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Britain and France have collaborated in getting the European Union to lift its arms embargo on Syria, opening the possibility of shipping arms to the opposition starting in July.  But key European thinktanks are very much opposed to the idea:  Julien Barnes-Dacey and Daniel Levy of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) wants de-escalation and Christopher Phillips of Chatham House criticizes what he regards as Britain’s flawed logic.

I have a hard time understanding their objections.  Why would Syria’s arms suppliers (Russia and Iran principally) reduce the flow unless they see the real possibility that escalation will favor the opposition?  Opening the possibility of future arms shipments will do more to give the Asad regime something to worry about than it will do to harden the opposition’s resistance to negotiation.  It is far more likely that offering weapons conditional on their unified participation in negotiations  (and being prepared to shut off the flow if they fail to participate seriously) will work.

Nor am I all that worried about weapons ending up in the wrong hands, so long as they are used to counter the regime.  The neat distinction between jihadists and moderates is at least in part a figment of Western imaginations.  However hard we try, some weapons will end up in the wrong places.  Given the current political atmosphere in the US, better that happen to the Europeans than to us.  We don’t need “fast and furious” on steroids.

Then there is the question of the Russia’s decision to export a new generation of air defenses to Syria, apparently decided in response to the European Union ending the embargo.  If the Russians go ahead and if the Israelis fail to attack them before they are operational, they would presumably make it more difficult to impose a no-fly zone, if that were President Obama’s intention.  But despite news reports, there is no real indication that the Americans are willing to patrol a no-fly zone, and the Israelis have good reasons to prevent the new air defenses from becoming operational, something that would take months if not years in the best of conditions.  It is amusing to see people who oppose a no-fly zone worrying about the Russian move and premature to worry too much about an Israeli-Russian war, though the Israelis should certainly be concerned about how far Russia is prepared to go in arming Syria and Iran.

While in my view wrong about the impact of arming the revolutionaries, or more accurately opening up the future possibility of arming them, the ECFR offers a “strategy for de-escalation” worth looking at:

• a set of guiding principles
• a wide enough coalition committed to de-escalation, and
• a diplomatic strategy to get Geneva II off the ground.

The principles they draw from the Geneva I communique:

1. All parties must recommit to a sustained cessation of armed violence
2. No further further militarization of the conflict
3. The sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic must be respected
4. The establishment of a transitional governing body that can establish a neutral environment in which the transition can take place, with the transitional governing bodyexercising full executive powers. It could include membersof the present Government and the opposition and othergroups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent
5. The Government must allow immediate and full humanitarian access by humanitarian organizations to all areas affected by the fighting

The most controversial is that fourth point, as it implies to the opposition and its supporters that Bashar al Asad will step aside while the regime and its supporters oppose that.  Squaring that circle will be worth a Nobel Prize.  But the Geneva I communique was not agreed by either the opposition or the regime, so getting them to sign up to something like these five points would be an important step forward.

The ECFR description of a possible de-escalation coalition is reasonable.  The diplomatic strategy beyond that is brief and vague, basically proposing that Russia and the US bring the rest of the P5 on board for a non-Chapter 7 UN Security Council resolution.

The ECFR paper offers one particularly interesting idea on cessation of armed violence:  this might be done in specific geographic areas, “rolling and expanding pockets in which ceasefires hold.”  This of course would enable both sides to concentrate their forces in areas where there are no such ceasefires, intensifying the conflict in some areas even while de-escalating in others.  The idea could have the great virtue of opening up more of the country to humanitarian relief and beginning the re-introduction of international monitors, assuming there is someone out there ready to take on that role.