Migrant crisis finally forcing West to change course on Syria

The US and its partners now realise that a no-fly ‘safe zone’ on Syria’s border will protect its citizens and force Assad to negotiate, writes Anne-Marie Slaughter

A RECENT front-page photo in the New York Times of a boatload of Syrian refugees drifting on the Mediterranean beneath an enormous setting sun could not have been more apt. The sun seems to be setting on Syria itself.

In the words of David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary and current president of the International Rescue Committee, the disaster in Syria has reached “almost biblical proportions”.