War in Syria: Meeting in Damascus

Barack Obama has trapped himself single-handedly. He drew a “red line” and then tried to buy time. Six million Syrians have fled their homes because of the conflict.

Washington’s faltering diplomacy, after repeated imminent threats, has postponed the punishment of Damascus for its alleged use of chemical weapons, in the hope that Congress will approve the attacks. There are three aspects — legal, moral and political — that can help us determine the propriety and efficacy of a bombing, now in limbo.

— Legal: In 2007, Barack Obama, current president, told The Boston Globe that he lacked the authority to unilaterally order a military operation “in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” which nobody can claim is the case here. However, Obama maintains that the blessing of Congress is not required because he is not asking for a vote on declaring war but only limited military action and — although he does not say it — he is emulating British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has renounced making himself a squire because the House of Commons voted against an invasion. However, whatever Congress decides does not constitute international law, and without ratification by the United Nations Security Council — which Russia would veto — the Syrian devastation would be patently illegal.

— Moral: Obama maintains that an atrocity like attacking a population with banned weapons cannot be ignored, so he is left with no other alternative than to retaliate against the government of Bashar al-Assad. However, the measure would only make sense if there were a causal relationship between the bombing and the resignation of those who perpetrated the wrongdoing, resorting to that terrible weapon again. The bombing cannot be any guarantee of this. However, even more bizarre is the president’s warning that the operation is not aimed at bringing al-Assad down but only at giving a forceful slap on the wrist — if you recall the number of times the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom and France have declared that they want and are pursuing the overthrow of the Syrian dictator.

— Political: The realpolitik demands a dispassionate balancing of factors here — in favor and against intervention. First, it ensures that the 1999 bombing of Serbia, facilitating Kosovo’s secession, acts as a model, when the differences between the Balkans and Middle East are definitive, as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is not exactly a fan of the Syrian president, has stressed. Serbia was alone: Russia had made it known that the life of any one of its solders was more valuable than its relations with Belgrade, and the ability of the tyrant, the Yugoslavian Slobodan Milosevic, to hurt the West was not going to go beyond insults or dirty words. Al-Assad, on the other hand, is established in an extremely fragile environment, and his weapons — chemical or physical, regular or guerrilla, although ultimately doomed to defeat — could ignite the neighborhood, while the West is dedicated to stopping it. Second, in reality, the model for intervention would be similar to the unfortunate Western intervention carried out in Afghanistan during the 1980s, where they armed an anti-Soviet guerrilla group, the Taliban, resulting in that part of central Asia turning against the West and harboring a multinational terrorism group like al-Qaida. Third, if Russia ended up losing its foothold in Syria, a new Cold War could be at the gates. And fourth, if the aerial attack is intense enough to seriously weaken the regimen, it would be contributing to the establishment of an Islamist government in Damascus, with the participation of al-Qaida, which is the spearhead of the rebellion. And how is one to understand that Europe and the United States celebrate, more or less in a veiled way, that the Egyptian military has come out against the Muslim Brotherhood, only to encourage the success of that same power in Syria?

Barack Obama has single-handedly trapped himself in a cul-de-sac. He drew a “red line” — the use of chemical weapons — that could not be crossed without consequences, and, once it was crossed, he has been shirking action, trying to buy time, such that the House of Representatives has allowed him to delay the attack until after Sept. 9, when Congress reconvenes. Obama will look for assistance from both houses because anything else would be an insufferable show of weakness — he might even bomb with one vote against it. But his pursuit of a bombing seems much more motivated by saving face than by reason.