Something big has happened in international diplomacy: The Arab League, a body which until just the other day defended the sovereignty of its members at all costs, is demanding that a skittish U.N. Security Council take forceful action to stop atrocities committed by Syria, one of its own members. The league's call last year for a no-fly zone to protect civilians in Libya felt like an aberration, because Muammar al-Qaddafi had placed himself so far beyond the pale among his own neighbors. But Syria is a pillar of the organization, as central as France is to the EU. And so the spectacle of an Arab country -- Morocco -- introducing an Arab resolution to the Security Council earlier this week demanding that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad leave office was astonishing.

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Arab authorship radically changes the politics surrounding the question of international action. Think, by contrast, of Darfur, where the United States and several European allies on the Security Council pushed resolutions threatening sanctions against Sudan for its campaign of mass killing and expulsion. Arab leaders defended their brother in Khartoum, President Omar al-Bashir, while the African Union repelled outside interference with its calls for "African solutions to African problems." Much the same happened in the face of international outrage against the regimes in Zimbabwe and Myanmar. The perpetrator's neighbors thus twist legitimate calls for action into a campaign of Western neo-colonialism, and reduce the universal principles behind norms like "the responsibility to protect" into a hobby-horse of Western elites.

China took the lead defending Sudan in the Security Council starting in 2004. Whatever pressure China had to ensure from Western governments and public opinion, it suffered no consequences at all in Africa, the Middle East, or throughout the developing world. And for years, Bashir was thus able to virtually dictate the terms of the international effort to stop his own killing spree, with a toothless peacekeeping force fielded by an overwhelmed and under-financed African Union. "African solutions to African problems" not only emboldened China, it also undermined the already shaky alliance seeking to stop Bashir. Who wants to stand up for a Western solution to Africa's problems? And so the United States, Britain, and others often proved quite willing to dump the problem in Africa's lap.

By all rights we should be in that place again, but somehow we're not. Russia, which is performing the same services for Syria that China did for Sudan, is negotiating not only with the Western powers but with representatives of Morocco, Qatar, and the Arab League. Russia can not disguise its support for Syria as anti-neo-colonialism (even though it also has the support of India, long-time stalwart of the Non-Aligned Movement) The plain truth is that, just as China depended on Sudan as an oil supplier, Russia views Syria as a major client for its arms-export industry; and both China and Russia fear that any effort by the Security Council to stop atrocities could serve as a precedent for similar interventions in Chechnya, or Tibet. Moscow has hardly folded: by threatening a veto, it has already forced the resolution's backers to strip out any explicit reference to Assad's departure and has removed passages calling for an arms embargo and support for sanctions. But after blocking any Security Council action on Syria for months, Russia is now actively negotiating for language it can live with. Diplomats say that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov may reach an agreement when they meet in Munich on Saturday.

The resolution, whatever form it takes, puts the Arab League in the lead. A senior State Department official I spoke to pointed out that -- while in the case of Libya the Arab League had, in effect, authorized the West to act on its behalf -- in the case of Syria it has asked the council to endorse an Arab bid to resolve the problem. "That's important," he said, "and it's new." It may be possible to speak of an "Arab solution to an Arab problem" without a cynical smirk.

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