On intervention in Syria

The shorter Steve Cook: Bashar al-Assad is massacring his own people, but the West doesn't want to intervene because they think he'll fall soon enough. He won't though, and while intervening is difficult, it's not as difficult as the conventional wisdom holds. It may have the added bonus fo the US to undermine Iran's regional position. That being said, post-Assad Syria might be a disaster.

The shorter Marc Lynch: Bashar al-Assad is massacring his own people, but a massacre is not enough ground to strike against a country, even if it may be part of the ground. Any form of military intervention, such as a no-fly zone, would quickly grow into something complicated that would draw the West in further. The Syrian opposition is not yet strong enough to provide a real alternative to the regime anyway. Beef up sanctions and go to the ICC first to isolate the regime further and provide a legal basis for more down the road.

My short take: I am always againt military intervention, humanitarian or otherwise, because of the experience of Iraq and because I believe in national sovereignty as the cornerstone of democracy and in respecting international law. I do not see Russia and China giving a go-ahead for UN-sanctioned intervention, nor do I see Arab unity over intervention in this case. That being said, we must be realistic about Syria: the conflict is likely to perdure and will probably draw in its neighbors – Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel. In other words, it is likely to internationalize. These countries (and in the case of Lebanon and Iraq, others working through them) may want to back a particular faction, or quarantine the conflict (which will have an impact on the belligerents, of course). What's more, fighters from those countries may very well want to join one side or the other (there have already been rumors of Iranians joining in on the regime side). In other words, foreign intervention will be a reality sooner or later. I'd rather it'd be done by Syria's neighbors then the West, even if that means it will be bloodier or even if it leads to Assad staying in power. Quite simply, it's none of our business.

Comments

[Kellie Strøm]

National sovereignty is the cornerstone of democracy? The unasked question there is who is sovereign within the nation. To use national sovereignty as an argument to defend tyranny is obviously undemocratic. To assign national sovereignty to popular will within a nation is to acknowledge the potential legitimacy of interventions that you oppose.

[Issandr El Amrani]

In Libya, there was a strong component of people who backed foreign intervention, and demanded it. I don't see that in Syria yet.

[Kellie Strøm]

Yes, I was responding more to your being "always againt military intervention" based on the national sovereignty point, rather than to the view on Syria in particular.

[Zak]

Hezbollah recently bit the STL bullet to keep his government going. I am not aware of any Lebanese party escalating/supporting internal fighting on the back of the Syrian issue. There is no single credible proof for the claim that Hezbollah is actually fighting on the ground in Syria. Imagine them emptying the front in south Lebanon because they have a backup job to do, and they need to train themselves for it. I think such unproven claims show some people don’t understand how Hezbollah operate. Plus the main force is Hezbollah who is smarter than sliding with Assad, which is different from getting involved in the case of an Iran strike.

[yqxo]

Syria is in the mess the America helped to create. Though I agree US cannot publicly help the intervention, they could assist rebels secretly.

Here is a quote from BBC archives:

Keeley believed that America should get rid of the present elected leaders, bring in a short period of dictatorship which would protect the Syrian people and thus allow them to develop self-confidence and stronger personalities, and within a few years a real independent democracy would emerge.

And that is what the Americans did. In 1949 a "Political Action Team" was set up that went and made friends with the head of the Syrian army, Husni al-Za'im. Copeland was part of the team and he is completely open about what they did.

And Za'im promised the Americans he would throw all the corrupt politicians in jail, reform the country, recognise the new state of Israel, and then bring in proper democracy. All the Americans were convinced that it was a brilliant plan - except for one man, a young political officer called Deane Hinton. Copeland describes a moment when they were out in Damascus planning the coup when Hinton turned to the rest of the group and said:

"I want to go on record as saying that this is the stupidest, most irresponsible action a diplomatic mission like ours could get itself involved in, and that we've started a series of these things that will never end."

The Baby and the Baath Water

[Issandr El Amrani]

yqxo - While I loved that post by Adam Curtis, Assad only has himself to blame for the situation the country is in - America has nothing to do with it, no matter what it did in the 1960s.

Kellie - the point is not about popular sovereignty in Syria or elsewhere – it's about respecting sovereignty as a principle we use to organize international affairs, and without which there is no basis for any country ever being a democracy, even if it isn't at the moment.

[Kellie Strøm]

But how do you define respect for national sovereignty if you can't define who holds sovereignty within a nation?

This isn't wordplay - it's a fundamental question that you seem to be avoiding.

[Issandr El Amrani]

I think we're talking past each other. Sovereign as an inviolable principle of international law is what I'm defending here. It doesn't matter who is in control or whether the government is representative. The sovereignty of a nation is not with its people, it's an attribute of the state. That sovereignty is necessary for democracy comes later - that is, sovereignty is a condition for democracy, but democracy is not a condition for sovereignty.

[Kellie Strøm]

That makes your view clearer, though I think not more sensible.

For example, on that basis, the American colonies had no right to declare independence as that violated the sovereignty of the British state, and France was wrong to aid the American revolution as that also violated the sovereignty of the British state.

However I am pleased to note that under your rule, US and NATO intervention in Afghanistan is OK, as the Taleban regime wasn't internationally recognised in 2001, and actions since then have been in co-operation with the sovereign state.

[J Jandali]

The discussion on sovereignty as a deterrent to foreign intervention is purely academic. However, there are some serious practical factors that make any military intervention in the Syrian crisis extremely difficult.Unlike in the Libyan case, the US and other Western powers are not able to get a UN sanctioned measure for any action against the Syrian regime, not even a "No Fly Zone", with Russia and China adamantly opposed to any such action.And sanctions are not really that effective, as Iran continues to make up for any economic losses inflicted on the Syrian regime as a result of those sanctions. The best that one can hope for is for Turkey and Jordan, the two neighboring countries who have openly advocated a change regime,to establish security zones which would allow the Free Syrian Army of defectors and others to organize, train, and possibley acquire some badly needed military hardware to be used in protecting the civilan population and challenge the regime's security apparatus. Time is running out for Al-Assad, as more and more of his military personnel defect and join the rebellious faction, which, with the covert assistance of the Turks and Jordanians, will grow to become a viable military force, capable of affecting a regime change in Syria.

[Paul]

Sovereignty as an ultimate organizing principle has a long and powerful history, but also one that I'm not very impressed with. It began with the notion that the right to rule had been handed to kings by God, and therefore that any challenge to the rule of the king was a challenge to God himself. It evolved into the sovereignty of the nation, the right we see in Wilsonian democracy of "a people" to choose its own destiny, free from outside interference. Taken to its own logical conclusions, it mandated that everyone stand idle during Bosnia and Rwanda, while these "peoples", inhabitants of countries whose borders they did not choose, nations they did not believe in or identify with, chopped each other into bloody chunks with incredible brutality. "We must let them determine their own future!", even if that future involves an 85% majority wiping a 15% minority off the face of the earth. Genocide is ok as long as it doesn't cross borders, if you hold to a strict view of sovereignty.

Samatha Power experienced this same set of contradictions, and wrote <u>A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide</u> in an attempt to find a way around or over the reigning doctrine of sovereignty that could recognize and establish the legitimacy of outside intervention in order to defend basic human rights and dignity. The Libyan intervention happened because of the intellectual groundwork she laid.

I am ashamed to admit I haven't read her book yet. But she deals with exactly this set of problems. I think all three of us could find our thinking challenged and clarified by reading her book. Sovereignty is problematic, and yet overthrowing it entirely is problematic also. Sovereignty defends the right of smaller nations to exist unmolested. It also means that even smaller nations within nations, like Tutsis or European Jews or Indian Muslims or Egyptian Copts or American Blacks, are completely defenseless. "State sovereignty" was the shield behind which Jim Crow was untouchable for 100 years. It has some good consequences on the international stage, but I'm presently convinced it's a pretty lousy way to order the world. But then, I haven't read the books yet.

[Junaid]

Samantha Power is the last person that should be allowed to define sovereignty. If it were up to her, the US would be in almost every country in Africa right now.

The US should simply not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. The concept of "moral obligation" is a meaningless buzzword. The people who end up fulfilling the role of peace-maker are young, low-income Americans, not Susan Rice, Samantha Power or Hilary Clinton.

[Issandr El Amrani]

I'm with Junaid on this one. Kellie - your historic examples are irrelevant, since the UN system was not in place at the time of the American revolution, and besides I am not necessarily against secessionism, which is a different matter than humanitarian intervention. With regards to Afghanistan in 2001, I was in favor of the attack to the remove al-Qaeda bases and the Taliban regime, but not because it wasn't internationally recognized. Remember that attack was legal and UN-sanctioned. Iraq wasn't. Libya, which I was ambiguous about, was but authority was overstepped – although at least you had a clear number of Libyans who were in favor of it. Syria is very unlikely to be.

We are headed into very turbulent times globally. I think the UN system as legally intended, with its protection of sovereignty and rules for breaking that protection, is an excellent safeguard against more wars. I find concepts like liberal interventionism and R2P, borne out not so much the genocides of the 1990s as the US' brief global dominance during that decade, inherently suspicious and deleterious to a more conservative approach to maintaining the UN system and the protection it affords all state against illegal, unwarranted attack.