Day: April 27, 2013
Civilians >> chemical weapons
The “Salon” I did with Stanford’s Lina Khatib yesterday on “Should the U.S. intervene in Syria?” focused mainly on chemical weapons, as all conversations about Syria yesterday did.
Lina, who had published a piece with Larry Diamond on Thursday making the case for military intervention (arms to the rebels plus a no-fly zone but no boots on the ground) in Syria, is concerned not only about chemical weapons use, the evidence for which she regards as “credible,” but about the fertile ground for Islamist extremists and the impact on the region. The longer the fighting lasts, the worse it gets.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But it doesn’t matter whether she and I think the evidence of chemical weapons use is credible. What matters is what the Russians, Chinese, Turks and others think. If there is going to be serious military intervention in Syria by the United States, it is going to need multilateral cover, preferably a UN Security Council resolution as well as an Arab League request. The standards the evidence is going to need to meet are high. The world is in no mood for another Middle East war based on flimsy claims related to weapons of mass destruction.
It is going to take time to assemble the evidence and convince skeptics. Once we are ready, Peter Juul proposes a reasonable course of action to mobilize the UN Security Council and NATO (for both military action and humanitarian relief). If that fails, the US will have to consider unilateral action without multilateral cover, but that is a course of action with many drawbacks.
There is also a credibility issue in the other direction: if the US doesn’t act against Syrian use of chemical weapons, why would the Iranians believe that we would take action against their nuclear program? This is a serious problem, but it should not drive the timetable. Being 100% certain, and trying to convince others, is more important than the timing.
That is a cruel thing to say. Syrians are dying every day. The average is climbing towards 200 per day, 6000 per month. The total by now is well over 70,000. Those are staggering numbers. Few of them are killed by chemical weapons. Bombing, Scuds, artillery and small arms fire are much more common:
The targeting of civilians is a war crime, no matter what the weapons used. Civilians are more important than the weapons that kill them. The standards of proof are easily met. The Syrian security forces and their paramilitaries are attacking and killing civilians daily with conventional weapons.
I would like to see the international community act on those grounds, rather than focusing on a limited (and difficult to prove) use of sarin gas. But this is not the unipolar moment of 1999, when the United States led a NATO intervention in Kosovo without UN Security Council approval. That is unlikely to happen. So we are heading down a long road of difficult proof.
Some, like Leila Hilal on Chris Hayes’ show last night, would prefer a negotiated solution. So would I. But it is not looking as if Bashar al Assad is hurting badly enough to yield to the transition plans that Russia and the United States agreed in Geneva last June. The mutually hurting stalemate that would provide the conditions for that will require that the revolutionaries do a bit better than they have managed so far. More international assistance is going to be needed.
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The referendum gambit
Serbian President Nikolic and his “progressive” party compatriot Deputy Prime Minister Vucic have been suggesting that a referendum might be called on the first Pristina/Belgrade “normalization” agreement. It would be held in northern Kosovo as well as Serbia proper only on condition that everyone, including northern Kosovo Serbs, promise to comply with whatever the result will be. It is not clear to me whether the Serbs living south of the Ibar in Kosovo would be able to vote.
The European Union and the United States do not want this to happen. The Serbian (and Kosovo) parliaments have already voted to approve the agreement. Adding another step to the process would not be welcome in Brussels and Washington, which want to pocket success and move on to implementation.
A referendum would certainly be a gamble. If the agreement were disapproved, the consequences for Serbia would be serious: an indefinite delay in getting a date to start negotiations on EU accession, including a delay in the financing that comes with the date decision. Disapproval would essentially lock Serbia into pursuing partition, making Belgrade non grata with the EU and the US.
If, however, the agreement were approved, that would presumably end resistance to implementation. It might even be the end of Serbia’s quixotic claim to sovereignty over Kosovo, since the agreement is clear about Kosovo’s territorial integrity and implies its sovereignty.
Vucic is betting that a referendum would approve the agreement and the northerners will therefore back off. He has threatened to resign if the agreement is not approved. Despite terrible socioeconomic conditions, he figures that most of Serbia is pleased with this government and in particular with him, as the leader of a popular anti-corruption campaign. Vucic has given the northerners until Tuesday to accept the agreement, or face a referendum 15 days later. That doesn’t sound practical to me, but maybe the election machinery in Serbia is better oiled than I imagine.
Polling suggests 50-60% of Serbia supports the agreement, but those who oppose it are much more committed than those who are favorable and far more likely to go to the polls. A simple up or down referendum to approve the agreement could lose. A referendum on disapproving it might have a better chance (of failure), in particular if a “double majority” is required.
This was the requirement for Serbia’s 2006 constitutional referendum: 50% had to approve, and 50% of registered voters had to vote. There is no way the second requirement can be met if the Kosovo Albanian voters on the register are counted. They were not for the 2006 referendum, but the constitution was adopted anyway. I’ll be glad to hear from someone who knows whether the “double majority” requirement is permanent or only used for the constitutional referendum.
If the northerners call Vucic’s bluff, how the referendum question is formulated and the requirements for it to pass are going to be decisive. But I wouldn’t yet bet on a referendum being called.
PS: Milan Marinkovic provided some of the material in this post, but the views here are not necessarily his. They are mine.
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