Syria probably put them up to it...
Now they can "comply" and prove what a team player they are, or refuse to submit and prove to the rest of the Arab League that they're not in bed with, or submitting to, the American Puppets and Western Infidels in the UN.
I don't see how they lose. They got a few sanctions lifted by playing ball for a few years and now all they have to do say no a few times and they get back some cool points with their neighbors. Sanctions won't be imposed... Does anyone really think Russia, France, and China give a damn about who's killing who over there? There's no way in heck those three countries have anything to gain by holding Syria accountable for anything.
I suspect this will fade away. Nobody has any real interest in forcing compliance, just like nobody is going to *do* anything regarding the recent chest beating coming from Iran.
I'd be impressed as hell if Russia and France expelled the Iranian ambassadors and supported a UN suspension for Iran, but it won't happen. Saving face is too important and the concept that actions have consequences that override personal/national pride is too foreign in the middle east.
I've seen multi-national military exercises in "westernized" Persian Gulf countries that cost millions of dollars with participation from 10 countries cancelled outright without notice, simply because the country that owned the airspace was embarassed by their performance in the first day of the excercise. They cancelled the next day's exercise AFTER everyone had taken off, just to save face. They proved that their opinion DID matter, that they had the real POWER to influence the actions of 10 neighbor nations and the US, and so in the region their unilateral decision to cancel the exercise was seen as a clear-cut "win" despite them getting their butts handed to them the previous day and, in the eyes of the western participants, taking their ball and running home crying.
Consequences for actions? Nah. They'd let a million of their citizens starve if it saved face. The rules there are totally different. If we want anything out of Syria, it has to make them look GOOD, which means they have to come out of the whole mess without appearing to bend to the will of the UN (and the US), and with an improved position relative to regional and global powers.
Reagan knew this which is why he just went and bombed Libya when it came down to the impasse. It sent a clear message about relative power, and gave Kadaffi a way to say that he had no choice because we could reach out and touch his family. Not that we intended to blow up his kids, but that's one way the Libya raid could be perceived and Kadaffi didn't lose as much face after that attack as he would have by submitting before he had lost anything important.
North Korea is in a similiar situation... Too proud to submit even though it is costing the country very dearly in every conceivable way. Unfortunately for them, the last time we (Clinton) gave North Korea a way out that saved face, they took advantage of it and stabbed us in the back. Now everyone is suspicious of NK and for good reason, but they have even less opportunities to gracefully back down and that makes them more dangerous, not more vulnerable.
