UN Security Council must intervene in Syrian conflict

Last year's international military intervention in Libya, crucial in the overthrow of the late Muammar Gaddafi, will surely be remembered for the spirit of multilateralism in which it was undertaken. The United Nations (UN) Security Council passed Resolution 1973, authorizing a no-fly zone and calling for the protection of Libyan civilians from their violent and repressive government. There were five abstentions—Brazil, Russia, India, China and Germany—but no nation saw fit to derail the process with a veto. The urgency of the Libyan problem was clear to all involved, and the UN recognized that its responsibility to protect the Libyan people—in the new, legalistic form of R2P—had been triggered. The nations of the world had placed themselves in the unique situation of being legally bound to impinge on a nation's sovereignty.

This time around it is Syria that has captured the world's attention; last weekend the Syrian government bombed the city of Homs, killing what is estimated to be over 200 people. All told, the UN estimates that over 5400 people have been killed by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since anti-government protests erupted last March. In the intervening months, most of the world has rightfully condemned Assad's acts as nothing less than mass murder. Hours after the Homs massacre the UN Security Council was poised to pass a resolution backing a plan developed in coordination with the Arab League to quell the violence and formally condemn the Assad regime. At this critical moment Russia and China both voted to veto the resolution, leaving the Syrian people in the lurch where they've been for nearly a year.

The Russians, it must be noted, have been holding up UN Security Council discussion of the Syrian conflict for months and keeping sanctions out of draft resolutions. They also sell weapons to Syria, and maintain a military base in the country, according to Bloomberg. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, after the vote, characterized the Russians as obstructionistic. Its chief rationale for vetoing the resolution came from concern that Assad was being "singled out," according to the BBC. China, for its part, called the resolution "unproductive," and was likely motivated to veto by its traditional solidarity with Russia and its interests in maintaining stability of leadership in the Middle East. Russia's and China's unwillingness to cast aside the Assad regime has had the secondary effect of weakening the Arab League, an organization that gained prominence as it helped to marshal international support for the Libyan intervention, and had begun to show promise as a forum for coalition in the conflict-ridden Middle East.

What can the international community do to help Syria now that the resources of the UN have been locked away? According to the Associated Press, Secretary Clinton has advocated for medical supply and food airlifts. President Barack Obama, despite calling for Assad's resignation, has not explicitly suggested there should be any military intervention in Syria, probably because he senses that the political stars have not aligned here as they did so convincingly for Libya. More and more the situation on the ground in Syria appears to be sliding out of control. Humanitarian intervention on the ground is becoming increasingly dangerous. The Economist notes that Russia's and China's intransigence is costing them international support on the matter, including the backing of South Africa and India. It is, of course, already taking too long to implement a decisive plan of action against Assad, but perhaps with time a coalition may present itself if support continues to increase.

Meanwhile, Syria is currently in the process of drafting a new constitution, the passage of which will be subject to a national referendum. International leaders, however, are skeptical of the fruits this process will bear, given the emptiness of Assad's past guarantees of political reform. "[W]hat we seem to have is a re-upping of this same offer that Assad has been making for months and months and months," said a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.

There are those who argue that the intervention in Libya should never have come to fruition, and set an irreversible precedent. Generally these people argue that national sovereignty should remain an inviolable principle in spite of despicable actions states may take against their own people—an argument that directly contradicts R2P, which has been in place since 2005. With respect to American action, opponents of R2P argue that presidents might invoke it in order to circumvent the War Powers Resolution. But all these arguments fail to address the vacuum that remains when R2P is taken away and a state disregards the constraints of its sovereignty—which, as argued by former State Department director of policy planning Anne-Marie Slaughter in The Atlantic last year, is nothing less than the obligation to "‘protect and serve'" its people—and begins to systematically kill its citizens.

R2P currently provides for potential intervention on a case-by-case basis, and as we saw in the lead-up to the Libya intervention, the process of intergovernmental cooperation remains relatively informalized. In my estimation, the current system does not go far enough. Had Russia and China been operating on the same incentives that led them to veto a Syria plan last year, Muammar Gaddafi may well have gotten away with his murderous war against civil protest. The Security Council veto works directly against the spirit of R2P. As Slaughter noted in a separate Atlantic article, R2P effectively gets rid of what she calls the "closed sphere" assumptions embedded in the UN Charter, transforming sovereignty from a quantity particular to a "territory and a defined population" and connecting it to a worldwide system of accountability. When one country can derail this system, whether because it has a weapons deal or because it values the regional status quo, all oppressed people suffer for it.

A piece posted on the Slate website the day after the veto makes the case that the composition of the UN Security Council is a product of the post-World War II environment and should be updated to reflect the current balance of power. Once again, however, the veto pops up as a roadblock to reform. It allows the persistence of an institution that remains largely ineffective as a whole, only emerging as a true power when it is graced with the luck of political expedience. It is impossible to say that Libya got lucky; thousands of civilians had died by the time NATO and European forces enforced the no-fly zone. But conditions in Syria are just as dire, and deserve the same response afforded Syria. Anything less is a failure of international law, an abdication of our responsibility to protect, and a tragedy for the Syrian citizenry.

—Lane Kisonak '13 is a political science major. He is also Opinions Editor for The Miscellany News.