According to the
New York Times, “In a powerful rebuke to Syria’s government, the United Nations
General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on [February 16, 2012] to approve a
resolution that condemned President Bashar al-Assad’s unbridled crackdown on an
11-month-old uprising and called for his resignation under an Arab League peace
proposal to resolve the conflict.” The reporter immediately undercuts his use
of powerful by observing that the
137-12 vote (with 17 abstentions) is “a nonbinding action with no power of
enforcement at the world body.” The “action” does represent “a significant
humiliation” for Assad. I doubt very much if he felt humiliated. His UN
ambassador “denounced the resolution as a politically motivated scheme to
intervene in Syria by the Western powers and others who ‘would like to settle
accounts with Syria.’” Altogether, the first two or three paragraphs of
Gladstone’s article can be read in terms of logic as “X, not X.” Of course, the
first X gets more attention, so the article gives the impression that the UN
did something powerful when in fact the exercise was one of exposing the
impotence of the world body.
The full essay is at "The Fecklessness of the UN."