Syria: Even fainter hope

By guest author Mike Corgan

Map of Syria
Image in public domain

The tragic course of violence in Syria, falling mostly as it usually does on women and children, highlights the limitations of the United Nations as a means of peaceful conflict resolution in the world.

Even at its best, the UN can only do in situations like the Syrian civil war what the Security Council allows, and that body is set to stop action rather than take it.

The best analogy of the Security Council is that of a circuit breaker. It shuts down anything that is too big for the system to handle. The idea is that if any of the five permanent members (P5) really don’t want an action, then taking it would likely cause a more widespread and destructive situation.

Right now China and Russia are both balking at anything more than admonitions to Syria for what the Assad regime is doing to its own people. Neither country, each with its own restive and sometime violent Muslim minorities in Central Asia, wants any kind of precedent-setting UN response that promotes intervention in internal state conflict, however bloody and barbaric.

Russia has the additional motivation of not wishing to be seen as weak because it abandons a decades-long client state.

Who else could intervene? NATO is withdrawing forces from both Iraq and Afghanistan as fast as it can. Trying to set the house in order for another Middle Eastern state is not on any member’s agenda.

The ratio of Arab League rhetoric to action is nearly infinite.

Israel can only watch and hope. Geopolitically speaking, a fractious Syria on its border is a positive thing–but one sunk into chaos is not.

And even if some outside power did step in to stop the massacres, the aftermath of regime change now evident in other Arab states like Libya and Egypt is not at all encouraging.

It is the inevitably depressing commentary on humankind that perhaps only exhaustion of one or both of the combatants will end the killing. Inspired leadership by someone, anyone, could also be the answer but, alas, that is an even fainter hope.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of International Relations, Boston University

A just war against Assad?

By guest author Mike Corgan

Almost daily, we learn of massacres, indiscriminate shelling, and rocket attacks against civilian areas in and around Homs.  The situation in Syria seems to offer the occasion for a just war against Bashir Assad and his army if ever there were one.

Government crackdown in Syria
Government crackdown in Syria. Photo by Elizabeth Arrott, in public domain.

Most members of the United Nations and the Arab League, as well as many others, support some kind of action. But does this near-universal consensus add up to a just war occasion?

In international law it well might. But just war theory usually requires a a just peace–a condition only implicit, at most, in international law.

And what sort of peace might follow in Syria if Assad were removed by force? Assad’s ruling Alawite faction is also supported by various other minority groups who have been tolerated under the current regime as they well might not be under, say, a strict Sunni regime.

Opposition to Assad is also disparate. There is a high likelihood that scores would be settled in the aftermath of regime change. Just look at Libya, Iraq, and now Afghanistan in the face of the impending U.S. pullout.

A just war in Syria requires a just peace at its conclusion and that means providing order. Has anyone volunteered for that task?

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of International Relations, Boston University