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Who Has the Power to Make War on Syria?
By Tim Holmes
Source: New Left Project
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
.....In reality, Washington’s actions in Syria will reflect its broader goal of securing regional dominance. They want, notes analyst Paul Rogers,
a pro-western Syria that would severely constrain Iranian influence in the region and end any notion that a 'Shi’a crescent' could be established—from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. This is akin to the neo-con dream of 2001-03, which believed that regime termination in Iraq would form the western counterpart of a pincer against Iran, complementing Afghanistan’s role to the east.
But the US has failed to win a dominant position for pro-western groups amid Syria’s disunited rebel factions, and instead confronts the “growing power of extreme Islamist paramilitaries”. Some “realists” therefore suggest Obama fuel the civil war deliberately, adjusting the flow of weapons to prevent either side winning. But Washington is equally unprepared to let Syria fragment, leaving large areas under jihadist control. The “chemical-weapons controversy”, then, “might provide a means to hasten Assad’s end and avert this outcome.”
The US media take official claims about the chemical attacks at face value; but the available evidence is shaky at best. It is clear an attack took place; less clear who perpetrated it. The Syrian regime has little obvious incentive to cross Obama’s “red line” and provoke retaliation. The Office of the Director for National Intelligence lacks “proof Assad ordered chemical weapons use”, while those “panicked calls” from a Syrian commander to the field only cast doubt on the regime’s complicity. Many question whether such attacks merit a response if the wider Syrian bloodbath does not.
Military options range from pointless to “extremely dangerous”, and are generally both. A 2012 paper in the Journal of Peace Research found “that military interventions [in civil wars] in favor of the rebel faction … tend to increase government killings of civilians by about 40%”. This supports an “academic consensus” that outside involvement makes civil wars longer, more bloody, and more difficult to resolve peaceably. The “worst results typically involve multiple external actors with conflicting objectives”—as in Syria.
a pro-western Syria that would severely constrain Iranian influence in the region and end any notion that a 'Shi’a crescent' could be established—from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. This is akin to the neo-con dream of 2001-03, which believed that regime termination in Iraq would form the western counterpart of a pincer against Iran, complementing Afghanistan’s role to the east.
But the US has failed to win a dominant position for pro-western groups amid Syria’s disunited rebel factions, and instead confronts the “growing power of extreme Islamist paramilitaries”. Some “realists” therefore suggest Obama fuel the civil war deliberately, adjusting the flow of weapons to prevent either side winning. But Washington is equally unprepared to let Syria fragment, leaving large areas under jihadist control. The “chemical-weapons controversy”, then, “might provide a means to hasten Assad’s end and avert this outcome.”
The US media take official claims about the chemical attacks at face value; but the available evidence is shaky at best. It is clear an attack took place; less clear who perpetrated it. The Syrian regime has little obvious incentive to cross Obama’s “red line” and provoke retaliation. The Office of the Director for National Intelligence lacks “proof Assad ordered chemical weapons use”, while those “panicked calls” from a Syrian commander to the field only cast doubt on the regime’s complicity. Many question whether such attacks merit a response if the wider Syrian bloodbath does not.
Military options range from pointless to “extremely dangerous”, and are generally both. A 2012 paper in the Journal of Peace Research found “that military interventions [in civil wars] in favor of the rebel faction … tend to increase government killings of civilians by about 40%”. This supports an “academic consensus” that outside involvement makes civil wars longer, more bloody, and more difficult to resolve peaceably. The “worst results typically involve multiple external actors with conflicting objectives”—as in Syria.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/who-has-the-power-to-make-war-on-syria-by-tim-holmes.html
