In a column in the FT under the title 'Why Syria will get away with it', Gideon Rachman sets out his reasons for thinking that 'a 20-year experiment with the idea that western military force can put the world to rights is coming to a close'. There are five of them: American disenchantment with Europe's degree of willingness and its capacity to play its part; the 'bitter experiences of the Afghan and Iraq wars'; difficulties at the UN; budgetary constraints; and the fact that military interventions often lead to long-lasting entanglements in the countries intervened in. In any event, Gideon sees probable non-intervention in Syria as a more indicative guide to the future than the intervention in Libya was, though at the time that it began the Libyan intervention was seen by many as 'evidence of a longed-for new era, in which dictators can no longer feel free to massacre their own people'.
Whether Gideon is right or not in this projection of his I wouldn't care to predict. I will only say that if he is right and no further interventions to avert impending humanitarian catastrophe are to be forthcoming, then it won't be long before the world stands by once more as passive witness to... humanitarian catastrophe - whether one of these or several. I say it on a merely probabilistic basis, given how the world currently looks. Whether this would then tilt things again, out of a sense of international shame, who knows? I hope Gideon is wrong.