Abstract
In the spring of 2011 the Syrian civil war emerged as a late chapter of the “Arab Spring,” a chapter that in retrospect has turned out to be the most complex and potentially most serious. How such crisis events are framed in press coverage has been identified as important with respect to possible responses the international community makes under the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). By most indicators (number of casualties, number of refugees, plus the use of chemical weapons against civilians), Syria certainly qualified as a candidate for the application of a UN Security Council authorized R2P reaction response; yet during the first two-and-a-half years of the war no such action was forthcoming.
This research examines editorial and opinion pieces on Syria appearing in two leading Canadian newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the National Post, from March 2011 to September 2013 in terms of assessing how the civil war was framed regarding the appropriateness of an R2P military response on the part of the international community. The research has both quantitative and qualitative dimensions. The former examines whether framing promoted or discouraged international involvement (i.e. a “will to intervene”), as well as whether diplomatic and especially military actions such as a “no-fly zone” or more direct military attacks would be likely to result in success or failure. Qualitatively, the major positions taken and arguments presented regarding R2P, and whether it should be invoked for Syria, are reviewed.
Keywords
The 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, “The Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), sought to redirect the world’s attention from the traditional but increasingly problematic emphasis on state sovereignty to the responsibilities of both nation states and the international community to provide for the human security of states’ inhabitants. 1 More specifically, it sought to reduce the impediments to collective action when no other means of protecting people from egregious violence were available. It laid on the international community the well-known three-fold responsibility to prevent such occurrences, react to them when prevention failed, and rebuild after any reaction that was necessary.
R2P did not seek to provide carte blanche for international military operations in any and all instances of humanitarian crisis. It emphasized, in fact, that resorting to a military reaction should only occur when all other methods of intervention had been exhausted, and then only under strict conditions—such as confidence of success and assurance that forceful methods would not worsen the situation. The form ultimately endorsed by the United Nations in 2006 also made clear that the Security Council would be the arbiter of if, when, and how R2P would be operationalized. 2
In a strict sense, therefore, R2P changed little. The same body as before remained charged with dealing with challenges to the conscience of humanity according to the same methods as existed prior to its appearance. This said, R2P’s greatest virtue might be that it takes a fairly significant step in the direction of human security. It may have altered little in a procedural or legal sense, but it undoubtedly elevated the principle that the protection of human beings must become a central focus of international efforts to create a better world. That in itself increases the pressure on all governments to respond in a positive manner to obvious humanitarian needs wherever and whenever they appear. Moreover, it underlines not only their right but also their duty to do so. R2P will not, and should not, eliminate the need for each government to evaluate crisis situations for itself and weigh what it might be able to contribute toward alleviating them, but it should increase states’ willingness to at least consider that possibility. That may be seen as scant progress by the impatient, but it’s a real advance over the thinking prevalent at the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
For R2P boosters, the task now is to convert a statement of moral principle into an obligation for decisive action. In the view of Frank Chalk and associates, this will necessitate creating a “will to intervene” by world states, and that in turn will depend heavily on the performance of the mass media: The “fourth estate”—the news media—exerts a powerful influence on government. The “CNN effect” is credited with persuading the U.S. and Canadian governments to intervene in Somalia in 1992, Bosnia in 1995, and Eastern Zaire in 1996. Policy experts argue that the process of “policy by media,” or formulating policy in response to media coverage, is a contemporary phenomenon that arises from the government’s sensitivity to media coverage. While news media reports influence policy, the inverse is also true: an absence of reporting on mass atrocities in a particular country removes the pressure on the American and Canadian governments to act on their “responsibility to protect.”
3
The latter is the focus of the reported research. Specifically, research on “framing effects” has established that the way in which news is presented (e.g., what is identified as the problem, who is responsible, and what are the acceptable boundaries of remedial action) influences the way in which audiences evaluate possible responses, and thus constitutes the basic input to public opinion, which few governments deliberately choose to ignore. To our knowledge, no study dealing with the question of how international involvement in the Syrian conflict was presented to Western mass publics has been carried out, either in Canada or elsewhere. 5
The Syrian civil war received abundant attention from its beginning, and the attention only increased with the conflict’s growing severity—indeed, it became a “mega-story.” 6 How that ample coverage was framed, however, is less obvious. This research accordingly focuses on how opinion-oriented materials in two leading Canadian newspapers, both having an active interest in Canadian foreign policy, appeared to promote or discourage resort to the more forceful components of the R2P doctrine.
The Syrian civil war: Background and context
In March 2011 protests against the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad broke out in several parts of Syria. They varied in tactics and aims, but were at the outset generally peaceful and non-sectarian calls for reform. They were quickly seen as an extension of the Arab Spring that had already brought about the largely peaceful end of the 22-year reign of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, the 30-year presidency of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and the 33-year rule of Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Salah. More violent actions, including those of a UN-authorized, NATO-led “no-fly zone,” led to the swift downfall of the 42-year reign of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. That international intervention was widely seen as a direct response to R2P imperatives.
These events unquestionably created a contagion dynamic that exacerbated deep-seated discontent with Assad’s rule, and when protests transformed into civil war the humanitarian consequences quickly reached staggering proportions. 7 In approximately three years, over 160,000 Syrians died; nearly 3 million became refugees in neighbouring countries; and more than one-quarter of a population of 23 million became internally displaced. The UN predicted that by the end of 2014 the refugee problem would become the worst “since the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago.” 8
But these numbers tell only part of the story. When mass rapes, ethnic cleansing, barbaric treatment of opponents, and especially the use of chemical weapons are added to them, the case for international intervention on humanitarian grounds is overwhelming. However, when non-military efforts to stem the carnage proved to be unsuccessful, there was little inclination for decision makers in Washington, Ottawa, or elsewhere, to escalate the response to more forceful methods. 9
Two questions therefore arise. First, what role did Canada’s press play with respect to a lack of “will to intervene” on the part of the international community? And second, does the absence of a military response in Syria mean that R2P “failed” before escaping its infancy? We hope to shed light on both these questions through an examination of the treatment of the crisis in opinion material appearing in the National Post and the Globe and Mail.
Research methodology
Data for the research were accessed from the Factiva electronic database beginning on 1 March 2011 and continuing to 30 September 2013. This period covers the beginning of protests against the Assad government up to and including a UN Security Council resolution endorsing the agreement to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons following their use on 21 August 2013. 10 Editorials and opinion articles were first read to ensure that there was sufficient material dealing with the Syrian civil war to merit inclusion. Those that dealt with Syrian topics unrelated to the war and those in which Syria was mentioned peripherally or as an example of some larger phenomenon were excluded. For the Globe, this vetting process resulted in 84 cases, while for the Post it yielded 83 cases. These items were then coded according to whether media framing specifically promoted or discouraged a “will to intervene,” as well as whether a stable democratic order was seen as likely to emerge in Syria at the conflict’s end. In addition, suggested diplomatic and military strategies were evaluated in terms of their perceived effectiveness in ending the conflict. Using Ole Holsti’s percentage agreement method, inter-coder reliability was established at 84.7 percent. 11
Finally, in order to provide a greater understanding of what lay behind the numbers presented in the quantitative analysis, the actual arguments and policy positions offered in opinion material in the two newspapers dealing with the operationalization of the R2P doctrine during the first two-and-a-half years of the war were reviewed.
Quantitative findings
Framing leading to a “will to intervene” by newspaper (percentage of total opinion items).
Assessments of positive or negative outcomes for democracy by newspaper (percentage of total opinion items).
Optimism vs. pessimism regarding possible R2P responses, by newspaper (percentage of total opinion items; ambiguous items omitted).
Qualitative findings
While numbers are useful in summarizing how R2P was evaluated by the newspapers, in order to produce a fuller picture of how R2P was seen as impacting the international reaction to the crisis it is necessary to address some of the arguments and positions opinion writers in the two papers adopted on the issue.
The first year: 2011
During the first year of the war, the Post’s opinion commentary centred on the relevance of R2P and the Arab Spring. Concern was expressed about what a post-Assad Syria might look like, as well as what the likely outcome of the Arab Spring in general might be. Initially, the paper’s position with respect to the role of the international community in the conflict was ambiguous. On the one hand, George Jonas specifically warned against a “Libyan-style” intervention, 12 while on the other, an editorial praised international support for the rebel cause against the Libyan dictator. 13 The one editorial that dealt directly with the UN conveyed the strong impression that nothing useful could be expected from the organization. 14
Globe opinion writers focused on the connections between NATO’s Libyan operation and the possibility of a replication of it in Syria. On this the dominant theme was that the application of the R2P doctrine was unlikely and probably unwise for two reasons: the perceived mandate excesses in Libya, and the fact that a variety of factors made the Syrian situation far more difficult than the Libyan one.
With respect to the first of these, a June editorial argued that NATO’s “overstretched interpretation—and application” of the Security Council’s mandate in Libya “undermin[ed] … the international community’s attempts to respond to the bloodshed and repression in Syria.” Russia, among others, felt betrayed by NATO’s “mission-creep” operations. 15 Moreover, as an August editorial added, “the NATO nations that took part in the Libyan intervention … have no appetite for another such mission so soon.” 16
The differences between Syria and Libya and the near impossibility of a successful military intervention in the former were explained in detail by professors Heather Roff and Bessma Momani. Syria was, for instance, more densely populated than Libya; its territory was mountainous rather than desert; and it possessed a much stronger military. It was also further away from NATO’s bases in Europe. Finally, in Syria there was “no identifiable rebel group occupying and controlling territory.” Roff and Momani concluded that “unless Western powers … are prepared for an on-the-ground invasion, we will continue to merely deplore what the Syrian regime is doing against its own people.” 17
The second year: 2012
Early in 2012, the Post reprinted an editorial from the Wall Street Journal that pushed for greater US action. Claiming that the US had provided most of the “firepower” seen as critical to the removal of Qaddafi in Libya, the editorial proposed “another coalition of the willing” and pointed to the “American folly … in giving the UN any ability to stop an anti-Assad coalition that includes the Turks, all of non-Russian Europe, the U.S. and the Arab world.” It added that “a no-fly zone above Syria also shouldn’t be ruled out.” 18
In addition, based on new arguments, the Post continued to develop its position that international intervention in Syria was a mistake. First, the nature of the anti-government forces came under greater scrutiny and comparisons with the Assad regime were offered. In this context, Marni Soupcoff observed that “the rebels’ supporters, which include al-Qaeda and Hamas, are potentially just as threatening to human rights and stability as Assad himself—perhaps even more so.” Brutal and unappetizing as Assad was, she wondered if the best alternative for the world might not be “standing by and not doing very much.” 19 The Post also endorsed this position editorially on 26 July: “It is not entirely clear that, overall, it is in Western interests for Mr. Assad to go.” One of the reasons for that was the presence of “foreign terrorists, Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda zealots” in the rebel ranks, and the other was the likelihood of full-scale civil war if he were to be forced from office. 20
Second, the issue of Syria’s chemical weapons enhanced doubts concerning the desirability of the anti-government groups. As one editorial asked, “would we prefer that these weapons fall into the hands of an ill-defined agglomeration of armed insurgents, whose only shared interest is in seizing Assad’s power for themselves?” 21 George Jonas described this as the worst possible scenario. 22 Other arguments were also advanced editorially in support of the “hands off” position. Syria, it was asserted, was going to fall apart “no matter what the rest of the world does,” and who wanted to be left trying to put the pieces together again? Moreover, half-hearted interventions like the imposition of a so-called no-fly zone were dangerous and had to be avoided because they inevitably led to deeper involvement. 23 Lastly, the discouraging example of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was raised. If the rebels won, there would be long-term, continued chaos and violence in Syria just as was still occurring in the DRC, and if Canada were to help the rebels oust Assad, it would be tarnished by the “resultant butchery.” The editorial concluded that “overall, the humanitarian arithmetic just doesn’t favour intervention.” 24
Opinion writers in the Globe also developed new themes in 2012, mostly along the same lines as their counterparts at the Post. There was a similar recognition that a victory by the rebels was possibly a worse outcome than the continuation of the Assad regime, and that, whatever the outcome, Syria was likely to remain chaotic for the foreseeable future. The only hope for dealing with the situation (albeit a faint and unclear one) lay with diplomacy, and any chance of that being successful depended on regional players like Turkey and Iran, but most of all Russia. Retired Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie argued that “the only solution to the Syrian conflict goes through Moscow,” and he urged Canada to “convince Vladimir Putin to visit Damascus.” He was also cautious about vilifying one side in the struggle while canonizing the other, claiming that “55 per cent of Syrians support Assad.” 25 A Globe editorial supported the notion that Russia was of crucial importance in bringing the killing to an end. 26
The Globe also presented two opinion pieces in favour of Western intervention. Senator Hugh Segal, invoking the pre-Second World War analogy of Czechoslovakia, argued that “the price we pay for not acting is often far greater than the actual price of deciding to act in the name of humanity.” He considered Syria a test case for R2P and advocated the mounting of a Libyan-style no-fly zone, despite the fact that this would be “hard, complex and messy.” Standing by and watching, however, was “simply criminal.” 27 Professor Wesley Wark, by contrast, was less concerned with humanitarian considerations than with realpolitik. He maintained that if the West wished to be able to influence post-Assad Syria, it had to become engaged in the conflict now; and that since “we have to accept the fact that diplomacy has failed,” the only way this could be accomplished was militarily. 28
The third year: 2013
The final year of the study witnessed both continuity and change in the Post’s opinion positions. The change involved some softening of the previously unflinching opposition to involvement in the Syrian tragedy, brought about primarily by the issue of chemical weapons and what should be done about them.
In January 2013, Middle East Forum analyst Gary Gambill offered a spirited rebuttal to pro-interventionists’ frequent tendency to attribute the deterioration of the Syrian situation to American failure to intervene militarily on the side of the rebels at an early stage. He maintained that “whatever America’s failings … they cannot be shown to have decisively impacted the trajectory of the conflict once it started.” 29 Senator Segal, however, reiterated the pro-intervention case, arguing that “the absence of meaningful Western intervention early on in the conflict made … [the deterioration of the situation] … practically inevitable.” Moreover, he claimed, “a coalition composed of Arab and NATO countries could still intervene decisively with a targeted air campaign,” augmented by the deployment of “Western special forces units.” He saw the issue as a moral one à la R2P, but also, given the threat of chemical weapons use, a practical national interest matter: “This is no longer about our moral responsibility to protect Syria’s helpless citizens. It’s about protecting our allies, and ultimately, ourselves.” 30
Segal was neither the first nor the last to focus on the chemical weapons issue, even before they were actually used. In August 2012 US President Obama had drawn a “red line,” warning that their use would trigger unspecified US responses. David Frum interpreted this as an indication that the president “clearly wanted to avoid intervening in Syria” and hinted that Assad probably saw it the same way. 31 Editorially, the Post was critical of Obama’s red line on the basis that it increased the possibility of an undesirable intervention: “it would be a mistake for Mr. Obama to now send U.S. warplanes simply for the sake of superpower pride.” 32 An editorial in mid-June included pro-intervention quotes from US Senator John McCain: “For us to sit by, and watch these people being massacred, raped and tortured in the most terrible fashion, meanwhile, the Russians are all in, Hezbollah is all in, and we’re talking about giving them more light weapons? It’s insane.” 33 This represents clear pro-intervention framing and, in that it appeared in an editorial, certainly implies a rethinking of the paper’s earlier position. McCain went on to propose a “no-fly zone” which he believed could be established and maintained “without risking a single American airplane.” While not actually endorsing McCain’s position, the editorial pointed out that with respect to Western foreign policy “there is a great distance between its actions and rhetoric,” and one can assume the paper was looking for a change in the former rather than the latter. 34
The actual use of chemical weapons on a civilian neighbourhood of Damascus on 21 August changed significantly the direction of the debate. Given the Obama red line, commentary quickly focused on whether and how the US should respond to this serious development. Post columnist Matt Gurney led off by arguing that Syria’s chemical weapons should have been destroyed nine months previously, as soon as their likely deployment had been detected, because that would have weakened whoever won the civil war by denying the victor their use. Gurney further argued that indeed, they should still be destroyed. 35 Even as staunch an anti-interventionist as George Jonas left a small window open for an international military response. While repeating his disdain for R2P (placed “in a class with the ‘White Man’s Burden’”) he observed, “when tyrants get too murderous, when they start gassing their own citizens, we may get disgusted, as nations and individuals. Tyrants should be careful not to make us lose our temper.” 36
Other commentators reprised arguments both for and against intervention. Irwin Cotler presented the classic pro-intervention case based on R2P: “We must reaffirm and reassert the moral and juridical imperative of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine.” Citing a UN report in June indicating that “war crimes and crimes against humanity have become a daily reality,” he argued that “if mass atrocities in Syria are not a case for R2P, then there is no R2P.” 37 Jonathan Kay responded directly to Cotler by maintaining that “R2P has been dead for a while,” and that “ordinary voters do not want to see their sons’ blood spilled, or even their tax dollars spent, to protect the dignity of an acronym.” 38
An opinion article by Bill Keller of the New York Times urged the Obama administration “to persuade Congress, and the American public, that the U.S. still has an important role to play in the world, and that sometimes you have to put some spine in your diplomacy.” He favoured “calibrated intervention to shift the balance in Syria’s civil war,” but given the “deep isolationist mood” into which the country had fallen (comparable, he thought, to that faced by Franklin Roosevelt during the early stages of the Second World War), he was not optimistic that it would be undertaken. 39
The Globe’s opinion material during 2013 can be characterized by two trends. On the one hand, the paper’s editorial position early in the year came down more firmly in favour of some sort of Western intervention, calling first for arming of the opposition forces. This continued over the summer with support for a no-fly zone and finally ended up deeply suspicious of the chemical weapons agreement that took US air strikes (which the paper supported) off the table. On the other hand, the Globe continued to present a range of opinion pieces which revealed no consistent line with respect to whether the use of force by the international community would be beneficial or harmful.
The first 2013 Globe editorial conveyed a sense of urgency not seen earlier: “The Syrian civil war has reached a point at which the international community—that is to say the world’s responsible powers—needs to take a more active hand, still with caution, favouring carefully selected insurgent groups that are not Salafist, and have no affinities to al-Qaeda.” Such an “active hand” included arming the anti-government forces by “supplying equipment, such as surface-to-air missiles, to certain opposition groups.” The motivation for such a policy was that the Assad regime was likely to fall and that in the resulting chaos “a group such as Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian group affiliated to the Iraqi factions that are in turn aligned with al-Qaeda, could well find and keep a foothold.” Even more critical was the judgment that if Assad resorted to the use of chemical weapons, “foreign intervention would become almost inevitable and indeed morally desirable.” 40
A mid–March opinion article by Paul Heinbecker endorsed the use of military force, albeit very circumspectly. He suggested that an intervention could be accomplished by establishing “safe havens and no-fly zones,” described as “limited but viable alternatives.” However, keeping “Western boots” out of Syria was a priority because “intervention fatigue” was widespread in “financially strapped and distracted Washington and Europe.” In such circumstances Canada was urged “to accept a greater share of the lead.” 41
A Globe editorial toward the end of April opened commentary on the issue of Syria’s chemical weapons in the context of the Obama-declared red line. It cited US evidence, confirmed by British and French intelligence, that “Syria is probably using nerve gas on a small scale.” Obama was urged to give “some practical substance to his words, in such a way as to protect Syrian citizens while not putting Islamic extremists in power.” 42
Globe foreign affairs reporter Campbell Clark assessed the May House of Commons emergency debate on Syria and concluded that there wasn’t much to show for it: “no vote on what steps to take, no call to back military intervention or a no-fly zone or to arm rebels.” While Ottawa’s reluctance to back the rebels stemmed from the presence of “extremists in their midst,” Clark pointed out that in reality “there is no prospective military mission to join.” 43
In an opinion article toward the end of May, Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning for the US State Department, criticized President Obama for timidity in not pursuing a military option, and argued the case for intervention. She claimed that at least a credible threat of military force on the part of US was required to get Assad to negotiate a settlement. 44
While conceding that “reasons for not intervening militarily are not trivial,” Paul Heinbecker pointed out that “not acting in Syria is far from cost-free.” Chief among these costs were the strengthening of Iran and Hezbollah and the weakening of the United States. Heinbecker proposed the creation of no-fly zones, a solution that would not stop the killing and was not without risks, but one that “would diminish Mr. al-Assad’s capability to visit vast destruction on his citizens by air.” It was noted that “Canada has the capability to contribute … [but]… if it doesn’t want to do so, it should not impede others who do.” 45
Former diplomat Derek Burney and academic Fen Osler Hampson took the opposite view, advancing “five reasons to stay out of Syria”: an untrustworthy opposition, a possibility of conflict escalation, a worsening of relations with Russia, no end to the conflict with the removal of Assad, and Western democracies’ simply not having “the stomach for protracted, inconclusive military gambits.” Canada was not seen to “have a dog in this fight … [and] … should not be stoking its fires or trying to pick winners.” 46
Lewis MacKenzie was unimpressed with no-fly zones, a concept that emerged following the first Gulf War with the simple warning to Iraqi pilots: “Don’t fly or you’re going to die.” By 1999, in the Serbia–Kosovo conflict no-fly zones took on a different meaning. Although the Security Council had not authorized the use of force, NATO used the no-fly zone concept to launch “an all-out bombing campaign against the infrastructure of the former Yugoslavia.” In Libya, a no-fly zone had been authorized by the Security Council and MacKenzie argued that Russia and China were “truly duped” into thinking they were approving something along the lines of the limited application seen in Iraq. Instead, NATO was as aggressive as it had been in Kosovo, commencing “all-out attacks on Libya’s aircraft on the ground, airfields, command-and-control centres, supply depots, military units and so on.” As for Syria, MacKenzie saw no way Russia and China would again be fooled. Furthermore, while NATO might be able to mount a successful no-fly zone, he argued that it “would not be wise” for Canada to sign on. 47
As with the Post, the supposed use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime in August opened a new chapter in the debate regarding what the international community should do, and occasioned an immediate Globe editorial that argued strongly for a military response that went well beyond the creation of a no-fly zone: “The message needs to be made clear that the world will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons.” It was argued that “Syria must pay a price.” 48
Former Canadian cabinet ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock championed the 1999 NATO mission in Kosovo “as an appropriate precedent … [with R2P] … to be used as the basis for action in Syria.” In that Russia would veto any Security Council authorization for the use of force, the mission would of necessity fall to “a coalition of countries prepared to take action,” and President Obama was reportedly “looking to Kosovo as a model in Syria.” Axworthy and Rock called upon “friends, allies, all those who seek a world of justice to urge him on, and offer their support.” 49
A second editorial following the 21 August attack appeared to be not quite as enthusiastic in its endorsement of military action. First it noted that “the consensus is that this monstrous act must not go unanswered,” but what was missing was a parliamentary debate to consider “the full range of options available to Canada and its allies, not to mention the degree of Canada’s participation in what now appears to be an inevitability.” 50 In early September, Jeffrey Simpson joined the debate on the side of caution. He questioned why the US in particular would want to be drawn into “a civil conflict of almost unfathomable complexity,” and whether there was any possibility that air strikes could be effective when the Syrian government “had plenty of warning to disperse its assets.” He also questioned whether there was in fact “another coalition of the willing” ready to step up; and if there were, it certainly would not be NATO. Most notably, he dismissed the Kosovo analogy: “by bombs alone Syria’s hellish war will not end.” 51 In a second piece three days later, Simpson again called for restraint, maintaining that “the United States, with support from Canada, is about to enter [the civil war] with only the vaguest ideas of what intervention will or should bring.” 52
Another opinion article by Axworthy and Rock appeared between Obama’s decision to seek congressional approval for military action and Putin’s proposal for destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. It referred to “‘our’ collective failure,” and, with the exception of Canada, no one escaped scathing condemnation. The UN led the list, and its Secretary-General in particular was criticized because “his recent statements fail to reflect the underlying principle of R2P”; and he had chosen “to wring his hands and leave the immense moral authority of his office untapped.” 53
The Globe’s final editorial in our study expressed skepticism about whether the agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons “will prove effective.” In any event it argued that “Western powers must remain tenacious in pressing Russia and the Syrian government to fulfill their end of the chemical-weapons bargain,” and if there were signs of “bad faith” in carrying out the agreement, the use of force in the form of “limited military air strikes should be revisited.” 54
Conclusions
What is perhaps most notable about the dominant orientation of the Globe and the Post with regard to the Syrian crisis down to August 2013 is that both arrived at roughly the same position despite radically different evaluations of R2P. The Post was more adamantly negative about physical involvement in the conflict than the Globe, but neither could be characterized as promoting a “will to intervene” by either Canada or the international community. For the Post’s editorial board and the majority of its opinion writers, R2P was more than irrelevant; it was a flawed concept that should never have seen the light of day. In contrast, a majority of Globe opinion supported the doctrine in principle but argued that its effectiveness had been seriously compromised by misuse by NATO in Libya; hence it could not be applied in Syria for political reasons. However, following the use of chemical weapons in August 2013, the Globe supported a military response while avoiding the problem of obtaining UN Security Council authorization.
As for the future of R2P, the debate continues. Aidan Hehir and Robert Murray concluded that “R2P has demonstrably failed” and claimed that the doctrine should be replaced by “a new legal architecture” to do what R2P failed to do. 55 To this Evan Cinq-Mars responded that “boiling R2P down to the use and potential abuse of military force in ‘hard cases’ is as inaccurate as it is self-serving, … [and] … while there is much to be done to make R2P implementation more effective and consistent … [it is] … far from dead.” 56 We side with the latter position. Unfortunately, the sort of “boiling down” cited by Cinq-Mars tends to characterize much analysis and criticism of R2P and overlooks the reality that the doctrine was never intended for blanket application. That such mischaracterization of R2P persists stands in the way of a reasoned evaluation of its effectiveness.
However that may be, since the end of the period focused on here, the Syrian civil war has morphed into the regional conflict that many feared, thanks to the brutal interventions of the radical terrorist group(s) known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which appears to have wide-spread Islamist territorial ambitions. Various Western powers are, as of this publication, engaged in what are so far limited forms of military confrontation with ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. 57 While it is likely that ISIS began with more limited objectives focused on the ousting of the Assad government, the current conflict is more than an extension of that campaign; thus, Western military intervention is different from an effort to protect the innocent from tyrannical brutality. Russia’s military intervention in Syria in the fall of 2015 was also aimed at, purportedly, fighting ISIS. What is going on in Syria and Iraq now is not, therefore, an affirmation of R2P, nor is it a denial. R2P is simply not applicable to a barbaric, chaotic, multisided, and multi-issue mélange. If the ISIS situation proves to be at all typical of what the future holds, further debate on R2P’s life or death may itself be irrelevant.
Footnotes
Acknowledgement
The research reported in this article is part of a book-length, three-nation study of press framing of the Syrian civil war: No Good Options: Syria, Press Framing and the Responsibility to Protect is under contract for publication with Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1
2
See Theresa Reinold, “The responsibility to protect—much ado about nothing?” Review of International Studies 36 (2010): 61; see also Aidan Hehir, The Responsibility to Protect: Rhetoric, Reality and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012).
3
4
Media effects associated with volume of coverage have been studied under the concept of “agenda setting.” See, for example, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, “The agenda-setting function of mass media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1972): 176–187; Everett Rogers and James Dearing, “Agenda-setting research: Where has it been, where is it going?” in J. Anderson, ed., Communication Yearbook, vol. 11 (Beverley Hills, CA: SAGE Publications, 1988), 555–594; Maxwell McCombs and Amy Reynolds, “News influence on our pictures of the world,” in J. Bryant and D. Zillmann, eds., Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. 2nd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 1–18; Maxwell McCombs, “A look at agenda-setting: Past, present and future,” Journalism Studies 6, no. 4 (2005): 543–557.
5
See, for example, Thomas Nelson, Zoe Oxley and Rosalee Clawson, “Toward a psychology of framing effects,” Political Behavior 19, no. 3 (1997): 221–246; Sean Aday, “The framesetting effects of news: An experimental test of advocacy versus objectivist frames,” Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly 83, no. 4 (2006): 767–784; Adam Berinsky and Donald Kinder, “Making sense of issues through media frames: Understanding the Kosovo crisis,” The Journal of Politics 68, no. 3 (2006): 640–656; Robert Entman, “Framing bias: Media in the distribution of power,” Journal of Communication 57, no. 1 (2007): 163–173; Kimberly Gross, “Framing persuasive appeals: Episodic and thematic framing, emotional responses, and public opinion,” Political Psychology 29, no. 2 (2008): 169–192; Dietram Scheufele and Shanto Iyengar, “The state of framing research: A call for new directions,” 2011, http://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2011/scheufele-framing/pdf (accessed 20 July 2014); Adam Kramer, Jamie Guillory, and Jeffrey Hancock, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA [PNAS] 111, no. 24, 17 June 2014: 8788-8790, 
(accessed 10 July 2014).
6
During January 2012, for example, the Factiva database reported a total of 25 “Syria” stories (including news items, editorials, and opinion pieces) for the Globe and 44 for the Post; by September of that year, 51 items were reported for the former and 47 for the latter newspaper. For these randomly selected months, this represents an average of well over a story per day for each newspaper. An Ipsos poll conducted between 4 September and 18 September and released on 9 October 2013 indicated that 91 percent of Canadians had “seen, heard or read about the current situation in Syria.” For a succinct breakdown of the polling data, see Ipsos, “Taking sides on Syria,” 9 October 2013, (accessed 22 August 2014).
7
See Marc Lynch, Deen Freelon, and Sean Aday, “Syria in the Arab Spring: The integration of Syria’s conflict with the Arab uprisings, 2011–2013.” Research and Politics 1 (October-December 2014): 1–7.
8
9
In the case of Canada, a parliamentary debate on Syria in the spring of 2013 was inconclusive. According to Globe and Mail reporter Campbell Clark, Canada emerged from the debate with a policy that called for “Mr. al-Assad to go, but is so wary of jihadists among rebels it does not want to tip the balance in their favour”. Campbell Clark, “All urgency, no action in Syria debate,” Globe and Mail, 9 May 2013, A8.
10
The search term “Syria” was entered, along with the content filters “Commentaries/Opinion” and “Editorials.” The articles resulting from this search were catalogued into a database which was then cross-referenced with two other electronic databases—Proquest and Canadian Newsstand—to ensure completeness. Only articles that appeared in printed copies of the newspapers were included.
11
Ole Holsti, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1969), 140.
12
George Jonas, “The spring of my Arab discontent,” National Post, 30 March 2011, A14.
13
Editorial, “Shades of Versailles,” National Post, 31 August 2011, A12.
14
Editorial, “Honouring Syria’s butchers,” National Post, 28 April 2011, A16.
15
Editorial, “Too little and too much,” Globe and Mail, 21 June 2011, A16.
16
Editorial, “No easy exit,” Globe and Mail, 29 August 2011, A10.
17
Heather Roff and Bessma Momani, “The tactics of intervention: Why Syria will never be Libya,” Globe and Mail, 25 October 2011, A17.
18
Wall Street Journal, “Another coalition of the willing, anyone?” National Post, 7 February 2012, A12.
19
Marni Soupcoff, “UN impotence may be a blessing in Syria,” National Post, 12 June 2012, A8; see also George Jonas, “From Suez to Syria: A half century of self-destructive Western foreign policy,” National Post, 12 June 2012, A13; Jonathan Kay, “How we won in Syria: Barack Obama played his cards exactly right—by doing virtually nothing,” National Post, 20 July 2012, A12.
20
Editorial, “Careful what you wish for,” National Post, 26 July 2012, A16.
21
Ibid.
22
George Jonas, “Coming off our high horses,” National Post, 8 December 2012, A27.
23
Editorial, “Let Syria fall apart on its own,” National Post, 2 February 2012, A14.
24
Editorial, “Staying out of Syria,” National Post, 29 September 2012, A26.
25
Lewis MacKenzie, “The road to Damascus goes through Moscow,” Globe and Mail, 22 February 2012, A17.
26
Editorial, “Syrian peace begins in Moscow,” Globe and Mail, 29 May 2012, A14.
27
Hugh Segal, “We must act now in Syria or pay later,” Globe and Mail, 22 June 2012, A13.
28
Wesley Wark, “How to end the fighting in Syria,” Globe and Mail, 19 July 2012, A13.
29
Gary Gambill, “Don’t blame the U.S. for Syrian strife,” National Post, 14 January 2013, A8.
30
Hugh Segal, “Intervene in Syria to protect ourselves,” National Post, 13 March 2013, A16.
31
David Frum, “Testing President Obama’s red lines on Syria,” National Post, 19 January 2013, A24.
32
Editorial, “The West’s humanitarian mission in Syria,” National Post, 14 May 2013, A12.
33
As quoted in Editorial, “The West’s non-existent Syria policy,” National Post, 18 June 2013, A12.
34
Ibid., A12.
35
Matt Gurney, “Destroy Syria’s chemical weapons,” National Post, 23 August 2013, A14.
36
George Jonas, “White man’s burden 2.0: Why is it the West’s job to help Syrians from different sects share the same country?” National Post, 31 August 2013, 21.
37
Irwin Cotler, “Syrians are dying while the world dithers,” National Post, 31 August 2013.
38
Jonathan Kay, “R2P is no basis for bombing Syria,” National Post, 3 September 2012, A12.
39
Bill Keller, “America’s new isolationism,” National Post, 17 September 2013, A13.
40
Editorial, “Pitfalls, chaos and terrorism,” Globe and Mail, 2 January 2013, A12 (italics added).
41
Paul Heinbecker, “Heed the lessons of Iraq,” Globe and Mail, 15 March 2013, A15.
42
Editorial, “The reddening line,” Globe and Mail, 26 April 2013, A14.
43
Clark Campbell, “All urgency, no action in Syria debate,” Globe and Mail, A8.
44
Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Going to school in Syria,” Globe and Mail, 29 May 2013, A15.
45
Paul Heinbecker, “Every day, the cost of inaction grows,” Globe and Mail, 18 June 2013, A15.
46
Derek Burney and Fen Hampson, “Five reasons to stay out of Syria,” Globe and Mail, 19 June 2013, A15.
47
Lewis MacKenzie, “Why this strategy won’t fly in Syria,” Globe and Mail, 25 June 2013, A13.
48
Editorial, “Red line crossed,” Globe and Mail, 23 August 2013, A10 (italics added).
49
Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, “Intervene in Syria? Look to the ‘Kosovo model,’” Globe and Mail, 27 August 2013, A13.
50
Editorial, “Parliament needs to debate war,” Globe and Mail, 29 August 2013, A12.
51
Jeffrey Simpson, “Syria is not a test of U.S. leadership,” Globe and Mail, 4 September 2013, A13.
52
Jeffrey Simpson, “Intervention is easier said than done,” Globe and Mail, 7 September 2013, F2.
53
Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, “Syrians suffer ‘our’ failure,” Globe and Mail, 10 September 2013, A13.
54
Editorial, “Chemical weapons and hard diplomacy,” Globe and Mail, 17 September 2013, A12.
55
56
57
The Canadian government under Stephen Harper joined Western efforts against ISIS, but Canadian participation was withdrawn by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. It is too early to tell whether the new government will treat the Syrian conflict within the context of liberal internationalism.
Author Biographies
Tom Pierre Najem is associate professor of political science at the University of Windsor, where he served as department head from to 2002 to 2012. His latest publications include Track Two Diplomacy and Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Old City Initiative (co-editor, 2016), and Africa’s Deadliest Conflict: Media Coverage of the Humanitarian Disaster in the Congo and the United Nation’s Response, 1997–2008 (with Walter Soderlund, Don Briggs, and Blake Roberts, 2012).
Walter C. Soderlund is professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Windsor. He has a longstanding interest in intervention and international communications and is the author of Media Definitions of Cold War Reality (2001) and Mass Media and Foreign Policy (2003) and co-author of several other books.
E. Donald Briggs is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Windsor specializing in international relations and African politics. Among his publications are Africa’s Deadliest Conflict: Media Coverage of the Humanitarian Disaster in the Congo and the United Nations Response, 1997–2008 (with Walter Soderlund, Tom Najem, and Blake Roberts, 2012) and, with Walter Soderlund, The Independence of South Sudan: The Role of Mass Media in the Responsibility to Protect (2014). For many years he was the coordinator of the World University Service Canada program at the University of Windsor, which sponsored 15 refugee students from conflict-ridden countries in Africa to Canada.
Sarah Cipkar recently completed graduate work at the University of Windsor. She worked as a research assistant to the book-length study on media coverage of international intervention in the Syrian conflict. Sarah was instrumental in finding, retrieving, cataloguing, and organizing the material that forms the data on which the quantitative and qualitative research of the book is based.