The Syria Situation—Chemically

For John, BLUF:  Don't Intervene in Syria.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Georgetown University Visiting Professor Paul R Pillar has written a short item for The National Interest, in which he talks about Syria and Chemical Weapons.  As is fitting for a former CIA Anaylst and Georgetown Professor, he throws light and cold water on the idea of intervention in the Syrian Civil War over the used by the Bashar al Assad regime of chemical weapons—"Syria and WMD Inconsistency in the Middle East".

The agitators on Syria have been aided by President Obama's unwise earlier declaration about how use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would be a “game-changer.”  Perhaps the president said this to help fend off the pro-intervention pressure he already was feeling at the time.  If so, the remark was a short-sighted tactic.  It opened the way for pro-interventionists to argue that U.S. credibility will be harmed if it does not now intervene in Syria.

That argument is also a familiar one associated with mistakes of the past.  It also is invalid, as a matter of how people and governments actually assess the credibility of other governments.  The argument was at the center—not just as a public selling point, but as a matter of genuine belief by policy-makers—of the decision to intervene in Vietnam in the mid-1960s.  That war also was a blunder.

Well, many think of the Viet-Nam war as a blunder.  The "also" refers to the Second Gulf War.

I am against intervention in Syria.  I accept that 70,000 human beings have died, many of them civilians, but it is a civil war and in a civil war the civilians are part of the process.  You are either with the Government or you are with the rebels.  There is no neutrality in a civil war.  Thus the large number of refugees in Turkey and Jordan.  Those people opted to not participate.  If you don't wish to participate you leave—flee to Canada, which has been an American tradition since 1776, although some might have been loyalists looking for an area of safety.

Yes, there is a principle out there call Responsibility to Protect (R2P).  It is an emerging norm.  It is not a US Senate approved treaty.  I would suggest that if intervention is required that the Arab League♠ or some other group of nations pony up the forces.  The United States could offer to the UN surveillance and reconnaissance data, the use of air and sealift and some command and control assets.  We don't need to have US Service members on the ground.  Remember Afghanistan, Iraq and Viet-nam?  How did they turn out?

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Syria is a member of the Arab League, although her membership has been suspended since November 2011, due to the ongoing civil war.