exist at the level of high principle, the debate about how to implement R2P in practice -- at least at the sharp end, in the hardest cases, when prevention has manifestly failed and violence is actually occurring, and the question arises whether coercive military force should be used -- has   become very fierce and very divisive. From the high point of consensus and cooperation we reached in the Security Council in February and March last year, with the resolutions over Libya (and Cote d'Ivoire as well) we have now plunged to a very low point indeed. So what went wrong, and how do we fix it? Part of the reason for the paralysis over Syria, as compared with the speedy and effective response to Libya, is that the geopolitics of the Syrian crisis are very different, with potentially explosive regional sectarian divisions, no Arab League unanimity in favour of tough action, a long Russian commitment to the Assad regime, and a strong Syrian army meaning that any conceivable intervention would be difficult and bloody. But there's more to it than that. Security Council consensus about when and how to apply R2P in sharp-end cases of human rights catastrophe, so evident in February and March 2011, has simply evaporated in a welter of recrimination about how the NATO-led implementation of the Council's Libya mandate "to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack" was actually carried out. Leading the critical charge, as I have noted, have been the 'BRICS'