1998 
The United States and NATO seek U.N. Security Council approval to intervene in Serbia's persecution of ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. China and Russia veto it, but NATO, eager to avoid a repeat of its mid-1990s failures, starts bombing anyway. The action -- broadly supported, successful, and illegal -- sets an uneasy precedent.

1999 
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan complains that "'human rights taking precedence over sovereignty' and 'humanitarian intervention' seem to be in vogue these days," threatening to "wreak havoc" on international relations.

2000 
With the U.N.'s backing, Canada convenes the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, a blue-ribbon panel co-chaired by Australian politician Gareth Evans and charged with drawing up guidelines for humanitarian intervention. The panel's report, "The Responsibility to Protect," released in December 2001, puts the term on paper for the first time.

2005 
At its World Summit, the U.N. unanimously adopts "responsibility to protect" as a guiding principle for the prevention of "atrocity crimes." "It cannot be right," Secretary-General Kofi Annan declares, "when the international community is faced with genocide or massive human rights abuses, for the United Nations to stand by and let them unfold to the end."

2008 
When Cyclone Nargis strikes a hapless Burma, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner argues that the "responsibility to protect" obligates the international community to step in. Writing in Britain's Guardian, Archbishop Desmond Tutu similarly invokes the principle in calling for a nonmilitary intervention in Zimbabwe. Neither persuades the Security Council.

2009 
U.S. President Barack Obama takes office. His foreign-policy team includes two prominent anti-genocide advocates: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who is haunted by the U.S. failure in Rwanda, and special assistant Samantha Power, who reported on the Srebrenica massacre as a journalist and later wrote A Problem from Hell, an influential critique of the U.S. government's response to genocide.

JOEL ROBINE/AFP/Getty Images

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