POLITICS FEBRUARY 27, 2012
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When interests meet ideals in the arena of states, ideals lose out. How shall we count the ways? In recent times, there were Somalia, Rwanda and Darfur—the massacres and the ethnic cleansing dwarfing anything happening in Syria or, last summer, in Libya. In more ancient history, the world allowed Japan to grab Manchuria and wipe out Nanking. Mussolini used poison gas to conquer Abyssinia while the League of Nations postured and then fell apart. The U.S. wouldn't even bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz, the reasons put forward being: We need the ordinance for the war against the Germans. Or the tracks will be rebuilt in the nick of time. Or, God forbid, we might hit the barracks and kill Jews on the way to the gas chamber.
This brief history of human cruelty is not meant to score a cheap moral point. It is to drive home a reality usually blanked out by those given to moral grandstanding. The international community—actually, the West—intervenes only where the venture promises to be cheap, quick, and bloodless. Hence the bombing of Serbia in 1999, hence the air campaign against Qaddafi in 2011. Coldhearted interest was at work, as well. Back in the 1990s, as conflicts raged in Bosnia and Kosovo, Europeans dreaded the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees, and so they were keen to staunch the flow by stopping Serbia’s strongman Slobodan Milosevic. The same logic helped to topple Qaddafi; add to this French President Sarkozy’s ambition to grab leadership of the EU. So his Rafales went in first.
None of these serendipitous factors operate in the case of Syria. Start with the United States. Bill Clinton had to be dragged into air war against Serbia, a locale that held little strategic interest for the United States. Yet a dozen years later, Barack Obama would not be budged over Libya, insisting that the Europeans do the heavy lifting. Today, the U.S. is pulling out of two wars in the Greater Middle East while slashing defense spending. If America does go to war again, it will not be for moral, but for overweening realpolitik reasons: to cut Iran down to size, to secure the world’s energy lifeline through the Gulf, and to demonstrate who is number one in the most critical strategic arena of the 21st century.
What about Europe? The Europeans have been chopping away at their militaries ever since the Russians went home in 1994. They are now slicing to the bone; they simply could not mount an air operation against Syria without the U.S. But Europe’s impotence is just for starters. This time, Russia and China aren’t content to just hang back, as they did in the run-up to the Libyan campaign. They would now actively oppose any intervention—look how they nixed two watery Security Council resolutions against Syria. So would Turkey, which has its own hegemonial ambitions in the Middle East.
Nor would America’s good Sunni friends cheer, let alone provide bases, for an intervention. Despots all, they do not look forward to yet another regime change by Western bombs and bullets. Iran, whose Quds Force is already operating in Syria, might actually fight for Assad in order to preserve its strategic outpost on the Mediterranean. Would Israel offer a staging ground? Hardly. The Israelis prefer the devil they know to a Sunni-based regime that will surely come in an Islamist garb, as it did in Egypt and Tunisia.
In other words, it is red lights all over. Nor would a campaign be a cakewalk in the skies. Syria’s army is among the Middle East’s strongest, with some 5000 tanks and 500 combat aircraft, though these Soviet-era jets are a bit long in the tooth. Humanitarian duty would require an aerial slugfest at least as protracted and intensive as the air campaigns preceding Iraq I, Afghanistan and Iraq II. It will not happen.
So what will? With the recent Sino-Russian veto of a mild motion of censure by the Security Council, both sides will now fight to the finish. Harsher sanctions by the West will follow, but they will be undermined by Moscow and Beijing. Meanwhile, arms flows will quicken—to both sides. The insurgency will escalate into a full-blown civil war. And the winners will take horrible revenge on the losers. Is there an upside?
Somebody in Assad’s entourage might decide to kill him. Or a well-aimed cruise missile might do the job. Or Assad may decide that exile in Saudi Arabia is preferable to sharing Qaddafi’s fate—namely, murder at the hands of rebels. Perhaps the stuttering Syrian economy will grind to a halt, with Assad’s tanks running out of ammunition and diesel.
These are conjectures, no more. So the West will fume against Moscow and Beijing, pulling ambassadors out of Damascus and pushing for a third Security Council resolution that dilutes the two vetoed drafts. The Russians will dispatch emissaries to tell Assad … what? To make nice to the rebels? Assad’s allies in Tehran will counsel him to follow Ahmadinejad’s script in the “Green Revolution” of 2009: Don’t assault frontally, use force economically by encircling and asphyxiating your foes. A low-level war, like the terror campaign against the “Greens,” will slowly recede offstage. Meanwhile, Syrians will keep dying, the toll now exceeding 5,000.
But the West will not unleash its air forces. Libya was no precedent for Syria. Remember the rule: We bomb only where the campaign promises to be short, cheap and decisive. And where the target—like Qaddafi—has no allies. Assad does: Russia, China, and Iran.
Josef Joffe is editor of Die Zeit and Senior Fellow at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies and Abramowitz Fellow at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford.
9 comments
So anybody who disagrees with the interventionists is a week-kneed appeaser and, worse, is guilty of "moral grandstanding". Joffee provides no argument, only contempt for those who disagree with him. Like all civil wars, this one is a war of attrition, and a war that Assad cannot win. Fully 80% of Assad's troops are Sunni, and while there have been defections, what's needed is a strategy to accelerate and broaden those defections. Unfortunately, at least one part of the west's strategy, sanctons, has the effect of discouraging defections because so many Sunni families are now dependent on military pay. The interventionists' solution is for the west and Sunni nations in the region (Turkey et al.) to intervene and take out Assad and the Alawi (Shia) troops and the Sunni troops that are loyal to Assad. That is not a strategy, that is a recipe for regional war.
- rayward
February 27, 2012 at 8:02am
While I agree with most of Joffe's points, I doubt Assad the Younger would be welcome for an exile in Saudi Arabia. I assume he already has a cattle ranch in Argentina's Patagonia...there are few places beyond Iran or Lebanon for an Alawite to feel safe. After all, the opposition in Syria are the Sunnis, and Assad already rejected all Saudi entreaties, before the Arab Spring, to peel away from Iran. The humanitarians have failed to notice that Syria's Alawites are in alignment with Syria's millions of Christians, who know they would be murdered en masse if the Sunnis wrest control from Assad.
- K2K
February 27, 2012 at 8:16am
OK hear me out. I wonder if there isn't a strategy that can be devised by the West that focuses solely on stopping the slaughter of innocents. I do know that the boundaries for such a thing are too messy and perhaps such a construct is naive, but I'll just ask one thing then: why not? I'm one of those wooly headed interventionists, I'll admit. This destruction of innocents is traumatizing, outraging me. The smug listing of all the other slaughters going on in the world at the moment leaves me cold, utterly unconvinced of anything and should not be bothered with in responding to this.
- WandreyCer
February 27, 2012 at 9:26am
The Syrian crises doesn't lend to easy solutions. First, any State intervention, as Joffe noted could result in a war between States: Syria, Iran on one side some Sunni State (Turkey?) and or NATO on the other side. Second, it could become the focal point of Sunni-Shiite animosities. The NY Times said that al Qaida is calling for a Jihad against the Syrian regime. Third, Syria has a strong arsenal of chemical weapons and the regime if desperate could seek to attack Israel with or without Iran's help. Finally, I agree with Joffe that intervention in humanitarian crises is usually done with reluctance by the international community, Syria is not a good example of such reluctance. There are many military and political reasons why we should move cautiously here.
- arnon
February 27, 2012 at 1:57pm
Although I don't appreciate Joffe's tone, I have to admit that his analysis is very accurate and certainly fits my memories of e.g. the Bosnian war in the early-mid 1990s (I lived in Germany at the time, and he's correct about the European fear of the refugees and the European inability to intervene without the U.S.). Wandrey, I hear you but some things are really intractable. At the moment, Syrian armed forces are being used with some restraint and we don't know where the breaking point is at which the armor, air force etc will either allow themselves to be sent in against civilians or (potentially) jump ship and fly the planes to Turkey or whatever. In fact, one unit might go one way, another the other way. In any case, a declaration of e.g. a no-fly zone will require -- unless it's mere words -- taking out Syrian air power and air defense installations, and this is not Libya. Do you want U.S. fighter aircraft in an air war over Syria? Yes we can do stuff from ships in the Mediterranean but it's a tougher nut to crack than last summer and the consequences much less predictable. And 80% of those guilt-tripping the U.S. and trying to show Obama the way will be slagging him off next week for doing the thing they were pushing for today.
- ironyroad
February 27, 2012 at 3:51pm
Thank you for your response Irony, much appreciate it. I read somewhere today about all sorts of henious consequences to inciting a civil war in Syria, that things could in fact get worse for civilians, hard as that is to fathom. As far as Obama getting grief - meh. I'm more frustrated with the silence of the Europeans in this round, the "despicable" (awesome Hillary) Chinese and Russians. Just awful.
- WandreyCer
February 27, 2012 at 4:46pm
"Yet a dozen years later, Barack Obama would not be budged over Libya, insisting that the Europeans do the heavy lifting." That is just a bald faced lie. The US provided the overwhelming amount of mission, ordinance, naval forces, drones, etc. Britain and France had a few more combat missions, but the designation of what to hit was done mostly by US forces. The US didn't spend a billion dollars on nothing. Either Israel or Turkey could eradicate Assad if they wanted to. If Israel wants to seriously hurt Iran, then they can take out Assad. A well targeted assassination would throw their leadership in chaos.
- blackton
February 27, 2012 at 7:01pm
Generally I feel like Wandrey, and want to help the people. And sadly I agree with Joffe; history hasn't shown a general willingness to sacrifice blood and treasure, even a few bombs to hit the tracks to Aushwitz, if simply saving lives is the goal. As for Syria, though, I think the situation is very confusing. I agree with Hillary of course, about Russia and China and the imagery from Homs and elsewhere is appalling and I wish we could help and try to prevent casualties. But, looking at it dispassionately: how much information about the wishes of a majority of Syrians do we really have? It turns out that in Libya, we thought there was a huge uprising and apparently the number of armed revolutionaries was very small, the bloodshed and chaos may well continue and some of the rebels were in fact not democrats seeking to be like France. That's true in Egypt too. So I am confused and don't know what should be done on a practical level. What if a majority of Syrians does support the regime? I realize this is quite possibly not the case but how do we distinguish a people's rebellion from a splinter attack? Also, look at the disinformation about Gaza for example. It's easy to react against pictures of a violent attack and want to jump in; however, were the Israelis justified in defending themselves from the rockets and other incitement? Are governments justified in trying to subdue armed insurrections? When is it a legitimate insurrection and/or war of defense and when is it just a slaughter? We need to learn more about Syria. I've read a lot from the standpoint of Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals who detest the regime for its authoritarianism; anti-Iranians, who detest the regime for that reason; and people who remember Assad's father, not kindly; and have personally heard anecdotes from Arabs and Assyrians who have come to the US to escape repression. Apparently even a pocket calculator could rouse suspicion back in the 1970's and lead to arrest. The tortures and murders of Assad The Elder's regime are notorious; Hama was the site of perhaps tens of thousands of murders. The present Assad has imprisoned people, I think, for poetry. However, what would follow in the wake of Assad? Would it be worse? Lead to more oppression, more violence? And do a majority of Syrian people oppose his regime? The repression of thought, of political speech and freedom is wrong per se and I agree with the desire to liberalize and create more freedom, more democracy, if possible - on principle. But, we haven't been very successful to date with our state-building efforts in the ME/North Africa or Central Asia. So I don't think this is as simple as saving victims in Rwanda, which I believe we should have done; or bombing the tracks to Aushwitz. We need more information and we can't see the future. Thus far, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt haven't moved in a progressive direction and we don't know if the Palestinians will either and Lebanon has maybe compromised with anti-progressive Hezbollah. So? Maybe we could - do what? How do we help innocent people without maybe making things worse or even inserting ourselves into a situation where we are effectively acting against the wishes of a majority? Apart from an end to the horrific violence, do we even know what Syrian people in general really want?
- Sophia
February 27, 2012 at 9:02pm
I should add: I have read defenses of Assad from people who praise him simply because he's kept the borders secure and there haven't been any major wars involving Syria directly, especially with Israel. There is stability. Peace and stability are not small things. It's good not to be blown up at the pet market or the mosque or on the highway. I am not saying this justifies violence and repression. But, security is a major element in what makes life possible on a daily basis. Also, would people really welcome the sight of American bombers overhead? The first Gulf War, they broadcast the attack on Baghdad. It was an appalling sight. I could imagine myself on the ground, under attack. I think the wars against Iraq, however bad Saddam was, and in Afghanistan have led to Iran wanting nuclear capabilities. They rant about Israel but they are afraid of the great powers far more. We could blow them off the planet and they know it, and the two Bushes have demonstrated that the US will not hesitate to "project power" just as the Soviets attacked the Afghans and destroyed their country. We should hesitate to use force.
- Sophia
February 27, 2012 at 9:11pm