Abstract

After the reality of the Holocaust had become clear, the members of the newly formed United Nations promised to ‘never again’ allow the crime of genocide and other crimes against humanity to occur. The war in Syria demonstrated the shallow nature of this promise. How was it that Syria was allowed to spiral into an inferno in which mass atrocities were committed against civilians and millions were forcibly displaced? We begin by recounting how a popular uprising was brutally suppressed by the al-Assad government’s military forces—the result was a ‘new war’ where many of the protagonists had more to gain from war than peace. The chapter then examines the diplomatic strategies regional and global powers pursued. We note that the enforcement of the Chemical Weapons Convention signalled a rare moment, during the conflict, where there was a consensus among the great powers. No similar collective international action has been evident thus far in response to the massive harms being inflicted upon millions of innocent civilians in a brutal war lasting more than a decade.