Obama’s Red Wiggly Line

“Obama threatens Syria with military action” — this is what the media report all around the world. What happened? The American president has drawn a “red line,” but he didn’t have a ruler. Everything remains vague and he isn’t helping the Syrian people at all.

In the middle of an American election campaign, politicians like to build poster walls, both in a literal and in a figurative sense. And since they think their voters are as stupid as large parts of the media portray them to be, difficult topics disappear behind very simple slogans — and not just in America.

As such, the debate about how to help the Syrian people has long since reached the state of a simple yes/no question: Whoever doesn’t bomb now is risking America’s leadership position, according to Mitt Romney’s statements. And even Madeleine Albright, who was secretary of state under Democrat Bill Clinton, states “We can’t afford to be in a cul-de-sac while people are being killed.”

Every time a conflict (one among many that the West is idly watching or even fueling) is made out to be a symbol for the humanitarian capacity to act, we are shown the same old warmongers’ picture, which paints everything in black and white. Every time they pretend that the only alternatives are to bomb or to do nothing, as if anyone who doesn’t “liberate” them with deadly weapons is cold-heartedly letting the Syrian people die. Morals and war are easily linked.

This logic doesn’t help the true liberation of the Syrian people; instead, it helps the warmonger achieve symbolic liberation from the dilemma of a terribly complex conflict; a conflict that is too complex to be used for campaigns, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere. Therefore, Obama had to and has to react. He has to defend the remainder of rationality that governs his administration. And at the same time, he has to give a bit of iron fodder to those who might be taken in by the simplistic logic of the hawks.

Obama’s Concrete Threat: None

So it certainly sounds good to be talking about a “red line,” implying “I can play hardball, too.” However, one can see the concrete meaning of Obama’s words quite well: they mean nothing. The “red line” consists of “a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” That’s approximately the same as if mum and dad threaten to take away the brother’s allowance if he hits his little sister “quite often” again.

The debate is silly, but it hides the serious question of how the worldwide community could really help to liberate oppressed peoples from their despots. We Germans live in a country that was liberated from a reign of terror by military means, so it’s impossible to discard such means lock, stock and barrel. But history also taught us to defend the principle that war can only be a last resort, if it must be considered at all.

Experience has shown that bombing is rather unlikely to be a way of solving explosive political constellations, especially in the Middle East: just look at Afghanistan or Iraq. There, more than anywhere else, the world powers’ special interest politics have decisively fanned the conflicts which they now believe they can solve by bombing. All this wouldn’t matter if anyone could show that adding more explosive devices to the tinderbox will cost less human lives than the current civil war. However, there is little evidence for that, especially in Syria. As horrible as it sounds, despite the Assad regime’s brutality, the humanitarian thing to do might be to patiently pursue a policy of sanctions and active diplomacy. Nobody can prove this prognosis, but to wage war because we don’t know any better? The warmongers should be the ones to provide evidence that war saves lives. And next door, in Iran, there’s an opportunity to consequently look for the path of de-escalation and to keep resisting the Israeli fantasies of a successful coup.

War Becomes a Currency with Voters

Does Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, really keep all that in mind? Are his policies defined by the above peaceful considerations? Is the vague threat of war actually part of a strategy to not let things get so far? And does he only talk about “red lines” because his political approach is in truth too complicated for the campaign trail? If that were the case, it would speak volumes about Obama’s quality as a president, but it would also speak volumes about politics at campaign time.

War has long since become a currency with which to buy voters, at least in the U.S. It’s astonishing how we can acknowledge that with a mere shrug of the shoulders.