Western Bombs, Eastern Societies: The Destruction of Nations and Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

After the fiasco of the Iraq War of 2003, the West pushed for a new mandate through the UN called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2005. This new mandate revived ideas of humanitarian intervention that had been called into question from the detritus of Iraq. No lessons were learned. After R2P came Libya, a society now in ruins, and then came Syria, a country whose civil war had been fanned along even as no good outcome seemed on the horizon. Presented by Dr. Vijay Prashad from Trinity College, this talk will explore the landscape of intervention and its perils.