Between Action and Inaction in Syria

This is the most damning op-ed I've seen to date regarding President Obama's foreign policy on Syria. The Washington Post editorials have been highly critical of U.S. inaction for some time as you can read on Aug. 16, 2016, and July 2, 2016, and from editorial page editor Fred Hiat who states that the Obama Administration not only failed  to take action in Syria, but "soothed the American people into feeling no responsibility for the tragedy." But the op-ed by Leon Wieseltier is scathing, calling Obama's words "outrageously hypocritical." Wieseltier writes, "The administration creatively pioneered a third option, which it pursued not only in Syria but also in Ukraine and elsewhere: Between action and inaction, it chose inconsequential action (italics mine). There is the Obama doctrine!"

 

It's hard to place blame on the Obama Administration for the tragedy taking place right now in Aleppo. One might instead blame Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, or perhaps Iran and Russia for inflicting hurt and destruction as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Powers did in a speech which has gone viral (to which the Russian ambassador replied, "I don't want to remind these three countries [US, France, UK] about their role in unwinding the Syrian crisis, which led to such difficult consequences, and let terrorists spread in Syria and Iraq). But where questions lie for the next Administration is whether the U.S., as a great power, has a moral responsibility to push harder militarily against the Syrian government an do more to protect civilians.

Obama's critics argue that there are serious costs to inaction. In contrast, proponents have argued that greater U.S. involvement would have only made the conflict worse, with more death and suffering. Can the U.S. to do more to take a stand against al-Assad in which the costs (in lives and treasure) do not exceed the benefits? I can clearly see the administration has been wrestling between a logic of consequence and a logic of appropriateness resulting in such inconsequential inaction.

Intro to IR Roundup: Nukes, Migration, Syria and IR Research

Today is the first day of fall 2016-17 classes. I usually teach Intro to International Relations in the fall, but am out of my routine due to a conference I'm organizing. However, I thought I'd post several good sound bytes which I would have offered to students had I been kicking off class with a dose of current events and international crises.

Syria: Why is the war so damn long and bloody. It's gets more violent by the day. Drawing on IR

 AFP/Getty Images

research, Max Fisher of the New York Times provides a run-down of some of the factors contributing to the ugly nature of the Syrian war. The usual suspects like multiparty factions and ethnic/sectarian divisions. But a big culprit appears to be foreign sponsorship/intervention. As Fisher writes:

"Foreign interventions that were intended to end the war ...have instead entrenched it in a stalemate in which violence is self-reinforcing and the normal avenues for peace are all closed...Whenever one side loses ground, its foreign backers increase their involvement, sending supplies or air support to prevent their favored player’s defeat. Then that side begins winning, which tends to prompt the other’s foreign backers to up their ante as well. Each escalation is a bit stronger than what came before, accelerating the killing without ever changing the war’s fundamental balance."

Intervention: Recent interventions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) have left us pondering the costs of such intervention.  Anne Applebaum asks what the costs of non-intervention have been in Syria in terms of total deaths, the refugee crisis, the destabilization of the region, and security threats in Europe . Of course, intervention could have made all of this even worse. Fareed Zakaria earlier argued that it was probably best for the U.S. not to intervene, but it could/should have done much more on humanitarian assistance, even if it rightfully chooses not to pursue humanitarian intervention. Part of the problem may be the politicization of aid.

Nuclear Weapons: Obama is toying with the idea of changing U.S. strategic doctrine by declaring a no first use nuclear weapons policy. Some pros and cons of a first no use policy are outlined by the WSJ.  While reducing nukes sounds good in theory, Stephen Sestanovich of CFR pushes back against this change.

Migration: Want to know the difference between migrants and refugees. A CFR video and backgrounder explains here.

Obama, Syria, Migration, and Intervention

Initial reactions from a few Republican presidential candidates and handful of Republican governors have ranged from disheartening to appalling. Unsurprisingly Democrats, including President Obama have attacked Republicans and others for refusing to accept Syrian refugees.

Conservatives have hit back, putting some of the blame on the Obama Administration for producing the Syrian crisis., and making a case for intervention. As Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post argues:

Four million Syrians have fled, with even more internally displaced. Half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes.For that, the Obama administration bears some responsibility — and the reasons should be something voters think about in 2016....He withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq when experts advised that a residual force of 15,000 would help to keep a fragile peace. He bombed Libya to overthrow its dictator but opposed a small NATO training force that might have stabilized the new government. He ordered a limited surge of troops to Afghanistan but soon began withdrawing them on a timetable unmoored to conditions. When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad cracked down on democracy protesters, kindling violence, Obama kept the United States aloof.

As a result, Hiatt claims we are paying "the price of inaction."

Today Libya is “engulfed in civil war and bloodshed.” In Iraq, having lost leverage and interest, the United States stood aside as the Shiite prime minister turned the U.S.-trained armed forces into a sectarian militia that gave space and impetus for radical Sunnis — reborn as the Islamic State — to reemerge. In Syria, effects even direr than Obama feared from U.S. intervention bloomed in its absence: a wider war, spilling across borders; radical jihadists establishing the kind of statelet that al-Qaeda never achieved; millions of refugees destabilizing not only Syria’s neighbors but all of Europe. 

This argument fits well with an ongoing discussion in my class on the extent to which the U.S. needs to engage in global affairs. Following Chris Preble in  The Power Problem, overextending our reach only does us more harm than good, and does not benefit U.S. interests. We should rely on regional powers and our allies to deal with crises in distant lands, especially if we cannot make the situation any better. Others, believe the U.S. must exercise its leadership and lead by example, recognizing that securing long term U.S interests do require maintaining/managing  global crises.

Anti-War Protests, Pacificism, and Syria

I've avoided discussion on Syria since there are a million other outlets pontificating on this issue already. However, two articles appeared on my radar, both in reaction to the recent surge in activity from anti-war groups so I'll comment on anti-war protests. Liberal anti-war groups largely supported Obama'd bid for election in 2008. However, Syria provides the first major break between the administration and demonstraters. It's no suprise that activists, who we often assume are principled actors, can too play politics, forming coalitions with lawmakers, disparate groups, and whoever will help them push their short term agenda. Who would have thought conservative libertarians and left-wing pacificists jumping in bed! But this also shows that coalitions are fluid, and their relationship with formal political parties are complex as argued by Michael Heaney and Fabio Rojas here. More related to my own (not-yet-off-the-ground) research is a confirmation about the worldviews and constraints of policymakers and activists. They are socialized into two completely different worldviews such that no permanent coalition could be ever formed in finding a solution to peace.

Source: Nikki Kahn/Washington Post

The second article is an op-ed from documentary filmaker Sebastian Junger titled " When the best chance for peace means war." It's essentially a rebuke of pacifism in the wake of humanitarian disaster as Junger writes, "At some point, pacifism becomes part of the machinery of death." Evoking just means for the use of force, he adds, "Every war I have ever covered — Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Liberia — withstood all diplomatic efforts to end it until Western military action finally forced a resolution." This last point is the tough question for pacfisits. The pacifist reponse is to always look for diplomatic solutions, even when such solutions have been exhausted. At times coercion, or the threat of coercion, are needed to bring about a diplomatic breakthrough.

The Libya Model?

With "victory" in Libya, we were bound to hear about the new "Libya" model. I don't have anything against the Libya model other than the cautionary comment that Libya will be unique from conditions in Syria, Libya, North Korea, or whatever regime we think we ought to oust.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

I'm more interested, however, in what protesters in Syria will do now that the verdict is out with Libya. Protests in Hom and elsewhere in Syria were relatively peaceful. Assad's government resorted to brutal force a la Tiananmen to quash resistance. Will protests embrace the type of armed resistance as taken up by the Libyan rebels? This leads to an interesting policy and academic question.

1) When do protests resort to armed resistance? I mean, when do they decide that nonviolence won't work and they ante up to meet force with force? Obviously a movement will have numerous factions so it probably depends on whether a "militant" wing rises to take leadership in the resistance movement.

2)How do we distinguish protests from rebellions to revolutions to civil war? If someone knows a really good article which spells this out, let me know. B/c I still have a hard time explaining this to students. To me, these concepts fall along a violent/non-violent spectrum of contention. Protests are non-violent and are a base form of contention. Revolutions offer a specific category of contention which call for the overthrow of the government in power. They may be violent or non-violent. Not all protests are revolutions - often the goals of protestors are less far-reaching. Ditto for rebellion.