![Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, speaks to the Security Council at U.N. headquarters, New York, Dec. 8, 2017 (AP photo by Richard Drew).](https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/l_____ussia__mbassador_02262018_1.jpg?w=519&h=259&crop=1)
It is hard to feel excited about United Nations Security Council resolutions anymore. On Saturday, after days of exhausting diplomacy, the council unanimously passed a resolution calling for a 30-day cease-fire across Syria. Most diplomatic observers reacted either cautiously or outright cynically. Previous U.N.-backed cessations of hostilities in the country have evaporated quickly. A veteran of the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia in the 1990s once told me that he had kept a list of how long each cease-fire there had lasted before a shot was fired. The shortest was less than a minute. The record in Syria is no […]