Realpolitik is liberating Syria from the Assad autocracy, while the institution-based international system – most notably the United Nations – has largely failed, because it depends on agreement among the permanent members of the Security Council. Moscow seems implacably committed to supporting the Damascus regime. Such is the Russians’ commitment to their traditional activist role that they are underwriting their Syrian ally at great cost to their own reputation as a constructive institution-based player, rendering impotent the mechanisms so ably used in Libya.
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