Syria and the "responsibility to protect"

http://www.americaabroad.org/radio/programs/documentaries/?prog=Syria_and_the_Responsibility_to_Protect

After worldwide moral cowardice during the Rwanda genocide, the UN adopted the "responsibility to protect" (RTP) doctrine, which states that global powers have the duty to "take action" when there is evidence of genocide. Two concerns: it leaves it up to the individual nations as to what actions are warranted, and the definition of genocide is pretty hazy. So it's a non-binding statute to say the least.

RTP was used to justify NATO bombing the Serbs over Bosnia, NATO bombing Saddam for gassing the Kurds, and most recently NATO bombing Qaddafi's military (for the record, Qaddafi wasn't really engaging in genocide, unless you consider those rebelling against him as a threatened minority). Of course other genocides have taken place since Rwanda where no one took any action beyond speeches. This inconsistency undermines the credibility of some global powers vis-a-vis RTP.

Last week the Syrian opposition claimed that Assad used chemical weapons on civilians/rebels in a Damascus suburb, and hundreds were sickened and killed. There is a lot of evidence to support that claim. This is the 2nd widely documented chem. attack by Assad in the last 3 months. Earlier in the civil war, Obama threatened that Assad deploying WMDs would cross a "red line" where the US would be forced to act. We did nothing after the first attack, but after this recent attack we have deployed more warships to the area (for possible missile strikes). However, there are several reasons why military intervention (even under the RTP) would be problematic for the specific case of Syria.

Bosnia is the only case on record where military intervention (with no boots on the ground amazingly) actually stopped war crimes. And the NATO bombing stopped it cold; i.e. Serbia rushed to the bargaining table the next day. But the differences with Syria are like night and day, so we can't expect to be that lucky again:

- Assad is locked in an existential internal struggle and major blood feud, while Milosevic was supporting Bosnian Serbs in a proxy war with very little strategic value or reasons to escalate

- There were clear, centralized chains of command in the Balkans, vs. quasi-chaos in Syria

- Bosnia was pretty much the nastiest war in the EU's backyard during a very peaceful period of world history (more attention, outrage, and support for intervention), while Syria is a blip (albeit a very tragic, bloody one) in the protracted War on Terror, failed Arab Spring, and general Mideast unrest that deters foreign powers from decisive action

- Russia and China will really risk a lot to go to bat for Syria, while most of Serbia's "allies" (including Russia) were not that close and easily persuaded to drop support

Then what about Libya? Over 100,000 Syrians have died so far; some in "legitimate" civil strife and others unlawfully. Qaddafi didn't come anywhere close to that (Libya as a nation is only 6M concentrated in a few major cities vs. Syria's 22M). But we helped the rebels topple his ass. Well, the effort was mostly led by the French (who sound more aggressive on Syria as well), so the US could "lead from behind" and not take flak for the consequences. Also we intervened when the Arab Spring momentum was strong and we appeared to be turning a new page in the region. In other words, lots of upside with little cost. Over a year later, we now know there were some major costs: they can't form a coalition gov't, they can't disarm their militias, they can't protect our ambassador, and arms used to oust Qaddafi (some given by the West) are getting funneled to Syria, Yemen, and other hot spots. So even a "no brainer" intervention has its downside.

This puts Obama in a real bad spot, obviously. If we keep talking about war crimes and not doing anything about it, then our credibility sinks even lower than its current abysmal level in the region. Also if we don't respond, innocents will continue to die and the instability/refugee crisis will threaten fragile neighboring nations. If we bomb Assad, then it's possible Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies will attack our forces in the Gulf (and no guarantee it will stop the atrocities). Plus it will further worsen our strategic relations with China and Russia. If we support the rebels (and they win), then Alawites will be persecuted/slaughtered and another Egypt might happen, except this time Al Nusra (overt Al Qaeda affiliates) could lead instead of the "tame" Muslim Brotherhood.

There's no way we put boots on the ground after Obama has campaigned and worked hard for years to pull out of our recent 2 Mideast wars. I believe no-win situations are in fact very rare if parties really give full effort to come to a solution, but Syria could actually be a legit one.

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Oh, forgot to mention... punitive air strikes can really go both ways, though clearly we don't have a big data sampling to study. Bombing worked well in the Bosnia War, but then I guess Milosevic learned and he was a lot less cooperative during the Kosovo War. Whereas we only bombed for a few days in Bosnia, Kosovo required over 70 DAYS of air strikes before the Serbs came to the bargaining table. Good thing too as NATO was running out of military targets, and decided to punish all the people of Serbia by expanding their target list to include irrelevant, peaceful infrastructure like the power grid and chemical plants. Also some accounts suggest that there really wasn't much evidence of atrocities against Kosovar Albanians, and NATO just wanted to teach Slobo a lesson at the time. After the first wave of cruise missiles, sadly the killing of Albanians increased out of retaliation. That's the problem with "long distance war", you have even less influence than conventional chaotic war. And it doesn't help our image, especially considering anger over our cowardly reliance on sometime illegal drone attacks. So even if we effectively and carefully target Assad's weapons (and I'm sure his WMD are carefully protected/hidden), we can't stop his ground forces from slaughtering more dissidents. UN boots on the ground won't guarantee civilian safety either. A recent report slammed the post-bombing UN-NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo for failing to protect local ethnic Serbs from revenge attacks by Albanians, and not investigating claims that thousands went "missing." The Alawites know what is coming if their side loses.

We are backing them and Assad into a corner. What is he going to do, capitulate? Slobo was still the popular leader of Serbia, possibly wanted for war crimes, and had something to lose if he didn't bargain to save his neck. Assad knows there is no scenario where he doesn't go to the dock or the morgue, so of course he is not going to respond they way we would like (especially after seeing what happened to other dictators who thought they would be safe by playing ball with America, like Qaddafi). I guess that is why diplomacy is so precious before the streets are full of blood and everyone gets irrational; now we've missed our chance to intervene effectively and are left with only bad options.

But we just can't sit idly by either, refusing to be vigilant after a regime has used WMD on civilians (and likely shot at UN inspectors trying to investigate that). If we stick to our guns, we have to go all-in then. Toppling Assad is the easy part, but we have to make sure to not let Syria become another Egypt, Iraq, or Kosovo. And we have to make sure we can afford to intervene, both financially and politically. Or we hold off and try to bribe Russia/China into permitting a UN mandate, then go in as a coalition and try our best to not F it up again.

Michael Scheuer on Osama and the Mideast

This was one of the most refreshing foreign policy interviews I've heard in a while, from Prof. Michael Scheuer of G'Town who used to head up the CIA's Bin Laden group (nicknamed "The Manson Family" for how fanatically they performed their jobs). I guess you might think he was a failure for that, but he informed the Pentagon of OBL's precise location on 8 occasions (of course no way to know if they were right), and the Clinton admin. declined to give the green light for their own reasons. In 2007, Osama himself said that the two Americans who understood him the most were Noam Chomsky and Scheuer (make of that what you will).

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201102231000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer

Scheuer said that as early as 1997, Osama's grand strategy was to foment political discord in the US and alienate us from our allies over our foreign policy, stretch our military-intel apparatus thin trying to chase Al Qaeda, and bankrupt us in foreign quagmires. If that is true, then the self-proclaimed greatest nation in history strutted into a major bear trap set by a guy hiding in a cave. We're not on our last legs yet, but we're not winning either (especially when you consider the price we've paid so far for minor gains). He also said that Osama is more of a smart, dedicated "worthy enemy" like Robert E. Lee than a delusional lunatic like Kim Jong Il. Unfortunately the former is a lot harder to defeat.

Osama's top enemies are/were the non-Islamic dictators in the Mideast (especially the House of Saud, Saddam, Mubarak, and Qaddafi, so this has been a great month for him) and Israel. The US and the West are indirect enemies due to our support for said enemies. But one wonders whether our choice of allies could have prevented Osama from becoming militant. After all, he did fight with us at one time, so we must not have been such intolerable infidels. Just as our "trusted Iraqi sources" told the neo-cons exactly what they wanted to hear, that Iraq had WMD for their own interests, Israel and our dictator buddies in the Mideast (who view grassroots Islamic movements as their top threats to power) have fed us crap for years that Al Qaeda hates us because of our values, and won't stop until we're dead or converted. Well if that's the case then it's personal; we better hate them back and wage an endless, amorphous war against them. Good vs. evil, our civilization is at stake, yadda yadda.

Yes Al Qaeda may want a global caliphate, because that is what Muhammad instructed Muslims to do (not necessarily through violence). I want a new job, and even if I try very hard to get one there's no telling if and when it will happen. Some US evangelicals hope to bring about the conditions that unleash Armageddon - not just prepare for the return of the lord, but actively make it happen. Then the US and all nations will be destroyed, and everyone but the true believers die horrible deaths (including the Jews they profess to support). So should we imprison the evangelicals for conspiracy against the US, and send them to Gitmo as religious fanatics? There is no point fearing and defending against every extreme religious endgame. But hey, it makes for a great bogeyman for people like Bush and Beck to peddle on the ignorant and fearful.

All this masks the truths that are politically inconvenient for our leaders, and hinders their propaganda efforts inspiring us to sacrifice for this righteous conflict. We and our allies created Al Qaeda and Osama. Instead of diffusing the causes of their grievances, we have chosen to fight them head on, and on their terms. And we have taken this problematic path because we care more about propping up dictators in order to keep the Israelis happy, Muslims down, and oil exports up (an industry whose profits go to only a small subset of people), rather than forging true partnerships, cultural understanding, political reforms, and economic development. The region is still affected by the legacies of colonialism; they need a Marshall Plan, not Rendition and sanctions. If we took the higher path, maybe Exxon and Lockheed's coffers would be smaller, but the people over there would have a better quality of life and viable political channels of redress (precluding the need to embrace violent Islam), which ensures greater stability and security for our interests in the end.

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Scheuer also made pretty good comments about our precarious support of Israel. Any nation founded on the premise that a deity granted a chosen tribe exclusive rights to a patch of land in an unbreakable, eternal covenant (and much of their government is populated by leaders who espouse this belief) is probably not a great partner for rational, 21st Century diplomacy. The US supposedly trusts in god, but no one except Palin types would claim that god cares whether the US is around or not. Scheuer was the first person I've heard to say that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, contrary to most public statements. He of course believes that Israel has the right to defend itself from threats, but no nation has a "right" to exist, and that is an important distinction. It must be true, otherwise the USSR would still be around, and we couldn't have forced Nazi Germany to surrender. Nations exist as long as they can, but if they grow weak or piss off other nations enough, they're going down. That is the way of the world, so why the double-standard for Israel? Because god said so? And we call the Muslims crazy? This is important because it's much harder to think clearly when existential sentiments are always clouding one's judgment.

Regarding Libya, it's amazing that Obama hasn't publicly condemned Qaddafi's violence against his people and called for him to step down (the Arab League already has). Clinton spoke out a bit, and also previously called on the Iranian people to rise up against their murderous regime. That's easy for her to say 10,000 miles away in safety and comfort, but these are not light decisions for the people on the ground. If they want to revolt, they have to go all the way or it's their death and doom for their loved ones. Despots stay in power by paying for loyalty and crushing opponents, especially those who dare to speak out. There's no turning back, and if we realize that we should really salute the courageous young people who risked everything to defy the odds and topple dictators backed by thousands of gunmen and billions of petro-dollars. The typical American can't even be bothered to drive down the street and vote once a year. It's a real shame that decades of our foreign policy blunders have rendered us nearly impotent during this critical time in Mideast history.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/too_little_not_yet_too_late

Why has the US put more heat on Mubarak, when he was responsible for far less bloodshed (at least Mubarak didn't send warplanes to bomb unarmed people in his own cities)? Libya cut a deal with Bush and others in the West to get UN sanctions lifted and to get off the terror blacklist. Qaddafi supposedly agreed to cease his WMD programs, pay reparations to the victims of the Pan Am bombing, and release some Western captives. He must have got a lot in return, including diplomatic cover. And when the EU buys 85% of Libya's substantial oil exports, that's a lot of capital to cash in during a crisis. That shows you how our foreign energy dependence can cripple our diplomatic options and stifle our principles. It's clear that Qaddafi is done; it just matters how much he will kill and destroy in the process. It's better for us and the region to limit Qaddafi's damage now. We enforced no-fly zones over Serbia and Iraq, why not with Libya? Our fleet is already over there. Many Libyan pilots bravely defected and refused to carry out missions to bomb protesters. But at least the US/NATO can embargo incoming shipments of resources and mercenaries from Qaddafi's African allies.

Why do Muslims hate us? Not because of our democracy, shopping malls, and women's rights (well not primarily). It's because we choose to befriend homicidal klepto-sociopaths over the millions of honest, poor people languishing under their boots. It's not just Obama but a long tradition.