Abstract

The crisis in Syria has been widely recognized as constituting a multi-dimensional threat to international security. It is seen as a humanitarian crisis, a breeding ground of transnational terrorism, a site of the use of WMDs and a failed state. Some see it as a turning point in which the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) civilians was abdicated by the international community. It can also be seen as a new site to understand the conduct of ‘new wars,’ and of insurgency and counter-insurgency, as this chapter proposes. The intractability of the conflict is a challenge to our thinking on conflict resolution and the conduct of diplomacy to address internal wars. The conflict has been a site of vociferous debates among theorists and practitioners over how the international community should respond (Falk 2014; Kaldor 2013).