'This remarkable account of the UN Security Council’s role in the Libyan intervention and its continued difficulties in Syria provides a very valuable insider’s perspective. As India’s permanent representative to the UN, and with extensive experience in multilateral diplomacy, Hardeep Singh Puri probes beneath the broad public declarations (protection of civilians) to examine the underlying motives of the principals actors, especially the US, UK and France. His account of the ambivalence of the US, still reeling from inaction in Rwanda fifteen years earlier but feeling propelled to act, leaves the reader with an acute sense of uncertainly as to how the US will respond to ongoing crises in Syria, Yemen and Libya. This is a must-read account for anyone who wants to probe beneath the conventional narrative to understand how the Security Council actually decided and acted in Libya and its longer-term consequences.'