A draft resolution on the Syrian crisis submitted by Morocco in the U.N. Security Council was defeated by the exercise of the veto by China and Russia o Feb. 4. The other permanent members, France, the U.S. and the U.K., condemned the two countries vehemently. At the moment, it is very difficult to foresee how the crisis will evolve.

The draft resolution, if passed, would have forced the Syrian president to cede power to the opposition, even if it did not contain any explicit provision calling for his resignation.

Our main concern here is why China and Russia vetoed the resolution this time, while they abstained in the case of the Security Council’s final resolution on the Libyan crisis last year. When the final resolution on the Libyan crisis was passed, many Western leaders and scholars expressed the view that humanitarian intervention (responsibility to protect) has finally become a universal value and part of international law.

But the Russian and Chinese actions in the Syrian case have proven that the principle of humanitarian intervention still remains the center of controversy between the West and the non-West.

If we know why China and Russia opposed military intervention by the U.N. in Libya and Syria while the U.S., France and the U.K. supported it, we can better understand the kind of changes which have been taking place in the international community since the end of the cold war and their implications for world peace and the security of nations in the future.

In both cases the Western powers supported U.N. intervention in the incumbent regimes of Libya and Syria because these regimes were committing crimes against humanity and therefore the international community should invoke its responsibility to protect innocent civilians. This view has revolutionary implications for international relations and the world order.

The U.N. is founded on the principle of state sovereignty and the concomitant principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs. According to the conventional view of international law, domestic crises in individual states belong to their domestic jurisdiction and therefore the U.N. has no right to intervene in the domestic crises in Libya and Syria. Russia and China stick to this traditional view.

In contrast, the Western powers have been pushing hard for the exclusion of four categories of atrocities ― crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing ― from the domain of domestic jurisdiction since the end of the cold war. Their theory is based on the view that individual sovereignty is more important than state sovereignty. They argue that the state exists to protect its citizens, not the other way around.

China, Russia and other non-Western states reject this view, arguing that the state is ultimately responsible for the safety and well-being of its citizens and only when a domestic crisis constitutes a threat to peace, a breach of peace or an act of aggression, the U.N. can intervene, although they adhere to the position that U.N. enforcement measures are primarily to deal with the violations of peace, not the violations of human rights. On the basis of this view, they hold that the Syrian crisis has not yet reached that stage.

The Western powers counterattack this position, maintaining that “the continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities” alone meet the requirements for U.N. intervention.

Actually, the dispute over the Syrian crisis between the Western forces and the non-Western forces represented by China and Russia reflects a new great divide between two ideological camps in the international community. The Western camp represents Western civilization whose main characteristics are Western democracy and Western Christianity and the non-Western camp, non-Western civilizations. Those countries in the Western camp are pushing for a new international legal order based on individual sovereignty while those in the non-Western camp try to preserve the existing international legal order.

This reveals that the international order is going through a transition. In other words, this means that the international community is likely to become more unstable and divisive.

This ideological divide has serious implications for peace and stability in the Korean peninsula. Some leaders and opinion makers in the Western camp advocate humanitarian intervention in North Korea’s violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

However, in view of the new great divide, it is not advisable to push for such an action in this stage, mainly because international organizations, including the U.N., will not be able to take any action. Moreover, if any states or a group of states try to intervene, the non-Western camp will vehemently oppose it, not to mention North Korea. It should be noted that why the above-cited phrase of the draft resolution is worded as “the continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental violations.”

But a more serious situation may occur if the masses revolt against the North Korean regime or the military or a military faction stages a coup, and, as a result, there are the continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Should other states individually or collectively or the U.N. intervene militarily? Will Russia, China and other non-Western countries support humanitarian intervention?

It seems that not the end of history but a new chapter of history is being written right before our own eyes.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University. ― Ed.