Month: April 2012
The road to Damascus runs through Moscow
The Syrian National Council (SNC) issued its Covenant this week, while the Friends of Syria today issued the Chairman’s conclusions from its meeting in Istanbul.
Friends of Syria is a group of countries and international organizations that are supporting “the just cause of the Syrian people,” which they define as a transition away from dictatorship and towards democracy. Its statement is a tawdry model of diplomatic waffling. Mostly it reiterates things said previously, without the means or the will to make them happen. As Ian Black, The Guardian’s Middle East editor tweeted to me, “awful! reeks of urge to sound purposeful + united while ignoring toughest questions. diplomacy of lowest common denominator.”
Ironically, since Syria’s international friends have criticized the SNC repeatedly for its failure to outline a vision of the New Syria, the SNC statement is a model of clarity. The New Syria will be “a civil, democratic, pluralistic, independent and free state”:
Syria’s new democratic order will be founded on the principle of “unity in diversity” and will embrace all individuals and communities without any exclusion or discrimination.
If this is not explicit enough, the Covenant specifies:
The constitution will ensure non-discrimination between any of the religious, ethnic or national components of Syrian society – Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Turkmens or others. It will recognize equal rights for all within the context of Syria’s territorial and demographic integrity and unity.
It is hard to beat this for clarity.
There is an important moment of fuzziness in the Covenant, though it could be a translation issue or just something on which I don’t have the required background. It says:
The transitional government will be committed to hold free and fair elections upon the fall of the current, illegitimate regime. A constituent assembly, formed by the transitional government, will engage in drafting a new constitution containing the principles of this Covenant and submit it to a free referendum.
Does the transitional government form the constituent assembly? It seems to me the constituent assembly should be the result of the elections. And who forms the transitional government? Does it exist before the constituent assembly elections and continue after them? How is it chosen? Or does the constituent assembly choose the transitional government? These are not small questions. I’ll hope that there is more clarity about them than in the English translation of the Covenant.
Of course the main question now is how to begin a transition when Bashar al Assad is still holding on to power, with pretty solid support from the Syrian army and security services as well as the country’s diplomats. Sadly, the Friends of Syria offer nary a hint, apart from urging no arms sales and tightening of sanctions. Humanitarian assistance, which the Friends emphasize, is not going to be sufficient to initiate the political dialogue that Kofi Annan’s plan calls for. If the revolutionaries are able to unsettle Damascus, spreading peaceful demonstrations throughout the capital, that would make a big difference.
The missing international piece of this puzzle is Russia. It has to be convinced to read Bashar the riot act. Only the Americans can hope to bring Moscow around to do this. The road to Damascus runs through Moscow.
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The joke is on us
The temptation to do an April Fool’s post is great, but the barriers are greater: how can anyone joke about Bashar al Assad murdering Syria’s citizens and managing nevertheless to stay in power? Or about nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian theocracy? A war we are losing in Afghanistan? A peace we are losing in Iraq? A re-assertive Russia determined to marginalize dissent? An indebted America dependent on a creditor China that requires 7-8% annual economic growth just to avoid massive social unrest? I suppose the Onion will manage, but I’m not even one of its outer layers.
Not that the world is more threatening than in the past. To the contrary. America today faces less threatening risks than it has at many times in the past. But there are a lot of them, and they are frighteningly varied. Drugs from Latin America, North Korean sales of nuclear and missile technology, Al Qaeda wherever, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the wrong hands, bird or swine flu… Wonks are competing to offer a single “grand strategy” in a situation that does not permit one. Doctrine deprived Obama has got it right: no “strategic vision” can deal with all these contingencies. They require a case by case approach, albeit one rooted in strength and guided by clear principles.
American military strength is uncontested in today’s world and unequaled for a couple of decades more, even in the most draconian of budget situations. A stronger economy is on the way, though uncertainty in Europe and China could derail it. All America’s problems would look easier to solve with a year or two, maybe even three, of 3-4% economic growth. The principles are the usual ones, which I would articulate this way:
- The first priority is to protect American national security
- Do it with cheaper civilian means as much as possible, more expensive military means when necessary
- Leverage the contributions of others when we can, act unilaterally when we must
- Build an international system that is legitimate, fair and just
- Cultivate friends, deter and when necessary defeat enemies
My students will immediately try to classify these proposition as “realist” or “idealist.” I hope I’ve formulated them in ways that make that impossible.
There are a lot of difficult issues lying in the interstices of these propositions. Is an international system that gives the victors in a war now more than 65 years in the past vetoes over UN Security Council action fair and just? Does it lead to fair and just outcomes? Civilian means seem to have failed in Syria, and seem to be failing with Iran, but are military means any more likely to succeed? If the threats to American national security are indirect but nonetheless real–when for example North Korea threatens a missile launch intended to intimidate Japan and South Korea–do we withhold humanitarian assistance?
America’s political system likes clear and unequivocal answers. It has categories into which it would like to toss each of us. Our elections revolve around identity politics almost as much as those in the Balkans. We create apparently self-evident myths about our leaders that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
The fact is that the world is complicated, the choices difficult, the categories irrelevant and the myths fantasies. That’s the joke: it’s on us.
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