By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
Proposals in an internal State Department memo signed by more than 50 career diplomats advocating military action against the Syrian government are fraught with risk and could further destabilize the country, according to experts.
“A more muscular military posture under U.S. leadership would underpin and propel a new reinvigorated diplomatic initiative,” the “Dissent Channel” cable’s 51 authors argue in the sensitive but unclassified four-page memo.
“U.S. military power would serve to promote regime compliance with the CoH, and in so doing save lives and alter battlefield dynamics,” it said, referring to a cessation of hostilities deal brokered in February.
President Barack Obama has strongly opposed military action against Syrian government forces, fearing that doing so could lead to a wider conflict between the U.S. and Russia -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s principal benefactor -- and could further destabilize a country that has been ravaged by five years of conflict.
“The 51 signatures were driven by some kind of humanitarian anguish over the death rate, which is a noble thing, but they didn’t have a solution for Syria, which is the Obama problem,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert who heads the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
That is in part due to the U.S.'s tattered history of interventions in the region.
Instructive for Obama was his 2011 foray to depose longtime Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi after the dictator sought to violently repress a popular armed uprising in the country.
Seven months after the campaign began, Gaddafi was captured by rebel forces and killed unceremoniously.
Rather than see the country emerge as a harmonious democracy, inter-militia fighting further destabilized the country and provided a safe haven for extremist groups to flourish.
Only five years later have the warring parties embarked on a shaky process to unite around a central government.
What the military excursion proved was that ousting longtime dictators in preference for opposition groups without governing experience “doesn’t bring you a pattern of stability simply because you drive out the existing regime”, said Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Security and International Studies think tank.
“I think the problem you have in Syria is quite clearly not totally different,” he said. “Whatever may come may be better. It could be worse. But you can’t predict what it is going to be.”
Complicating Obama’s calculus is the uncertainty of whether Russia would risk a military confrontation with the U.S. if Washington were to target Assad’s forces.
“Would Russia choose to engage the U.S. as long as the U.S. did not choose to engage Russian bases, attacking selected military capabilities?” asked Cordesman. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“You could easily get into a very weird contest where we were attacking more Syrian government targets and they were attacking more Arab rebel targets, and we were careful not to fight each other,” he said. “But that’s a kind of scenario that has very obvious risks.”
The memo’s authors write that their policy recommendations are not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in military confrontation with Russia.”
But Moscow has established a robust air-defense system at its string of military installations across Syria that cover the entirety of the country’s airspace, as well as parts of its neighbors.
To be sure, Russia’s extensive military presence in the country, alongside its stalwart support for Assad, complicates any kind of effort -- diplomatic or otherwise -- to see the Syrian president transitioned out of power.
Whether or not their policy recommendations lead to confrontation with Moscow, it’s unclear what the memo’s authors ultimately desire for Syria.
Vice President Joe Biden lambasted the memo saying that while diplomats have a right to dissent, their document does not have “a single, solitary recommendation” that includes a “solitary answer.”
Landis, the University of Oklahoma Syria expert, says it is clear that the diplomats want to see Assad at the negotiating table but “it’s unclear what they want him to say yes to.”
In many ways, that has been the wider issue with the Obama administration’s Syria policy.
While it’s clear the American president does not want to see Syria devolve into a power vacuum a la Libya, it is unclear what exactly Obama’s vision is for the country.
Ultimately, America’s long history of failed interventions in the region might prove insurmountable for Obama.
“America has been singularly unsuccessful in its attempts to create harmony, power sharing and cohesive governments in the Middle East, whether that’s Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Yemen, and the notion that it’s going to be successful in Syria just stretches the imagination,” Landis said.
