The Atlantic – Joshua Foust: Syria and the World’s Troubling Inconsistency on Intervention
In his column for the Atlantic, ASP fellow Joshua Foust writes about the inconsistent standards on intervention.
Keeping Syria in the context of other civil conflicts does not excuse or justify the bloodshed. But it should lead us to ask why some people who advocate an intervention now in Syria did not do so with those prior conflicts. That doesn’t mean they must necessarily be wrong, of course, but it does provide an opportunity for understanding the justifications and motivations for intervention.
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Some of the world’s worst conflicts with the highest numbers of civilian dead go receive far less attention in the global media and Western capitals than does Syria. That’s not an argument for ignoring Syria as well, of course, nor is it an argument for intervening in every conflict. But the discrepancy should lead us to ask why Syria gets so much more attention than, for example, Sri Lanka, and whether our metrics to evaluate who deserves an intervention are really fair or objective. Establishing tandards matters, and when it comes to the relatively new idea of a “responsibility to protect,” we’re still figuring that out.
