Nice piece of turnabout by Ian Black on Russia’s veto of the Syria motion at the UN these days. China’s decision has got a bit less attention. The thing is, the PRC has vetoed six Security Council motions since its accession in 1972. Two of these have been in the past three months; and both of those were over Syria.
Unless we assume that China has a specific and highly developed liking for a no-mark like Assad, it’s hard not to see this as a response to Libya. That motion was far more interventionist than the one on Saturday; yet China let it go through with an abstention, which seemed to be its usual policy up until recently. This is in line with frequent complaints that its understanding of how the Libyan resolution was implemented was at variance with the campaign that actually took place.
What Saturday’s resolution did was replicate the Arab League’s call for Assad to stand down, which given that he won’t paves the way for another resolution noting that Assad had defied the will of the Security Council, which in turn paves the way for something big, baggy and permissive. So from Beijing’s point of view, it’s best to intervene against intervention now.
In conclusion, after a bit of a flirtation with the idea of responsibility to protect last year, China, along with Russia, has decided to kill the whole idea, at least as practiced through the UN. Secondly, we’re seeing a much more aggressive assertion of Beijing’s traditional non-intervention stance, something that may well play out beyond the region.
Meanwhile, in Syria, things seem to be carrying on much as they were before. The difference since Saturday so far is that the notion that there’s a civil war in Syria has magically become conventional wisdom as well as being true.
I don't think civil war is the best way to describe a "clearly asymmetrical conflict".
[I'd tend to go for massacre or revolution, depending on how things turn out, assuming it doesn't develop to conventional forces on each side, which would be a civil war]
Posted by: skidmarx | February 06, 2012 at 08:51 PM
It's asymmetrical in terms of the balance of forces involved, but the Syrian rebels seem increasingly to be seizing ground and confronting the regime more or less head on. So in that sense I think the term holds.
Posted by: jamie | February 06, 2012 at 08:58 PM
I think civil war is about right, although it's in the grey zone. I'd settle for emerging civil war, but here's what the opposition looks like in Homs these days. Some of it at least.
"Secondly, we’re seeing a much more aggressive assertion of Beijing’s traditional non-intervention stance, something that may well play out beyond the region."
This is interesting. There's so much speculation on how China will change its foreign-policy orientation as it's economic/military clout grows, internal pressures and rising nationalism kicks in, etc. But I suppose the default entry option for a more assertive Chinese policy would simply be to enforce their traditional line more rigidly, now that they can, instead of trying to seek out a different role.
Posted by: alle | February 06, 2012 at 10:25 PM
Given what NATO did with UNSC 1973 - which wasn't particularly baggy or permissive - vetoing Syria 1.0 is probably a very good thing.
This just makes me think that somebody somewhere is looking at reports on the state of Iraq and Afghanistan as the US leaves or prepares to leave, and thinking "Well, that went well, all things considered! What shall we do now?" The appetite for wars of aggression doesn't seem to have diminished at all.
Posted by: Phil | February 07, 2012 at 09:48 AM