Two Issues at Stake in Syria

Rami G. Khouri

September 03, 2013

It is quite stunning to experience for the sixth time in a decade a global debate about whether Western powers should use their military superiority to attack Arab countries in order to get those Arab countries to conform to “international norms.” After the experiences of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, and the global use of drones to attack suspected Al-Qaeda militants, we now witness heartfelt debates across the world about the wisdom, efficacy, and legitimacy of an American-led attack against Syrian targets.

It is heartening to see the best aspects of Western democracy in practice, in the British parliament’s rejection of the prime minister’s request to join the U.S. attack on Syria, and in the skepticism that many American congressmen and women express about the validity of the administration’s case for the attack. Not surprisingly, President Barack Obama’s administration is making the case that it does not need congressional approval for an attack, and seems determined to go ahead with it, with or without Western partners or the Congress’ support.

So in the coming days we are likely to see a few dozen American missiles smashing into selected Syrian targets, accompanied by passionate arguments for and against this action. Since we have witnessed this scenario several times in the past decade, and are likely to encounter it again in the years ahead (Iran? Sudan? Afghanistan and Pakistan again?) This might be a good moment to step back a bit from the din and haze of battle and focus for a moment on the core issues at hand that matter to all sides.

I see those issues very clearly as two sides of the same coin: What do we do about the criminal use of armaments by a government against its own people, especially when such action breaks prevailing global norms and conventions? And what do we do about the criminal use of armaments by a government against other countries—even ones whose governments kill their own people—in the absence of legitimate international support for such action? Our prevailing global media- and entertainment-based society does not like to discuss such issues in a symmetrical manner that juxtaposes the criminal actions of the Syrian president against the criminal actions of the American president. Yet we must do so, if we wish to reduce the recurring incidents of Western attacks against Arab or other regimes in the South that kill their own people with impunity.

The cautious Barack Obama has now shifted into a common policy mode of American presidents who are confronted with the need to respond to a complex foreign policy issue somewhere far away and largely alien to them. This is the policy that, in political science terms, should best be called the “kicking ass policy.” It uses the United States’ massive advantages in military technology and force projection to unleash powerful missiles against virtually defenseless targets in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen. It aims to teach those people over there a lesson they will never forget, and push them to comply with global norms of civilized behavior, but it also almost always happens without Washington fully calculating or understanding the consequences of such a policy.

The silliest arguments that some Americans use to justify such a policy are:

a) that the United States, as the world’s strongest and most moral and liberal power, must act to enforce international norms and laws if other collective means of action are blocked; and,

b) the United States cannot be defied and must be respected when it lays down an ultimatum, as it did when Obama said that using chemical weapons was a red line that Assad should not cross. In other words, U.S. “credibility” is at stake, and Washington must strike Assad in order to ensure that others respect the United States and obey its orders in future such situations.

Well, I hope the White House hires some political psychologists to help it understand why it is that after every such episode of American missile strikes against a recalcitrant dictator in the South, the next dictator comes along and seamlessly defies the United States, totally ignoring Washington’s military prowess and its commitment to its credibility. Is it possible then that the American policy of kicking ass is mainly a psychological tonic that makes Americans feel better about themselves, without actually promoting greater global compliance with those important international norms?

I suspect that the massive disposition of Americans against attacking Syria (over 70 percent oppose an attack) and the British parliament’s rejection of such an attack largely reflect lessons learned from the last dozen years of kicking ass around the South, and having to come back again and again to do the same thing, because this policy is a chronic failure. Yet it is also critical that we all collectively explore the legality and morality of the United States and other powers that unilaterally attack countries in the South without UN Security Council approval.

This debate is not only about Syrians killing Syrians, but also about Americans attacking the world at will.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.