President Barack Obama is under increasing pressure to intervene in Syria’s civil war, either by ordering air strikes on government targets, arming the opposition or setting up a no-fly zone to protect the rebels trying to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
The pressure is coming from all directions – from Obama’s political rivals at home, the Syrian rebels themselves and powerful U.S. allies such as Britain, France, Israel and Turkey. All of them argue Syria has already crossed the so-called “red line” Obama himself drew nearly a year ago when he said use of chemical weapons against civilians would be a “game changer” requiring U.S. action in Syria.
The U.S. intervened in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, one line of reasoning goes; why does Obama seem so reluctant to take action in Syria, a country that regional analysts say could destabilize the entire Middle East and beyond?
Is it because after Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the American public no longer supports military intervention abroad? Is it because Syria has no big petroleum reserves to speak of? Or because the U.S. government doesn’t want to get involved in the internal disputes of yet another Muslim country?
Or maybe because – without a clear United Nations Security Council mandate -- Washington sees no diplomatic or legal basis to justify intervention in Syria.
The prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, and stipulates that only the U.N. Security Council has the power to determine whether there has been an actual threat to peace and what should be done about it. In the case of Syria, permanent members China and Russia would veto any such call to action.
Cornell University Law points out another alternative: Self-defense.
“That also includes collective self-defense, and so one justification I could imagine the Obama Administration giving for sending troops to take part in hostilities in Syria would be the defense of Turkey, which is a NATO ally and which has been attacked quite recently by Syria—at least that is what appears to have happened—and that would not require any specific authorization by the U.N.”
, a professor at the University of Chicago who specializes in international security affairs, has long argued the need for a new pragmatic standard for interventions. Such a standard, he says, should be based on three “pillars”—1) whether mass homicide is occurring; 2) the cost of intervention in terms of lives lost; and 3) whether intervention can bring about lasting peace.
“In the case of Syria, there is no doubt that there is mass homicide occurring in the country,” Pape said. “It’s been going on for two years and the Assad government has been a main perpetrator there and that has unleashed the Syrian civil war.”
The challenge is that any form of intervention, Pape says, would result in a tremendous loss of life.
“It would be very difficult to find ways to intervene directly in the fighting without
involving tens of thousands of ground troops, if not more, in an ongoing civil war,” he said, adding that there would be no way for American troops to intervene without appearing to be fighting for one side or the other.
“And so the problem here is that this is a situation where you intervene directly in an ongoing civil war with boots on the ground in large numbers, where you are likely to have a lot of people fighting and shooting at us.”
As for the third “pillar,” Pape says the sheer size and demography of Syria undercut the contention that intervention could bring about lasting peace. Bosnia and Iraq had similar mixed demographics—that is, different ethnic and religious groups intermingled with one another. The difference, however, is that these populations were smaller and more easy to control.
In other words, given Syria’s huge size and large population -- 22 million Alawite, Sunni, Shia, Christians, Druze and Kurds living amidst one another -- there is no way a U.S. military presence could prevent a bloodbath following Assad’s fall.
Despite the practical difficulties -- whether they are legal, diplomatic or logistical -- some regional experts insist there is a moral imperative to do something when hundreds of Syrians are killed, imprisoned or displaced each day.
Pape says his approach, while practical, is also moral. “In everyday terms, helping strangers is something that you should do, as long as it doesn’t violate other moral commitments that you’ve made.”