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.
Local leaders, activists, and regional and international organisations have a responsibility to make sure that these revolutions do not just result in a different brand of self-serving rulers.
The history of US foreign policy is a violent and bloody one, although this is not necessarily the dominant perception of most Americans. It is in fact, the most warring nation in modern history. It is in this historical context that we have to try and understand its current military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Libya.
To seize the opportunity of this historic moment of political change and support democratization in the Arab world, Obama needs to fill in the details of how the USA and the international community will offer concrete, sizeable and sustained help towards securing political reforms throughout the region in the coming months and years.
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