Foreign Policy In Focus

Re-posted from Dissent's Arguing the World blog.

Before making the jump from academia to the world of policy making and punditry, Anne-Marie Slaughter compiled an impressive body of scholarship on law and international society. Her early work linking the common threads of international relations theory and legal research was nothing short of groundbreaking, and contributed meaningful insights to both fields of study. Later, Slaughter’s A New World Order revolutionized intellectual understandings of global governance by introducing network analysis and her anatomy of “disaggregated states” to mainstream academic circles.

When Slaughter has recently offered her ideas in public, however, they have been less impressive. This has been especially pointed with regard to the unfolding horrors in Syria. In an extended meditation for the Atlantic, Slaughter forcefully advocates for the application of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine, arguing that the minimum requirements for triggering intervention have been met. On top of that, she claims, failure to act would expose R2P “as a convenient fiction for power politics or oil politics, feeding precisely the cynicism and conspiracy theories in the Middle East and elsewhere that the U.S. spends its public diplomacy budget and countless diplomatic hours trying to debunk.”

That Gareth Evans—the godfather of R2P—and others have argued that the minimum threshold for action in Syria has in fact not been met seems of little consequence to Slaughter, nor the fact that she is ready to suspend the writ of international law by acting without a Security Council mandate for the purpose of saving international law. As David Rieff points out, “Slaughter seems to be willing to undermine the structural foundations of international order, which, for better or worse, is based in large measure on the Security Council, in order to further it. Peace is war; war is peace. George Orwell, call your office.”

In Sunday’s New York Times, Slaughter returns with a condensed version of the same argument, this time sprinkled with some new ideas for resolving the crisis in Syria, though curiously not explicitly within the R2P framework. Which might be just as well: her opening statement is enough to make R2P advocates shudder. “The mantra of those opposed to intervention is ‘Syria is not Libya,’” Slaughter writes. “In fact, Syria is far more strategically located than Libya, and a lengthy civil war there would be much more dangerous to our interests. America has a major stake in helping Syria’s neighbors stop the killing.” Slaughter’s emphasis on American national interest rather than human rights is all the more curious given her awareness that humanitarian intervention is frequently seen, especially in the Global South, as a Trojan Horse designed to smuggle imperial intent past the gates of state sovereignty.

Slaughter’s argument quickly descends from there into self-contradiction. She warns against “simply arming the opposition,” which “will bring about exactly the scenario the world should fear most: a proxy war that would spill into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan and fracture Syria along sectarian lines.” But then just a few sentences later, she boldly asserts that her plan “would require nations like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to arm opposition soldiers with anti-tank, countersniper and portable antiaircraft weapons.” Slaughter also calls for special ops and spooks to enter the fray. Presumably, these regional and European “advisers” would keep the tinder box of sectarianism from exploding and, without a hint of irony from Slaughter, help opposition fighters expand so-called “peace zones” by killing and capturing government forces.

“Although keeping intervention limited is always hard,” Slaughter admits, “international assistance could be curtailed if the Free Syrian Army took the offensive. The absolute priority within no-kill zones would be public safety and humanitarian aid; revenge attacks would not be tolerated.” And if they happened anyway? Slaughter does not entertain worst-case scenarios of this sort, and thus excuses herself from having to confront the very real possibility that flooding Syria with more guns might actually make matters worse, not better, if things got out of hand.

Instead, Slaughter suggests that “Turkey and the Arab League should also help opposition forces inside Syria more actively through the use of remotely piloted helicopters, either for delivery of cargo and weapons—as America has used them in Afghanistan—or to attack Syrian air defenses and mortars in order to protect the no-kill zones.” This drones-for-peace approach is dubious on its face and, more startling, opens the door for what sounds like direct interstate conflict of the sort that could ignite the very regional confrontation Slaughter fears most.

Absent in Slaughter’s comments, and in the comments of the majority of pundits pressing for intervention, is the third pillar bolstering R2P: the responsibility to rebuild. Discussion of a potential long-term commitment requiring investments of blood and money—especially in the wake of a global economic crisis and the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan—would likely dampen enthusiasm for the rush to war. Slaughter, a skilled ideational entrepreneur, is undoubtedly aware of the public opinion pitfalls a warts-and-all assessment might present, which makes her argument doubly problematic and dishonest. One has to look no further than post-intervention Libya to understand just how prone previous efforts in the name of “responsibility” are to failure, not to mention abandonment by the “international community.”

And that’s the rub. Popular sentiment—if not always political will—in support of intervention can be quickly mobilized by the outrage of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. As a result, there’s no shortage of ideas offering moral justification for a call to arms. But this abundance of ideas actually represents the poverty of discourse surrounding schemes to coercively defend human rights in Syria, a set of arguments that paper over very real, and often morally hazardous, dangers that can result when the dogs of war are let off the chain.

Protecting civilians from murderous regimes does not end with military action. Nor can it be an a la carte process of selective response with no thought given to the long-term responsibilities that attend coercive engagement across borders. Instead of offering a half-baked defense of skirting international law for the purposes of maintaining it, Slaughter might want to consider sketching out possible roadmaps of action for the moment hostilities cease. That way, in Syria at least, solemn pledges of “never again” might need never again be pledged. A serious outline by prominent intellectuals of what the rebuilding process might entail (and how it can be driven by widely supported local actors) could assuage concerns that R2P is nothing more than an elaborate excuse for invasion.

To be sure, comprehensive post-conflict plans would do little to quell concerns that humanitarian intervention serves as an invitation to violence and control in the colonial dominions of western power. Nevertheless, without due diligence and thorough consideration of all three pillars of protection—the responsibility to prevent, react, and rebuild—prospects for truly ethical humanitarian intervention will be doomed to a holding pattern of half-measures and hand-wringing that offers no escape from the suspicion and realpolitik that mark our current debate.

Cross-posted from IPS Special Project Right Web's Militarist Monitor.

The recent deaths of two Western journalists in Syria, killed during the Assad regime’s shelling of the Amr Baba neighborhood in Homs, has cast a new light on a near-daily slog of reports chronicling the carnage in Syria, where the regime has launched increasingly brutal attacks on civilian population centers in response to an increasingly armed and violent opposition.

Citing the final dispatch of Marie Colvin, one of the slain reporters, the Washington Post quickly editorialized: “Ms. Colvin was trying to tell the world is that [Srebrenica] is happening again, in Baba Amr. … If the Western nations and Syria’s neighbors continue to stand by passively, Ms. Colvin’s words will come back to haunt them.” A few days before, the Post had explicitly called for the West to arm Syria’s opposition elements: “The most available and workable solution,” it claimed, “is tactical and materiel support for the anti-regime forces, delivered through neighbors such as Turkey or the Persian Gulf states.”

That the Post, with its cast of neoconservative writers and editors, would call for U.S. involvement in a conflict in the Middle East should come as no surprise. Neither should calls by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for the United States to channel arms to Syrian opposition fighters through connections in “third-world countries,” or Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) support for instituting Libya-style “no-fly” zones over parts of Syria. But the Obama administration, which has ostensibly sought a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, also appears to be softening its once-strong opposition to arming Syria’s rebels.

Last week, a coalition of 56 hawks assembled by the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Foreign Policy Initiative sent President Obama an open letter demanding action on Syria. The letter—whose signatories included the likes of Paul Bremer, Elizabeth Cheney, and Dan Senor—called on the president “to take immediate steps to decisively halt the Assad regime's atrocities against Syrian civilians, and to hasten the emergence of a post-Assad government in Syria,” including by providing “self-defense aid to the FSA [Free Syrian Army].”

Calls for further escalation will doubtless follow. And although they are keen to raise recent events, many of the letter’s signatories have been calling for regime change in Syria for months or even years.

Max Boot, another signatory to the letter, has claimed that “foreign jihadists will flock to Syria” if Assad is not deposed—a rather astonishing assertion given the documented (if not overwhelming) presence of Islamists in Syria’s domestic opposition, as well as Iraq’s all too recent descent into violent extremism in the wake the U.S. invasion. 

However, Syria hawks have yet to articulate how funneling arms to a fractured Syrian opposition could help end the bloodletting in the country. Foreign Policy’s Marc Lynch, himself a stringent backer of the NATO action in Libya, has strongly opposed a similar course in Syria. “Arming the Syrian opposition is not a cheap and effective substitute for military intervention,” he wrote, “and it is not a generally harmless way to ‘do something.’ It does not guarantee either the protection of the Syrian people or the end of the Assad regime. It is more likely to produce a protracted stalemate, increased violence, more regional and international meddling, and eventual calls for direct military intervention.”

Since Gaddafi was deposed in Libya, for instance, scores of dueling militias—often with western-provided arms—have continued to skirmish with each other and terrorize civilian populations. Similarly, funneling arms wantonly into Syria might help bring down Assad, but there’s no reason to expect it will end the killing. It may well do just the opposite.

Peter Certo oversees Foreign Policy in Focus Special Project Right Web's social media projects and is an editorial assistant at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Cross-posted from the Arabist.

Libya, in the words of the Obama Administration, was a “time-limited, scope-limited” engagement enacted under the responsibility to protect doctrine. After decades of dealing with Qadhafi’s nepotism and secret police, I hope that Libyans will be able to move towards a participatory democracy (and, I hope, we will see a continued airing out of all the zenga-zenga-ing the late Colonel engaged in with US lobbyists, oil majors and European defense contractors).

NATO went in hard by air, and then left the NTC (National Transitional Council of Libya) in charge to ensure democratization and guarantee a semblance of unity in the country. Some felt that the US had proven the efficacy of the “time-limited, scope-limited” interventionist model, even though some earlier incidents in Libya – such as reports of extrajudicial killings and the racially-motivated targeting of migrant workers – did emerge to sour the warm welcome that the NTC was enjoying in Western capitals. Further comments of this nature, Jadaliyya notes, have barely registered in the media, or, it seems, in the capitals of the states who helped put the NTC in power.

The New York Times reports that Libyan militias are defying the government’s calls to lay down their arms. “Much about the scene on Wednesday was lamentable, perhaps because the discord was so commonplace,” the Times intones, but it’s also lamentable because this outcome should have been anticipated by more observers. After Iraq, it should be clear that removing the central authority from a country with extensive weapons stockpiles is a cause for concern for the new regime’s security (and therefore, its legitimacy). Without a military force to guard these depots, anyone and everyone can raid them for profit or to augment their militias. Given the animosities among rival militias – who to trust when everyone’s armed, and why give up the power you’ve gained by arms? – it is no wonder these militias don’t want to turn in their guns to the NTC and rely on the “new” Libyan Army to maintain order: “rival militias, most of them deriving from particular tribes,” Joshua Hammer reported, “withdrew their pledge to disarm [in November 2011], declaring that they would preserve their autonomy and shape political decisions as ‘guardians of the revolution’.”

This mistrust and opportunism, in turn, makes it that much harder for the NTC to guarantee security throughout the country, encouraging militias to continue augmenting their forces. The Arabist’s own Abu Rohan was in Libya this past August, and he hoped then that because of the popularity of NATO intervention, “proposals like bringing in the UN to help with the transitional process, as some Libyan politicians have proposed, [were] probably going to be broadly acceptable.” Political will within Libya – and the international community – has unfortunately not yet manifested towards this end.

Racially motivated violence and extrajudicial political murders remain a serious problem in Libya – largely because of the impunity that tormentors can exercise towards refugees and former members of the Qadhafi regime. The continued detention of some 1,500 people, who had fled reprisals from anti-regime militias, in Tripoli remains a major source of concern because some of these militias continue to try and raid the camp to exact revenge against a community they blame for assisting Qadhafi’s crackdowns. It is left to the goodwill and guns of those militias actually protecting the camp’s inhabitants to keep things from escalating.

In addition to concerns about missing weapons stockpiles, STRATFOR reports on the nagging concern that

. . . thousands of armed Tuareg tribesmen who previously served in Gadhafi’s military have returned home to Mali. The influx of this large number of well-armed and well-trained fighters, led by a former Libyan army colonel, has re-energized the long-simmering Tuareg insurgency against the Malian government.

The analysis of the situation notes that the danger remains that these rebels could “re-establish Libyan lines of supply through a new relationship with the black and gray arms market there,” a market that radiates throughout the Sahel and offers good opportunities for those who possess stocks of Libyan arms (and very few scruples). It is clear that the NTC cannot secure Libya’s borders due to its own incapacitation in Tripoli. So where is the international response to the problem? Where is Doha (training pliant Islamist officers for the Libyan Army)? Where are Geneva and Brussels? Where are Paris, London, and Washington?^*

It should now be clear the rosy optimism and “fire and forget” mentality the international community displayed over Libya has been gravely misplaced, to the detriment of the country, its neighbors and to the West’s ostensible interests in regional security and stopping human rights abuses. Of course, had Colonel Qadhafi remained in power, these problems would have been present in different ways, particularly in the form of human rights abuses (the NTC’s current difficulties do not posthumously absolve the man of his actions). Yet the way Libya has been handled does not offer a good precedent for those arguing that we can intervene in Syria by arming opposition groups, hitting the regime hard by air, and then hoping that things will work themselves out on the ground in favor of the people we’ve intervened on behalf of.

If Western countries are truly interested in seeing a democratic transition in Libya (or Syria), and not just determined to remove a brutal dictator who has outlived his welcome, then these countries have to accept the fact that their “responsibility to protect” (R2P) cannot end when the last bomber drops its payload and heads for home. This does not necessarily mean putting a foreign army on the ground, or full-scale subsidization of reconstruction efforts. But it does mean more international aid (especially from those who helped Qadhafi dig Libya into a hole despite its oil wealth) and assistance that will focus on getting militias to lay down their arms and commit to a political process, instead of pretending they don’t exist as stumbling blocks to that process, or worse, deciding to resort to drone warfare to “suppress” the “insurgents” on the peripheries.

I don’t think we’ll be flying armed Predators over the Libya-Chad border anytime soon, but I brought in drones for a reason, and that reason is to note that such military responses from other countries become more likely to occur when a government fails to secure the country and be seen as being “responsive” to US interests. When a government is divided and unable to control its own people – whether through explicit violence or by gaining their trust – it enters a danger zone that can ultimately lead to outside military intervention. And then the cycle repeats itself. If “R2P” really does end – not just militarily, but diplomatically – when the last bomber heads for home, then we may be arguing in a few years over whether or not the bombers ought to go back.

*Rome, for its part, is back in the game. 

Nir Rosen has spent two months in Syria reporting for AlJazeera, which just debriefed him with two interviews. Once you've read them, you'll finally feel like you know what's going on them. In the second, he speaks about the armed resistance groups, which are still a local phenomenon without foreign intervention, aside from Syrian exiles sending them money.

Some of the details that emerge surprise. One is the lessons that members of the opposition have learned from watching the protests in Tunisia and Egypt. When asked what the concerns of the activists are, Rosen replies:

They recognise the importance of maintaining civilian political control over the armed revolution and preventing the emergence of militias out of control. They worry about the emergence of sectarianism, vendettas, and criminality. They think of how to provide services and security to their population in areas where there are no longer government services. They worry about how to secure government institutions in the event of a sudden collapse of the regime. Nobody wants to be Libya or Iraq.

One can't help but be impressed by their foresight. Meanwhile, when asked if Syrians wish for foreign intervention, Rosen responds that while the "older intellectual opposition figures who are well-known but not significant in this uprising are opposed to foreign intervention," most "opposition activists, fighters and supporters on the ground in Syria are in favour of some form of foreign military intervention."

That kind of disagreement is natural. Less so is this (emphasis added):

Surprisingly, the mainstream Syrian opposition on the ground looks to the West for help. … Even Islamist leaders of the revolution look to Europe and the US more than they do to Arab or Muslim countries (with the exception of Turkey). … It strikes me as the opposite of many Egyptian protesters who reacted to decades of a pro-American and pro-Israeli dictatorship by expressing anti-imperialist slogans.

What's his explanation for how they look to the West?

… the Syrian opposition associates notions of resistance and anti-imperialism with the Assad regime.

Furthermore:

… the causes themselves have been discredited and their enemy has been reduced to the regime and the daily struggle for survival.

In other words, says Rosen:

It is the death of ideology, in a way.

Al Qaeda (New York Times spelling) never met a conflagration it could resist stoking. On Friday, February 10 Jonathan Landy of McClatchy reported:

The Iraqi branch of al Qaida, seeking to exploit the bloody turmoil in Syria to reassert its potency, carried out two recent bombings in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and likely was behind suicide bombings Friday that killed at least 28 people in the largest city, Aleppo, U.S. officials told McClatchy.

On Sunday, February 10 Agence France Press seemed to confirm that (thanks to Focal Pointer Paul Mutter for bringing this to my attention):

Jihadist forums say that Muslim volunteers are travelling to Syria from a string of Arab countries to fight against President Bashar al-Assad's secular regime. … One jihadist site, Ansar al-Mujahedeen, has a page called: "Lions of Al-Sham -- the news of jihad in glorious Syria," … One of the members of the forum, using the name Nasr al-Din al-Hosni, on Thursday announced "the death of Emir Abu Osama al-Muhajar on the Iraqi-Syrian border, after he managed to smuggle ammunition" from Iraq to Syria."

Among the "string of Arab countries" is Jordan (thanks to Mutter and Agence France Press again).

Jordan's powerful Muslim Brotherhood on Sunday called for "jihad" against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and support for the rebel army, saying it is "an Islamic duty."

"This duty requires all Muslims to support the [rebel] Free Syrian Army against the aggression of the regime's criminal and brutal forces," Brotherhood leader Hammam Said was quoted as saying in a statement on the group's website.

Meanwhile Landay had written:

A third U.S. official said that AQI has been able to operate in Syria because it still maintains in that country networks that it used to infiltrate foreign extremists into western Iraq to fight U.S. forces.

It's ironic enough that the flow of combatants has reversed course. Doubly so that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped facilitate Al Qaeda meddling in Syria.