Foreign Policy In Focus

In a recent post on intervention -- both the subject in general and as applies to Syria -- I proposed codifying guidelines for insurgent behavior that would act as incentives. They would include the obvious, such as refraining from: savage retaliation against the regime's forces, killing civilians, and blocking monitoring by human rights groups. In return the insurgents would receive arms from other states, NATO, and the United Nations or even intervention. 

On June 21, at the New York Times, Eric Schmitt reported:

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers. … By helping to vet rebel groups, [the C.I.A. officers] hope to learn more about a growing, changing opposition network inside of Syria and to establish new ties.

In a sense this is a method of rewarding insurgents -- but after the fact. If incentives were codified, the vetting process could begin months earlier and theoretically proceed with more efficiency, thus saving many lives.

When it comes to foreign policy, most progressives agree that intervention in another state's internal affairs is ill-advised. With regards to Syria, Foreign Policy in Focus columnist Stephen Zunes summed this argument up well back in March.

"Empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that international military interventions in cases of severe repression actually exacerbate violence in the short term and can only reduce violence in the longer term if the intervention is impartial or neutral. Other studies demonstrate that foreign military interventions actually increase the duration of civil wars, making the conflicts longer and bloodier, and the regional consequences more serious, than if there were no intervention. In addition, military intervention would likely trigger a 'gloves off' mentality that would dramatically escalate the violence on both sides."

Speaking generally, if Vietnam hadn't soured us on intervention, Iraq sure did. In the case of Syria, U.S. intentions, as Rob Prince and Ibrahim Kazerooni explain at Focal Points, remain suspect since the United States has long sought the its destabilization. It's sort of a twofer to the United States, since bringing down Bashar al-Assad's regime removes a key ally of Iran. Another objection to intervention in Syria is that it would conflict with Russia's wish to keep Bashar al-Assad's regime intact. We already see this beginning to happen when a Russian cargo ship allegedly transporting helicopter gunships to Syria was ordered out of British waters after its insurance coverage was revoked.

This author understands those rationales, but, in his gut, he balks. It's not just how progressives go all libertarian and label liberals who call for intervention liberal hawks. Nor how it makes progressives look soft on defense. What most troubles me is the reflexiveness with we resist intervention.

Granted, the word intervention is maddening in its neutrality. Here, for instance, is its military definition: "Action taken to divert a unit or force from its track, flight path, or mission." But, to me, the most heroic use of the military is not to defend our soil -- that's its everyday job. It's to save the lives of innocent people -- of any nation -- who are in peril. It's true that I personally have a rescuer complex; I suppose some background is in order.

What opened up the world of foreign policy to me personally was the Rwanda massacre and the refusal of the United Nations and the United States to make more than token attempts to prevent it or halt its progress. I read books on the subject such as Philip Gourevitch's 1998 classic We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux).

That led to read a series of books about the Holocaust, as well as Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books, 2002), for which author Samantha Power was unjustly smeared as a liberal hawk. Much of that book was devoted to Rafael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide and whose ceaseless lobbying led the United Nations to adopt the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The concept of genocide, though, is limited by its requirement that the existence of a group of people or an ethnicity be threatened. Mass killing isn't always confined to one race. As Timothy Snyder made crystal clear in The Bloodlands (Basic Books, 2010), during World War II, 14 million people of different races and nationalities were killed by both Hitler and Stalin in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, and western Russia. Nothing, though, obliterates the concept of genocide like nuclear weapons, the ultimate in equal-opportunity mass killing.

Needless to say, from the Holocaust to Rwanda, intervention came too late or not at all.

Walking the subject of mass killing back from millions dead spanning continents to thousands in one state, Syria could provide a test case for a new approach to intervention. Instead of thinking in terms of halting a repressive and murderous regime, which is a punitive act, focus instead on incentives -- but not just to the regime. Also dangle incentives to the insurgents, as a way to identify the so-called good guys and force bad actors among them to mend their ways.

In other words, clear guidelines need to be codified -- not only for Syria, but for opposing all tyrannies -- which, if conformed to will result in the reward of assistance in the form of arms from other states, NATO, and the United Nations or even intervention. These guidelines would include the obvious, such as refraining from: savage retaliation against the regime's forces, killing civilians, and blocking monitoring by human rights groups.

Of course navigating around obstacles such as, in Syria's case, Russian and Chinese opposition to intervention, might prove impossible. Nevertheless, incentives for insurgents might help in separating the wheat from the chaff, such as extremist Islamists in Syria.

Every day the news from Syria is more and more somber as the country and the region continue their journey to unknown and more dangerous realms. As Syria appears to heading for “beyond explosion,” for implosion and NATO foreign military intervention that could result in unpredictable dangerous consequences.

A curious person asking about the situation would get the following predictable reply: Syria is on the verge of civil war; it is run by a ruthless leader that violates human rights on a biblical scale and needs to be removed so that the “peace loving” Syrian people can live in harmony and tranquility and it appears the only way to achieve this goal is through yet another NATO-led military “humanitarian” intervention under the auspices of the United States.

Stepping back from the official (and Fox News’) version of Syrian analysis, and remembering a few historical facts, changes the picture considerably.

• Through repeated presidential doctrines, U.S. administrations – starting at least with Truman – have made it clear that the Middle East holds a strategic position in U.S.’ regional and global policy.

• It’s an historical fact that to protect those strategically declared interests, the United States will partner with anyone and do anything – kosher or not – from Netanyahu in Israel to Saddam in Iraq, to Bin Ali in Tunis, to Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah, to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, to Osama Bin Laden, the list goes on (when it serves U.S. interest).

• At least since WW II, the United States has repeatedly engaged in the destabilization of regimes it called undesirable, through various means (economic boycotts, bribes, CIA clandestine operations, infiltrating foreign militaries).

All this is done to change regimes that oppose U.S. interests in one way or the other! Why think that the basic paradigm has changed in the case of Syria? The goal remains the same; only the methodology – we would argue – is slightly different. Old wine, new bottle.

Let’s look at just a few pertinent facts:

1. The destabilization of Syria and Lebanon as sovereign countries has been on the drawing board of the US-NATO-Israel military alliance for at least ten years. Action against Syria is part of a “military road-map,” a sequencing of military operations that is being put into operation. According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark – the Pentagon had clearly identified a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan” (Pentagon official quoted by General Wesley Clark in “Winning Modern Wars” [page 130]).

2. The overthrow of Syria’s government is a premeditated US plot which was instituted long before the outset of the Arab Spring. A concerted campaign to isolate, destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government began as early as 2002, a year after Clark was informed of the Pentagon’s plan to blitzkrieg through the Middle East. It was then that Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the growing “Axis of Evil.” It would later be revealed that Bolton’s threats against Syria included covert funding and support for “opposition’ groups inside of Syria spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations. In 2011, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner remarked that the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 and the funding continues until today. In an April 2011 AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.”

3. A Washington Post report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East then gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” The same Michael Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course is the “Arab Spring,” and in Syria’s case, the impetus for the current unrest threatening to unhinge the nation and invite in foreign intervention. (Emphasis added).

What we have here then is not a humanitarian gesture to democratize Syria – to the contrary, a pro-active policy of regime change similar to what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan that was planned many years ago. The only thing needed was the proper context to implement the plan.

As every effort by the U.S. administration so far has not brought down the Syrian regime, this leads us to posit that the next step in the sequence of events – as it happened in Iraq and Afghanistan – is the implementation of the Salvador Option. This operation under U.S. supervision and support was perfected in El Salvador at the cost of 75,000 lives and in Guatemala with several hundred thousand deaths in the 1980s.

In Part Two, we will discuss this further.

Ibrahim Kazerooni is finishing a joint Ph.D. program at the Iliff School of Theology and the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies in Denver. More of his work can be found at the Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni Blog. Rob Prince is a Lecturer of International Studies at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies and publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has claimed that "there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria,” though the Russian government denies the accusation. If true, it would be highly disturbing, given the Syrian regime’s widespread use of such weapons against unarmed civilians.  Amnesty International and other human rights groups have called for an immediate end of arms transfers to the Syrian regime, particularly of weapons that have been used to target civilians.

However, the United States is hardly in a position to criticize arms transfers to governments which use them to attack innocent civilians, particularly helicopter gunships.

Thousands of Salvadoran civilians are believed to have been killed by U.S.-supplied helicopter gunships during the 1980s. Obama named Robert Gates, one the key architects of the Reagan administration’s Central American policy during that period, as Secretary of Defense.

The administration of Clinton’s husband provided helicopter gunships to the Turkish government despite their widespread use again civilians in Kurdish areas of the country. U.S. arms were responsible for thousands of civilian deaths in that country during the 1990s and over 3000 villages were burned.  

Similarly, both the Clinton and Bush administration provided helicopter gunships to the Colombian military, despite their use against civilian targets.

Amnesty International called on the United States to cease such arms transfers to both Turkey and Colombia, but both the Clinton and Bush administrations rejected the plea.

In early October of 2000, immediately following the killing of a dozen Palestinian civilians by U.S.-supplied helicopter gunships killed a dozen Palestinians—including attacks on apartment complexes in Netzarim—the Clinton administration announced a new shipment of advanced Apache attack helicopters. The Pentagon acknowledged that, "U.S. weapons sales do not carry a stipulation that the weapons can’t be used against civilians. We cannot second-guess an Israeli commander who calls in helicopter gunships." Amnesty International called for a cessation of all attack helicopter transfers to Israel, but Clinton administration rejected this call as well.

Similarly, the widespread use of helicopter gunships by Israeli forces against civilian targets in the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009 led Amnesty to again call for an end to the U.S. providing such materiel to the Israeli government, but the incoming Obama administration—like the Bush, Clinton and Reagan administrations before it—rejected the call to consider human rights in the transfers of such deadly technologies.

The Obama administration, like its predecessors, has tried to justify such transfers on the grounds that these governments were faced with armed insurgencies, including groups which had engaged in acts of terrorism. This is the exact same rationalization currently being used by the Syrian regime and its apologists. Yes, there is indeed an armed insurgency underway, and some elements are indeed terrorists, but that still does not give a government the right to target civilians. This is true regardless of the offending governments’ relations with the United States.

The very idea that the Obama administration even cares the slightest about civilians killed by helicopter gunships is debunked by the incident involving the release of audio and video footage of U.S. helicopter pilots in Iraq killing two unarmed Reuters journalists and several would-be rescuers. Not only did the Obama administration refuse to indict the pilots responsible, they chose to prosecute the private who exposed the illegal killings for “aiding the enemy.”

It appears, then, that the Obama administration’s opposition to the alleged Russian arms sale is not out of any concern for civilians, but out of a desire to weaken the Syrian government’s ability to combat rebel fighters armed by such U.S. allies as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Hypocrisy aside, it is still imperative for anyone concerned about human rights to categorically oppose Russian military assistance to Syria, such as helicopter gunships, which could be used against civilians, as it is imperative to oppose arms shipments by any country to governments which would likely target innocent civilians. 

Unfortunately, the United States is in no position to preach to the Russians about the sanctity of arms.

Confession: supporting non-intervention in Syria requires considerable restraint on the part of this author. In Problem From Hell, Samantha Power had me at Rafael Lemkin.* To someone with a savior complex (okay, me), it seems like the most virtuous use of military resources: rescuing innocents, deposing tyrants.

Problem is, as we well know, in practice, it seldom works. Also in theory, military intervention is more likely to be successful when mandated by an international body. Unfortunately, it's as difficult to get anything constructive done in the U.N. Security Council as it is in the U.S. Congress.

In a piece for the New York Times on May 30 titled For the White House, a Wary Wait as Syria Boils, Peter Baker wrote about precedents for U.S. intervention in recent years.

Every week or so, a cabinet or deputy cabinet-level meeting is convened on Syria and, much to the frustration of the participants, each time the choices on the table are more or less the same: more diplomacy, more sanctions. … Unlike in Libya, there is no defined rebel army holding territory that would be helped by airstrikes. Syria has a better trained, better equipped military, including Russian anti-aircraft defenses. And there is no United Nations or Arab League support for international force.

Meanwhile, James B. Steinberg, a former deputy secretary of state under President Obama, not only said that "the difference was that Bosnia was in the heart of Europe and a test of NATO’s credibility after the cold war." But, that "the Bosnians set up their own breakaway government so there was a clear entity to assist, unlike the inchoate Syrian opposition."

In effect, he's saying the opposition is too powerless to be helped. In other words, the more help it needs, the less likely it is to receive any.

Meanwhile at Focal Points and the United to End Genocide blog, Daniel P. Sullivan calls for intervention -- the other kind, that is.

It’s time for an intervention. The brutal massacre of over 100 people, mostly women and children, in Houla, Syria last week shook the world’s conscience. Despite more than a year of atrocities, the murder of civilians in Houla has spurred the largest global outcry to date and rare unified condemnation by the United Nations Security Council. It also brought increased calls for military intervention with U.S. General Martin Dempsey warning that he had contingency plans ready and that atrocities like those in Houla made military intervention, although a last resort, all the more likely. 

But the massacre in Houla should also raise the specter of another kind of intervention. The international community should have a diplomatic “intervention” with Syria’s strongest remaining ally, Russia. In the chorus of condemnation that resounded after the massacre, Russia’s voice stood out for its glaring ambiguity. Even as it joined others in condemning what happened in Houla, Russia provided Syria with political cover and quashed any hope for meaningful action.

Kind of like an intervention by members of an Al-Anon-like group for nations that enable tyrannies. Syria's civil structure aside, a pressing, but overlooked, pretext for military intervention does exist. At the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Charles P. Blair explained in March.

Syria likely has one of the largest and most sophisticated chemical weapon programs in the world. Moreover, Syria may also possess an offensive biological weapons capability that Libya did not.

While it is uncertain whether the Syrian regime would consider using WMD against its domestic opponents, Syrian insurgents, unlike many of their Libyan counterparts, are increasingly sectarian and radicalized; indeed, many observers fear the uprising is being "hijacked" by jihadists. Terrorist groups active in the Syrian uprising have already demonstrated little compunction about the acquisition and use of WMD. In short, should Syria devolve into full-blown civil-war, the security of its WMD should be of profound concern, as sectarian insurgents and Islamist terrorist groups may stand poised to seize chemical and perhaps even biological weapons.

In other words, Syrians and the world are faced with two possibilities, both equally disturbing: either the current regime uses WMD to suppress the rebellion or those aiding it (ostensibly) seizes them and uses them against the state and, by extension, the Syrian people. Of course, foreign intervention might, in itself, prompt the regime to activate its WMD.

Meanwhile, by all rights, concerns about a nuclear program Iran might have been developing a decade ago and its current uranium enrichment should pale in comparison.

*The man who coined the term "genocide" and got the United Nations to pass a convention, however limited, against it.