Is 'responsibility to protect' in Syria an irresponsible idea?

There are more questions than answers about the idea of an international "responsibility to protect" in Syria.

The principle known as "responsibility to protect", invoked last year to justify foreign intervention in Libya, is now being cited to support some kind of action against the brutal regime in Syria.

The core of the inchoate "R2P" doctrine is that states have a right, even a duty, to protect the population of any other state against genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

On this page yesterday, Anthony Elghossain and Firas Maksad argued, in an essay entitled A responsibility to Syria: set up a humanitarian corridor, for a particular plan based on the R2P. But I have a few questions for them.

If, as they claim, the "core principles" of the R2P are "beyond debate", what are they exactly?

For example, if as they also assert this doctrine now frees "regional organisations" to act against sinister sovereign states, who decides which organisations have legitimacy in such matters? (By the way, is Nato really a "regional organisation" in the Middle East?)

Should Nato by itself be able to invoke R2P to help, for example, the oppressed Venezuelans, whose leader could surely be accused (whether justified or not) of some crime against humanity? Could the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States put down "banditry" in the Caucasus - possibly including ethnic cleansing against Russians - by invoking this doctrine to justify a military expedition? Why not? Who decides?

Why do R2P advocates invoke the notion so selectively? Aren't the people of Yemen facing a deeper, broader and longer-running humanitarian crisis than the people of Syria? Where is their international protection? Where are the supporters of R2P when it comes to protecting Tibetans and the Nepalese from Chinese cultural imperialism and violence? Where are they when North Koreans are starving, or when the people of Zimbabwe are impoverished and oppressed? Why single out Syria?

If "concepts of sovereignty and human rights obligations have competed, and reinforced each other, since the 19th century", as the writers assert, how did this process miss King Leopold's Congo, Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Kim Il-sung's North Korea, Idi Amin's Uganda and other hellholes large and small?

Hasn't a sovereign state's power over its people actually been essentially unlimited in international law ever since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War?

Was what the writers call "humanitarian intervention" in the Mount Lebanon area in 1861 truly humanitarian? Or is it better understood as Britain and France jostling for influence in the region by protecting their proxy groups?

Can the writers offer even one example, before or after the UN was founded, of genuine, disinterested effective humanitarian intervention against a sovereign state because it was abusing its own people on its own territory?

In the case of Syria, would Iran also be free to invoke R2P and take military action to protect the Assad regime from the "armed gangs" said to be killing Syrian soldiers? If Nato and the Arab League can legitimately invoke R2P, why couldn't Iran do the same, on some pretext? Who would be the arbiter of this?

Since R2P is usually defined to cover only certain war crimes and crimes against humanity, what standard of proof must be met before an R2P intervention becomes legitimate? What recourse would a target government have against bogus "proofs" such as those the US offered about Saddam Hussein's (still-missing) chemical or nuclear weapons?

If Nato, the EU and the Arab League did set up a "humanitarian corridor" on the Turkish-Syrian border, who would control it? Who would pay the bills, build the housing, provide for sanitation and food? The Arab League? Turkey? Not the UN, surely?

Would humanitarian aid be limited to those Syrians able to reach this haven? How big would the corridor be? Is the terrain suitable? Is there a big-enough airport nearby?

Would the corridor be used to assemble, train and equip Free Syrian Army forces for military action against the Assad regime? If so, could the corridor truly be called humanitarian? Who would provide force protection for the Free Syrians? Would Free Syrian military forces mingle with civilians?

If on the other hand the corridor is not a military staging ground, what would it accomplish?

Would the regime have the right to attack insurrectionary forces being mustered on his own soil? What if it attacked the part of this safe haven that is to be on Turkish soil? How would the Arab League et al react if this project degenerated into full-scale civil war? If Iran chose to intervene with troops?

Would the Turks welcome the idea of a corridor partly on Turkish soil? How do the Turks feel about Kurdish extremists who seek safe haven just over the Turkish border in Iraqi Kurdistan?

Would this be a precedent for Turkey to set up a similar "humanitarian" corridor on its border with Iraq, to suppress Kurdish banditry and terrorism? Or would it be a precedent for the Kurds to set up their own "humanitarian" corridor on the same border, to limit Turkish aggression? Maybe both?

Why did "western diplomats, led by French Foreign Minister Alan Juppe", abandon the idea of a safe haven, even though the UN Security Council route seemed sure to be blocked by Russia and China?

Could it be that those experienced statesmen understand clearly that the whole notion of R2P, in general and in this case, creates far more problems than it solves?