Libya bitten, Syria shy (original) (raw)

The fate of United Nations action on Syria may have been decided months ago in Libya

By R.L.G. | NEW YORK

IN 2005 all the world's countries signed up, in theory, to a new norm called the "responsibility to protect". In short, the idea is that a government is sovereign because it protects its people. When it cannot do so—or worse, is the perpetrator of mass violence against its own—the responsibility to protect them may devolve to the international community. For a while, this norm was mostly airy, referred to when other countries or United Nations diplomats got involved to stop violence in its earliest phases. But some construe the "responsibility to protect" as a mandate for "liberal interventionism": the right of outside countries to step in militarily when abuses get serious enough.

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