The spectre of US military action against Syria has not diminished with the surfacing of divisions among America’s European allies and the resounding rejection of such intervention by the British parliament. President Barack Obama went ahead to announce his decision to take military action, declaring that the US was ready to strike once he had secured Congressional approval. But he made it clear he did not need UN authorisation or the findings of UN weapons inspectors for the use of military force.President Obama said he was considering “limited and narrow” action in response to the chemical weapons attack on August 21 in Damascus, which he blamed on Bashar al-Assad’s government. Making the case for a punitive strike, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed there was “clear and compelling” evidence that chemical weapons used by Syrian authorities had killed over 1400 people. Acknowledging that the American public was war weary, Kerry asserted that “fatigue did not absolve” the US from responsibility to “enforce the norm” on chemical weapons, outlawed under international conventions.
These warnings of a military strike came ahead of UN weapons inspectors completing their investigation, and even as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged “giving peace a chance”. He called for delay in action until inspectors had assessed and presented their findings to the UN Security Council, a process that could take about three weeks. But Kerry seemed to brush aside these urgings, claiming “high confidence” in American intelligence and pointing to the fact that UN inspectors had no mandate to assign blame.
As momentum built for US military strikes, Russia and Iran warned of destabilising consequences while China said that unilateral action would worsen the Middle East’s turmoil, making it harder to resolve the Syrian issue. President Vladimir Putin rejected the American intelligence report’s allegation about the Syrian government’s involvement and demanded that proof be presented to the Security Council before taking “rash action”. Similarly the Chinese foreign minister stated, “Determining the facts was a precondition for taking action”.
None of these entreaties swayed Washington from concluding that its intelligence assessment (a four-page unclassified report) was sufficient ground for the use of force. This attitude and the unilateral determination of “evidence” rekindled memories of the false intelligence marshalled out by the Bush administration in 2003 that served as a prelude and basis for the disastrous invasion of Iraq, undertaken without UN backing.
The prospect of military action raises troubling questions about the legality, evidential basis, wisdom and consequences of a military attack on Syria. First and most fundamentally, this stance regards the use of force as the option of first resort, when a range of coercive measures are available as a response once UN investigators have ascertained that chemical weapons were used by the Syrian authorities. They vehemently deny this. The use of chemical weapons is undoubtedly a “crime against humanity”. But under international law only the Security Council can impose penalties. ‘Punishment’ cannot be inflicted unilaterally by individual states.
By earlier setting a ‘red line’ – the use of chemical weapons – that ‘obliged’ him to act if it was crossed, President Obama seemed to have painted himself into a corner. This self-generated pressure led to his present position that unless the US intervened militarily its credibility would be in doubt – hardly a basis to justify war. A way out of this predicament would have been for Washington to work with and through the UN to push for penalties on Syria when and if its complicity was conclusively proven. But Obama chose not to take this course.
Instead the US unilaterally assigned guilt to Assad and deemed this as adequate ground for military action. This strengthened the impression that wider geostrategic considerations could also lie behind Washington’s decision to intervene in Syria, at least for those advisers egging on Obama. From this perspective, action against Syria would be intended as much as a signal to Iran as Syria. On the larger geopolitical chessboard, weakening the Syrian regime would diminish Syria’s powerful allies, Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus neutralising the threat posed to Israel by the latter.
Moreover military action to enforce a WMD norm could set a precedent for future action over nuclear weapons against another country. As an influential American recently wrote: “it is imperative that a broken red line on Syrian weapons of mass destruction use doesn’t blur the line regarding Iran’s.” But there is no legal link between the obligation not to use CW, which US military action aims to punish, and the demand that Iran give up its NPT ‘right’ and halt nuclear reprocessing. The argument that if Obama does not carry out his threat to attack Syria, Tehran will not believe any future threat to attack Iran is completely erroneous.
Against the backdrop of mounting US-Russia tensions – intensified by the Snowden affair – weakening or forcing out Assad would also deprive Moscow of its few remaining allies in the Middle East. Also, action against Syria has also long being urged by rival regional powers to enlarge their own influence. These dimensions of the regional scenario reflect a complex web of rivalries and tensions, which risk being inflamed by any armed intervention.
US officials have insisted that the aim of any military intervention is not ‘regime change’ or taking sides in the Syrian civil war, but to “enforce a norm” by punishing and deterring the Syrian regime from future use of chemical weapons. But military strikes would likely shift the internal balance between the warring sides, indirectly help the rebels and escalate into a wider regional conflict with unpredictable consequences.
The argument that this aftermath could be minimised or averted by a carefully calibrated “limited” military response does not hold water given retaliatory responses likely by Syria’s allies against Israel and the chaos that could ensue in Syria. The latter scenario would empower the Salafi factions among Syria’s armed opposition and local affiliates of Al-Qaeda – hardly an outcome Washington would want but one its actions would unintentionally trigger. Military strikes would unleash hard to control dynamics and complicate an already unstable situation with far reaching ramifications for regional peace and America’s own interests.
The case for war pressed by its supporters rests on questionable grounds (setting the dangerous precedent of unilateral ‘enforcement’ of a norm) as does its legality. With the UNSC unwilling to authorise military action in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition, the contention that America can still act “legally” has no legitimacy or basis in international law. Military action is legally permissible only if a country acts in self-defence or when it has secured UNSC backing.
As for the responsibility-to-protect principle being invoked by some proponents of military action, ‘humanitarian’ interventions also require UNSC authorisation and cannot be undertaken unilaterally, bypassing the SC.
In any event once UN inspectors report their findings these will eventually come before the Security Council. Thus, military action before the Security Council has had a chance to weigh the evidence would be anything but legal. The military campaign’s limited scale and scope being promised by Washington does not validate it.
Though Assad deserves no sympathy for the actions his regime has taken in the past two and a half years of Syria’s civil war, this does not justify armed foreign intervention. The ill-thought action being contemplated overlooks both near and longer-term dangers and threatens to push the region into a wider conflagration, with military intervention likely to further fuel the growing Shia-Sunni tensions sweeping the region.
President Obama has himself acknowledged military strikes will do nothing to resolve Syria’s underlying problem. That makes it necessary to instead seek a political solution through the UN-backed Geneva II process. This was framed earlier this year as a joint US-Russian peace proposal to bring Syria’s warring sides to the negotiating table. Renewed diplomatic efforts to convene this much-postponed conference and negotiate a ceasefire should take precedence over any resort to force. Military action will destroy, not improve, the chances of a negotiated settlement of the Syrian crisis.
The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.
Source: www.thenews.com.pk
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