Epstein Secrets

olonel Muammer Gaddafi over-ran Benghazi; the US stood by; the Libyan opposition was reduced to sporadic uprisings, quickly crushed. The regimes in Yemen and Syria took note, and put down their own uprisings with greater vigour. The west let brutality and oppression triumph again in the Middle East.

rals seeking to intervene for strictly moral reasons. We also now know how different intervention looks when we help forces who want to be helped. East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Libya — all cases where force evened out odds between a brutal government and a widespread and legitimate social or na

olonel Muammer Gaddafi over-ran Benghazi; the US stood by; the Libyan opposition was reduced to sporadic uprisings, quickly crushed. The regimes in Yemen and Syria took note, and put down their own uprisings with greater vigour. The west let brutality and oppression triumph again in the Middle East.

rals seeking to intervene for strictly moral reasons. We also now know how different intervention looks when we help forces who want to be helped. East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Libya — all cases where force evened out odds between a brutal government and a widespread and legitimate social or na

Islamic Republic of Iran. Syria is to be the next battlefield, but here, there is a critical difference from what were minor skirmishes in Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere. The Saudis, with the aid of Qatar and the UAE, are striking at the core interests of Tehran, and they have through their tribal netw

r, UNPROFOR finally intervened. When Annan became secretary-general, the United Nations tried to bolster its peacekeeping efforts. It did better in East Timor, Kosovo and Libya in putting some teeth in the concept of a "responsibility to protect." But the abiding story has been the United Nations' limitat

Colonel Muammer Gaddafi over-ran Benghazi; the US stood by; the Libyan opposition was reduced to sporadic uprisings, quickly crushed. The regimes in Yemen and Syria took note, and put down their own uprisings with greater vigour. The west let brutality and oppression triumph again in the Middle East. T

berals seeking to intervene for strictly moral reasons. We also now know how different intervention looks when we help forces who want to be helped. East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Libya — all cases where force evened out odds between a brutal government and a widespread and legitimate social or nati

of 1994 and over the many years of dithering as lives were lost in the Balkans. But a series of apparently successful interventions - Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone - gradually strengthened the belief that western military power could be used to end conflicts and save civilians. The bitter experienc

r pathetic cluelessness about the forces we do so much to promote. The Arab Spring is turning into a long, hot summer. Civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen and the sullen silence of the Shi'a in Bahrain have baptized Arab democracy in blood. More will flow — and American foreign policy is befuddled and b