Should the US Intervene Militarily in Syria?

The big international story of the past week is the apparent use of chemical weapons in the civil war in Syria and the signals from the US that it, along with whichever allies it can persuade to go along, may take military action in response. This has naturally given rise to vociferous debate in the US and elsewhere about whether a military response is appropriate or even legal. I have received several requests from different progressive groups asking me to sign petitions opposing military action or insisting that Congress must authorize any attack. Likewise, my right-wing Representative said in his newsletter that he is calling on President Barack Obama to ask for Congressional authorization before taking any military action. Another progressive group sent an email asking for opinions regarding US military action in Syria, with options of "Yes", "No" and "Not Sure" and space to further explain your position. My response was "Not Sure", which at this point is still my position on the issue.

Of the groups opposing US military actions, some did a better job of arguing their position than others. One simply railed against the whole idea of going to war, raising the specter of Iraq and other stupid ventures in the past. Another focused primarily on the legality of military action and the War Powers Act. A related approach was taken by those who talked mainly about "vital national security interests" of the US as being the only legitimate rationale for a US President taking action without Congressional authorization. Some simply argued that US military action would make things worse.

For my own part, I have a problem with anyone who completely ignores humanitarian considerations as if they didn't exist. Whatever arguments one makes against intervention – and there are many good ones to be made – it first has to be acknowledged that the situation in Syria is awful and no one should be comfortable with the idea of just standing by and doing nothing. I won't say that the US or anyone else is compelled to take any particular action without considering all the downsides, and it is possible that a thorough consideration will lead to the conclusion that there is nothing the US can do to improve things, but no debate about taking action can ignore all the dead innocents in Syria (or even all the dead combatants).

Some have questioned whether it is absolutely proven that the Assad regime was responsible for the recent gas attacks. As far as I am aware, the rebels probably would have more difficulty launching a large scale chemical attack due to their relative lack of heavy artillery, but I can't say that it is impossible. Several of the reports on the US moves towards a military response mention that the US intercepted communications among low-ranking Syrian officers discussing the attack. Depending on what exactly was said, I am prepared to believe that it could be proven that the Syrian military was responsible, though the use of chemical weapons could still have been either a mistake or the result of a decision taken at a lower level without consulting the high command. Let's say, however, that the case against the Syrian leadership is compelling. What of the other arguments against intervention?

The US leadership is basing their arguments in favor of intervention on the assertion that the use of chemical weapons cannot be tolerated. In one mailing, US Representative Alan Grayson made the point that tens of thousands have already been killed in Syria, many in ways that are at least as horrific than a poison gas attack (I'd say that in many cases, even more so). So why does a chemical attack justify intervention when those other deaths didn't? This is a legitimate question. I personally think that if military intervention is justified, it was justified long before this. However, it is an unfortunate fact that a single large scale slaughter, complete with pictures of dead children, using a sinister-seeming weapon like poison gas, is more likely to galvanize world opinion in favor of action than any number of smaller-scale massacres or instances of torture using "conventional" means.

Then what of the War Powers Act and the requirement that action be approved by Congress unless the "vital national security interests" of the US are at stake? This is really a major obstacle and is one of the reasons I hesitate to support a military strike. I think the War Powers Act is flawed in that it doesn't allow for emergency action in the name of humanitarian causes. Even in the best of times, it would take some time for Congress to act. On the event of a truly horrific mass atrocity, such as what happened in Rwanda in the 1990s, a delay of a few days could mean thousands of additional deaths (not that the US or anyone else really tried to stop the slaughter in Rwanda...). Given how dysfunctional Congress is now, it might take forever for action to be authorized. I also don't agree with the argument that the "vital interests" of the US have to be at stake; or to put it another way, I think everyone should consider stopping atrocities one of their "vital interests". However, given the way the law is written, I am also highly uncomfortable with idea of allowing the President to just ignore it, even in a good cause. Once that precedent has been set (and some would argue it has been set already in previous military interventions), it will be even harder to stop future Presidents from launching military action for much less noble reasons. While in general if forced to choose, I'd favor doing what is right over doing what is legal, I don't think the future consequences of such a step can be ignored. The same conundrum applies to the question of legality of military action under international law (though this sort of situation is a very good argument for taking away the veto powers of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council; unfortunately, none of them, including the US, is willing to give them up).

But more than anything else, the real question is whether military intervention by the US or other outside powers will make things better in Syria. This is what really concerns me, more than any questions of legality. What we should be talking about is, what will improve the situation for all the civilians in Syria caught in the middle of this vicious struggle? If we can be fairly certain that military action would help and almost completely certain it won't make things worse, than I would favor it. Unfortunately, I don't think that anyone can guarantee that military action will be unequivocally beneficial (some would say that "beneficial military action" is itself a contradiction in terms, but while I understand where they are coming from, I don't agree that such a thing is completely impossible).

The NATO intervention in the Libyan civil war is the one of the most obvious recent cases of outside military action playing a decisive role in a conflict. But even leaving aside the important question of whether Libya is truly better off now than it was before, there are a lot of differences between the situation in Libya and that in Syria. In Libya, there were clear front lines, with the rebels holding the east and scattered pockets elsewhere, and the Qaddafi regime holding the west. It was a relatively simple matter for NATO air power to target the regime's forces in the Libyan desert where much of the fighting was taking place. Even in Libya, however, NATO air power was much less effective in fighting in and around the rebellious city of Misrata in the West, since it was much harder to attack the regime's forces without hitting the rebels or civilians. In Syria, there are few if any clear front lines, and most of the fighting is in urban environments like Misrata's, so it is doubtful that a prolonged air war will do much good, and it is likely to result in more civilian deaths (though one might argue that things are so bad for people in Syria now that it could hardly get worse). A more long-term useful military action might be setting up a no-fly zone, probably along the Turkish border, to protect refugees, though this is less likely to have a decisive effect on the course of the war.

However, from the hints dropped by Obama and other US officials, it seems that the US is merely contemplating a single strike to punish Assad for the use of chemical weapons. If done right, this is at least unlikely to make things worse (since I think substantial retaliation from Syria or its main allies is unlikely, due to the risk that they would be inviting more US intervention when they have their hands full already), and it would at least allow the US to say that it had sent a message about the use of chemical weapons. On the other hand, it would have the negative political repercussions mentioned above due to the questions about its legality and yet would probably do little practical good in terms of ending the conflict in Syria. What will it take to do that, especially without leaving either the bloodstained Assad regime or the radical elements among the rebels in charge? I really don't know, but, whether or not the US decides on a military strike on this occasion, I certainly hope those in a position to act will keep looking for a palatable option aimed at a long-term solution.

Events and Developments around the World

A lot has been going on in the world recently, too much for me to adequately cover myself. In addition to some brief commentary of my own on a few things, I've included a large number of links to news articles and commentaries that I've assembled over the past few weeks and months.

The most recent big international news story is what might reasonably be considered the Egyptian equivalent of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. After numerous threats, the Egyptian military violently cleared the camps of pro-Morsi Muslim Brotherhood protestors in Cairo, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The government made dubious claims that all violence was initiated by the protestors, and a few governments that were particularly hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood made supportive statements, but for the most part outside observers, including the US, condemned the violence, though the strength of their condemnations and the degree of blame they ascribed to the army varied. Notably, Mohamed El-Baradei, the liberal Interim Vice-President and one of the few relatively admirable prominent figures in Egyptian politics, resigned over the massacre. For my part, while I don't agree with anything the Brotherhood represents and I think their overthrow was probably on the whole a good thing, since they were governing not only badly but undemocratically, there is really no excuse for a slaughter on the scale that took place. It is an unfortunate reflection of the extreme polarization of Egyptian society nowadays that many ordinary Egyptians unreservedly supported the crackdown.

Elsewhere in the Mediterranean world, Tunisia has also been facing a political crisis. While theirs has not been as violent or chaotic as Egypt's, we can only hope that they find a resolution (preferably Ennahda agreeing to a technocratic transitional government) before it gets worse. Turkey's government, despite demonstrating an authoritarian streak in its response to protests in Istanbul, has also made positive moves to expand Kurdish rights.

Thanks to various radical Islamic groups in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria and elsewhere, a lot of people nowadays associate religious extremism exclusively with Islam. Not only does this ignore the long history of Christian extremism (including the rhetoric of some fundamentalists in the US today), it ignores contemporary situations in which Muslims are the victims of violent religious extremism. The most prominent example in the last year has been the massacres of Muslims in Burma (Myanmar) at the hands of Buddhists (while in a few instances individual Muslims helped start the violence, the vast majority of victims have been innocent Muslims, including women and children). Fortunately, a few Burmese have begun to speak out against those who encourage anti-Muslim prejudice. Unfortunately, despite Buddhism's peaceful reputation, Burma isn't the only country with violent Buddhist extremists, as a recent incident in Sri Lanka shows. Actually, I had heard of Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka many years ago, as around the time I visited the country groups of radical Buddhist monks were among those pushing for a renewal of hostilities against the Tamil Tigers. In that case the victims (not so much the Tigers as the Tamil civilians, though the Sri Lankan military committed human rights violations against captured Tigers as well) were Hindus, though of course there are Hindu extremists as well, such as the ones that perpetrated the horrible massacre of Muslims in India a number of years ago. Also, of course, there are plenty of peaceful and idealistic Muslims, even in places like Yemen.

Going back to Southeast Asia, this article about Myanmar brought back memories of our trip there. When we were in Bagan (aka Pagan), we happened to come across a National League for Democracy office. There were a few guys sitting around outside on motorcycles who told us we could go in and take a look (the office was open but there was no one inside). It seemed obvious to us that the men outside were secret police, just like the ones described in this article. Unfortunately such a massive security apparatus can't be expected to disappear in a short space of time, though one might hope that some individuals would repent of their previous deeds and join in efforts to reform the country. Past misdeeds and their perpetrators are also an issue in Thailand. Unfortunately in this case neither side of the political divide exactly excites admiration, though certainly Thaksin shouldn't be allowed back in power. It's a little easier to favor the opposition in Cambodia, which managed to do fairly well in the country's recent parliamentary elections, despite the obstacles to a free and fair election created by the government of premier/dictator Hun Sen. Of course, if the elections had actually been free and fair, there's a good chance that the opposition (which, though certainly preferable to the authoritarian Hun Sen, does have a regrettable tendency to use nationalist rhetoric) would have won outright.

But while Hun Sen didn't succeed in completely stealing the Cambodian elections, Robert Mugabe seems to have managed to steal the elections in Zimbabwe. In retrospect, his statement on the eve of the election that he would willingly give up power if he lost was not surprising. No doubt he felt he could afford to sound conciliatory, since he knew that thanks to his party's manipulation of the voting rolls and so forth, the election was already in the bag. Many Zimbabweans have already started to resign themselves to more years of mismanagement and stifling of opposition voices.

Returning again to Asia, I've seen numerous interesting articles in the past few weeks on the continent's biggest and most rapidly growing imperialist power, China. Domestically, despite occasional good signs such as this or this, overall there is little indication that the human rights situation will improve in China under Xi Jinping – if anything, it may be getting worse. There is some reason to hope that the environmental situation may start to improve in the country, with positive consequences for the world, but even about this I'm not entirely optimistic. It seems to me that often the Chinese government only takes positive action on environmental and similar issues when it is almost forced to by Chinese public opinion, and in some cases only after things have reached an absurdly extreme state, such as this case of a wealthy Chinese building an artificial mountain complete with villa on top of an apartment building. Even in more open Hong Kong, the Beijing government's recent version of responsiveness sent decidedly mixed messages.

China's influence is being felt more and more outside the country, often for the worse, including in such places as Africa, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and the South China Sea, with the last one being the most obvious case of naked aggression. But China's influence is not limited to economic and military power. For instance, though this very interesting article about how Hollywood went out of its way to avoid offending the Nazis in the period before World War II might seem to have nothing to do with China, I was immediately reminded of some things I have read recently about Hollywood films being cut differently for the China market, often for political reasons. This is a highly disturbing trend.

This in turn brings to mind some of the similarly disturbing trends we've been seeing here in Taiwan. One that I have mentioned before is the cross-strait agreement covering service industries, including for example the film industry and hairdressing. I recently saw a government ad in an MRT station promoting the benefits of the pact, and they mentioned how China has a big market, blah blah, without mentioning that there's no guarantee Taiwanese companies will be able to successfully compete, not to mention issues such as political censorship which will affect such things as Taiwanese films even more than Western ones. But at least as disturbing are some of the recent actions of the KMT government in Taiwan itself. First there have been numerous instances of people having their land confiscated or their houses torn down in the name of "development". In many cases this "development" blatantly favors private developers. For instance, the government may confiscate land for a "public" project (often a clearly unnecessary one), in which the compensation they provide will be less than market value. Then they rezone the land and sell it to private developers at a profit to the government (not to mention individual officials who may pocket some of the proceeds). In several cases, the local government has used heavy handed methods to remove protestors and tear down buildings that they have targeted for these projects. The increasing tendency of the police to be heavy-handed with protestors is another bad trend, as is repression of dissent by methods such as the designations of restricted areas (for instance in the general vicinity of the president), where the police claim the power to check IDs without probable cause and even to arrest people shouting slogans for "endangering public safety". [Update: Here's a news article about a big recent protest against the government's handling of development projects, and here's an animated video on the topic, focusing on a development project in the central part of Taipei.]

In virtually all of these situations, the government's favorite response is that they are acting "according to the law". Now there is no question that operating under rule of law is preferable to a situation where government actions are entirely arbitrary and often in blatant violation of the countries own laws, as is still the case in China (whose constitution actually guarantees many rights that the Chinese people have never enjoyed in practice). But simply following the letter of the law is no excuse for perpetuating obvious injustices. What's more, many laws, in Taiwan and in countries such as the US as well, are written in ways that strongly favor the wealthy, large corporations, or others with power. Legalized theft is still theft. One can only hope that more ordinary people become aware of these issues and not only pressure the government to follow principles of justice rather than the letter of the law, but also put people in power who will make laws that benefit the disadvantaged as much as the powerful.