Achieving an effective international consensus to stop the killing in Syria has little to do with semantics. It has much more to do with the squandered legacy of the Responsibility to Protect.
Months after the outbreak of the uprising in Syria, Damascus continues its steady descent into sectarian strife and is at the epicenter of a regional struggle that may well shape the new political contours of the Middle East.
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.
Syria is different to all other countries hit by the Arab Spring. The international community’s main security concern should be the fate of Syrian WMDs.
The question is not whether the regime will crumble, but rather when, and under what circumstances. The answers will have a profound impact on the future of Syria and the Arab world.
Turkey should push for humanitarian assistance and sanctions, whilst putting serious diplomatic pressure on the Assad regime.
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 best response to the crisis in Syria is the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force to oversee an inclusive political process for a new Syrian constitution.
Syria surely demonstrates, in all too graphic detail, the limits of R2P and the pressing need for creative thinking about profound reforms of the UN which address the P5 veto in the Security Council and the absence of a UN standing army.
The China–Russia veto does not prove the irrelevance of the UN Security Council. Rather, it proves that the politics of the Security Council must be got right before an R2P military intervention; and the political equilibrium should be maintained during the operation.
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