A decade ago, weak evidence of the
crimes of Saddam Hussein helped lead the U.S. and its allies to
war in Iraq. Today, strong evidence of war crimes by Bashar al-Assad may help the U.S. and its allies avoid war in Syria.
The damning United Nations report confirming the use of
chemical weapons also highlights the importance of the Sept. 14
agreement putting Syria’s chemical weapons on the path to
destruction -- and the huge challenges of doing so. It also
points to the need to leverage this agreement into a lasting
political solution to Syria’s increasingly horrific conflict.
The UN investigators say they have “clear and convincing
evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve
agent sarin” were used to attack several neighborhoods. To
reach that conclusion, they interviewed 50 survivors and
collected 30 soil and surface samples from impact sites, as well
as blood, urine and hair from 34 affected residents. More than
85 percent of the blood samples tested positive for sarin.
Such clinical specificity on the part of the UN may be
reassuring to those not moved by the Barack Obama
administration’s more general public assertions (or, for that
matter, to those still dubious of any U.S. claims about weapons
of mass destruction). More important, such results underscore
the significance of an agreement that promises to spare Syrians
more such horrors, destroy a potential source of chemical
weapons for terrorists, and reduce the number of countries that
have failed to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention from five to
four.
If Syria abides by the terms of the pact reached by U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Secretary
Sergei Lavrov, both it and the world will be a better place.
That’s a big if. The UN team’s efforts were hampered by
intimidation, violence and the generalized chaos of operating in
a war zone. Never mind the Syrian regime’s apparent effort to
destroy evidence of the chemical assault: Exhibit A of its deep-seated duplicity is its sudden willingness to acknowledge and
give up an arsenal that it had denied having in the first place.
The Sept. 14 agreement sets tight deadlines: Syria has one
week to submit an inventory of its chemical weapons, with
initial inspections by November, and must carry out the complete
removal and destruction of its chemical weapons by the first
half of 2014. Yet while the U.S.-Russia agreement grants
inspectors the “immediate and unfettered right to inspect any
and all sites in Syria,” what happens after Oct. 14, when Syria
formally becomes a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention
and, with Russia, has the right to try to block “challenge
inspections”? Ironically, national exemptions carved out by
U.S. legislators during the late 1990s may end up making it
easier for Assad to do just that.
These are just some of the thorny issues that the U.S. and
Russia must work out as they negotiate procedures for destroying
Syria’s chemical weapons in a country at war, along with a UN
Security Council resolution setting out the consequences for any
Syrian backsliding. And for all the complaints about Obama’s
tortuous negotiating style -- complaints that the president has
tartly dismissed -- one thing is clear: It was the U.S.’s threat
of military force that brought us to this hopeful point, and it
must be retained.
The UN report also makes something else clear: the need to
redouble efforts for a political settlement, and to write a
future for Syria that does not include Assad. In keeping with
its limited mandate, the report offers no “smoking missile,”
but the circumstantial evidence confirming earlier U.S.
assertions about the regime’s culpability is compelling, as is
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s statement that “this act is
a war crime.”
It’s far too early to say that this agreement lays out a
path for a larger solution. But it does show what the U.S. and
Russia can achieve when, whether for the wrong or the right
reasons, their interests align.
In the real world, the problem of removing Syria's chemical weapons certainly has its difficulties. But, it is likely to prove doable. That is because it only depends on a cost benefit analysis by Assad. On one side, he has the significance of his support from Russia and the potential cost of a limited American military strike targeted at removing those chemical weapons. On the other side he has whatever potential gain he might realize from large scale use of those weapons. It looks like his calculation is that it is to his benefit to give up the weapons. No doubt continued pressure will be required to achieve results and some of the weapons probably will be missed. But, there is no fundamental obstacle to success.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, the idea that the United States and Russia can impose a political solution on a civil war is ridiculous. The problem is not a political conflict between Russia and the United States. It is an existential conflict between different parts of the Syrian population.
Certainly the United States should try to work with the Russians to look for ways to encourage the Syrians to find a way to live together. It is always possible that process might make a difference. But, anyone being realistic about human behavior and the history of the region would not place a large bet on a positive outcome.