The human suffering in the Syrian crisis since February 2011 is, above all, a tragedy for the Syrian people, but also demonstrably a crisis of international intervention.
It is strange that we vest in a piece of machinery the moral blame that belongs to humans, and alarming that faith in technology and the power of numbers is leading us down a dangerous path.
A recent BBC documentary tackled the question “does humanitarian aid sometimes do more harm than good?” but missed an important opportunity by failing to ask whether we expect too much of aid in the first place.
The Civil War in Sri Lanka ended in May 2009. To date there have been no international prosecutions for the crimes that occurred. That is the gravest failure highlighted by recent disclosures.
The only thing that is precise about drone strikes is the machine that delivers them. We should be realistic about how much we can programme imprecision out of our lives – and more modest about the true nature of precision strikes.
One can see why some would argue that the Annan plan has failed. However, it is important to retain a realistic perspective about how much a third-party mediator can hope to achieve given the circumstances.
Less coercive forms of intervention have been relatively neglected by politicians and academics. The case of Syria clearly demonstrates the pitfalls of this approach.
The UN-mandated intervention in Libya is now officially at an end. Perhaps only time will tell whether Libya turns out to have been a great case of international intervention or something rather less.
Why does my heart sink when I hear the current UN-mandated action in Libya described as “humanitarian intervention”? After all, over the last 20 years the term has acquired currency — not only among Western politicians but also academics — as a description of coercive, usually military, intervention ostensibly for humanitarian purposes.
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