Costly and insufficient
President Obama today sharply increased humanitarian aid to Syria, by $155 million:
Welcome though it may be, increased humanitarian aid will do nothing to solve the real problem in Syria, which is at its heart political. The regime has decided to stay in power by using whatever force is necessary.
Fred Hof argues that what Syria really needs now is an alternative government. The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is trying to form one. But the Coalition is hesitating because it worries about failure. If the international community does not provide sufficient resources, a revolutionary government could demonstrate weakness rather than strength, ringing a death knell to the two-year struggle against Asad.
President Obama is rightly worried about getting involved militarily in Syria, a move that could endanger Russian cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran. But what Fred is arguing does not require American boots on the ground, Patriot missiles in the air or even boatloads of arms supplies. It would only require that Washington recognize a revolutionary government and supply it with financial resources, perhaps $50-100 million for its own first-year start up costs as well as channeling a good part of the humaniarian aid through whatever mechanisms it is able to gin up.
This to me is a no-brainer. If we’ve already accepted the National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, the government it forms must the legitimate government of Syria. I’m sure there are a thousand legal issues that would need to be resolved, but it makes no sense to allow those to stand in the way of making the political moves required to bring the regime in Syria to the earliest possible end. And political moves require some financial backing, albeit much less than feeding, sheltering and clothing millions of people.
President Obama obviously knows what is going on in Syria–he refers to some of the worst behavior of the regime in the White House video. And he must know how hollow his own presentation sounds to those who are suffering inside Syria. If not, he should count the thumbs down on his video. Now what he needs to do is put some money and political support behind an alternative Syrian government, before it is too late.
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Humanitarian assistance to help overcome the suffering of the people in need is the best support the US can give at this point. What would be costly and inefficient, as we have seen from examples of our spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is to start to throw money down the rabbit hole of nation building. Syria is yet another example of a country that needs to have peace and security to allow its children to grow, and was bogged down for decades by a greedy regime. Whoever comes into power after the current government falls will have years of getting its act together. Any support we give for an alternative government at this point could well be wasted.