Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: Guilty but Free

Because Syria’s government had not signed onto the Rome Statute, which renders governments and their respective officials subject to the International Criminal Court, including its arrest warrants and verdicts, Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother, Mahar, who were then in absentia under Putin’s protection in Russia, were not subject to the ICC when a Syrian court found the two brothers guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes on August 11, 2026. The two men could evade the death sentences issued by their own country’s judiciary as long as they could be protected by the Russian president in Russia. Although an Israeli court had tried and convicted the Nazi Eichmann of crimes against humanity, so a precedent existed for national courts adjudicating that crime, the fact that Israel had to illegally kidnap Eichmann in Argentina and the al-Assad brothers could evade being held accountable for their horrendous crimes in Syria suggests that the right, proper, and effective court to hear cases on crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes, is international, such as the ICC. That court’s weakness, however, as in Syria, Russia, and Israel not being subject to that court’s jurisdiction, points to a hole in jurisprudence on crimes against humanity, assuming that the proper and necessary jurisdiction is rightly international rather than national. With the U.S. having recently announced a full-on attack on the ICC (and its prosecutors) at the behest of the indicted suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, it could be asked whether the ICC was in a position to “fill the hole” in the jurisprudence of crimes against humanity (and war crimes), or whether a coalition of the willing of national governments would have to start from scratch to construct a new international criminal court (and block diplomacy and trade with any country not willing to be bound by the new international jurisprudence). The judicial case against the al-Assad brothers (and their maternal cousin, who was in the courtroom and thus could be held accountable by the national court for having led the 2011 Daraa crackdown) demonstrates the value in shoring up international jurisprudence on crimes against humanity (and war crimes).

The Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus, Syria, found the country’s former dictator guilty of having ordered “the murder of civilians including children, as well as torture and unlawful detention.”[1] Although the senior director of the Soufan Center said at the time of the verdict and sentencing of death, “The ruling we saw today on the al-Assad brothers and their cousin, Atef Najib, marks a new chapter in Syria’s post-regime accountability landscape,” such accountability was severely limited because neither of the brothers were in Syria, and thus could not be touched by the ruling and sentence.[2] In fact, the ruling on and sentencing of the two brothers even as they were in absentia showcases the limitations of a global order in which accountability in regard to crimes against humanity is subject to national sovereignty rather than international jurisprudence. Caroline Rose, the director at Soufan, admitted, “Bashar and Maher remain in Russia and likely will not be handed over by Moscow.”[3] It is indeed tenuous at best for accountability for the guilty of crimes against humanity to hinge on the political discretion of Russia’s president Putin, who was then wanted by the ICC for having abducted Ukrainian children and having them send to Russia to indoctrinate them to be ethnic Russians rather than Ukrainians.

So even though Rose said of the Syrian court’s verdict and sentencing, “It is a decision that seeks to satisfy millions of Syrians who seek accountability and justice after war crimes committed by the regime, seeking closure,” the “result” was anything but closure.[4] This is significant because the “al-Assad regime’s documented atrocities over 14 years include the use of chemical weapons, most notably a sarin attack on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus in August 2013 that killed an estimated 1,400 people, according to US intelligence reports” and “confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”[5] Additionally, the Syrian Network for Human Rights reports that the “regime also dropped more than 80,000 barrel bombs on civilian areas,” and photographs smuggled out by a military police photographer confirm that 11,000 detainees died “from torture, starvation or execution in Syrian government facilities.”[6] 

The severity of such crimes in Syria can be said to transcend national sovereignty and the related reach of national judiciaries, and thus to properly belong to international jurisprudence in line with the Nuremberg Trials wherein several Nazi officials were tried between 1945 and 1949 by an international, albeit of the Allied powers, tribunal. It was there that “crimes against humanity” was coined and first tried, and with success. In fact, that not every defendant was found guilty added to the credibility of the Trials as being something more than the vengeance of the victors on a vanquished regime. Even the Israeli trial of Eichmann turned out to be credible, as the verdict hinged on Eichmann’s violation of Himmler’s order not to march Hungarian Jews to far-away death-camps; Eichmann could not say that he was just following orders, and thus he could be found guilty of having committed a crime against humanity. Even so, both the added credibility that an international court would have had and it not having to necessarily resort in illegal abduction argue in favor of having an international rather than a national court adjudicate on crimes against humanity (and war crimes), rather than leaving these crimes only to national tribunals, especially as military technology, including on chemical weapons, has magnified the possible scale of the crimes. 

As in the case of nuclear weapons and even carbon-emissions, the weapons that technology, or science, already made possible when the al-Assad brothers were killing and torturing Syrian civilians for 14 years, can justify a situs for justice at the global level—as jurisprudence in a global order, and thus not held back by absolutist interpretations of national sovereignty which had arguably already been antiquated when Nazi Germany enforced nationalism throughout Europe in the mid-20^th century. In other words, the limitations on the Syrian court being the enforcer of justice against two brothers found guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity could ween nationalists around the world from the addiction to national sovereignty as the exclusive default for any sort of global arrangement and international relations.

---

1. Aleksandar Brezar, “Syria Sentences Bashar al-Assad to Death in Absentia for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity,” Euronews.com, 11 August, 2026.
2.Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Israel Invades Syria Preemptively without Declaring War: A New Norm?

In the wake of the downfall of Syria’s Assad in December, 2024, that he had used chemical weapons against civilians in rebel areas against international law not only means that the victors of the coup would have ready access to chemical stockpiles, but also justifies other governments in breaking Syria’s national sovereignty by bombing the locations at which the noxious chemicals were being stored. This does not justify, however, governments hostile to Syria invading the country and destroying its military. Otherwise, the norm could be established, as valid, that any time there is a coup in a country, it is “open season” (a hunting expression) for any government in the world to snatch up territory and destroy the military. Although absolute sovereignty, which ignores international law, is too much, presuming a country with a new government to be valid prey goes too far in the other direction. I contend that both absolutist and nullified national sovereignty are contrary to the interests of the whole—the global order—wherein the protection of human rights (and thus international law) is in the interest of humanity especially given the horrendous destructiveness that a government can have against its own people and other countries in the nuclear age.

Just after the Assad regime folded, the BBC reported, “Israel has confirmed it carried out attacks on Syria’s naval fleet, as part of [Israel’s] efforts to neutralize military assets [in Syria] after the fall of the Assad regime.”[1] Fifteen vessels were docked at the port of Latakia. Israel also announced, moreover, that “its warplanes had conducted more than 350 air strikes on targets across Syria, while moving ground forces into the demilitarized buffer zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights.”[2] Just three days after that announcement, CNN reported that Israel had struck "nearly 500 targets, destroying the navy, and taking out . . . 90% of Syria's known surface-to-air missiles."[3] Essentially, the Israeli government was taking advantage of the momentary weakness of a transitioning foreign goverment to rid a sovereign nation of its right to a military. 

Israel’s defense minister said Israel wanted to “destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel.”[4] Because Syria had not been militarily active against Israel, the threat was not actual, but only potential. Israel said it invaded Syrian territory “to prevent attacks on its citizens.”[5] Israel had “a long history of seizing territory during wars with its neighbors and occupying it indefinitely, citing security concerns.”[6]

Israel invades Syria, taking the highest mountain there. (Source: CNN)

It seems that Israel no longer felt the need to bomb and invade another country during a war, as neither the media nor Israel would admit that bombings and an invasion constitute war. The implication, should Israel’s actions to rid another country of its military become the norm internationally, is that it is ok to eliminate the entire military (i.e., not just chemical weapons) of any country that finds itself in a brief interregnum following a coup (or power dispute) and whose military is even just potentially a threat or even just a security concern. This essentially opens the door to unfettered aggression anytime another country’s government is temporarily weak. Is it not the case that national sovereignty includes the right to have a military, or is that right conditional on the approval of the Israeli government? 

Such a squalid, opportunistic norm would not only violate international law, but would fall under the theory of political realism wherein states follow their own strategic interests unfettered by international norms or law. Hobbes’ state of nature is also relevant, as Israel’s military aggression against another sovereign country follows the dictum that might makes right. Syria had not ceased being a country, and the mutually-agreed-upon demilitarized zone was so obviously contracted, and thus violated, by Israel’s ground invasion that situated military forces in the zone that no justification save the law of the jungle could be sited by the Israeli government.

That Russia had unilaterally invaded Ukraine in 2023 and was still doing so as Israel was attacking and invading Syria could be enough to give the underpinning norm some de facto grounding to potentially become de facto valid, or at least more widely acted upon and with impunity. During Israel’s invasion of Syria, the media in both the E.U. and U.S. notably did not refer to the military action as a war, as would be expected when one country bombs and invades another country. With both Russia and Israel acting as kingdoms seeking empire militarily, it could be concluded that the “modern” twenty-first century was not fundamentally different than world history, as evinced by the Qing Dynasty (especially Emperor Kangi) in China, the ancient Romans, the Mongols, Alexander the Great, and the various European colonial empires. 

After all, even with the promise of genetic engineering, human nature was still pretty much unchanged since the incremental changes through the process of evolution during the long, prehistoric hunter-gatherer stage. Put another way, human nature has been a constant from the ancient military invaders to Russia and Israel in the (technologically) “advanced” 21^st century. In political-military matters, the raw power opportunism in modernity belies any claim to political development in international relations, even taking into account the impotent UN. 

It seems unfathomable even to contemplate whether international relations were gradually returning to the dark ages of the state of nature in which aggression and political realism—essentially self-interest--are the only real guidelines. The trajectory unleashed by Russia and Israel in the century following two world wars—the second having ended with two nuclear bombs—does not bode well for humanity, whose exploding population and related energy pollution could render the question of unfettered international aggression moot. 

At the very least, it is not at all antisemitic to label bombing and a military invasion as a war—and an unprovoked one at that, seeking the total destruction of another (sovereign!) country's military. A world of preemptive strikes based on security concerns to rid undesireable countries of their very defenses may be what humanity may be heading for since the U.S. invaded Iraq at the beginning of the “post-modern” century ostensibly to remove weapons of mass destruction. It seems to me that the emerging norm being foisted on the world by Israel and Russia is itself a weapon of mass destruction.

---

1. Jacqueline Howard, “Israel Confirms Attack on Syrian Navel Fleet,” BBC.com, December 10, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Mick Krever, "Why Israel Captured Syria's Tallest Mountain Just Hours After Assad Fell," CNN.com, December 14, 2024.

4. Jacqueline Howard, “Israel Confirms Attack on Syrian Navel Fleet.”
5. Rory E. Armstrong, “Israel Strikes Syrian Military Sites While Troops Move into Golan Heights Buffer Zone,” Euronews.com, December 10, 2024.
6. Ibid.

Protests in Belarus: Raw Violence Versus Moral Power

Once Syria’s Assad regime folded, Travis Timmerman, an American who had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage, was freed from a prison after seven months there. A border guard had thrown him into prison. That Timmerman is Christian may have had something to do with it. Austin Tice, an American journalist who had been missing since his abduction in Syria 12 years earlier, was still unaccounted for days after the fall of the Assad regime. Incredibly, Timmerman said of his prison experience, “I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom.”[1] Timmerman’s experience can be used to calibrate just how violently police handled Belarusians who protested the rigged election in 2020 in Belarus, and the quick, unexpected fall of Assad can remind us of the plight that could be in store for Lukashenko. For as soon as enough state “riot” police decide not to follow orders to beat, falsely imprison, and even torture non-violent protesters, what seems like a solid dictatorship could unravel surprisingly quickly. This is especially so because, like Assad, Lukashenko has used violence solely for the same of retaining power, rather than to further an ideology. This renders the violence committed on the orders of Assad and Lukashenko as even more shameless than Mao, Stalin, and even Hitler, all of whom sought to radically reshape society in the broad sense, including the economic and political systems, and thus could be countered ideologically as a wsy of stopping the repression and murders. The shameless, naked power-aggrandizing, non-ideological violence against non-violent individuals evinces power as an end in itself. It is especially ripe for a Gandhian approach of resistance wherein moral power is intentionally set against the raw power of violence.

Around the time of the 2020 election in Belarus, a woman accused of insulting Lukashenko was sentenced to 3 years at a penal colony, an entrepreneur was sentenced to 3.5 years for rioting (i.e., attending a peaceful political protest), an engineer who merely went to a polling station to view the results was detained and beaten by riot troopers, and a poet was detained for having walked his dog on the day before the 2020 election.

The entrepreneur later reflected on his experience by asking, “How can you imprison an entire nation?” The engineer remarked, “When people stop obeying [the president’s] orders, the system will collapse.” The poet pointed out that if no factory workers had shown up for work for three days following the election, the regime would have collapsed. The thread here is essentially about the collective action problem. An IT contractor who had been arrested subsequently pointed out that virtually none of the people who depend on the state for a job would risk being fired by joining in even peaceful protests on the rigged election. It could even be said that the problem of collective action inhibited the numbers that would be necessary for Gandhi’s kind of non-violent moral resistance to work. It seems that not even the use of social media like Facebook to notify residents of a mass protest can facilitate enough additional people to come out that the problem would be solved. Hence, violent dictators around the world could continue to count on the problem of collective action to keep the size of protests down to a manageable number of people who can be beaten and taken away to be imprisoned. After all, this cannot be done to an entire people.

The moral contrast between a Belarusian policeman saying to prisoners that he would burn them all alive if he got the order even though he was presumably not enraged by the non-ideological protestors and the prisoner who subsequently said that he would not bear a grudge or take revenge on that riot trooper is just the sort of contrast between good and evil that Gandhi’s non-violent passive resistance fits.  So too, the moral contrast between the young women handing out flowers to riot troopers in military vehicles while knowing that the police could get an order, which they would obey, to beat, detain, and even torture the non-violent women. Handing out the flowers is something Gandhi would certainly do, even while being beaten. Were the problem of collective action not such an obstacle, perhaps the sheer number of followers of Gandhi’s method of political resistance would be such that dictators could no longer take advantage of the problem by knocking off individual protestors with impunity. With sheer numbers, the moral shock of people around the world would not have to be relied on for pressure to build internationally against a given dictator. A whole people cannot be arrested; the system would come to a halt. Ultimately, courage would have spread while the problem of collective action is alleviated somehow. Until then, a world without brutal dictators will be possible, though not probable.

---

1. Mohamad El Chamaa, Abbie Cheeseman, and John Hudson, “U.S. Citizen Found in Syria Says He Was Imprisoned for Months,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2024.

The Tyranny of the Veto: Eviscerating the U.N.

Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on October 4, 2011, effectively tossing a life preserver, according to the New York Times, to Syria’s president. The toothless proposal would have condemned the Syrian government for its violent crackdown of popular protests in which more than 2,700 had been killed. The proposal’s language had been softened from targeted financial sanctions; the council would merely have been charged with considering unspecified measures after a 30-day period. Two reasons can be cited for the two vetoes: commercial ties and a vested interest in forestalling any more threats to the doctrine of national sovereignty.

The veto-provision itself of the Security Council can be questioned here, as it allows allies to protect even a government that has, in the words of Gérard Araund of the E.U., lost its legitimacy in the world. The New York Times reports that the arms contracts that Russia had with the Syrian government at the time of the vetoes were valued at $4 billion. “Beyond jet fighters and tanks, Russia has varied interests in Syria, like oil and gas and cement.” Russia is Syria’s fifth largest trading partner. Accordingly, Russia’s foreign minister issued a statement condemning extremists in Syria who were engaging in “open terror” through violence. Russia was betting on Assad. Aleksandr Shumilin, director of the Center for the Analysis of Middle East Conflicts, told the media that as “soon as it seems that the opposition has become comparable to [Assad] in strength and there appears a possibility they will win, Russia will change its behavior.” One could add that such a change would occur if and only if Russia’s commercial interests with Syria are threatened. This approach is known as realism in international relations. States pursue their own strategic interests internationally, taking for granted rather than challenging the system of sovereign nation-states that permits realism to be the driver even though it does not take into account the broader public good.

The continued hegemony of the nation-state system and the impact of realism are both evident from the fact that even such a weak proposal could successfully be blocked against a government that had killed over 2,700 unarmed protesters. The message being sent by the U.N. is that a government can use its claim to legitimate force pretty much any way it wants. Put another way, an implication from realism in a nation-state system is that the U.N. is merely a conference, or discussion, without much attention to the broader (i.e., international) system of governance, at least in so far as the Security Council is concerned. We are thus left in a Bodinian/Hobbesian world wherein every government is looking out for its own narrow interests, which allow for governments to turn against their people.

To be sure, opponents of the resolution did have a leg to stand on. They claimed that the no-fly-zone resolution on Libya had been abused by NATO bombing pro-Gadhafi positions even when no civilians were in danger. There was a sense in both Moscow and Beijing that the West had been using economic sanctions and military actions under U.N. auspices to further Western-friendly regime change. According to the New York Times, there “is a sense in both capitals that the West in general, and the United States in particular, is feeding the protest movements in the Arab world to further its own interests.” Both Russia and China are “determined to reassert their long opposition to anything that smacks of domestic meddling by outside powers.” Lest it be thought that this is for the protection of other governments or for national sovereignty as a virtue or ideal, Russia faced outside pressure concerning Chechnya and China has Tibet. In other words, the national sovereignty doctrine is a manifestation of realism, wherein international consensus is the result of narrow national interests rather than a view of the good of the whole.

In defending Assad with the doctrine that ultimately protects them, Russia and China must also deal with the inconsistency in letting Assad get away with his killing spree while Gadhafi had killed less yet been stopped. In other words, why does Gadhafi’s opposition deserve help while those against Assad are “extremists”? If abuse of the Libya resolution by NATO were really the problem, then Russia and China could have insisted that U.N. officials oversee any action to defend Syrian protesters and report regularly to the Council, wherein Russia and China could nullify the resolution by a veto if either government suspected any abuse taking place. In fact, the U.N. Secretary General could designate Russia and China as coordinating the operation. The U.N. should not have delegated the Libyan operation so much to NATO, but this does not mean that the same thing would have to be accepted in an operation against Assad.

Going beyond the strategic interests esteemed in realism, the question of international governance can be broached, particularly as there are several truly global issues (e.g., global warming). The development of communications technology means that wholesale human rights abuses occurring on the other side of the world can be instantly seen. Out of this greater awareness, a greater groundswell of opposition to unfettered national sovereignty can be expected, with implications for how international governance is structured.

Given the greater need for international governance, the U.N. should be reformed from a confederation to a modern federation such that a few friends do not have sufficient influence to block a resolution against an abusive government. The veto itself should be eliminated, though this might require that a new organization be formed in lieu of the U.N. Otherwise, we will be left with a world in which Hobbesian sovereigns are allowed to violate their citizens’ basic human right to life while friendly government officials attend to their countries’ respective financial and political interests at the expense of the system as a whole and the general good. I contend that enabling violent, abusive dictators is not in our good, so their friends ought not be allowed to prevent the international community from policing its basic standards. National sovereignty should be limited, just as international governance itself would be subject to constraints.

Sources:

Joe Lauria, “Russia, China Veto U.N.’s Syria Move,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2011. 

Neil MacFarquhar, “With Rare Double U.N. Veto on Syria, Russia and China Try to Shield Friend,” New York Times, October 6, 2011. 

The U.S. Enabled Turkey to Invade Syria: Absent the U.N.

Turkey invaded Syria on October 9, 2019 “to flush Kurds allied with the US out of northeastern Syria.”[1] Strategically, Turkey wanted to distance the Kurds from Turkey so they could not aid Kurdish separatists in Turkey should the latter rise up in attempting to establish Kurdistan. U.S. President Don Trump, who had just cleared American troops from northeastern Syria, had advanced knowledge from Turkish President Recep Erdogan that he planned to invade the area once the American troops were out. A rare bipartisan unity in Congress criticized the removal of American troops and the president’s acquiescence on Turkey’s plan to attach the Kurds, an American ally—a plan that could possibly give ISIS a toehold in the region. Both the Congress and the president had their respective rationales, yet neither side looked past the apparent dichotomy to arrive at a solution consistent with the points made by both sides.

Backing up the arguments made by the bipartisan critics in Congress, “Pentagon and State Department officials had advised Trump against making the move, arguing a US presence is needed to counter ISIS and keep Iran and Russia, both influential inside Syria, in check.”[2] Rep. Ro Khanna asked why the president would not at least have asked for a concession from Turkey. That the U.S. was turning its back on “allies who [had] died fighting for a US cause” was also objectionable.[3] Certainly some erosion of trust could be expected. Help the Americans on one of their causes and the next administration may turn on you anyway. To put friends in harm’s way and disavow any responsibility that goes with having received help points to a deep character flaw. While less obvious than is the mentality in preemptively invading another state, the U.S. President’s treatment of the Kurds was also culpable (and the U.S. Government had also preemptively invaded another state—Iraq).

President Trump’s rationale stemmed from his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the long, senseless war that ensued. He pointed, moreover, to the eight trillion dollars spent by the U.S. and all the dead and wounded American soldiers “fighting and policing in the Middle East.”[4] He had campaigned on getting out of such long, senseless wars whose benefits to the U.S. do not justify the costs in lives and money. His solution in gradually pulling out American forces involved leaving a power-void that could be exploited or filled by adversaries. For example, ISIS could establish more of a presence in northeastern Syria under Turkish occupation. The Syrian Democratic Forces wrote that they were suspending military operations against ISIS in northern Syria following the “Turkish aggression.”[5]

I submit that both the concerns of the Congressional critics and President Trump could have been obviated had the U.S., a major financial contributor to the United Nations, sponsored a resolution in the Security Council for U.N. peacekeeping troops to replace the American forces in northeastern Syria. A contingent coalition could have been put together should Turkey have invaded anyway. American geopolitical interests would have favored a peace-keeping force over a force that could enable the spread of ISIS (like Turkey).

In general terms, the more the world organization of countries can step into troubled areas in peace-keeping roles, the less the world will have to rely on self-interested large countries, such as the U.S., to act as a global policeman. A conflict of interest exists in having one of the state-actors to be such a policeman because the temptation will be to put the state-actor’s own strategic interests above peace-keeping. I contend elsewhere that even if the state does not indulge such a temptation, the conflict-of-interest arrangement, which includes such temptation, is inherently unethical because of the existence of the temptation, given human nature.[6] In northeastern Syria, the U.S. was oriented to rooting out (and preventing) ISIS more than keeping the peace. Even if the official American objective had been peace-keeping, the U.S. would have been tempted to attack new ISIS outposts. Especially in political realism (but also in neorealism), to assume that a state would not act in its own strategic interests is naive. 

Had the U.S. pursued the U.N. option, the tension between the Congressional critics and the administration could have been avoided. This type of problem-resolution—a third way—is particularly beneficial in cases in which both sides to a dispute have good points. I suspect the human mind, whether from nature or nurture, goes to either-or dichotomies too readily. The back-and-forth in a debate is supposed to come to the better answer, but what if a third is even better?

---

[1] Nicole Gaouette, “Republican Anger at Trump Grows as Turkey Launches ‘Sickening’ Attack on US Allies,” CNN.com, October 9, 2019 (accessed same day).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Skip Worden, Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon. 

The Russian Conscience: Human Rights in Syria

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, warned on January 18, 2012, according to the New York Times, “that outside encouragement of antigovernment uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa could lead to ‘a very big war that will cause suffering not only to countries in the region, but also to states far beyond its boundaries.’” A very big war, it would seem, with very big stick, would be the result of “outsiders” stepping in to protect the Syrian protesters from their own government. In fact, the Times reports that “Lavrov said Russia would use its position on the United Nations Security Council to veto any United Nations authorization of military strikes against the government [of Syria].” It made no difference to Lavrov that the United Nations, including the Secretary General, had “repeatedly called for Syria [to] end a crackdown on opposition demonstrators, which Arab League monitors say resulted in hundreds of deaths over the past month.” In other words, the U.N. was officially impotent in being able to act on the basis of its “demand” because one of its members has a veto.

Lavrov’s position forces potential “outside” interventionists to justify their position. I would have thought that stepping in to stop people from being killed is a good thing. Lavrov was insisting it is bad. “If someone conceives the idea of using force at any cost—and I’ve already heard calls for sending some Arab troops to Syria—we are unlikely to be able to prevent this,” he said, “(b)ut this should be done on their own initiative and should remain on their conscience. They won’t get any authorization from the Security Council.” In other words, stopping people from being killed—from their own government no less—is a matter that would weigh on one’s conscience. One might ask Lavrov whether the Syrians killed because of his veto ought to weigh on his conscience. He was undoubtedly putting an absolutist view of national sovereignty before any right of “outsiders” to stop killing that at the very least, given a government’s formal monopoly of lethal force, unfair. Were he to relax his view of national sovereignty, would he still say that stopping the killing would remain on a conscience? There would not be much daylight between insisting even that and saying that interfering with Hitler’s concentration camps (or Stalin’s mass killing of the Polish elite) from abroad would have weighed on consciences. In other words, Lavrov can almost be read as being in favor of Assad’s killing spree, irrespective of national sovereignty needing to be respected for the world of nations to have order.

Of course, it could be objected that there was not much order in Syria at the time, and, moreover, that national sovereignty is not absolute on account of human nature, and that far from weighing on consciences, “outsiders” have a moral obligation to step in to stop killings when there is a reasonable expectation that they would otherwise happen. This obligation can be based on Kant’s imperative that there is a duty to treat rational nature, which humans have, as an end in itself and not merely as a means. This duty presumably includes stopping those people who would otherwise treat others only as means to their own designs. Alternatively, the obligation could be based on Hume’s moral theory, which holds that “immoral” simply is the sentiment of disapproval that humans naturally feel in watching something like a protester being dragged down the street and killed. In other words, what we naturally feel as a reaction to watching footage from Homs Syria is a valid basis for moral action.

Therefore, from both a rationalist and a psychological basis, moral theory can be used to justify the obligation of intervention by “outsiders.” This directly refutes Lavrov’s contention that there is an obligation not to intervene. Were one to talk with the family of a murdered Syrian, which position do you suppose the family members would say concurs with conscience? I’m thinking it’s not good ole Sergey’s. Fortunately, the rest of us can move on, past even our limp, even crippled U.N., to formulate and implement a mechanism with teeth for dealing with governments that engage in wholesale slaughter of their own citizens. Our consciences naturally demand nothing less.

Source:

Ellen Barry and Michael Schwirtz, “Russian Warns That Western Support for Arab Revolts Could Cause a ‘Big War’,” The New York Times, January 19, 2012. 

UN’s General Assembly as Nonbinding on Syria

According to the New York Times, “In a powerful rebuke to Syria’s government, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on [February 16, 2012] to approve a resolution that condemned President Bashar al-Assad’s unbridled crackdown on an 11-month-old uprising and called for his resignation under an Arab League peace proposal to resolve the conflict.” The reporter immediately undercuts his use of powerful by observing that the 137-12 vote (with 17 abstentions) is “a nonbinding action with no power of enforcement at the world body.” The “action” does represent “a significant humiliation” for Assad. I doubt very much if he felt humiliated. His UN ambassador “denounced the resolution as a politically motivated scheme to intervene in Syria by the Western powers and others who ‘would like to settle accounts with Syria.’” Altogether, the first two or three paragraphs of Gladstone’s article can be read in terms of logic as “X, not X.” Of course, the first X gets more attention, so the article gives the impression that the UN did something powerful when in fact the exercise was one of exposing the impotence of the world body.

That the resolutions of the General Assembly are nonbinding even for the UN is perhaps the epitome of self-emasculation. That the Security Council, on which just a fraction of the UN’s 193 members sit at any time, could have resolutions binding on the UN while the GA, on which every member sits, is allowed only non-binding “actions” suggests a democracy deficit in the UN itself—or at the very least a serious problem of priorities. The UN would have more legitimacy were its resolutions that are binding on itself voted on by all of the members—none of which having a veto and thus able to dominate the world body. This change would hardly be earth-shattering, as even “binding” resolutions have trouble finding enough respect to be acted on unless by certain members having a strategic geo-political interest in “volunteering” on the enforcement end. It is striking how Assad’s government can kill over 5000 citizens—whom Gladstone curiously refers to as “an uprising” as if Assad had met rather than led with weapons—and still be a valid member of the UN. I’m not convinced that unconditional love should apply to the organization that has a declaration of human rights, after all.

Therefore, rather than being “powerful” or “humiliating,” the nonbinding resolution of the UN’s General Assembly makes transparent just how bad that world body’s inherent flaws are. This conclusion is utterly hidden in the title that Gladstone went with: “General Assembly Votes to Condemn Syrian Leader.” A better, more realistic title would have been: “A lot of UN members mad at Syrian Government.” Let’s not gild the lily. With global warming and nuclear proliferation each being a viable threat to the continuance of our species, not to mention ourselves in particular regions, we can no longer afford to rely on the UN.

I envision a new world body with a General Assembly capable of enacting resolutions that are binding for still-existing members, none of which has a veto, and a Security Council consisting of rotating members that meets only to handle emergencies (again, no veto). The GA would be authorized to instruct the Security Council how to implement enforcement, using members as it will. Of course, countries would be free to leave the body and face isolation with respect to the benefits that membership provides. Behind this new organization is the realization that our species has stepped onto new land in the twenty-first century. This is not exactly a brave new world of terra firma (the frozen tundra melting in fact). We as a species now know that we can put our entire lot at risk.

We are even beginning to suspect that the historical absolutist interpretation of national sovereignty is now too dangerous, given what damage we can inflict on each other and on our species itself. Even for people not buying into this “new era” thinking, it must be obvious that the UN is an embarrassment and an utter failure with respect to protecting human rights and even ourselves from ourselves. Even just on the surface, a resolution that is non-binding even for the body that does the resolving suggests that the body itself is seriously flawed and deserves to be replaced. Yet as apparent as this reasoning may be, politicians are typically creatures of the status quo and won’t likely make a peep—preferring instead to cite Gladstone’s report of the “powerful rebuke.” Both the rebuke and Gladstone's characterization evince a case of the blind leading the blind. The beguiled followers blindly put still more clothes on the emperor while congratulating themselves on such a fine appearance having been achieved. “It looks good to me,” one blind man says to another. “I quite agree,” the other replies. All the while, the world sleeps, dreaming that it is wide awake.

Source:

Rick Gladstone, “General Assembly Votes to Condemn Syrian Leader,” The New York Times, February 17, 2012. 

Human Rights Violations by Rulers in Syria and Bahrain: On the American Reaction

The New York Times reported on March 25, 2011 that Syrian military troops opened fire on protesters in the southern part of Syria. Tens of thousands of demonstrators in the southern city of Dara’a, a well as protesters in some other cities and towns around the state, were defying a ruler who once again demonstrated his willingness to use lethal force against his own citizens. The paper reported on March 27th that "(w)ith 61 people confirmed killed by security forces, the country’s status as an island of stability amid the Middle East storm seemed irretrievably lost." Weeks earlier, the Arab League had declared that Qaddafi had lost his sovereignty—meaning his right to rule without intervention from other countries—because he had been engaged in having Libyan civilians killed. Since the League’s declaration on the Libyan dictator, the “president” of Yemen had use force against protesters—even gaining power from the legislature to lock up his detractors. As if these cases would not be enough of a bad precedent, Bahrain’s ruler had also been using lethal force against protests—just days after sitting down with U.S. Secretary of Defense William Gates, who was urging restraint.

In the midst of the Syrian government's violence, MSNBC reported on March 25th that the United States called on the Syrian government to stop the violence against marchers, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "We strongly condemn the Syrian government's attempts to repress and intimidate demonstrators,'' he told reporters. Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, the new American ambassador in Damascus, Robert Ford, was "quietly reaching out to . . . Assad to urge him to stop firing on his people." Quietly? Meanwhile, American fighters had been bombing what was left of Qaddafi's airforce in Libya. The inconsistency was not lost on some American officials, according to the New York Times. "Having intervened in Libya to prevent a wholesale slaughter in Benghazi, some analysts asked, how could the administration not do the same in Syria? Though no one is yet talking about a no-fly zone over Syria, Obama administration officials acknowledge the parallels to [Qadaffi]. Some analysts predicted the administration will be cautious in pressing Mr. Assad, not because of any allegiance to him but out of a fear of what could follow him — a Sunni-led government potentially more radical and Islamist than his Alawite minority government." So strategic interests, even if running at cross-purposes with itself, are thought by some as a legitimate basis for a rather blatant inconsistency from the standpoint of human rights and the long term goal of democracy in the Middle East.

I contend that the continued support of rulers in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen while turning on Qaddafi, as if diplomacy were sufficient in dealing with the former three but not with the latter, is not at all in the interest of the United States beyond short-term political expediency in the theatre of international relations. Moreover, the double-standard concerning the rulers who have turned on their own people undercuts the credibility of the American government. “Syria’s security forces are showing the same cruel disregard for protesters’ lives as their counterparts in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Whitson evinces a consistency seems so easy, yet is for some reason so difficult for government officials around the world, and particularly in the United States. Lest I be misread as bashing my own country, my aim is to call us to a higher ideal and a better international relations. It would be nice to see the Obama administration take the moral high ground on a consistent basis, rather than simply according to vested interests, such as oil but also a desire to maximize influence among sitting heads of state.

Beyond breaking off relations with rulers who violently turn on their own citizens, the self-declared republics of the world have a moral obligation to step in to protect the civilians from their own respective governments. To be sure, there is an opinion in the United States that opposes such intervention unless there is an important U.S. interest at stake. A Middle East populated by republics is in Americans’ interest even apart from the moral imperative to protect the defenseless against their own governments. Even so, as reported in the New York Times on March 27th, narrower strategic concerns were being raised by senior American officials. Specifically, they worried that the widespread nature of the Syrian uprising, for instance, "could dash any remaining hopes for a Middle East peace agreement . . .  It could also alter the American rivalry with Iran for influence in the region and pose challenges to the United States’ greatest ally in the region, Israel." A Syrian republic could pull away from Iran, though it could also undo any deals that the Americans have made for Assad's assistance with a peace agreement involving Israel. In other words, the officials were "pulled between fears that [Syria's] problems could destabilize neighbors like Lebanon and Israel, and the hope that [the fall of Assad] could weaken one of Iran’s key allies." Such a pretzel is only natural for short-term strategic thinking that is obsessed with immediate self-interest from all angles. In other words, an obsession to maximize such self-interest is actually self-defeating not only because it is short-sighted, but also because no one scenario is completely in one's self-interest and this is apt to be paralyzing to such a mentality. One might even say that such a mentality deserves itself. It definitely does not deserve to be "leader of the free world."

In the end, and even for today, the world stopping any ruler's violent betrayal of masses of his people such that sovereignty can no longer be construed as absolute is in the American (and the world’s) short and long term interest. This is the new idea that burst through in the world’s consciousness as the Middle East erupted in protest in early 2011. Sadly, the implementation of even such an idea can be compromised by the routine or status quo that naturally goes with a narrower self-interest that assumes that tomorrow will be just like today. Even if merely the idea itself of sovereignty being conditional on a ruler’s non-abusive conduct evinces a significant advance in human political understanding long overdue, consistent implementation is implied. Otherwise, Qaddafi can be viewed as a victim of the unfairness that is implicit in the inconsistency of a lapsed implementation. Such irony undercuts the principle as it manifests on the world stage. American officials who merely urged restraint in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain even as American aid continued were by 2011 woefully antiquarian--as if fossilized incarnations of habits long since expired from the old world.

Beyond the particular cases discussed here, it is important to take note of the phenomenon of human beings whose staid mentality and conduct continue much like the continued instinctual motions of a recently killed insect. Even though the world has gone on to demand more, if only from its new awareness, diplomatic analysts still move their mental limbs in the same awkward movements. How can people in government be so regimented in their cognitive apparatus that they allow themselves to think and behave so out of context (even possibly without realizing it)? This phenomenon is like the nerd who continues dancing on the dance floor (by himself) after the music has stopped or is on to a new song having a different beat. 

For example, on March 12th, the New York Times reported that “in the wake of a violent clash between protesters and Bahrain’s security forces and pro-government vigilantes, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates [Bahrain’s] ruling family on Saturday that “baby steps” toward reform would not be enough to meet the political and economic grievances sweeping the region. Mr. Gates also cautioned Bahrain’s king and crown prince during two hours of meetings in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, that if the reform process was prolonged, the United States feared that Iran would become involved and create more chaos. Gates said he was convinced that the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and the crown prince, Sheik Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, were serious about reform and starting a dialogue with protesters demanding more democracy.”

While perhaps being in line with the narrow American strategic interest in Iran’s influence being contained in the region, urging more than baby steps and being assured were clearly inadequate positions from the standpoint of stopping the king from continuing to violate his subject’s human rights. Moreover, Gates’ comments seem so woefully timid or pallid given the facts on the ground in Bahrain at the time that one could be excused for asking if the secretary was suffering from dementia. The New York Times reported that even “as Mr. Gates arrived, security forces firing what protesters said were rubber bullets and pro-government Sunni vigilantes wielding sticks and swords beat back a group of several hundred protesters near the royal palace in Riffa, a residential neighborhood for the ruling family and the Sunni Muslim elite. The protesters said they had been met with stones and clouds of tear gas.” Even so, Gates told the king, “Obviously, leading reform and being responsive is the way we’d like to see this move forward.” Alternatively, the secretary could have said, “Obviously, if your forces continue to fire on unarmed protesters, the U.S. military would have to step in on humanitarian grounds to project your subjects from you—and of course the flow of American aid to you would have to stop.” On the plane, Gates had remarked concerning Libya, “If we are directed to impose a no-fly zone, we have the resources to do it.” The inconsistency is striking, if not indicative of differential motives based on the geo-political strategic interest of the United States.

According to The New York Times, two days later, “about 2000 troops — 1,200 from Saudi Arabia and 800 from the United Arab Ehmirates — entered Bahrain as part of a force operating under the aegis of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-nation regional coalition of Sunni rulers that has grown increasingly anxious over the sustained challenge to Bahrain’s king.” Violence against protesters (rather than restraint) ensued while the Obama administration continued to work at the U.N. for a resolution calling for a no fly zone in Libya. Meanwhile, “A senior American diplomat arrived [in Bahrain] on an unplanned visit and sought ways to calm the chaos while pressing the government to exercise restraint.” Additionally, a White House spokesman called for “calm and restraint on all sides.” Calm? Either the American administration is woefully ignorant of an appropriate response or the officials want to protect deals that have been made between the United States and the rulers in Yemen and Syria. Fortunately, there is a third alternative. Sadly, however, the "analysts" have it all figured out, even if their song has ended.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/world/middleeast/26syria.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42268707/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/middleeast/13military.html?scp=1&sq=gates%20bahrain%20king&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/middleeast/15bahrain.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/middleeast/16bahrain.html?scp=7&sq=gates%20bahrain%20king&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/middleeast/27diplomacy.html?_r=1&hp

Political Psychology: Syrian Human-Rights Abuses

According to the New York Times, “masked gunmen severely beat Syria’s best-known political cartoonist,” Ali Farzat, on August 25, 2011. The attack came days after he had published a cartoon showing Bashar Assad hitching a ride out of town with Qaddafi. To be sure, it seems foolhardy for the cartoonist to have published such a cartoon in Syria unless he meant it as an act of non-violent civil disobedience. If the latter, willingly taking the beating without hitting back would be of such moral fortitude that the injustice of the regime would be made transparent and discredited. How moral strength can overcome physical force is a point on which Gandhi had much faith.

Mr. Farzat suffered two broken fingers on his left hand, a fractured right arm, and a bruised eye. He was thrown out of a car after being beaten severely. The American Embassy in Damascus called the beating “ a government-sponsored, targeted, brutal attack.” A Syrian activist from Homs told a reporter that the beating scared the activists there. “But it’s only a proof of how desperate the regime is. It shows how frightened they are and proves that they are losing control.”  I want to focus on the two words, scared and frightened.

It is easy to understand why the beating would cause Syrian activists to be scared, for similar abuses could be done to them. It is less clear to me that a regime can be frightened. To government officials, dealing with political opposition must surely be part of their jobs. It is difficult for me to believe that individual officials would actually feel the emotion of fear due to protests unless a crowd were outside about to break in and physically attack the government officials. Even a fear of being arrested and sent to the ICC would not be as immediate as the fear of an imminent physical attack. Similarly, it does not follow that gunmen hired by a government official to beat a person would necessarily be angry. Of course, were the gunmen admirers of Assad and felt anger in looking at the cartoon, some of that anger could have been felt in attacking Farzat. However, even such anger would not be on the level of rage that one would expect in carrying out such a beating. So I wonder whether government operations involving beating (which I would argue is a category mistake—beating as a political tactic) are done more matter-of-factly than out of emotion such as activists feel. In other words, activists and others may project emotions that they feel onto people hired by government officials (and those officials themselves, unless directly insulted).

This is not to imply that government policy cannot (or should not) be motivated by emotion. For instance, rather than simply have its embassy link the government to the attack, the U.S. Government could have been motivated to appeal to the U.N. and/or N.A.T.O. to do more to protect civilians such as Mr. Farzat in Syria from the government charged with protecting them. This, after all, was the justification by which the U.N. Security Council passed the resolution permitting member nations to enforce a no-fly-zone in Libya.

In short, we ought to distinguish the psychology of government officials and their hired guns from that of protesters and activists. Doing so will add to our understanding of the actual dynamic that is at play when a regime turns against its own people rather than protects them.

Source:

Nada Bakri, “Political Cartoonist Whose Work Skewered Assad Is Brutally Beaten in Syria,” New York Times, August 26, 2011. 

Absolute Sovereignty: The Case of Syria

By the end of 2012, over 60,000 Syrians had been killed and over half a million had fled as a result of the civil war in Syria. Shortages of food and shelter were worsening inside Syria for civilians. In early January of 2013, a spokesperson for the U.N. said that the international organization was unable to feed a million residents in combat zones. Acute fuel shortages in Syria were contributing to the rising price of bread—at least six times greater than the pre-conflict price. Additionally, an outbreak of violence in a large Syrian refugee camp of 54,000 refugees in Jordan amid a winter storm was reported. “The incident followed a night of heavy storms, during which torrential rains and high winds swept away tents and left parts of the camp flooded,” an official in Save the Children said in a statement. One might ask what was really behind the deteriorating conditions.

At first glance, the culprit is merely that of two centers of power fighting for dominance within Syria. World history had been littered with such conflicts. However, this explanation does not explain why other countries permitted the harm in Syria to worsen. Lest one be content to ascribe the impotence to a web of international alliances and politics, it can be asked whether principles could have been holding back otherwise willing interventionists.

In a rare public address, President Assad of Syria claimed early in 2013 that the sovereignty of Syria, which is for him the top principle, is “based on the principles and goals of the UN Charter and the international law which all stress on the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of countries.” National sovereignty is absolute. In making this well-established principle explicit, Assad could have drawn on western political theory—namely, the thought of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes.

In the war-weary context of the seventeenth century, Hobbes wrote that the king needed absolute sovereignty, even as the definitive interpreter of divine law. Any constraint in the latter on a king would pertain to his afterlife, and therefore not bear on a king’s actual conduct. Jean Bodin too had viewed divine law as a constraint on otherwise absolute sovereignty, though for that theorist the king is not the definitive decider on divine law. Accordingly, such law could in principle act as a constraint on a king even in this world. Even so, other powers could not intervene at the expense of national sovereignty.

 Unlike Bodin and Hobbes, Assad defended absolute sovereignty out of fear that Syria would be brought into submission by foreign powers. “A country that is thousands of years old cannot be dictated to,” Assad said, by foreign powers.  “Syria has always been, and will remain, a free and sovereign country that won’t accept submission and tutelage.” Anything less than absolute sovereignty means becoming the vessel of an imperial power. In making this point, Assad could have drawn on dependency theory in international political economy. The sovereignty of developing countries is compromised or surrendered by their subservient economies. In being “allowed” to export only commodities, for example, a developing country could be at the mercy of one or a few countries that are the principal buyers. Those countries could keep the developing country from industrializing so as to retain economic and even political leverage.

In other words, Assad’s position combines the Bodin-Hobbes notion of absolute sovereignty with a theory of economic development that stresses the structural subservience of developing countries. In fact, dependency may lie at the root of Assad’s notion of national sovereignty. The problem with Assad’s rendering is that sovereignty can be viewed as limited without necessarily entailing submission to a foreign power.

Beyond the geopolitical and related mercantilist interests of particular countries, the international community could come to a consensus on how far a government can justifiably go in inflicting harm domestically under the principle of national sovereignty before outside powers would be justified in intervening. In terms of such harm, wounding or killing unarmed residents would trigger relatively close limits on national sovereignty, while the harm unleashed in a civil war would have a higher threshold. Rather than involving submission to the foreign powers, the limitations on national sovereignty would be geared to stopping the harm by removing the extant government from power. Once the government whose legitimacy had been lost internationally is expunged, the emphasis of the international community would turn to assisting the people in the construction of their own new government. To be sure, Assad would view such an approach as a cloak used by imperial Western powers to dominate Syria. The international community would thus be well-advised to stress its own restraint in placing limits on national sovereignty.

Given the sheer extent of harm inflicted on the Syrian population by the end of 2012, however, the international community would be justified in intervening in Syria to immobilize Assad’s government even without concern for the “submission” argument on behalf of absolute sovereignty. That the world stayed on the sidelines, essentially allowing the situation “on the ground” to worse so much, suggests that the dominance of the Bodin-Hobbes notion of absolute sovereignty was still too great, and thus should be subjected to critique. In other words, the powers around the world in favor of intervening should not have felt like they would be imposing in stepping in to stop the violence. The notion of a country being under temporary international occupation because a government had lost its legitimacy due to the harm inflicted or permitted was well overdue even before Assad’s government had gone after unarmed protesters.

The matter of default itself, particularly its staying power (as though a house guest who will not leave), is the true culprit that kept the world at bay as Syria degenerated in a cycle of increasing violence and suffering. Why it is that the default can continue to enjoy hegemony even when it should be subject to critique—this is the underlying question before us here.

Assad can claim that Syria’s sovereignty is absolute. This does not necessarily make it so, even ideationally. He can claim that absolute sovereignty is a necessary bulwark against becoming the agent of another country, but this does not mean that is assumption is valid. In making his claim, he could rely on the default and thus count on the related trepidation of the international community in intervening even to stop horrendous suffering.

If the U.N. is necessarily bound to the notion of absolute sovereignty (even if kept so by one member’s veto), then the international community would be well within its prerogative to form a new international organization (even without necessarily having to leave the U.N.)  that is oriented to placing and enforcing limits on national sovereignty. Such an organization would say, in effect, “No, we will not stand by as great harm takes place within a country.” Would not bystanders be justified in saying something similar as a boyfriend beats his girlfriend in public and restraining the man? Were he to claim that being restrained in that instance would imply or result in him becoming a slave would hardly be taken seriously, and yet Assad’s claim of Syria’s absolute sovereignty had its defenders abroad and even held other powers at bay when they would have been justified in intervening to stop the harm. Were the dogmatic basis of Assad’s claim made transparent (i.e., obvious), the notion that sovereignty is somehow absolute would finally be viewed as artificial in nature rather than as part of the basis of Western civilization; the demise of the reigning default would not have to wait generations needlessly before being realized.

Source:

Rick Gladstone and Nick Cumming-Bruce, “Aid Groups Report New Level of Misery Among Displaced Syrians,” The New York Times, January 8, 2012.

Full Text of Assad’s Address of January 7, 2013: http://www.ibtimes.com/bashar-al-assads-speech-syrian-crisis-full-text-998536?fs=4fa7a

On the Obama Administration's Inconsistency on Syria and Libya

In his foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011, U.S. President Barak Obama attempted to justify his administration’s policy of selective military action against violent rulers. “(W)e cannot prevent every injustice perpetrated by a regime against its people, and we have learned from our experience in Iraq just how costly and difficult it is to impose regime change by change by force – no matter how well-intended it may be.” The Obama administration was assuming that facilitating the removal of a ruler who is violently betraying his people must involve a multi-year American occupation, as in Iraq. However, the case of the U.N.-sanctioned international coalition enforcing a no-fly-zon and protecting civilians in Libya proffers a counter-example.

Obama stated, “(W)e saw the prospect of imminent massacre, had a mandate for action, and heard the Libyan people's call for help. Had we not acted along with our NATO allies and regional coalition partners, thousands would have been killed. The message would have been clear: keep power by killing as many people as it takes.” The problem is that by the time the U.S. President uttered these words, Assad had killed perhaps up to a thousand unarmed protesters in Syria. In June 2011, after Assad's troops had killed an estimated 1,100 civilians, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton could only muster a warning. "The legitimacy that is necessary for anyone to expect change to occur under this current government is, if not gone, nearly run out." How many civilians did Qadhafi's troops kill before his right to rule was expunged by the U.S. Government? The irony is that whereas in Libya the protesters had relatively quickly become armed rebels, the Syrian protests remained largely in the protest mode. Ethically, it is worse to kill unarmed protesters than armed rebels. 

Even though Obama admits that “the Syrian regime has chosen the path of murder and the mass arrests of its citizens,” he claims it is sufficient for the U.S. to have “condemned these actions, [while] working with the international community [to step] up our sanctions on the Syrian regime - including sanctions . . . on President Assad and those around him.” Sarcastically, I am tempted to ask whether sanctions is sufficient, given what Qaddafi had done to provoke a no-fly-zone and bombing to protect civilians amid an armed civil war.

In addition to the red herring that any U.S. involvement must somehow match the Iraq case, it is misleading to suggest that the U.S. “can’t” stop every ruler who turns on his people as if other empires or independent states could not also take the lead. To be sure, the American military has its areas of expertise, but this does not mean that the U.S. should or must take the predominant role globally. Working with other empire-scale countries as well as independent states, the U.S. Government could provide moral leadership as the world takes a firmer stand than mere sanctions when a ruler is killing hundreds of protesters. At the very least, the credibility of the U.S. Government would be much enhanced were it more consistent in regard to similar cases. Inconsistency can provoke possible explanations hinging on partiality and self-interest.

For example, some foreign policy experts say the White House has not called for the world to unite in a military action against Assad not because he has been any less violent than Qaddafi, but because Syria is “critical to Obama’s attempt to end Iran’s nuclear program and to promote Arab-Israeli peace,” according the USA Today. If this explanation is correct, then the U.S. Government has put manipulation above Obama’s own pledge to stand up for democracy over tyrants.

Still others argue that Assad has the support of other Middle East regimes and that the elite in Syria is not fractured—making the case different from that in Libya. However, this is not an argument that Assad’s betrayal has been any less than Qaddafi’s; rather, the argument is that more obstacles exist to stopping Assad than Qaddafi.  However, standing up for human rights is not for the timid. In other words, it is not necessarily quick and easy. It does not say much about a leader’s character if a little difficulty is enough to resort to sanctions. In the case of Syria, that the E.U. had already joined the U.S. in leveling sanctions against the Syrian officials suggests that an international coalition could be strong enough to give the Syrian protesters a viable chance to topple the regime, even given the size of Assad's military.

In Libya, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil suggested that it is in the interests of the U.S. and E.U. to support such causes. "The United States and the European Union should know that we are a righteous people," he said. "We are fighting for a better future and they will not regret helping us." Perhaps the question of consistency comes down to how important human rights are to the American and European officials who have competing goals.

Sources:

Transcript: Obama’s Foreign Policy Speech, May 19, 2011.

Oren Dorell, “Syria, Libya Merit Different U.S. Policies,” USA Today, May 16, 2011, p. 5A.

Michelle Faul, "EU Opens Diplomatic Office in Libya's Rebel East," MSNBC.com, May 22, 2011.

Jay Solomon, "Syrian Violence Tests U.S.," The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2011