab population. They called the strikes, which had reportedly killed at least a dozen civilians and suspected militants, "plotted barbaric aggression." At the conclusion of their meeting, the Arab League issued a statement demanding that UN Security Council convene "on an urgent basis" and impose a no-fly zone (NFZ) to protect those Arab civilians from future attacks. They asked for outside military force, but they were ignored.
The Arab League was advocating to protect not anti-Qaddafi fighters in Libya but Arabs in the Gaza Strip, which the Israeli Air Force was bombing in retaliation for rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel. Less than one month earlier, the Arab League had asked for a NFZ in Libya, a request that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton an event "of historic importance" that "would be quite unfortunate if the international community were to have ignored." But when the pan-Arab institution sought the same sort of international military support for the Gaza Strip, they were ignored by the U.S. and the entire international community -- or, at least, the countries with deployable air forces.
The distinction in how the world treated the force requests for the Gaza Strip and Libya are worth keeping in mind as the demands from Syrian civilians and armed opponents of the Bashar al-Assad regime for intervention escalate. From Gaza to Somalia, governments and groups make far more requests for humanitarian intervention than you'll hear about in the press. Nearly all of them are summarily rejected as impractical or an inappropriate use of force. Here are just eight of the most recent examples of à la carte requests for military force with humanitarian aims, not one of which was honored or even seriously entertained:
1. In May 2010 (and again in October 2011), the East Africa security bloc Inter Governmental Authority for Development requested that the UN institute a NFZ and naval blockade in Somalia.
2. In February 2011, the Cambodian prime minister appealed to the UN to establish a buffer zone along the border between Cambodia and Thailand to prevent the escalation of skirmishes over the disputed territory near the Preah Vihear Temple.
3. In June 2011, Vice President of South Sudan Riek Machar requested that the UN Security Council establish an international buffer zone between Sudan and South Sudan to prevent military confrontations.
4. At a regional summit in September 2011, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called on the United Nations to support Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, and the African Union Mission forces helping it, in implementing "corridors of humanitarian assistance" in Somalia.
5. In October 2011, Kenyan and Somali government officials called on "big countries and big organizations" to blockade the seaport of Kismayo, Somalia, which is controlled by al-Shabaab militants.
6. In December 2011, over 20 international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) petitioned the UN Security Council to establish a NFZ over "Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan, Darfur, Abyei and also along the border between South and North Sudan," an area slightly smaller than Texas, "for protection of civilians." (About a month earlier, 66 American NGOs had made a similar request.)
7. The same month, Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, sent a letter to the Obama administration in December 2011 that asked for the United States to impose a NFZ over the border between Sudan and South Sudan.
8. Also in December 2011, the African Union appealed to the UN Security Council to establish a NFZ over and maritime blockades around Somalia. It made similar requests in October 2010, April 2011, and September 2011.
Not one of these received the slightest support from the UN Security Council, NATO, the Obama administration, or any other country able to project military power. It's unlikely that you even heard about it. It's not hard to imagine the three big reasons they were all likely rejected: they were not in anyone's national interest; they required greater resources to achieve a lasting impact than were available; or they were the wrong military mission to achieve the intended military and political objectives.
Since Syrians began the No-Fly Zone Friday demonstrations in late October, such protests have been held in Damascus, Homs, Horan, Qamishli, Al Hiffah, and elsewhere to request the world implement a NFZ. The supposed leaders of the opposition movement in exile have described how this NFZ should be implemented in different ways. Last Thursday, the head of the Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, re-demanded a NFZ along the Syria-Turkey border to be enforced by any country (except the United States), although in a more limited form than the selectively enforced mission over Libya. "We don't have to destroy all the Syrian air force," he said. "You only need to secure a specific zone and this can be done without damaging the whole defenses of the country."
A NFZ in Syria is the wrong military mission for protecting civilians who are being brutally suppressed and killed by the Assad regime through infantry forces, tanks, and sniper fire. Over 4,000 Syrians have died since the last time that the regime used airpower against civilians (June 10), as best can be determined.
There are more demands for international military force to protect civilians and assure the delivery of humanitarian assistance than one might imagine. Most are in response to legitimate emergencies, such as in South Sudan, where, according to the UN, more than 600 people were killed in a cattle raid in a single day in August and where another 150 people -- mostly women and children -- were killed over five days last week.
When people within the effected country or region -- or policymakers and policy analysts in the West --request military intervention, they should be aware of who they are saying "no" to and what accounts for that distinction.
There are three primary reasons for the difference between intervention requests the world entertains and those it does not. First, in the case of Libya and now Syria, both were ruled by well-known and sufficiently demonized autocrats who had been told to step down from power by the United States and European governments. Here, intervening to save lives is a useful pretext for the strategic objective of regime change.
Second, other NFZ demands were not accompanied by a decision-forcing point that catalyzed international political will, such as the Srbrenica massacre in 1995, the Racak massacre in 1999, or the attempted siege of Benghazi last March. Without such a well-publicized incident, any conflict zone can appear to be open-ended disasters that swing from one crisis to the next. Finally, seven of the eight force requests were from Africa, which is under-reported in Western media despite it being the most conflict-prone continent for decades. You cannot conceive of saving lives with military force if you are unaware they are at risk. All of which argues for the consistent and universal application of principles beyond what you read in this morning's paper.
