On Feb. 4, Russia and China blocked a U.N. Security Council resolution to support an Arab League peace plan for Syria. Since the conflict between President Assad's forces and Syrian protestors against his regime began in March 2011, the U.N. estimates that more that 5,000 people have been killed—well over the 2,000 minimum generally used to define wars. With the death toll growing by the day, and calls from Arab and Western leaders alike for an end to the government-led violence,
one cannot help but note the resemblance between this debate over national sovereignty and the international discussion that normally surrounds a genocide.
In both cases, it is difficult for international leaders to decide whether to intervene as international intervention is rarely clear-cut or one-sided. Part of the dilemma revolves around labels; in the case of Syria, are the government's military strikes against protestors and their supports in Homs part of a civil war? If this is the case, as the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov argues, intervention would be “taking sides in a civil war” and would thus violate an international understanding on national sovereignty that has existed since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. However, if what is happening in Syria is a "massacre," as French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé has said, then the international community has the humanitarian motivation, if not the legal obligation, to intervene.
This debate on whether to intervene in Syria is remarkably similar to the discussion that has gone on before and after genocides like Rwanda. In fact, if R.J. Rummel's definition of democide as the "murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder" is accurate, then the fact that Syrian security forces have repeatedly killed protesting civilians means that Syria has already participated in democide, genocide's more inclusive cousin.
So why have Russia and China been so reluctant to intervene? Ignoring the argument over whether intervention would be taking sides in a civil war, Fred Weir, a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, explains that "The Kremlin has always reflexively opposed foreign intervention (unless the subject was a Soviet satellite country), which in the past was equated in ideological terms with Western colonialism and imperialism." Russian leaders now insist that NATO's intervention in Libya, which occurred under the auspices of Security Resolution 1973, was simply another one of the United States' foreign regime changes. Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the State Duma's foreign affairs committee, argues that Russia's resistance to intercede in Syria is due to its beliefs on "law and noninterference," while Lavrov has gone so far to claim that "Russia's policy is not about asking someone to step down; regime change is not our profession .... the decision should be made by the Syrian people themselves."
While Russian officials may argue that their role in blocking the Syrian resolution was due to their respect for Syria's "constitutional government," there is more to this picture. If countries like Russia and China support international intervention in cases of government-directed assaults on civilians, then what is to prevent the international community from intervening when Russia and China assault their own citizens, as what happened in Russia in December when protesters took to the streets over violations of election fraud.
one cannot help but note the resemblance between this debate over national sovereignty and the international discussion that normally surrounds a genocide.
In both cases, it is difficult for international leaders to decide whether to intervene as international intervention is rarely clear-cut or one-sided. Part of the dilemma revolves around labels; in the case of Syria, are the government's military strikes against protestors and their supports in Homs part of a civil war? If this is the case, as the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov argues, intervention would be “taking sides in a civil war” and would thus violate an international understanding on national sovereignty that has existed since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. However, if what is happening in Syria is a "massacre," as French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé has said, then the international community has the humanitarian motivation, if not the legal obligation, to intervene.
This debate on whether to intervene in Syria is remarkably similar to the discussion that has gone on before and after genocides like Rwanda. In fact, if R.J. Rummel's definition of democide as the "murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder" is accurate, then the fact that Syrian security forces have repeatedly killed protesting civilians means that Syria has already participated in democide, genocide's more inclusive cousin.
So why have Russia and China been so reluctant to intervene? Ignoring the argument over whether intervention would be taking sides in a civil war, Fred Weir, a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, explains that "The Kremlin has always reflexively opposed foreign intervention (unless the subject was a Soviet satellite country), which in the past was equated in ideological terms with Western colonialism and imperialism." Russian leaders now insist that NATO's intervention in Libya, which occurred under the auspices of Security Resolution 1973, was simply another one of the United States' foreign regime changes. Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the State Duma's foreign affairs committee, argues that Russia's resistance to intercede in Syria is due to its beliefs on "law and noninterference," while Lavrov has gone so far to claim that "Russia's policy is not about asking someone to step down; regime change is not our profession .... the decision should be made by the Syrian people themselves."
While Russian officials may argue that their role in blocking the Syrian resolution was due to their respect for Syria's "constitutional government," there is more to this picture. If countries like Russia and China support international intervention in cases of government-directed assaults on civilians, then what is to prevent the international community from intervening when Russia and China assault their own citizens, as what happened in Russia in December when protesters took to the streets over violations of election fraud.
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