The consequences of abdication of responsibility
August 31, 2021
The Economist cover page, August 31, 2013.
This was the cover of The Economist on August 31, 2013. The Assad regime had just committed its largest massacre to date, suffocating some 1,700 Syrians to death with chemical weapons in Ghouta, near Damascus. The rest is bloody history, and not just for Syria.
But had the powers leading the response at the time - US, UK, France – heeded the advice in this editorial (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/08/31/hit-him-hard) and neutralized Assad's air force and WMDs, Syria and the world might have been a very different place today.
14+ million Syrians – over half the population – wouldn't have been displaced. Most of Syria would not have been carpet bombed. Authoritarian, populist leaders might not have stoked people's fears so easily. The Brexit referendum could have gone 52% - 48% ... the other way.
The collective abdication of responsibility allowed the ongoing catastrophe to reach incomprehensible proportions. Red lines evaporated, and with them accountability for crimes against humanity, encouraging an emboldened Assad to increase the pace and scope of the mass slaughter.
There is enough blame to go around for this appeasement of mass murderers and their allies, and for the abandonment of people left helpless in the face of monstrosity, but, above all, the responsibility lays with Barack Obama and Democrats, and with Ed Miliband and Labour.
Now, with these superpowers' retreat from Afghanistan, there was much stupefaction at their incompetence, short-sightedness - even after 20 years - and abandonment. I also saw schadenfreude from some who believe all intervention is evil - but only when it comes from "the West."
When opposition to intervention of any kind screeches to a halt when it's Russia, Iran or China intervening, or when revolution against the severe excesses of democracies is good but revolution against authoritarian regimes is bad, the short-sightedness is even more dangerous.
There was a lot wrong with the recent world order. But a new world order where ideologue, authoritarian, violent regimes are given carte blanche to do anything they want to the people they are supposed to govern, under the convenient concept of sovereignty, is terrifying.
It can't be either or. There must be a way to impose the Responsibility to Protect doctrine whenever it is needed, whether we want to help or not. We don't choose to assist a person in danger we happen to pass; we have to, legally and morally, on common ground or on private property.
One of the worst sensations is knowing that someone could have saved you, but chose not to. And what doesn't kill you doesn't necessarily make you stronger: it can make you more bitter, radical, desperate, with nothing left to lose - whether your torturer wears a suit or a robe.
