Shut out

Max Boot in the Washington Post today makes the case for U.S.-led military intervention in Syria.  Zack Beauchamp at foreignpolicy.com makes the case for relying on diplomatic, political and economic tools.  Zack wins.  The score isn’t even close.

Boot

Boot dismisses most of the downsides of military intervention without serious discussion.  He cites Syria’s lack of air defense effectiveness against Israel in 1982 (sic) and in 2007, when the Israelis achieved strategic and tactical surprise in a one-time raid on a single target.  The inapplicability of these instances to a major, fully anticipated air campaign against multiple targets in urban areas in 2012 should be obvious.  An American-led air war in Syria is going to be difficult and kill a lot of civilians.

Likewise, Boot writes off the large Syrian army as mostly conscripts and unmotivated.  But it has also proven cohesive during a year of attacking Syrian cities.  There have been few defections compared, for example, to Libya.  The notion that only Alawites will fight for Bashar al Assad, as Boot implies, is just wrong.

Boot also writes off the argument that we don’t want to get into a proxy war with Iran, claiming that the Iranians are already fighting a war with the U.S., or with Russia, saying Moscow won’t fight for Bashar.  But he doesn’t even consider the political and military risks to our ability to attack Iran, if that proves necessary to prevent it from building nuclear weapons, arising from a prior attack on Syria.  The Obama Administration is not making a mistake to keep its powder dry if it wants to maintain a serious military threat against Tehran’s nuclear program.

Claiming that we have not even provided communications capabilities to the Syrian opposition, which is surely untrue, Boot says Syria is already in a civil war and doesn’t bother considering whether foreign military intervention could make things worse rather than better.  After all, our other Middle Eastern military adventures have gone swimmingly over the past 10 years, without any blowback that undermines U.S. national security?

Our military intervention will also somehow prevent Syrian chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands.  The evidence on this question in Libya is still not in, but I’ll bet we haven’t prevented it entirely there, where our assets were much stronger than what they are likely to be in Syria.

Beauchamp

Zack doubts that airstrikes can have the desired impact in urban areas.  He also notes the strength of the Syrian army (relative to the Libyan one) and the divisions in the opposition (also relative to the Libyan one).  “Safe zones” would be target-rich environments for the Syrian army and difficult to defend for those intervening.  Ground troops would be required.  As for chemical weapons, Bashar might well use them in the event of an international military intervention, making things much more deadly than they would otherwise have been.

Beauchamp also considers the negative implications of a U.S.-led military intervention without Security Council approval.  It would, he says, stiffen Indian, Brazilian and other resistance to “responsibility to protect,” undermining its usefulness in the future. Certainly there is ample reason to believe this.

Instead, he suggests we rely on diplomatic, political and economic pressure:  referral of Bashar al Assad to the International Criminal Court (ICC), assurances to the Russians that their interests will be served in a post-Assad Syria, and consideration of renunciation of any debt Bashar incurs now as “odious,” i.e. not to be repaid.  These are, admittedly, not strong options:  the Security Council referral to the ICC is unlikely, assurances already offered have not yet moved the Russians, and anyone who still thinks Bashar’s debts are going to be repaid in full if the opposition wins is smoking something.

Shut out.  These are, nevertheless, the right approaches to a problem for whose solution there are no good options.  A U.S.-led military intervention without a UN Security Council resolution or even an Arab League request is a non-starter.  I’d call this one four or five to zero for Beauchamp.  And he didn’t even know what game he was playing:  his piece is mostly about R2P and how it is properly applied to Syria.  He’s right on that too.