I strongly oppose intervention, but shockingly don’t see an argument on either side in this thread that approaches my position.
I will note invalid reasons to oppose intervention:
- The intelligence is faulty. (Expressed most inappropriately by Stranger.) This isn’t a valid argument. For one, states have to act based on the best intelligence available to them. If you have no confidence in specific pieces of intelligence, you generally should not act on it. However the argument being proposed by the group that is concerned about the intelligence on this matter is that because the political administration “lied” prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq we can never trust U.S. intelligence at the worst, or at best we have to have “proof beyond a reasonable doubt to act.”
The international stage is not a court of law, nor should the professionals analyze intelligence based on prior misdeeds of the political branch. But to analyze past intelligence failures, basically only the United States had intelligence indicating things like yellowcake uranium and etc in regard to Iraq. The intelligence was so weak that individuals in the intelligence community actually went public to try and debunk the evidence, to let the public know it was not reliable.
In this scenario three countries (including one that did not support our invasion of Iraq in 2003): France, UK, and the United States have multiple confirmed reports by independent analysis of physical evidence that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on its people. Not only this time, but repeatedly in the past on a smaller scale. A President or any state leader has to be able to act on reasonable intelligence, the intelligence we have more than fits that criteria. The idea that they should only act on “beyond reasonable doubt” intelligence is insane, because that would literally paralyze government. A criminal court can operate on that standard, which requires you to exclude any reasonable alternatives. A state would be paralyzed by inaction in foreign affairs if it only acted on the same level of certainty.
- We should only act with UN Security Council approval. This is also faulty and looks at the UN through rose colored glasses. The UN has its positives, but it has many negatives. The permanent members of the security council have veto power over any sort of UN Security Council resolution–this is actually a flaw in designing a truly international body and instead was designed specifically to give the United States (who was most influential in forming the UN after WWII) power to never have UN sanctioned military action happen without its approval. Obviously the other five permanent members exercise that same level of power. It isn’t based on any internationally positive concepts or anything other than basically giving to five states extraordinary power to say they get veto power over the military activities of the UN.
If we view the war in Syria as a humanitarian atrocity which I believe all neutral observers must, even if chemicals weapons had not been used, and we view the use of chemical weapons as intrinsically undesirable and against humanitarian norms then the mission of the UN would demand that it address those concerns. Instead, you have China blocking any intervention over humanitarian concerns because China itself (while dramatically improving) commits many humanitarian abuses and supports many countries which do the same. China does not as a policy ever want the international community to respond to even the worst humanitarian abuses by dictators perpetrated on their own people. Russia is voting based purely on its geopolitical self interest, it has a small refueling base in Syria. It is its only base in the eastern Mediterranean and without it all Russian ships would have to sail through the Bosporus and into a Russian black sea port to refuel and resupply. Russia has also invested considerable amount of money and material in keeping Assad in power. Its vote is based exclusively on crass geopolitical concerns.
For that reason the UN SC has no real validity as anything but something that expresses the geopolitical desires of its participants. It is not a moral validator by any means, nor is there a moral or humanitarian aspect to its decisions.
If you genuinely believe that the U.S. must have the backing of a security council resolution, then what you’re saying is you’re 100% in favor of never intervening in Syria regardless of what Assad does. If that’s your position, you should just say so–don’t hide behind the security council which is a body of no real validity when talking weapons proliferation or humanitarian concerns. Two of its members are probably the two powers most responsible for weapons proliferation around the world and are significant violators of human rights norms.
Now, here are some invalid arguments made by those who support military action:
- It is necessary on humanitarian grounds. I’d argue the military action proposed advances no humanitarian purpose. Even if we somehow completely destroyed Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile, the fact is he has killed probably fifty times as many people as were killed in the chemical weapons attack with conventional weapons. The pro-Assad militias round up non-combatants who support any opposition group and summarily execute them. They butcher civilians every day and make no regard to collateral damage in their military operations. In fact, many of their operations they specifically try to maximize the number of civilians killed to weaken the opposition. Slapping Assad, while it may satisfy some feel good desires serves no humanitarian purpose.
Even if we “took it all the way” and actually committed to toppling Assad, unfortunately that would likely advance no humanitarian purpose. There is a small amount of the rebels forces who are secular (and being backed by Saudi Arabia) that may behave appropriately if they won the war (that’s a big maybe, and how secular they are is also a giant question mark.) The rest of the opposition are bad sorts, the ones who aren’t backed by al-Qaeda affiliates are still pretty terrible when it comes to human rights. The Alawite minority and probably the Christian minority in Syria would face genocide if these groups won the war, and in fact when they’ve had a chance they’ve killed as many of those minority groups as possible whenever they’ve had the chance.
Even if we invaded Syria, to topple Assad and “impose” some order on Syrian society so that the extant rebel groups don’t take over and start killing all of their enemies that is likewise unlikely to advance any humanitarian purpose. What will instead happen is we’ll divide Syrian society into groups that have reasons to support the occupation and new government we build up, and those that do not. They will fight one another and continue to commit atrocities against one another. In the process many American soldiers will die, and in our military operations against the insurrection we’ll inevitably cause collateral damage, further enraging the Arab world against the United States. The resulting insurrections would most likely continue to pile up thousands of dead civilians on both sides–so I see no humanitarian positives even with the absolute, strongest type of U.S. intervention.
- The U.S. needs to stop chemical weapons proliferation. This was the first argument expressed in this thread, that if chemical weapons use is permitted, they will proliferate more and more as groups come to view them as valid instruments of warfare. I’ll admit that’s a more novel argument than what I typically see in regard to chemical weapons. But, I still view it as flawed. Everyone knows chemical weapons have a powerful utility in certain aspects of warfare, especially when you can use them against enemy troop formations or civilians in areas removed from your own troop formations or civilians. Because of the nature of chemical gas, they are dangerous and often ineffective when used in a direct battle, but they can inspire fear and demoralize people when used in other scenarios. Realistically then I would argue the incentive to use chemical weapons has always been there. Likewise, I do not think there is any substantial disincentive for terrorist groups to use chemical weapons other than they simply haven’t been able to either access any or produce any and get them to desired targets.
I’d argue the type of dictatorial countries that would potentially be willing to sell chemical weapons to a terrorist group by and large already stockpile chemical weapons. The fact that we haven’t seen substantial (or even really any) proliferation of chemical weapons to terrorist groups is evidence even the worst state actors prefer to keep such weapons in the hands of state actors and not terrorist groups. This is similar to the fear that if the Iranians get a bomb they’ll give it to a terrorist group–that makes no sense, the last thing Iran would want is to give a valuable weapon to an uncontrollable terror group.
We already sanction countries that use chemical weapons, so it is not without penalty. Further, in the past countries that have used chemical weapons in war (both Iran and Iraq) have mostly not been punished for that. Sure, we invaded Iraq but not in response to its actual use of chemical weapons. Iraq used them in the Iran-Iraq war, in response we did nothing. Iraq used them against Kurds and opposition during the uprising following the Persian Gulf War–we did nothing in terms of trying to topple him. We did levy sanctions and maintain sanctions. But ultimately what this shows is that letting a dictator get away with using chemical weapons against its own people does not seem to lead to any greater proliferation of chemical weapons nor does it lead to those weapons ending up in the hands of terrorists.
Most of these arguments I reject out of hand, regardless of who is right or wrong on the specifics. Whatever the humanitarian argument, I see no reason to intervene solely on humanitarian grounds. Now, the chemical weapons argument, in regard to proliferation (which could affect the United States) I could see acting on that basis if we actually had a genuine fear of chemical weapons proliferation. I don’t see that in this situation, though. In fact intervention, which might weaken the Assad regime could actually result in chemical weapons falling into the hands of non-state actors in the ensuing chaos, which would be our worst fear and a direct result of our own actions.
I don’t think that toppling Assad advances the interests of the United States one bit, and that is core to my argument. If toppling Assad does not advance our interests at all, then what purpose is served by “slapping” him? Certainly no humanitarian purposes. Certainly no chemical weapons proliferation purposes. I guess some vague argument that it’ll “teach” dictators that using chemical weapons gets them “punished?”
Dictators are good at doing cost-benefit analysis, I’d argue that’s why Assad has actually used chemical weapons. He probably figured the U.S. would either not respond, or if it did it would be a series of limited strikes from which he could recover, and that ultimately using chemical weapons was still worth it in response to these strikes.
Random air strikes shouldn’t be likened to “fines” or some other minor punishment in the criminal justice system. These air strikes would really serve no purpose at all, and most importantly even if they significantly altered Assad’s behavior I still do not see how that advances U.S. interests whatsoever.