INTERNATIONAL BUNGLING

摘要

LA: Ultimately the diplomatic battlefield is in the UN Security Council, but even then we can't enforce our global morality at the point of a bayonet. The days of Western coalitions conducting shock and awe in Afghanistan and Iraq with a careless attitude to international law are numbered. After Kosovo, a new legal concept emerged - The responsibility to protect or R2P - which asserts that governments should have an "obligation" to protect their people, not abuse them. We invoked this with Libya, whereby we helped where we could with a coalition wider than the West and with the backing of international law. The ramshackle Libyan rebel army, with Nato support, created a new way of intervening.