Syria: the case for action
Prompted by today's debate in the House of Commons, a new (temporary) thread. First a couple of documents: 1) the public letter from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), with its assessment:http://slink.eu/yd
The BBC's Security Correspondent, Frank Gardiner, tweeted:
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UK Govt intelligence case just published on Assad regime culpability for alleged gas attack rests more on logic than hard evidence.
His partner, Gordon Corera, has analysed the JIC letter:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23883617
2) The UK government's legal case:http://slink.eu/ye
From the later document:
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If action in the [United Nations] Security Council is blocked, the UK would still be permitted under international law to take exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe in Syria by deterring and disrupting the further use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.”
The Government sets three conditions:
1) “convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief”;
2) “No practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved”; and
3) Force is necessary and proportionate.
In a sharply worded commentary, the normally "tame" RUSI has rejected the case presented, it ends with:
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For the truth is that, although clever lawyers will always find a wheeze, the Syria operation has little justification in international law.
Link:http://www.rusi.org/analysis/comment.../#.Uh8d3GR4anZ
That 'Special Relationship' has a twist
From A BBC Tweet:
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Ironies of history: last time a UK PM was defeated on a war motion was 1782, when MPs voted to stop fighting American war of independence.
The 'Special Relationship' dead or alive?
Just what the vote last night means to the 'Special Relationship' is unclear, although HMG must be anxious, especially if an attack goes ahead. This is a side issue here, but many SWC members will know how close that military relationship is.
My quick assessment then. For many reasons the ‘Special Relationship’ as a publicly acceptable good thing has diminished since the end of the ‘Cold War’, no doubt buttressed for many by the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The relationship is very much a Whitehall-Westminster-Cheltenham axis, it has almost no public profile. Gone are the days when tens of thousands flocked to USAF bases for air displays. Fewer Brits go on holiday to the USA, a few years ago a million a year went to Florida.
I am not persuaded today the relationship has died. Within the axis it is strong and politically few argue we are not a good ally of the USA – on many issues, except Syria today!
The USA has always taken a different view of the relationship, long before the ‘pivot’ to the Pacific. It will be interesting to see how the UK’s American friends, especially those who know the depth of the intelligence-military relationship, respond – in briefings, interviews and articles.
An injured relationship in need of care is more fitting.
All playing out according to schedule - part 1
The White House announced earlier this week that an intelligence report would be released before any military action is taken. It was released today; and John Kerry gave us a little pep talk - differentiating "us" from "them".
Kerry calls attack against Syrian civilians 'crime against humanity' (NBC News; by F. Brinley Bruton and Erin McClam, August 30, 2013):
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Secretary of State John Kerry made a forceful moral case Friday for the United States to punish Syria for using chemical weapons — painting a ghastly portrait of twitching bodies, victims foaming at the mouth and more than 400 children killed.
He called Syrian leader Bashar Assad “a thug and a murderer” and pledged, to a country weary after more than a decade of war in the Middle East, that the American response would not involve troops on the ground and would not be open-ended. ...
Kerry Makes Case That Syria Used Chemical Weapons (NYT; by Michael D. Shear, August 30, 2013):
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Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Friday there was “clear” and “compelling” evidence that the government of President Bashar al-Assad used poison gas against its citizens, as the Obama administration released an unclassified intelligence report on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
“Read for yourselves the evidence from thousands of sources,” Mr. Kerry said in aggressively laying out the administration’s case for strikes on Syria. “This is the indiscriminate, inconceivable horror of chemical weapons. This is what Assad did to his own people.”
Mr. Kerry said that more than 1,400 people were killed in the chemical attack, including more than 400 children.
A four-page intelligence summary released by the White House said the government had concluded with “high confidence” that the Assad government had “carried out a chemical weapons attack” outside Damascus, based on human sources as well as communications intercepts. The suggestion that the opposition might have been responsible “is highly unlikely,” the assessment said.
Mr. Kerry said the administration had “high confidence” in the intelligence, much of which was being released to the public as he spoke. But he vowed that the government had carefully reviewed the evidence to avoid the kind of intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq war.
John Kerry makes forceful case for U.S. military intervention in Syria (WP; by Anthony Faiola, August 30, 2013):
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Secretary of State John F. Kerry made a forceful case Friday for U.S. military intervention in Syria, saying that U.S. intelligence has information pinning responsibility for last week’s chemical weapons attack squarely on the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
In a speech at the State Department, Kerry said U.S. intelligence has “high confidence” that the Assad government was responsible for the attack based partly on knowledge of regime officials’ conversations about the attack and the tracking of movements of regime personnel before and after the strike.
Kerry said that for three days before the Aug. 21 attack, the Syrian government’s chemical weapons personnel “were in the area, making preparations” for the strike. He also said that “regime elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks” and taking other precautions. And he said U.S. intelligence knows that the rockets containing the poison gas were launched only from “regime-controlled areas.”
The attack killed 1,429 Syrians, including 426 children, Kerry said.
Thus, an explicit recitation of "...the horror, the horror ...", because that is, indeed, the Obama administration's strongest point of argument.
Also, we now seem to have a revitalized French Connection.
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Kerry spoke after French President Francois Hollande said Friday that his country is prepared to act in Syria despite Britain’s surprise rejection of military action, potentially making a nation that turned its back on Washington during the war in Iraq the primary U.S. ally in a possible strike against Syrian forces.
...
Hollande’s apparent willingness to take action in Syria stems, analysts say, from a number of variables. France is the former colonial power in Syria. The country, in military missions in Mali and Libya in recent years, has been reasserting its military might.
In addition, because the country sat out the war in Iraq, French politicians are not carrying the same painful baggage as those in Britain, whose troops joined the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq based on false intelligence that dictator Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
“There is no feeling here that ‘we are at it again’ or that ‘our government is lying to us,’ ” said Dominique Moisi, senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. “We are in a better position to have public opinion favoring intervention in Syria.”
Kerry also noted that France is our oldest ally - vive le ancien regime ! .... Oh, what a difference a decade makes ....
The intelligence report (presumably the "1000s of sources" were redacted to protect sources and methods) is here: Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013 (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, August 30, 2013); and Syria: Damascus Areas of Influence and Areas Reportedly Affected by 21 August Chemical Attack (1 page map).
- to be cont. -
All playing out according to schedule - part 2
How will this play out ? We have some indications - leaving aside attempts to read White House tea leaves.
Jack Goldsmith's political post (a rare bird, since Jack writes mostly legal) from yesterday outlines some issues. I've had respect for Goldsmith since he duelled it out with David Addington (Wiki; read this 2007 NYT piece on Jack, Conscience of a Conservative - which evinced moral courage on his part once he found the right path).
British Bow Out of Syria Intervention, USG Plunging Ahead (by Jack Goldsmith, August 29, 2013):
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In
a separate story, the NYT reports that “President Obama is prepared to move ahead with a limited military strike on Syria . . . even with a rejection of such action by Britain’s Parliament, an increasingly restive Congress, and lacking an endorsement from the United Nations Security Council.” And, the NYT might have added, without the support of the American people.
The segment below on the two recent polls suggest something of a shift in the American attitudes. That as it may or may not be, I certainly concur in these snips by Goldsmith:
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The NYT says that the President “is basing his case for action both on safeguarding international standards against the use of chemical weapons and on the threat to America’s national interests posed by Syria’s use of those weapons.” These rationales are very weak – especially since the President would be violating international law to “safeguard international standards,” since our closest ally Britain withdrew from the fight, since the U.N. failed to authorize force, and since the Arab League does not support intervention.
...
The President is way out on a limb, by himself. Independent of legality, unilateral military intervention in these circumstances is extraordinarily imprudent, and it is hard to fathom that it is being considered by the man who based his case for the presidency in 2008 on his commitment to domestic and international legality, and on opposition to imprudent wars.
The administration seems to think that the costs of going forward in Syria are small because the planned strike will be “limited.” But even assuming that a limited strike does not produce terrible second- and third-order consequences in the region, it would still be self-defeating because (although it is limited) it would be contrary to international and domestic opinion and (because it is limited) it would bring few benefits in terms of punishing Assad or enhancing Obama’s credibility.
Jack addressed "why not congressional approval":
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This is very dangerous territory for the President. Forget the Constitution for a moment. Why won’t the President pay the same respect to American democracy that David Cameron paid to British democracy? (I offered
answers to this question a few days ago, but the question is much more poignant now that the British Parliament has spoken against intervention.)
Jack's five answers were (adding numbers to them):
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1. has a very broad view of his unilateral war powers;
2. this military action is being rushed, and formal congressional approval is not a priority in light of the President’s self-induced credibility crisis and the overwhelming military and diplomatic demands of planning the intervention;
3. the White House doesn’t want to expend (or doesn’t have) the resources that seeking and winning congressional approval would require;
4. it doesn’t want to suffer through the formal national debate;
5. and it fears it might lose the debate (either outright, or with a limitation on presidential power), which would be politically and legally humiliating.
I'd add that the White House has as much as it wants from the key congressional leadership. Here, for example, is the position of Michigan's senior senator, Levin statement on Syria consultations (Thursday, August 29, 2013)
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WASHINGTON -- Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued the following statement today following consultations with the Obama administration on the situation in Syria:
"I have previously called for the United States to work with our friends and allies to increase the military pressure on the Assad regime by providing lethal aid to vetted elements of the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I suggested that we should do so while UN inspectors complete their work and while we seek international support for limited, targeted strikes in response to the Assad regime’s large-scale use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. I appreciate the administration’s continuing efforts tonight to consult with Congress about the situation in Syria, and its commitment to further consultations with Congress."
Note that "we seek international support" (thus, the effort to bag the UK is probably going to continue); and "consult" and "consultations" do not mean formal approval - even though 80% of Americans want exactly that.
- to be cont. -