All in, or not

Whether President Obama will get Congressional backing for strikes on Syria’s capability of using chemical weapons will be decided in the political arena, where the current is running strongly against.  While he may win in the Senate, he faces a difficult uphill battle in the House, which is far more sensitive to public opinion.

Both Tea Party Republicans and more liberal Democrats are hearing from their constituents, who include members of my family, that they don’t see why the United States needs to take action.  Why can’t the Arab Gulf states, whom we have armed to the teeth, do this job?  What is at stake for America?  What is happening in Syria is sad, even tragic, but why is it our responsibility?  Why don’t we have stronger backing at the UN and elsewhere?

Samantha Power, now our ambassador at the UN, was busy yesterday in Washington trying to answer these questions.  She cited as reasons for the United States to act destabilization of the region, growing recruitment of violent extremists, Israel’s security, and proliferation of chemical (and other mass destruction) weapons as well as American credibility in the effort to prevent it.  She catalogued the international community’s carefully hedged verbal support.  She reviewed our efforts to use nonmilitary means both at the UN and elsewhere.  That’s all fine as far as it goes.

The disconnect, and it is an important one, is arguing that American national security is at risk but the President proposes a strictly limited intervention:  short, high-flying and unmanned, no boots on the ground.  Samantha says:

President Obama is seeking your support to employ limited military means to achieve very specific ends, to degrade Assad’s capacity to use these weapons again and deter others in the world who might follow suit. And the United States has the discipline as a country to maintain these limits.

Limited military action will not be designed to solve the entire Syria problem. Not even the most ardent proponents of military intervention in Syria believe that peace can be achieved through military means.

But this action should have the effect of reinforcing our larger strategy for addressing the crisis in Syria. By degrading Assad’s capacity to deliver chemical weapons, we will also degrade his ability to strike at civilian populations by conventional means.

She may be correct that we’ll hit that sweet spot where we deter further use of chemical weapons and also help the opposition by degrading his conventional capabilities.  But the odds are definitively against hitting such a small part of the spectrum of possible results.  Unintended consequences are the rule, not the exception.  US military action could also collapse the regime completely, with chaotic results or inimical ones like a takeover of Syria by Islamist extremists.  Or it could be perceived by Bashar al Asad as nothing more than a pinprick, causing him to escalate the use of both conventional and chemical weapons to defeat a flagging opposition.

An honest adviser should be telling the President that the consequences of military action in Syria are likely to be long-lasting, one way or another taking us down the slippery slope he has so long tried to avoid.  This could mean more military action and also burdensome civilian efforts.  The real option is not a quick and limited strike, but a quick and limited strike followed by difficult to predict consequences that may well require more of us than we anticipate now.  That’s the “all in” option.

Doing nothing, however, is also a decision.  That too could lead in unintended directions, including collapse of the regime and takeover by Islamist extremists.  After all, the last two years of doing little or nothing militarily have not moved us any farther away from those outcomes.  It is arguable, and often argued, that had we done something two years ago things would be much easier to manage now.

The difference between “all in” and “not,” the option that ironically “All In”‘s Chris Hayes favors, is how much say the United States afterwards.  A strike will bring clout with the opposition as well as the international community. It will mean a central role for the US in post-war Syria, something that may be as much burden as advantage.  It could also increase the credibility of a military threat to the Iranian nuclear program.

Backing off now, or going ahead without Congressional approval, will weaken a president who is already having domestic difficulties.  Domestically, “not” could put an early end to his second term.  Can you see the Republicans compromising on the budget by October if the Tea Party beats him on Syria?  Internationally, he will have a harder time convincing anyone that he is willing or able to strike the Iranian nuclear program, which will make a diplomatic solution even harder than it is already proving.

The Administration may be proposing a short-term effort, but the real alternative is between “all in” and “not.”