SPEAKING
FREELY Obama loses sight of Syrian
reality By Riccardo
Dugulin
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
President Barack
Obama's speech at the United Nations General
Assembly in September provided an interesting
outlook about the current administration concept
of foreign policy. Through the president's words,
the US appeared to remain deeply engaged in global
affairs. The will to spread democracy and the
respect of
human rights as universal
values has been the core of Washington's foreign
policy for the last two decades and it keeps on
being so under this administration.
Yet,
the presidential speech presents major points of
inflection. If the willingness to better people
lives through relentless efforts of the American
citizens and their government is still a dominant
of the foreign policy equation, the president
further stressed his personal attachment to a
strategy of empowerment of local partners, in
which regional actors receive many of the
prerogatives the United States used to have.
If in a long time US presidential speeches
may have not been characterized by political
realism, an underlying distinctiveness of Obama's
address to the UN was his unquestioned acceptance
of the Arab Spring rhetoric, and the idealistic
strategy that follows. Such a foreign policy
stance is especially arguable as the discourse
emerging from the Arab revolts has not been
crafted by the White House; it is not under its
control and may to some extent damage its direct
national interests in the region.
Focusing
on the current Syrian civil war, it is necessary
to consider the possible back clashes of such a
position. Since day one, the events in Syria have
been as much a human struggle as a war of
information. While the US president, along with a
majority of Western leaders, fully adopted the
rhetoric of Syrian oppositions forces, the
situation on the ground is now coming to a point
where a simplistic approach based on wishful
thinking and diplomatic procrastination may yield
negative effects for US interests in the region
and an overall protracted conflict in Syria and
neighboring countries.
The US stance over
the ongoing civil war may be summarized by Obama's
statement: "in Syria, the future must not belong
to a dictator who massacres his people". This
brief sentence highlights a certainty: whenever
the clouds over Syria dissipate, the political
situation will be substantially different than the
one existing prior to the uprising. The fall of
Bashar Al-Assad may not be a given today, but the
rapports de forces inside the country will
drastically change in the coming months and years.
Regardless of that, President Obama
allusions to the present conflict do indicate that
the US policy toward Syria is based on two
pillars: 1) unwillingness to commit to overt
military intervention, 2) overly simplified, if
not erroneous, analytical premises.
The
unwillingness to intervene militarily has
certainly not been officially stated but the US
military posture in the region does indicate that
Washington will not lead NATO forces into a
humanitarian oriented operation against the Assad
regime. Budgetary restrictions, a wary public
opinion and the need to keep up the pressure
against Teheran are the major forces behind the
US/NATO inaction over Syria. In addition to that,
if the beginning of the Syrian uprising provided
international decision makers with clear cut black
and white lines these frontiers have now long been
shattered. A military operation against the regime
forces would in no way serve the purpose of ending
the ongoing civil conflict as the Syrian military
apparatus has now became only a part, granted the
major one, in a regional proxy war.
The
Obama version of the Syrian conflict remains an
overly simplified appreciation of the facts on the
ground. There are no doubts of the atrocities
committed by the regime against its citizens, yet
the prolonged conflict is now offering a more
complex situation than that of a "dictator who
massacres his people". The Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights recently published the data
concerning casualties of the civil war. All
statistics of the conflict must be viewed as
approximations yet this information provide a
clear outlook of an evolving situation.
Throughout the war, the report states, "At
least 21,534 civilians, 7,322 soldiers and 1,168
defectors have been killed". A steep increase of
military casualties has been verified in the last
six months as it has been accompanied with an
amplified inflow of foreign fighters.
Libyans and Chechens jihadis are pouring
into Syria financed by Sunni power houses to
support the oppositions' forces, while Iranians
and Lebanese Shi'ites are stepping up their
efforts to wage irregular warfare in support of
the regime. The multiplication of stakeholders and
conflicting parties is likely to lessen the
chances of a quick solution to the internal
conflict. Clashes have been reported between
oppositions' forces as ideological differences
between secular and jihadis augment the risks of
prolonged hostilities.
President Obama's
rhetoric of focusing on regime atrocities
willingly omits the breaches to human rights
committed by other parties involved in the
conflict. Arbitrary executions, kidnappings and
random bombings are no longer actions that can
only be attributed to Al Assad loyalists.
By focusing exclusively on the obvious
accusations against Assad's regime, President
Obama overlooked some of the major risks presented
by the Syrian civil war.
The ongoing
spillover of the conflict by stepping over the
Lebanese, Turkish and Jordanian borders are
realities to be considered with the highest degree
of attention. As in the 1980s Palestinian
terrorists found safe havens in Southern Lebanon
to wage a war against Israel, elements of the
Syrian oppositions' forces increasingly settle in
border region to prepare attacks against regime
loyalists. While a full-scale military response to
these acts may remain unlikely in the near future,
destabilization attempts and low intensity border
warfare may possibly be the next step of Al
Assad's strategy.
A fall of Assad would in
no way limit the presence of jihadist elements in
Syria and is likely to introduce a period of
amplified inter-confessional and inter-ethnic
violence, a point President Obama has willingly
bypassed as well. The likelihood of the
destruction of century old Christian communities
in the region will only be increased in an
all-against-all civil conflict once the focus will
be taken off the Syrian regime forces.
In
addition to these changes, the abrupt and
uncontrolled fall of Al Assad may well provoke the
transfer of Syrian chemical weapons to Hezbollah,
a move which has been defined as "red line" by the
Israeli political and military establishment.
President Obama fell short of highlighting
what the United States can actually do to enable a
solution to the Syrian civil war.
The
quest for freedom and respect of human life is one
of the most honorable acts a nation can thrive
for, yet the Syrian civil war is rapidly moving
toward an highly explosive situation destabilizing
the region requiring a major participation of all
international powers.
Securing the
Lebanese border, aiming at having fully
non-weaponized refugee camps in Turkey while
putting pressure on Iraq to immediately stop its
support to the murderous Syrian regime are a few
points the President should have stressed. Strong
and unconditional "red lines" regarding the use or
diffusion of chemical weapons along with the
support of Arab led and Arab implemented peace
efforts should also be among the White House top
priority issues.
With these priorities
clearly stated, the US and its NATO allies could
drop the military option while focusing on
depriving regime forces of its arm supplies and
sponsoring an inclusive reconciliation dialogue.
Riccardo Dugulin holds a Master
degree from the Paris School of International
Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in
International Security. He is currently working in
Paris for a Medical and Security Assistance
company. He has worked for a number of leading
think tanks in Washington DC, Dubai and Beirut.
His personal website is
www.riccardodugulin.com.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
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