Syria

Striking the Syrian dictatorship’s military facilities and degrading them makes no sense without a broader political agenda. The moral argument Obama and Kerry are using to defend limited armed intervention is understandable but too little too late and, much worse, senseless without a political framework. By avoiding any mention of a political framework, it leads us further away from difficult solutions that could be developed if we were willing to consider the real economic and defense interests of Iran, Turkey, Kurds, and Russia, to mention a few actors. All of this has become harder than ever, yet more needed precisely because it is harder and there is no good option. There would have been more possibilities if we had sat down with Russia and China two years ago and established some ground to negotiate the sharing of power in Southeast Asia, the Causasian area, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. And of course if we lowered our military posture regarding Russia by keeping NATO within narrow boundaries after the fall of the USSR. Or regarding China in the Pacific. Things might have been very different now if we had begun real negotiations with Iran instead of conducting war against it via sanctions and going nowhere. Now the administration is proposing to plunge again into a conflict that is all too easily framed religiously in the absence of other economic, social, legal frameworks. If we strike, we are on the side of Sunni rebel forces in Syria (some of them hostile to the US) and perceived to be with the Sunnis in control of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc., in a mounting conflict with the Shi’as of Iran, Irak, Lebanon (Hezbollah), and the Alawites of Syria. Read Juan Cole and especially today’s opinion by Alex de Waal and Bridget Conley-Zilkic on the need for a political roadmap and the absurdity of using military punishment alone.