The US is determined to punish the Assad regime for using chemical weapons and violating ‘red lines’ through a military intervention. Inadvisable as this may be, even a narrow targeted attack might be effective if well-planned. However, this does not seem to be the case
The debate on foreign military intervention in Syria is as complicated as the situation in Syria is itself, and it is difficult to do justice to the whole horde of issues — political, ideological, economic and strategic — that shape the conversation in this regard. So, let’s strip the discourse to its bare essentials and focus on two key issues here: First, why does President Barack Obama want to intervene in Syria? And second, what exactly does he plan to do?
The Assad regime has been at war with its own people since 2011 when it first used brutal police force to crackdown on peaceful protestors. Since then, President Bashar al-Assad has slowly but steadily intensified his campaign, using artillery fire and scud missiles even, and each time the West has responded with nothing more than a bland condemnatory statement. What changed in recent weeks is the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime — President Obama had designated this as a ‘red line’ — that reportedly killed almost 1,500 people on August 21.
This flagrant breach of what the White House now likes to believe was an ‘international red line’ has to be punished, the Obama Administration has decided. The problem is that there is still no concrete proof that it was, in fact, the Assad regime that ordered the CW attack. The US intelligence assessment in this regard is flimsy; the UN is still investigating the attack; the French are the only ones with a detailed analysis of Mr Assad’s CW stockpile but still cannot pin the blame firmly on Damascus.
Also, the French and American estimates for the number of dead — 400 and 1,400+ respectively — do not match. The British peg the figure even lower at around 300. This is an important distinction because there were chemical attacks prior to August 21 but none elicited such a response, presumably because the body count was low. This brings us to the fallacy of using chemical weapons attacks as a ‘red line’ in the first place.
First, there is no evidence to suggest that chemical weapons kill more people than conventional weapons. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Second, there is an underlying assumption that there is something especially horrific about using a chemical agent as opposed to a conventional weapon. That does not make much sense. As the chemist James Conant, involved in the United States’ chemical weapons programme, wrote: “I did not see in 1917… why tearing a man’s guts out by high explosive shell is to be preferred to maiming him by attacking his lungs.” In fact, some scholars have even argued that chemical weapons are more humane than conventional weapons but that is beside the point. The crux of the matter is that the international brouhaha over a CW attack is largely misplaced.
But still, let’s go with the flow and assume that President Assad who has been on a murderous spree for two years has now committed an exceptionally terrible crime by gassing his people, and therefore, deserves to be punished by the US (and the international community) or else it will be setting a dangerous precedent for other despots around the world. This brings us to the second aspect of how exactly President Obama intends to hand out this punishment — and it is here that the situation gets really murky.
President Obama has proposed targeted, signature strikes — America fires a few missiles and bombs key military assets, thereby, weakening the regime and possibly forcing President Assad’s regime to the negotiating table. On the face of it, this seems like a quick, clean, surgical operation but dig below the surface and there lies a can of worms. First, what do these strikes hope to achieve? Is the US looking only to ‘deter’ further CW attacks or is it looking to significantly ‘degrade’ President Assad’s military capabilities?
If the elimination of chemical weapons-related targets is the only aim of US intervention, this is not a practical option. As military experts Chandler P Atwood and Michael Knights point out, the Assad regime is likely to be taking ‘defensive measures’ such as moving the stockpiles around, making it extremely difficult to target them unless the US can respond with persistent intelligence collection for which it will have to establish full control over Syrian airspace. Also, even after these stockpiles have been discovered, the US cannot bomb the chemical weapons. Boots on the ground will be needed. The US can choose to focus on CW delivery systems but even that will require rocket launchers, missiles and aircraft — in other words, a major military operation.
The other option, as Messers Atwood and Knight note, is to hit President Assad’s military assets such as the Damascus-based Fourth Armoured Division which was supposedly responsible for August 21 attack and the lethal 155th Brigade, led by the President’s brother. The US could also attack symbolic targets such as the Air Force intelligence headquarters and military bases in Dumair, Saiqal, Tiyas and Hama and ‘People’s Army’ units that are financed by Iran and trained by its militant Shia proxy Hezbollah.
In fact, single targeted strikes can actually be quite effective, as Brigadier General Michael Herzog points out. For instance, this year Israel attacked two weapons shipments intended for Hezbollah and also the Scientific Studies and Research Centre in Damascus that was reportedly involved in the development of biological and chemical weapons. All three were targeted strikes (of the kind that Mr Obama fancies) and they were all successful in achieving Israel’s narrow goal of preventing Hezbollah from receiving weapons. But, the key to that success was careful planning and the element of surprise.
Unfortunately, President Obama does not seem to have planned targets and he has already frittered away the surprise advantage. In fact, he if really wanted to launch targeted strikes, he should have done it months ago when Mr Assad was losing ground and the rebels were advancing. A military intervention at that time could have actually tipped the balance in the Opposition’s favour (although, this is not to say that Syria’s Islamist infested, fractured rebel groups are a welcome alternative to the Assad regime). But the calculus has since changed, especially after Hezbollah threw in its weight in favour of the regime. Today, the Assad regime is in a stronger position and there is no reason for the President to willingly give up power.
There is also the matter of civilian casualties which cannot be ruled out, no matter how surgically precise the strikes, as most military experts acknowledge. Even Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that while the US can restrain its own actions, there are no guarantees for how the Assad regime (and its allies in the region) will retaliate.
(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on September 15, 2013)
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