Libyan officials condemned the use of the drones as a violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution that authorized intervention in Libya for the sole purpose of protecting civilians.
"If Putin shows weakness on Syria, it will look like what happened with Libya," Mirsky says, referring to last spring, when the Russians abstained from the Security Council vote authorizing intervention, rather than vetoing it.
The administration's convoluted path to deeper involvement in Syria began nearly two years ago, when repeated efforts to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing intervention on behalf of Syrian civilians were thwarted by Russian vetoes.
The problem with these precedents is that the Security Council did not authorize intervention in Syria, and an intervention there will thus harm, not help, the Council's credibility and effectiveness.
Q: If one looks back at how the Clinton administration handled the Kosovo crisis, it became clear that Russia would not support a new Security Council resolution authorizing intervention to protect the Kosovars.
This time, the Russian position is different from what it was in 2011 when Russia agreed (to its later regret) to a UN Security Council resolution authorizing intervention in Libya.
Among other things, they authorized United States interventions to maintain "a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty," mandated the compromise of Cuban sovereignty by a perpetual nominal lease to the United States of Guantanamo Bay, and, required the insertion of each and every conditions in the Cuban constitution.
The trainer selection was based on the quality of authorized veterinary interventions, which represented a way to mitigate bias.
Back in December, after the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in Mali, Amnesty International's researcher on West Africa, Salvatore Saguès, warned: "An international armed intervention is likely to increase the scale of human rights violations we are already seeing in this conflict". As always, western governments are well aware of this consequence and yet proceed anyway.
In January 2013 he dispatched French troops to combat Islamist militants in Mali, and in December a French-sponsored UN Security Council resolution authorized armed intervention in the Central African Republic.
The United Nations authorized an intervention brigade to bolster the peacekeeping force and put in charge a Brazilian general known for battling street gangs in Haiti.
