El dilema sirio.

¿Qué hacer con Siria? Las violaciones a los DDHH son flagrantes. Pero, Damasco no es Trípoli. Pues el régimen de al-Assad cuenta con el apoyo de Rusia y China. Lo que torna muy factible su veto a cualquier resolución del Consejo de Seguridad que pretenda llevar a cabo una intervención humanitaria.

 

The Realist Prism: U.S. Faces Strategic Gamble in Syria

By Nikolas Gvosdev | 01 Jun 2012

In the aftermath of the massacre in Houla, Syria, pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to become more directly involved in efforts to remove the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The problem for U.S. President Barack Obama’s national security team is that there is no clear, safe course of action: Intervening or staying out of the conflict both carry their own sets of risks.
Let’s start with the “knowns” that would have to guide any American decision. The first is that Russia, backed by China, will not allow the United Nations Security Council to give its imprimatur to any military action, even if Russia has been more willing to chastise Damascus in the aftermath of Houla. U.S. commentators have focused on the mercenary reasons for Russia’s support of Assad, including lucrative contracts for Russian defense contractors and the use of port facilities at Tartus by the Russian Navy. Beyond that, however, Russia simply does not share the U.S. narrative of events in Syria. Moscow is less willing to accept the reports issued by the Local Coordination Committees in Syria or the London-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory about the culpability of the Assad regime for civilian deaths. And in contrast to Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin is far less likely to allow resolutions calling for more robust action to move forward in the Security Council.

So if the Obama administration wants to act, it must be willing to do so without the legitimizing cover of the United Nations, either in response to an Arab League request for intervention or by assembling a “coalition of the willing” prepared to act without such a request. It must also calculate whether causing new tensions in what are now rockier U.S. relations with Russia and China is worth bypassing the Security Council to intervene in Syria.

The second “known” is that any military intervention in Syria would largely be a U.S. show. The bulk of both the costs and the actual military sorties in Libya last year were undertaken by the United States, even if Washington wore NATO livery. Moreover, NATO members who did participate in Libya have, for the most part, not yet replenished the stocks of munitions they expended in the air campaign. Nor will the U.S. approach in Sudan and Somalia -- providing some financial aid and logistical support but having other countries provide the front-line forces -- work in Syria. So while the administration might hope that “someone else” will take on the bulk of the intervention, those hopes are not going to be realized. The Obama team will instead have to calculate how another Mediterranean-based U.S. military action will affect the situation both in the Persian Gulf and farther afield in Asia.

But beyond these two givens, there are a series of questions to which no definitive answer can be provided right now, and each of them is a potentially risky gamble for Washington.

The first is how U.S. policy toward Syria will affect the prospects for a peaceful settlement of the nuclear dispute with Iran, arguably Washington’s top foreign policy priority at the moment. Advocates for intervention argue that a demonstration of the U.S. willingness to use military force to back up its diplomatic efforts sends a clear signal to Tehran that the rhetoric about “all options being on the table” is real and that, if the negotiations set to resume in Moscow this month do not point the way to an eventual agreement, force is a realistic option. The counterargument is that military action taken against a regime that is a close Iranian partner will cause the Islamic Republic to circle the proverbial wagons, strengthening the arguments of those within the clerical regime who say that only a credible nuclear program is capable of deterring the United States. Would an air campaign over Damascus bring the Iranians to the table or cause them to accelerate their efforts to cross the nuclear finish line? There is no “right” answer that the administration can rely on in making its decision.

The second has to do with projected costs. In touting up the balance sheet, U.S. military planners will focus on Syria’s military capabilities and raise concerns about the possible loss of American life and equipment. Moreover, in contrast to Libya’s more mercenary military structure, the Alawite core of the Syrian military is motivated to fight in order to stay in power. Pro-intervention voices in the administration will likely counter that similar estimates of Libya’s capabilities in 2011 or Yugoslavia’s military potential in 1999 did not pan out in actuality, with both air campaigns being carried out with almost no U.S. losses. But beyond the military dimension, planners must also answer the question about potential economic disruptions. Would another military action in the Middle East roil oil markets at a time when gas prices in the U.S. are coming down and the Obama administration is seeing modest gains in its polling numbers? Or would a strike on Syria be quick and decisive, with minimal impact on global oil prices? Again, no definitive answer can be given.

The final considerations have to deal with Gen. David Petraeus’ famous remark: “Tell me how this ends.” How would an intervention in Syria end? The Libya operation began at a time of optimism about the likely progress of the Arab Spring, when it seemed that the forces in Egypt’s Tahrir Square that had toppled Hosni Mubarak appeared to be in the ascendancy. Now, Egypt’s presidential run-off is between a representative of the old Mubarak order and the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the country’s liberal democrats out of the picture. In Iraq, the overthrow of a minority-Sunni dictatorship led first to severe ethno-sectarian strife, and now to the emergence of an increasingly illiberal majority-Shiite regime whose ties with the U.S. are strained at best. The “new Iraq” is not a pluralistic and secular democracy, nor has it recognized Israel or done any of the other things that advocates for regime change promised as outcomes back in 2002 and 2003. So would the Syrian opposition, if aided militarily by the United States, bring a more democratic government to power, one that would provide adequate protections for Syria’s minorities, and which would be more inclined to support the U.S. agenda for the region? Or are the crimes of the Assad regime now so great that its removal is justified no matter what may follow? Again, the United States has to make a judgment call.

When one factors the uncertain impact of a Syrian intervention on U.S. domestic politics in an election year into the mix, the picture becomes even less clear. For the past year, Washington has clearly been reluctant to get involved in Syria, and Russian and Chinese obstinacy at the U.N. helped to take some of the pressure off the administration over whether or not to intervene. But we are reaching a point where the Obama team will have to make a choice, one that will be roundly criticized no matter what is decided and where there are no guarantees that the things which matter most to the U.S. will be secured. At best, Washington will have to take a strategic gamble in Syria.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest and a frequent foreign policy commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of the Navy or the U.S. government. His weekly WPR column, The Realist Prism, appears every Friday.