Syria and the Demise of 'Responsibility to Protect'

There is no sugar-coating the damage done to the cause of humanitarian intervention by the global wavering over Syria. This is particularly stark when considering that the conflict has occurred so closely on the heels of the 2011 Libya intervention, which many human-rights activists initially touted as a model for future application of so-called “responsibility to protect” (R2P)—the new U.N. doctrine that supposedly obligates all states to protect civilians whenever and wherever they are threatened with mass killing.