How Syria Stymied the UN

The civil war marked the start of a new, contentious era at the Security Council

As I write, the situation on the ground in Syria is extremely fluid. After over a decade of stalemate, opposition forces are making remarkable gains. The Syrian army is seemingly melting away, retreating from several key cities. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Damascus falls, and the regime of Bashar al-Assad along with it.

In the face of this renewed and intense fighting, parts of the UN system are snapping into action—specifically, the humanitarian agencies, which are on the ground delivering assistance to people who’ve been displaced. On the other hand, the Security Council is doing next to nothing, other than providing a forum in which the American and Russian representatives can trade insults. Alas, this has been more or less the status quo for the Syria file at the Security Council for the last 14 years.

As Anjali Dayal and I discuss in this episode of our UN podcast To Save Us From Hell, the Syria conflict marked a turning point for the Security Council’s ability to meaningfully respond to conflicts. From the end of the Cold War until the Syria conflict, the Security Council would sometimes intervene to stop conflicts. Now, it almost never does. Disputes over how to approach the Syria conflict have both reflected and accelerated the widening geopolitical rift between the United States and Russia, which has stymied action on a range of threats to international peace and security.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why the Syria conflict marked the end of an era for the Security Council — and the start of a new, far more contentious one

• How the non-permanent members of the Security Council became crucial to keeping humanitarian corridors open for the Syrian people

• What it means that the leading Syrian opposition force, HTS, is designated as a terrorist group by the UN and is under UN sanctions

• How the UN might approach Syria if the Assad regime falls

Plus: we have a random digression into Javier Pérez de Cuéllar’s innovative diplomatic style during the First Gulf War!

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Audio embed below the fold