Introduction

For centuries, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been the battlefield of great-power games. Among the Arab states in the MENA, Syria is precisely a key intersection, with an important geographical location and concentrated sectarian and ethnic conflicts. In the first decade of the 21st century, Europe emerged as a unique “civilian power” with the structure of the European Union (EU) through integration. At the beginning of the 21st century, Europe gained self-confidence from its successful regional integration after WWII. For more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the EU insisted on the authority of the UN and advocated to resolve crises by political means in most cases, except for the Kosovo War in the late 1990s, when the EU agreed to use force to drive Milosevic out of power. Since the 1990s, Western international law academe has been developing in the direction of weakening sovereignty.