Syrian violence invites foreign
intervention By Victor Kotsev
In her book On Violence, celebrated
political theorist and philosopher Hanna Arendt
wrote, "The extreme form of power is All against
One, the extreme form of violence is One against
All." According to her - and others - power is
based on consensus (however that is achieved),
while violence, especially in its more extreme
forms, rips through the fabric of a society.
Later in the book, she added, "Every decrease
in power is an open invitation to violence."
This is an apt description of what is
happening in Syria. As relentless, and ever-more
lethal, foreign-sponsored guerrilla warfare exposes the military
weaknesses of the regime, Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad's forces are responding with desperate
violence. The two sides trade accusations about
the almost daily massacres, and credible reports
claim that neither is innocent; still, the
government has clearly abandoned hope of propping
up its
legitimacy with the
majority Sunni Muslim Syrian population (around
75%, according to most estimates).
Assad
can hardly even hope for the kind of political
power that grows out of the barrel of the gun (to
quote China's famous communist leader Mao Zedong).
His attempts to mimic statesmanship - for example,
by appointing a new prime minister a few days ago
[1] - ring hollow as his isolation grows. Even his
core constituency, which is expected to stick with
him for lack of alternatives, is showing signs of
unease with his methods, according to The New York
Times [2]. It is increasingly becoming a fight of,
if not one against all, a few against most.
If this trend continues, given the broader
geopolitical standoff in the region, the risk of
an overt foreign intervention in Syria will grow
as well. The regime's diplomatic isolation is
increasing, and though significant obstacles
remain, a military operation could theoretically
take place as soon as a few weeks from now.
The scenes of the past days - including
helicopter assaults on opposition areas near the
city of Homs (confirmed by United Nations
monitors), indiscriminate artillery bombardment of
civilian areas (including alleged attacks on the
unarmed UN observers themselves), rebels
reportedly capturing a missile base, and heavy
fighting spreading even in the capital Damascus -
recall various stages of the civil war in Libya
last year.
The Syrian army has absorbed
hundreds of fatalities within a couple of weeks -
with perhaps thousands wounded, defected and
captured - and its ability to exert control over
much of the country has been degraded further. The
use of helicopters suggests that even the movement
of tanks and artillery has become more difficult.
According to several reports, new
anti-tank missiles transferred to the rebels from
abroad have destroyed or damaged "dozens" of tanks and armored
vehicles just this month [3]. The rebels have
become better organized, both politically and
militarily. Reportedly, they have boosted
significantly their arms procurement network,
including by trading with corrupt officers from
the regime army, smuggling more from abroad and
manufacturing their own explosive devices and lightly armored vehicles
[4]. They even claim to have made plans for securing Syria’s weapons of mass destruction once the regime collapses.
On the political front, the
main opposition umbrella group, the Syrian
National Council, picked a new leader on Sunday.
Abdelbaset Sieda, a Kurdish dissident and
professor of Arabic, ran unopposed and promised
after his election to "expand and extend the base
of the council ... so it will take on its role as
an umbrella under which all the opposition will
seek shade."
In this context, it would not
be surprising to hear renewed calls for a
resolution authorizing a "no-fly zone" in Syria,
similar to the one used to topple Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi, at the United Nations in the near
future. Whether or not such an initiative can gain
momentum will depend very much on the developments
on the ground in the next days, as well as on
various external developments such as the progress
of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the
West.
The bargaining between the US,
Russia and the European powers (as well regional
powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey)
continues. A few days ago, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov said that his country would
not oppose Assad's departure. The viability of the
so-called "Yemen option" (replacing Assad with
somebody else from his regime), however, is
questionable.
Not only did it fail to stop
the violence in Yemen, but Syria is also a very
different case: the sectarian violence there has
advanced very far, and there is hardly anybody to
step in after Assad (who is not expected to leave easily).
For now - given that
the regime possesses sophisticated air defenses
and missiles tipped with chemical weapons - the
viability of a Western intervention is uncertain
as well. According to most estimates, such a
campaign would be several times more costly and
dangerous than the one in Libya last year, which
ran in the billions of dollars and produced
dubious results.
On the other hand, if the
civil war escalates further and becomes a protracted one, this could
turn into a disaster for the entire region, as
well for the American administration.
US President Obama, who is in the middle of a re-election campaign, will likely face severe criticism at home for his inaction should the massacres continue unabated.
Moreover, American policy in the Middle East could suffer a major setback. In an
article titled "Why a Syrian Civil War Would Be a
Disaster For US National Security," for example,
Robert Satloff outlines several plausible
nightmare scenarios (including regional war and
the falling of weapons of mass destruction in
terrorist hands).
He argues that a form of
intervention, broadly along the lines of the
operation in Libya, is necessary:
[A] mix of cyber-warfare, to
interfere with Syrian government communications
efforts; unmanned drones, to target key
installations and weapons depots; air power, to
establish and defend safe zones; and a manned
element based in neighboring states, to execute
a train and equip mission to support rebel
forces. At the same time, it is essential that
the United States, teamed with Arab, Turkish and
other allies, inject urgency and energy into the
task of upgrading the cohesion and message of
the Syrian political opposition, so that there
is a clear answer to the important question of
what comes in the wake of Assad's demise. [5]
Elements of such a campaign are
already visible on the ground. The big question in
this respect is how quickly the Syrian regime can
be brought to its knees to the point where an air
campaign is more palatable. In Libya, where the
use of air power preceded other tactics, the
foreign effort to prop up the rebels and to
subvert the army eventually worked - Gaddafi's
control over the western part of the country
imploded - but it took months. In Syria, covert campaign has been underway for months, and signs
of chaos in Assad's forces are growing, but the regime
still controls much greater might than Gaddafi
ever did.
Other considerations may also
interfere in the calculations of the great powers. The
nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West,
for example, are intimately linked to the crisis
in Syria, since Assad is Iran's closest Arab ally,
and Syria is a key link in the Iranian system of
military deterrence.
According to a recent
analysis in Foreign Policy Magazine (among other
sources), a successful military operation against
Assad could push Israel's timetable for an attack
against Iran further into the future, and thus
postpone an even more violent and dangerous
regional conflict [6]. Per this logic, if an intervention in Syria down the road is unavoidable anyway for the Americans, a negative outcome in the talks with Iran in Moscow in a week could bring its execution forward.
An interesting, if speculative, scenario would involve the assassination of Assad and his close circle, as a way of decapitating the regime. A similar attempt, involving the poisoning of several top officials, was reportedly carried out by the rebels last month, and may have contributed to the violence unleashed by pro-government forces. In part as a result of Assad’s efforts to prevent a Yemen-style solution, most of the power in the regime is reportedly concentrated in a relatively few people; the president’s growing indispensability and isolation, however, constitute also a great liability for his camp.
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