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What We Talk About When We Talk About Military Intervention
Steven Cook, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Shadi Hamid and Dan Byman -- smart analysts whose work I always read and admire -- have all now argued we need to consider military intervention in Syria. The problem is, for me at least, "military intervention" at once means everything and nothing. On the one hand, the decision to use force to achieve a desired political end is momentous in and of itself. On the other hand, though, I cannot determine whether or not "military intervention" is a good or bad idea until I have some idea of what, precisely, is meant by the term. Analysts who argue either for or against military intervention have an obligation to sketch out the ways in which one could possibly intervene so that we can determine which ways, if any, make sense given the circumstances.
A broader problem here, as I was discussing with both Adam Elkus and Robert Caruso, is that regional specialists rarely understand military capabilities and options well enough to make an argument for or against, and those who understand military capabilities and options rarely understand the regional dynamics well enough to make an argument for or against. It is important, in that context, for scholars to work collaboratively to complement areas of expertise.
Along these lines, Marc Lynch is working on an analysis piece for CNAS that I hope will go some way toward addressing specific ways in which the United States could intervene militarily in Syria to better determine which options, if any, are worth attempting. This kind of analysis takes time but is, I think, ultimately the more responsible way to go about making these arguments.
I find it bordering on insane
I find it bordering on insane that the overwhelming majority of Syria intervention analysis has focused on ‘intervention...what would it look like and should we or shouldn’t we’....and not on ‘what are the internal economic, sectarian, ethnic, socio-political etc...realities of Syria, and what problems are likely to manifest following an intervention-caused fall of the regime.’
I haven’t had the pleasure of reading all the articles you linked, but I did read Cook’s and I thought it was rendered useless as because he dedicated the following to what should be the heart of the decision making debate:
"The wild card in the bomb-Syria-for-humanitarian-reasons argument is what post-Assad Syria might actually look like. Syria has similar ethnic and sectarian complexities as Lebanon and Iraq and there is reason to believe that, in the vicissitudes of politics, these groups might seek to settle scores against one another and to gain advantage through violence. Then again, it is worth asking whether analysts are over-correcting as a result of the American experience in Iraq. Given recent history there, it certainly seems that caution is warranted, but that means leaving Syrians to their fate with a regime which seems intent on shooting and torturing its way out of its present troubles.”
That’s not an analysis of a core issue. It’s stating that there’s a massively important discussion to be had, then ignoring it completely ‘cause it’s hard.
I think Anne Marie did some
I think Anne Marie did some sound analysis, and we need to be of one mind with our NATO and Arab League partners on the prerequisites for intervention as well as the scope of that intervention. Assad is certainly less insane than Qaddafi was, but his position is slowly eroding, so far as I can tell. I am not sure of his long-term ability to swat moles if the resistance persists and there are further military defections. Might he be persuaded to make some kind of deal before the slippery slope pulls him into a sewer pipe?
I can't get over the insanity
I can't get over the insanity of proposing any military intervention in Syria. You suggest that "it depends" based on the desired outcomes - everyone who is intellectually honest has to see that this would play out just like Libya but on steroids. First we secure the skies, but to secure the skies, we have to bomb all of their air defense platforms. Then we'll decide that control of the skies doesn't influence Assad, so we'll start blowing up tanks, even as they thread through the cities. Then when that airpower doesn't change things, we'll start blowing up C2 sites, all claiming that this is necessary to "protect the civilians."
So what happens then? Are these advocates ready to see Hezbollah take over in the struggle for a dominant government? Do you really want to see what happens when we allow another Middle Eastern country to go radical? Great idea... Hey, I know, let's bomb Iran too, because I'm sure their regime will just flip over right away. It's pretty sad if we get to the stage where the number of Middle East countries that we haven't bombed can be counted on one hand.
What is our interest here?
What is our interest here? by our interest I am using that retrograde term the United States. If it's to undermine Iranian influence in the region and abort at birth the Shia/Persian Crescent for instance, than Bravo - bombs away.
Forget about improving the lot of the Syrians, it's not the business of the American govt, and can we talk here? If you want to help the lot of anyone, anywhere to include America you lot need to leave them completely alone and not lead them on. You redistribute misery, if that misery happens to be violence and repression then that's what's redistributed. See Iraq. Or a very long list of places, recently Libya and Egypt. Or Detroit.
Let the Scholars collaboratively form Byronesque Zouave Battalions, take the nice Irish reporter with you please. You have plenty of platoon level leadership there at CNAS to teach them how.
Ever notice that Washington
Ever notice that Washington sells fear and emotions?
Really makes me wonder if Iraq would have happened if there wasn't a threat of WMDs. Washington is doing it again with Iran. If is not fear, it is human suffering. Wouldn't you give your money to this kind blue-hatted girl . Wonder how many of the 50,000 odd US GI's got killed by kindness in Vietnam?
Washington markets other people's human suffering, it makes us forget the personal failings of our own country.
Washington does not do long term planning, if they did plan they wouldn't have borrowed against every dime of the Social Security fund. For what people pay into the Social Security fund and the growth of the nation as a whole, there should be enough money to pay out. Politicians run on platforms of hope and the American Dream, those moments are meant to stir the event not to build a better future. You can see how Americans think by looking at the national savings rate. If savings rates predict the future, Americans are losers (99%) the only winners are businessmen(1%). How many futures did Mit Romney steal at Blain Capital, he leveraged off of peoples retirement funds to do it ! Democrats willingly invested in Blain why not at a 80% return-in-investment! LOL.
To prove my point did Bush listen to Collin Powell when he said, "if you break it, you bought it"? No, it was all about WDM's. Would the US do Iraq again today? Hell no.
Ask the American people if they want another 10-20 year commitment. Every time anyone gets involved in a ME country a civil war breaks out. Libya has been sold as a breakthrough in humanitarian conflict resolution. When will Libya be stable enough for the killing to stop?
AQ is about what the US did in Afghanistan in 1979. Today's Iran is about US history pre-1979, Siemens AG designed the first Iranian nuclear reactor. Vietnam in 1964 was about 1953, US supported Ho Chi Minh in 1940. Pakistan's nuclear program has roots in the US Atoms for peace program. US has been paying Egypt for peace since 1979.
America's stupidity in our lack of saving for retirement is only superseded by our decision to get so dependent on oil. The US is killing people with kindness, where is our humanity?
How can smart people, with so many PhD's, be so incredibility STUPID?
For the last three years Americans have heard about trying harder to educate people. Americans have gotten a first rate education about Iraq and Afghanistan for the past ten years.
Good luck selling snow to Alaskans. If I save Mohammad, he will come back and ask for more, then get upset and shoot me for helping him. Duh......
Think I want to help an American student get a job to pay off their school loan, they will return the favor by paying taxes.
Opps
Opps http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/why-we-have-a-r...
Retraction on comment above. Helps to read the caption, "Syrian boy in Homs stands in front of a burned out armored vehicle belonging to the army / Reuters".
Sorry , I was too busy saving the planet to bother with the details.
1. If strengthening Islamist
1. If strengthening Islamist groups in the ME has been an objective of our diplomatic and military actions, we have been fairly successful.
2. On that basis, would advocate continuance of our present policies, to include military intervention in Syria and diplomatic pressure upon the present regime to abdicate.
3. How this benefits the United States eludes me.
4. Will this benefit the Syrian man on the street?
5. Hope someone downtown has answers to #'s 3 and 4.
V/R JWest
R2P, Richest 2 Pay Guess that
R2P, Richest 2 Pay
Guess that leaves out the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, and just about anyone else in the UN. China and Russian excused themselves from the world union.
R2P is amazing, no treaty was passed by the US Congress, it is not a law only a norm, and everyone at the table looks at the US to come up with the military equipment. So the bluff is those in Washington responsible for FP keep the ball rolling acting like R2P is part of international DNA. We jump right to responsibility, right over any debate or US Congressional Approval or Funding. Another NO BOOTS mission.
I am starting to understand why the US Federal Reserve is starting QE3.
We need to vote Obama out of office, this is getting to ridiculous.
Send the R2P bill to George Soros.
BTW.
1) R2P, no not really. It is only a guideline.
2) If Syria gets a proxy, it will just look like another Arab country. Just another day in the hood.
3) Protection zones. Which NATO country will commit troops that has not already pulled out of Afghanistan?
4) UN Resolution. Europe still doesn't have the right equipment, sure that they will be happy to get behind the US.
Continuous war, remind me again why Obama went to Oslo.
The guy who sells me Wild
The guy who sells me Wild Turkey whiskey down the street (who is a Syrian Christian) claims that it is the Lebanese and Saudi's who are arming the Sunni's in Syria . . . and that there is a clandestine Sunni plot at work here. Of course, right?
But so what? Even if the Sunni arms dealers and political heavyweights in the region are arming Sunni's in Syria, so what?
Does this mean that they are capable of forming some kind of government if the Assad regime falls?
This is where I'd like to see Abu Muqawama say something about the "lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan" and how "all security rises organically from the ground up" and that "a hellish civil war" could break out if NATO crushes Assad's military and he is taken out.
What's the plan AFTER "military intervention?"
Answer that, and then we're talking.
Is a civil war, to allow for
Is a civil war, to allow for all of the pent up hostilities between the disparate groups, exactly what Syria needs? I know that is contrary to the R2P mindset however our country had one and if it had “put it off” I think this country would have just limped along with those underlying issues festering in the background. I know many thousands will die, but can/should the world work to save everyone from themselves? Perhaps the fact that there are just too darn many people in a small geographic area, has anyone read Malthusian Theory lately? There are just not enough resources in many developing countries to make them look like Switzerland, yet due to the internet and Satellite TV they now want that kind of life. I am not implying that if they kill off each other and the new population is half of what it is today that the place will turn into paradise but I also have doubts that forcing peace upon them will have any lasting impact with all of the underlying problems that exist, that the international community will not address.
I left this out in the last
I left this out in the last post, at 7:29am, but for those that may have missed it Syria is far more about the Sunni/Shiite balance in the region than it is about R2P. If we go in and bounce out Assad and his Alawite (a Shiite offshoot) then the country will likely revert to a Sunni dominated govt, which Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others would prefer. Oh ya, that will marginalize Iran a bit so we might like that to for a couple of reasons. R2P exists and makes everyone sleep well at night but in this case we have far bigger fish to fry it just so happens that R2P will help in the sales pitch…
Visitor on February 5, 2012 -
Visitor on February 5, 2012 - 8:20am & Jesse Aizenstat on February 5, 2012 - 12:57am
Guess that is really the root part of this problem, R2P is tone deaf to secretarian or tribal issues.
From an American point of view, R2P is UN speak only because it has not been an issue brought to Joe Plumber’s US Representative to vote on, Joe really has not had a chance to consider what he is paying for or what his off-spring will get into if they join the US military. That view from the US of A is part of the discussion because of the shared costs of the UN budget. For a country that was born on the concept of no taxation with out representation it is an unconstitutional way to spend shared resources. The question of cost and military personnel roles can be rubber stamped on any of the democracies that contribute to the UN.
I have a hard time even debating R2P because it is a concept, not a law or mandate. Its interpretation is that is shared by a few elites and not the people who die to protect the concept. Obama or Clinton have never had military duty.
R2P is about this, “The State carries the primary responsibility for the protection of populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing” and it gives a structure for how to proceed. Those concepts were born out of Western Government with the ideology that there is a separation of church-and-state, or that there is no church at all. What happens when the State is the church? R2P does not comprehend the struggle in the Islamic world. If R2P were applied to war itself, then the USA would have a responsibility never to have started Iraq and Afghanistan. R2P is a poor tool to use for a civil war where one tribal religion is debating with another.
R2P in itself is war and war should always the absolute last resort. That means that war should be very rare. Looking at the past 20 years, all we have known is war in our solution.
The more you suppress a conflict the longer it simmers. The ME has been simmering for a long time. It is time the world let these people wear themselves down to a conclusion. Just as America has an election with a war of parties, the ME has its own culture and way of resolution.
Are we to suppress a culture?
Assad this, Assad that...
Assad this, Assad that... Reminiscent of Saddam this, Saddam that... And everybody tiptoes around the Sunni-Shia divide at the heart of the matter. I agree with Elf that this is about the Shia crescent -- compensation to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, etc., for pushing Iraq into the Shia camp.
Of course, there is a little personal payback in seeing the ratlines from Al Anbar running in the opposite direction -- bet Assad did not foresee the day when the Iraqi Sunni expatriate community in Syria would be somebody else's toy and not his own.
I do question the weakness of all the analysis that Eric listed -- very poor work. None of them estimate the blowback from crossing Russia and possibly driving them out of their only naval base on the Med (bet that's already a quid-pro-quo for Western intervention). Where's the analysis on possible reversal of the Russian position on the arms blockade of Iran in revenge for Western intervention in Syria? What are the chances that the first S-400 SAM deployment outside of Russia is diverted from Belarus to Iran? What are the chances that Iranian oil will be purchased by Russia at a 10% discount and mixed into their own before resale at regular market price? Russia is finally a member of the WTO so we don't have that to hold over their heads anymore... Is Syria really worth the Russian and Chinese international bad behavior that may follow? Do not doubt that Russian culture is a vendetta culture, not a rule-of-law culture -- read up on the Second Chechen War if you have any questions on that account.
"None of them estimate the
"None of them estimate the blowback from crossing Russia and possibly driving them out of their only naval base on the Med"
Oh please. They're going to screw us whenever they can, even if they keep that base, so let's not pretend this is a factor in the calculation.
"They're going to screw us
"They're going to screw us whenever they can."
Nope, they've been moderately well behaved lately (for Russians). They even reversed themselves on selling S-300s to Iran. So your idea that they've been fully uncooperative rather than simply pursuing their own interests recently is wrong.
A broader problem here, as I
I'm a little confused here. Haven't previous no-fly zones been executed against exceptionally weak nations that had very little ability to adapt because of arms sanctions? What happens to a no-fly zone opposed by nations with access to a large technological base (i.e., weapons supplied by China and Russia)? Does a no-fly zone work if the enemy is given anti-radiation missiles? So, "those who understand military capabilities and options" would be operating under quite a cloud of uncertainty in trying to make predictions, wouldn't they? The result might be another Libya or it might be another North Vietnam. Also, what would the knock-on effects be? For example, if you send in F-22s to defeat ARM, doesn't that give enemies the chance to start finding the weaknesses of our most advanced systems? And what if you loose an F-22 and your enemies get hold of it?
Also, who makes the call on the civilian aftermath? Which group is responsible for predicting the equivalent of the Iraqi diaspora that resulted from the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the outcomes related to their settlement and activities?
I think the over 50% of
I think the over 50% of people that support Assad might be a bit pissed at an intervention, this number has only increased since the troubles began. The leaked Arab League observer mission report found that armed groups had been killing civilians and soldiers [mostly unreported in Western press], and that reports of government atrocities had been exaggerated, even totally made up. So the situation in Syria isn't as it seems. No doubt there has been some atrocities, but the Syrian regime has always been a brutal one.
The US should have copied
The US should have copied third world South Africa back in 1973 and started building synthetic oil plants. Almost forty years later it's still not too late. The money wasted on these endless wars in the Middle East, and aid to Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt etc, could pay for building them.
Of the oil it processes, a normal refinery needs 40% of the energy contained therein to function. If you take global warming seriously, nuclear power could provide this, or the somewhat greater energy requirements of fuel synthesis, thus ensuring that the liquid fuel the US consumes would involve considerably lower final CO2 production. Of course, the idea of using nukes is so politically incorrect that the chances of it actually happening are zero.
Still, self-sufficiency in liquid fuel would allow the US to consider the obvious and sensible policy of complete abandonment of the Middle East. No doubt all the locals would be over-joyed at the opportunity to misgovern themselves as they see fit.
Naturally, they would still blame the US for failure to intervene or anything else they didn't like. Otherwise, they might have to blame themselves!!
to all, i cannot understand
to all,
i cannot understand all the cmts about nato etc...
how did nato get a horse in this race.
nato is a defensive alliance. or so it's charter indicated.
how did it become a strike arm of un or us policy?
jim
Response to Visitor 6Feb
Response to Visitor 6Feb 8:18am
While I appreciate the level of influence that oil has on the regions we are discussing is it your assertion that “Naturally they would still blame the US…” would not in some way result in our being targeted again? While I will not entirely dispute the entire “path not taken” issue at the end of the day we are where we are, how about we remain focused on what to do now and the logic behind those recommendations. I agree that the US should work to become less tied to where our oil comes from, there are many ways to do that. As to spouting off about Nuclear being the way to go I would urge you to 1st figure out what the heck to do with the waste product…the NIMBY problem has proven a problem in the past. The decision to not work more productively with Canada to access their oil could perhaps not be in the soundest decision. Lots of room for improvements...
"The guy who sells me Wild
"The guy who sells me Wild Turkey whiskey down the street (who is a Syrian Christian) "
Who's the most qualified person mentioned.
Please support R2STFU. American Joe would vote for that.
hruska...NATO comments?+US
hruska...NATO comments?+US policy?=Libya, joined at the hip.
ELF... horses are not swimming today, that means I am underwater trying to figure something out....what is R2STFU?
See that OB1 locked up Iran's money in the US today.
When smart people try to out smart one another, they find out that they really are not that smart at all. Syria and Iran are not going to end gracefully.
You guys are going to do something in Syria no matter what the American public want, do the American public a favor and take the IRAN money and use it to pay for the cost of doing business. This is really starting to suck the big one having to run around paying for all the damage that is inflicted to be humanitarian.
Could always jump to the conclusion, take Iran's money and use it to pay for American infrastructure. Rather than taxing the 1% in the US, we can just take the cash from the people that give the US pain.
As a planner at a COCOM I
As a planner at a COCOM I have asked for different COAs and has anybody looked and planned out phase four of the conflict if the US or NATO commits forces? Nobody have any concept or detailed plans. In addition, there are no funds for this operation, so it is a non-starter.
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryRevi...
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryRevi...
It seemes to me that we have all ready forgot lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya,
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