UN: Armed Intervention May be Necessary in Syria
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

At a meeting on September 5, the United Nations (UN) reaffirmed its ultimate goal of eradicating national sovereignty. The favorite weapon at the moment is the principle known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

Agreed to by the UN General Assembly at a summit of world leaders in 2005, R2P purports to grant the global government power to decide whether a individual nations are properly exercising their sovereignty.

UN literature describes R2P as the concept that holds “States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes against humanity and requires the international community to step in if this obligation is not met.”

That is to say, if the UN determines that a national government is not voluntarily conforming to the UN’s idea of safety then the “international community” will impose its will by force, all for the protection of that nation’s citizens.

Lest anyone believe that the globalists at the UN are simply pacifists whose desire is to meekly encourage regimes to treat their people kindly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (pictured in illustration above along with the R2P logo) took a more forceful posture at the conference held at the UN headquarters in New York.

“We all agree that sovereignty must not be a shield behind which States commit grave crimes against their people. But achieving prevention and protection can be difficult,” said Ban. “In recent years, we have shown how good offices, preventive diplomacy, mediation, commissions of inquiry and other peaceful means can help pull countries back from the brink of mass violence.”

“However, when non-coercive measures fail or are considered inadequate, enforcement under Chapter VII will need to be considered by the appropriate intergovernmental bodies,” he added. “This includes carefully crafted sanctions and, in extreme circumstances, the use of force.” 

Chapter VII of the UN Charter authorizes the Security Council to use force in the face of a threat to peace or aggression, taking “such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.” As there is currently no UN military, all such interventions are carried out by the national armed forces of member nations.

Faithfully, the United States, as the chief financial engine of the international body, has not only signed on to promote the Responsibility to Protect scheme, but President Obama has created a federal agency to ensure that it is executed effectively.

The bureau is called the White House Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) and it will be headed by President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Samantha Power.

Exercising the powers he created for himself in Executive Order 13606, President Barack Obama established the Atrocities Prevention Board, whose formation was announced by the president during his remarks at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The stated goal of the APB is to first formally recognize that genocide and other mass atrocities committed by foreign powers are a “core national security interest and core moral responsibility.”

Apart from the unconstitutionality of this use of the executive order, there is something sinister in the selection of Samantha Power to spearhead the search for atrocities.

One source claims that the very existence of the APB is due to Power’s own persistence in convincing the White House that discovering atrocities should be a “core national-security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” The statement released at the time of the signing of the executive order demonstrates Power’s remarkable power of persuasion.

Samantha Power rose to prominence in government circles as part of her campaign to promote a doctrine known as the Responsibility to Protect.

Responsibility to Protect (also known as Responsibility to Act) is a doctrine advanced by the United Nations and is predicated on the proposition that sovereignty is a privilege not a right and that if any regime in any nation violates the prevailing precepts of acceptable governance, then the international community is morally obligated to revoke that nation’s sovereignty and assume command and control of the offending country.

The three pillars of the United Nations-backed Responsibility to Protect are:

  1. A state has a responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocities,
  2. The international community has a responsibility to assist the state if it is unable to protect its population on its own, and
  3. If the state fails to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.

Given Powers’ remarks and the current public relations campaign to prepare people for new military operations, the situation in Syria seems ideally suited for the attention of the APB and for the carrying out of the United Nation’s “Responsibility to Protect.” 

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon agrees. 

At the on September 5, Ban chastised the Security Council for failing to seize the reins of Syrian sovereignty and reminded members of the “immense human cost of failing to protect” the Syrian population from the atrocities committed by the Assad regime and the rebels trying to topple it.

“Prisoners on both sides are subject to harsh treatment and, often, torture,” he said. “There have been alarming reports of summary executions on both sides.” 

“Government forces and the armed opposition have clearly failed to protect civilians and respect the rules of international humanitarian law,” he added.

So anxious is Ban to play elected leader and deploy troops under the U.N. flag, he told member states that if the Security Council continues to drag its feet on the Syrian R2P project, they can take matters into their own hands.

“It has shown that, while moments of unity in the Security Council have been few and far between, the rest of the world body need not be silent,” Ban said.

A UN news report on Ban’s speech repeated the message that “paralysis does the Syrian people harm, damages its own credibility and weakens a concept that was adopted with such hope and expectations.”

Then in what seemed like a nudge toward armed imposition of the UN’s will, Ban said, “Let us by all means continue to talk through the responsibility to protect in all its aspects. Each year we achieve greater precision and common understanding,” he stated. “But let us recognize that we face an urgent test here and now. Words must become deeds. Promise must become practice.”

Directing his remarks at both government and opposition forces, Ban added, “How can we convince armed groups that a better future lies not in fighting, but in building the foundations of a new political and social contract that guarantees freedom and justice?”

Again, if the social contract fails, there’s always the threat of blue helmeted soldiers imposing peace at the point of a gun. 

The newly appointed Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, seemed to recommend delegates work in their individual governments to contribute to an armed UN force under the command of the global government. Reciting the third point of R2P, Dieng pushed for more powerful tools to carry out the third pillar.

“It is our collective responsibility to study the implications of the use of each of them, and to understand the conditions under which the potential of each tool can be maximized,” Mr. Dieng said. “It is also our responsibility to establish and strengthen the structures that will make third-pillar tools actionable and effective.”

The government of the United States does not have a constitutional responsibility to protect the citizens of the world from atrocities, because the Constitution doesn’t grant the government purview over such projects.

And nowhere in the Constitution is the president or Congress authorized to place the armed forces of the United States under the command of foreign powers or international bodies, regardless of treaty obligations to the contrary.