ABSTRACT
The disturbing populist and inward-looking politics in the West now exist side-by-side with the most gut-wrenching humanitarian disaster in recent memory during which a collective conscience was beyond shocking as half a million Syrians have been murdered in real time. The essential positive normative development over the last 15 years figures prominently throughout these pages, namely the responsibility to protect (R2P). Not all claims to justice are equally valid, and those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were superior to China's and Russia's expressed in double vetoes. At least in Kosovo, a regional organization took a unanimous decision to deploy military might to halt mass murder and displacement by using force for human protection purposes and ultimately to provide a political solution. The current dissent and disarray among aid agencies vis-à-vis both military intervention and traditional humanitarian principles reflects polarized perspectives on the ground.
