Stakes high on Syria
Source: by Harsh V. Pant: The Tribune
IT almost seems as if West Asia is perpetually stuck in a crisis mode. It is a region now where multiple crises co-exist easily, where regional actors now seem perennially preoccupied with fanning the flames of sectarian strife and where external actors are perpetually involved in fruitless crisis management. So even as the Egyptian military junta was the focal point of regional and global attention because of its ruthless assault on the supports of Muslim Brotherhood, the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime has changed the calculus for everyone.
Now even Barack Obama finds himself at a place where he would have least liked to be at the beginning of his second term as the US President – on the verge of starting a fourth war in West Asia in little more than a decade. Obama’s foreign policy has so far been caution writ large. But Bashar al-Assad has called his bluff.
For nearly a century now the world has been united against the use of chemical weapons, so horrifying in World War I. Waging war against his own people, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has used them previously during the past year, but never on the scale of the August 21 attack in which thousands of people were affected and at least 1,400 killed. Rockets loaded with a nerve agent were allegedly shot into residential neighborhoods of the Damascus suburbs, constituting one of the deadliest uses of chemical agents since they were outlawed nine decades ago.
The Obama administration has publicly asserted that the Syrian government used the nerve gas sarin to kill Syrian citizens. The French government has emphatically suggested that the suspected chemical attack near Damascus last month “could not have been ordered and carried out by anyone but the Syrian government”.
This was the ‘red line’ that Obama had publicly suggested Assad would not be allowed to cross. So now the credibility of the American foreign policy is at stake. The argument goes that if there is no response, the Assad regime would use them again, on an even larger scale, and other dictators in future conflicts would calculate that they, too, could use these ghastly weapons at no cost.
The problem has always been that Obama has had no larger Syria policy so far. For more than two years he has insisted that Assad must go, but has taken few steps to hasten that departure. During this time millions of people have been displaced from their homes, Al-Qaida has found a safe haven in the country and violence has spread to neighboring Lebanon and Iraq, with Israel, Jordan and Turkey also at risk. There has been an extraordinary failure of leadership by the US President. While deciding on intervention in a fateful Middle East war, the President has chosen a minimalist option, which is likely to fail.
Not surprisingly after raising hopes that attacks were imminent in Syria, Obama had to back down in the face of opposition from the US Congress facing widespread ridicule. Syria’s envoy to the UN suggested that Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron — who last week ruled out military action after failing to get parliamentary approval – had “climbed to the top of the tree” but didn’t know how to get down, and so had deferred the decision to the lawmakers.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition released a statement urging Congress to support military action, saying that if the international community does not respond to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons; it would set a dangerous example for other dictatorships around the world. But in Washington, London and Paris, the spectre of Iraq war looms large and domestic politics in these countries is by and large opposed to the nascent military plans being drawn up by their respective governments.
Syria today stands at the heart of the geopolitical struggle for influence between Saudi Arabia and Iran in West Asia. There is little likelihood that a war against Syria would remain limited. It will engulf the whole region as Syria is the only major ally left of Iran in the region and Tehran will do its utmost to protect the Assad regime in Damascus. Because of this, The biggest danger for the Western forces is that they might get drawn into a more protracted struggle, “mission-creep”, risking an open-ended military commitment that many fear might be as dangerous as another Iraq or Afghanistan.
At the moment, the most attractive option for the West is to engage in short swift punitive strikes against the Assad regime targeting military sites linked closely to the regime — the headquarters or barracks of elite units so as to get the regime’s attention and to persuade him not to resort to chemical weapons in the future. This will be politically acceptable and will give an appearance that something is being done. But this is unlikely to solve the problem and may even prolong the ongoing civil war in Syria. The West also doesn’t want many of the groups fighting the Assad regime to win because of their extremist ideology.
Obama’s heart is not in this war but he has few good choices left. He has boxed himself in a corner and now he needs to show that he can lead from the front as opposed to leading from behind which has become his mantra. But the stakes are huge not only for the US but for the larger international community which has been preoccupied with various West Asian crises for far too long.
Courtesy: http://www.ksgindia.com/study-material/today-s-editorial/9048-07-sept-2013.html
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