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Monday, May 12, 2014
5TH INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE ON UNDERWATER MUNITIONS
© 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The Obsolescence of Ideology: Debating Syria and Ukraine by Richard Falk
I have been struck by the unhelpfulness of ideology to my own efforts to think through the complexities of recommended or preferred policy in relation to Syria, and more recently, the Ukraine. There is no obvious posture to be struck by referencing a ‘left’ or ‘right’ identity. A convincing policy proposal depends on sensitivity to context and the particulars of the conflict.
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| Richard Falk |
To insist that the left/right distinction obscures more than it reveals is not the end of the story. To contend that ideology is unhelpful as a guide for action is not the same as saying that it is irrelevant to the public debate. In the American context, to be on the left generally implies an anti-interventionist stance, while being on the right is usually associated with being pro-interventionist. Yet, these first approximations can be misleading, even ideologically. Liberals, who are deliberately and consigned to the left by the mainstream media, often favor intervention if the rationale for military force is primarily humanitarian.
Likewise, the neocon right is often opposed to intervention if it is not persuasively justified on the basis of strategic interests, which could include promoting ideological affinities. The neocon leitmotif is global leadership via military strength, force projection, friends and enemies, and the assertion and enforcement of red lines. When Obama failed to bomb Syria in 2013 after earlier declaring that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime was for him a red line this supposedly undermined the credibility of American power. My point is that ideology remains a helpful predictor of how people line up with respect to controversial uses of force, although relying on ideology is a lazy way to think if the purpose is to decide on the best course of action to take, which requires a sensitivity to the concrete realities of a particular situation. Such an analysis depends on context, and may include acknowledging the difficulties of intervention, and the moral unacceptability of nonintervention.
On a high level of abstraction, it is true that the hard right tends to find a justification for military action as the preferred solvent for any challenge to American foreign policy and the hard left is equally disposed to dismiss all calls for humanitarian intervention as sly anti-imperialist maneuvers, recalling Noam Chomsky’s dismissal of the Kosovo War in 1999 as ‘miltary humanism.’ In this sense it seems easier to proceed by dogma than to engage seriously with the existential complexities and uncertainties of the specifics pertaining to a conflict setting, and thus be willing to conclude either that ‘the situation is horrible, and something must be done’ and yet still believe that ‘the situation is horrible, but military intervention will only make it worse.’ This is the kind of conundrum that has perplexed and troubled me ever since the Syrian uprising in 2011 turned violent, unleashing the criminal fury of the Damascus regime, and attracting a variety of predatory outside forces on both sides. Often those on one side or the other of the debate fail to recognize the consequences of either a failed intervention or a refusal to intervene.
There are at least two problems that bedevil interpretation in these setting. To assess particularities of context requires a genuine familiarity with the specifics and changing dynamics of a conflict if persuasive policy recommendations are to be grounded in relevant knowledge rather than on knee jerk reactions. And secondly, no matter how expert, core uncertainties will persist, and the difficulties of making choices that involve killing and dying of others is a huge weight of responsibility if the policy risks and alternatives are carefully weighed.
I would add a third caveat—in the last fifty years military intervention has rarely worked out well for the target society or for the intervener; that is, historical experience would seem to call for what lawyers call ‘a presumption against intervention.’ This presumption is not intended as an absolute prohibition, but it does impose a burden of persuasion on the advocates of intervention. Often, also, the evidence pro and con intervention is doctored and manipulated one way or another to reflect the views of the government or of special interests. This was spectacularly illustrated by the lead up to the U.S. led attack on Iraq in 2003 where governmental efforts to strengthen the public case for intervention produced notorious fabrications. Rwanda in 1994, did present an exceptionally strong humanitarian case supportive of a limited military intervention with operational responsibility entrusted to the United Nations, but the bad experience of the Clinton presidency with the Somalia intervention during the prior year led the United States to oppose effectively a UN effort to prevent, or at least mitigate, a genocidal onslaught.
It would seem against such a background that the best solution in such situations might be procedural, that is, leaving the final policy decision in each instance up to a determination by the UN Security Council. If the Bush Administration had accepted the outcome of the Security Council vote that withheld approval for intervening in Iraq it would have been spared a humiliating strategic defeat that damaged America’s status as world leader. Allowing the Security Council to decide whether or not international force is required and justified also is consistent with the presumption against intervention due to the possibility that any of the five permanent members casting a negative vote counts as a veto.
The Obama approach has not fared much better than that of Bush. It induced members of the Security Council opposed to military intervention to accept the plea of NATO countries in 2011 to engage in a humanitarian operation to save the besieged civilian population of the Libyan city of Benghazi by way of establishing a No Fly Zone. Once the operation got underway, it completely ignored these UN guidelines, and used its air dominance to widen the scope of violence and carry out an unauthorized mission of regime-change. The aftermath in Libya casts further doubt on the overall wisdom of authorizing intervention in such a circumstance of internal strife. As well, the spillover from the refusal of the interveners to adhere to the limited UN mandate has been to undermine trust in such a way as to weaken any prospect for the UN to play a more robust role in resolving the Syrian conflict where the case for interference has become stronger than it ever was in Libya.
Beyond this issue of trust are questions of geopolitical alignment, especially encounters that align the U.S. and NATO on one side and Russia and/or China on the other. As yet, fortunately, there is no second cold war, although the neocons, and some in Europe, are beating the war drums in relation to the Ukraine in such a way as to point in that most unwelcome and totally unjustified direction. Russia’s sensitivity to hostile developments on its borders, previously expressed a few years ago in the 2008 crisis over Georgia, is now more potently evident in relation to the Ukraine and breakaway Crimea, which contains a strategic Russian naval base at Sevastopol that is the only Russian warm water port, as well as home to their Black Sea naval fleet. More
Friday, March 7, 2014
7th Syrian chemical weapons destruction update
Here is the 7th Syrian chemical weapons destruction update here: http://www.gcint.org/green-cross-blog/syrian-chemical-weapons-destruction-update-7.
This update, and all previous updates, are stored on the CWCC site (CWCCoalition.org) under Documentation.
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Charlotte Baskin-Gerwitz
Green Cross International
Global Green USA
Environmental Security and Sustainability
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Report: Libya Intercepts Syria-Bound Mustard Agent
Libyan authorities allegedly intercepted a cache of mustard blister agent being smuggled to opposition forces in Syria, Arutz Sheva 7 reports.
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| Syrian Rebel Fighters |
A separate Israeli news report quotes a Libyan military officer asserting that his country's armed forces had stopped a group of Islamic militants in possession of a container holding the deadly chemical, the news station said on Sunday. The military personnel took custody of the caustic substance, Libyan Col. Mansour al-Mazini added in the report by Israel's Channel 2.
The press claim did not cite the timing of the alleged incident. Libya finished destroying its mustard agent stockpile with international assistance in January, but hundreds of tons of chemical-arms ingredients are still awaiting destruction in the North African country.
Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime agreed to surrender its arsenal of mustard agent and other warfare chemicals in the aftermath of an August nerve gas strike. The government blamed its opponents for the incident, and Moscow has joined its Damascus ally in holding rebel forces responsible for the attack on opposition-controlled territory.
The Syrian government also has placed blame on its opponents for slower-than-expected progress in the disarmament operation, which was to have removed the regime's entire chemical arsenal from the country by early last month.
Norway's military released footage of a transport vessel removing the first batch of Syrian chemical-warfare materials in January as part of the disarmament operation, the Washington Post reported on Friday. More
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Updates on Syrian chemical weapon destruction process
As part of our push to maintain more regular contact with CWC Coalition members, we have started a weekly update on the Syrian chemical weapons destruction process. Please find links to updates from the first three weeks below:
http://www.gcint.org/green-cross-blog/syrian-chemical-weapons-destruction-first-stage
http://www.gcint.org/green-cross-blog/syrian-chemical-weapons-destruction-update-2
http://www.gcint.org/green-cross-blog/syrian-chemical-weapons-destruction-update-3
We are making every effort to stay as up to date as possible on this process. If you have additional information, or have found well informed articles, please share them with the group, as we all benefit from transparency in this situation. We are working on broadening the scope of the destruction to include further information for civil society and will keep you updated accordingly.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Syria: Whose Sarin?
In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.
He cited a list of what appeared to be hard-won evidence of Assad’s culpability: ‘In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighbourhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces.’ Obama’s certainty was echoed at the time by Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, who told the New York Times: ‘No one with whom I’ve spoken doubts the intelligence’ directly linking Assad and his regime to the sarin attacks.
But in recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration’s assurances of Assad’s responsibility a ‘ruse’. The attack ‘was not the result of the current regime’, he wrote. A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening. The distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam. The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’
The complaints focus on what Washington did not have: any advance warning from the assumed source of the attack. The military intelligence community has for years produced a highly classified early morning intelligence summary, known as the Morning Report, for the secretary of defence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; a copy also goes to the national security adviser and the director of national intelligence. The Morning Report includes no political or economic information, but provides a summary of important military events around the world, with all available intelligence about them. A senior intelligence consultant told me that some time after the attack he reviewed the reports for 20 August through 23 August. For two days – 20 and 21 August – there was no mention of Syria. On 22 August the lead item in the Morning Report dealt with Egypt; a subsequent item discussed an internal change in the command structure of one of the rebel groups in Syria. Nothing was noted about the use of nerve gas in Damascus that day. It was not until 23 August that the use of sarin became a dominant issue, although hundreds of photographs and videos of the massacre had gone viral within hours on YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites. At this point, the administration knew no more than the public.
Obama left Washington early on 21 August for a hectic two-day speaking tour in New York and Pennsylvania; according to the White House press office, he was briefed later that day on the attack, and the growing public and media furore. The lack of any immediate inside intelligence was made clear on 22 August, when Jen Psaki, a spokesperson for the State Department, told reporters: ‘We are unable to conclusively determine [chemical weapons] use. But we are focused every minute of every day since these events happened … on doing everything possible within our power to nail down the facts.’ The administration’s tone had hardened by 27 August, when Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, told reporters – without providing any specific information – that any suggestions that the Syrian government was not responsible ‘are as preposterous as suggestions that the attack itself didn’t occur’.
The absence of immediate alarm inside the American intelligence community demonstrates that there was no intelligence about Syrian intentions in the days before the attack. And there are at least two ways the US could have known about it in advance: both were touched on in one of the top secret American intelligence documents that have been made public in recent months by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor.
On 29 August, the Washington Post, the Obama administration has never claimed to have specific information connecting Assad himself to the attack.) published excerpts from the annual budget for all national intelligence programmes, agency by agency, provided by Snowden. In consultation with the Obama administration, the newspaper chose to publish only a slim portion of the 178-page document, which has a classification higher than top secret, but it summarised and published a section dealing with problem areas. One problem area was the gap in coverage targeting Assad’s office. The document said that the NSA’s worldwide electronic eavesdropping facilities had been ‘able to monitor unencrypted communications among senior military officials at the outset of the civil war there’. But it was ‘a vulnerability that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces apparently later recognised’. In other words, the NSA no longer had access to the conversations of the top military leadership in Syria, which would have included crucial communications from Assad, such as orders for a nerve gas attack. (In its public statements since 21 August More
Monday, September 23, 2013
OPCW Course on Assistance and Protection Against Chemical Weapons Held in Finland
“Working together for a world free of chemical weapons”
OPCW News 51/2013 | The Hague, 23 September 2013 |
Course on Assistance and Protection Against Chemical Weapons Held in Finland
The Government of Finland and the OPCW jointly organised a course on Assistance and Protection Against Chemical Weapons in Kuopio from 9 to 13 September 2013 for 18 participants from 16 States Parties.*
The course relates to Article X of the Chemical Weapons Convention and offered training in the use of protective equipment and in monitoring, detection, and decontamination techniques that are used in response to attacks with chemical warfare agents. Participants were also familiarised with chemical emergency responses by the CBRNE-2013 Exercise, organised by the South Savo Regional Rescue Department in Mikkeli.
The course facilitated exchange of information and experience regarding Article X implementation and provided a forum to discuss future cooperation among participating Member States.
*Armenia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Chile, India, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania, Ukraine and Yemen.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Resolving the Syrian Chemical Weapons Crisis: Sunlight and Shadows By Richard Falk
The Putin Moment: Not only did Vladimir Putin exhibit a new constructive role for Russia in 21st statecraft, spare Syria and the Middle East from another cycleof escalating violence, but he articulated this Kremlin initiative in the form of a direct appeal to the American people.
There were reasons to be particularly surprised by this display of Russian diplomacy: not since Nikita Khrushchev helped save the world from experiencing the catastrophe of nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 by backing down and agreeing to a face-saving formula for both superpowers, had Moscow distinguished itself in any positive way with respect to the conduct of international relations; for Putin to be so forthcoming, without being belligerent, was particularly impressive in view of Obama’s rather ill-considered cancellation only a few weeks ago of a bilateral meeting with the Russian leader because of Washington’s supposed anger at the refusal of the Russian government to turn the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, over to the United States for criminal prosecution under American espionage laws; and finally, considering that Putin has much blood on his hands given past policies pursued in relation to Chechnya and in the autocratic treatment of domestic political opposition, it was hard to expect anything benevolent during his watch. And so Putin is emerging as a virtual ‘geopolitical black swan,’ making unanticipated moves of such a major character as to have the potential to transform the character of conflict management and resolution in the 21st century. It should be understood that Putin could have stayed on the sidelines, and benefitted from seeing Obama sink deeper and deeper into the Syrian quagmire, and instead he stepped in with a momentous move that seems to have served the regional and global interest.
Putin has explained in a coherent manner in his opinion piece that was published in the NY Times on September 11th attacks) that his approach to Russian foreign policy relies on two instruments: soft power and economic diplomacy. He acknowledged American leadership, but only if exercised within a framework of respect for international law and the UN Charter. And he appropriately took issue with Obama’s sentiments expressed a night earlier to the effect that America in its leadership role had a unique entitlement to use force to overcome injustice in situations other than self-defense and even without authorization by the UN Security Council. It was Putin, perhaps disingenuously, who claimed (quite correctly) that such a prerogative was “extremely dangerous.” He rejected Obama’s pretension that a unilateral discretion with respect to the use of force could be inferred from American exceptionalism. Whether disingenuous or not, the requirement of a Security Council authorization for non-defensive uses of force, while sometimes preventing a peacekeeping response by the UN to certain tragic situations of civil strife and humanitarian crisis overall contributed to finding diplomatically agreed upon solutions for conflict and enabled the UN (unlike the League of Nations) to persist despite severe tensions among its dominant members. Let hope that this Putin vituoso exhibition of creative diplomacy prompts his counterpart in the White House to explore more diligently soft power opportunities that will better protect American national interests, while simultaneously serving the global interest in war prevention and the rejection of militarism, and might also have the added benefit of reversing the steady decline of American credibility as a benevolent global leader ever since the end of the Cold War.(without invoking the symbolism of the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11
Constitutional Balance: Perhaps what might be of even greater importance than averting an ill-considered punitive attack on Syria, is the grounding of recourse to war on the major republican premise of Congressional authorization. There is little doubt that here the efficient cause and anti-hero was David Cameron, who turned to Parliament to support his wish to join with Obama in the attack coalition despite the anti-war mood in British public opinion. Cameron was politically spared by the vote of the House of Commons to withhold authorization. It is hard to believe that Obama’s decision to seek authorization from the U.S. Congress was not a belated realization that if Britain deferred to its Parliament as an expression of constitutional democracy, it would be unseemly for the United States to go to war without the formal backing of Congress. Of course, the Putin initiative saved Obama from the near certain embarrassment of being turned down by Congress, which would mean that either he would follow in Cameron’s and face savage criticism from his hawkish boosters or insist upon his authority as Commander in Chief to act on his own, a prerogative that seems constitutional dubious to support a bill of impeachment. Beyond this, theWar Powers Act that would seem to require some emergency justification for the presidential bypassing of Congress in the context of a proposed military action. Hopefully, we are witnessing, without an accompanying acknowledgement, the downfall of the ‘imperial presidency’ that got its start during the Vietnam War. The governmental pendulum in the United States may have started to swing back toward the separation of powers and checks and balances, and thus be more in keeping with the original republican hopes of limited executive authority, especially in relation to war making. This renewal of republican constitutionalism, combined with growing populist skepticism about military adventures abroad, might make this Syrian crisis of decision a welcome tipping point, reversing the unhealthy subordination of Congress in war/peace situations during the last half century and anti-democratic disregard of the views of the citizenry. More
Saturday, September 14, 2013
How to destroy chemical weapons by Paul Walker
The recent news that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is willing to accede to the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) has raised the question: How might one actually go about eliminating Syria’s chemical munitions?
The CWC entered into force in 1997. Seven CWC member countries have declared existing chemical weapons stockpiles—Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. Three of these—Albania, India, and South Korea—completed stockpile destruction in the last few years. Three more—Libya, Russia, and the US—expect to complete their destruction programs over the next decade. And Iraq, which joined the convention in 2009, is planning the destruction of its chemical weapons equipment and agents left from the 1991 Gulf War.
There are essentially three broad categories of destruction approaches, all used successfully in the above programs. These approaches can be mixed and matched, depending on the type, size, quantity, and condition of the agents, munitions, and containers.
Incineration.The initial destruction technology used by the United States—which began operating its first prototype facility on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in 1990—involves burning chemical agents and munitions in high-temperature furnaces. Individual munitions such as rockets and artillery shells, likely similar to what has been used in Syria, are dismantled and drained of their liquid agents on a robotic disassembly line. The liquid agent is captured in holding tanks and then moved to a liquid furnace. Should the munitions include explosives or propellant, these are separated and burned in an explosives furnace, armored to withstand blasts. A metal parts furnace is used to burn any remaining residue of agent left in the metal containers and weapon shells A fourth “dunnage” furnace was designed to burn all other materials—wood pallets, plastics, fiberglass cases—but in practice, these potentially contaminated materials are fed through the metal parts furnace as well.
Tons of gaseous effluents from this process are then scrubbed by multiple wet and dry filters and released into the atmosphere through a tall smokestack; alarms notify workers if any agent is accidently released out the smokestack.
Neutralization.The preferred process of Russia and four American states has been a wet chemistry approach, typically called neutralization or hydrolysis. This requires that the chemical weapons container or weapon be drained; its liquid agent is placed in a mixing tank with hot water or a caustic reagent such as sodium hydroxide, or with both. Russia introduces its reagent directly into its large aerial bombs, allowing the chemical process to operate directly in the bomb for a month or more. The chemical reaction destroys the toxicity of the agent and the liquid effluent can then be further processed in a second stage, using either a liquid industrial incinerator or a bioremediation process similar to sewage treatment. The metal parts of weapons are processed in a metal parts furnace.
Explosive destruction systems. In a third option, countries seeking to destroy chemical weapons detonate or neutralize each weapon in a closed “bang box,” a heavy reactor designed to blow up or treat chemically each individual weapon in a contained and safe manner, capturing and treating all gas, liquid, and solid toxic effluents. This process is being used by the Japanese now to destroy the hundreds of thousands of abandoned Japanese chemical weapons being excavated at multiple sites around China; it is also used to treat unexploded ordnance, both chemical and conventional, unearthed in Europe after the world wars. It will also be used as a complementary treatment process in the United States for some weapons.
There are a variety of other possible treatments for destroying chemical weapons, including steam reactors, plasma reactors, and super-critical water oxidation reactors. The basic approach to chemical weapons destruction is typically conditioned on safety, public health, local preferences, cost, and schedule. In fact, the CWC mandates that such demilitarization programs be based primarily on the protection of public health, the environment, and workers. Ocean dumping, burial, and open burning are prohibited, even though these were common practice decades ago.
It will be difficult to predict the best destruction options for Syria until more specific details of its program are known: how many sites, how many weapons, what types of agents, the amount of precursor chemicals, and the condition of the stockpiles. The good news is that the governmental and private sectors of the United States, Russia, Germany, Japan, and other countries have many years of experience that can help guide the project. The bad news? It will be a long-term, expensive operation. More
“Working together for a world free of chemical weapons”
OPCW Press Release 11/2013 | The Hague, 14 September 2013 |
OPCW Director-General Welcomes Agreement on Syrian Chemical Weapons
The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, has welcomed the agreement on chemical weapons in Syria that wasannounced today following talks held in Geneva between the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey V. Lavrov, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
The Director-General hopes that these agreements will facilitate the fulfilment of obligations by Syria deriving from the Chemical Weapons Convention, which it has decided to join. Following decisions that are proposed to be taken by the Executive Council of the OPCW, necessary measures will be adopted to implement an accelerated programme to verify the complete destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles, production facilities and other relevant capabilities.
The Director-General envisages that this significant step will be fully supported by States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the wider international community. The CWC represents the sole multilateral mechanism to rid the world of chemical weapons and the OPCW,with over 16 years of experience, possesses the necessary skills and capacities to undertake such missions. OPCW experts are already at work preparing a roadmap that anticipates the various undertakings and missions in Syria. Nine OPCW experts recently participated in the UN investigation of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.
These matters are expected to be discussed by the OPCW Executive Council in the coming week. More
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Syria: Obama’s Surprising (and Confusing) Latest Moves by Richard Falk
President Obama’s August 31st remarks from the White House Rose Garden will long be remembered for their strangeness, but the final interpretation of their significance will have to await months if not years.
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| Richard Falk |
There are three dimensions, at least, that are worth pondering: (1) seeking Congressional authorization for a punitive military attack against Syria in support of the treaty prohibition on recourse to chemical weapons in an armed conflict; (2) reconciling any endorsement of an attack by Congress with United States obligations under international law and with respect to the United Nations and its Charter; (3) assessing the degree to which American war making prerogatives continue to operate within an unacceptable domain of American exceptionalism.
In framing the issues at stake Obama set forth the fundamental policy choices in a rather incoherent manner:
- First of all, he asserted that on the basis of evidence available to the United States Government, that the Assad regime was without doubt responsible for the massive chemical weapons attack of August 21st directed at the Ghouta residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus, and causing over 1,000 civilian deaths, including several hundred children. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, clearly articulated the grounds for skepticism about this American construction of the Ghouta atrocity. He put forward a strongly worded request that the allegations be confirmed by the release of convincing evidence. This is a reasonable demand. Many around the world have questioned why Assad would launch such a provocative attack to coincide with the arrival of UN inspectors, and when the battlefield balance was tipping in favor of the Damascus regime. All along such important figures in the Obama administration, especially John Kerry and Joe Biden, have arrogantly dismissed the relevance of any information provided by the UN inspection team. In light of the gigantic deception relating to Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) arsenal, which was more politely described long after the event as an ‘intelligence failure,’ it would have been appropriate for Washington to admit that it has a credibility problem in winning governmental and popular support for an attack on Syria. Its refusal to acknowledge such an issue merely deepens suspicions.
- Secondly, Obama informed listeners that “..after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets.” He added that he made this decision “as Commander-in-Chief on what I am convinced are our national security interests.” This conclusion was explained to rest on the importance of punishing such a crime against humanity and deterring future recourse to chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction by Syria, as well as sending a message to Iran and North Korea about America’s readiness to use force to uphold such norms of international law.
- Thirdly, there was no effort in Obama’s remarks to show why, absent a UN mandate, the United States in coalition with a few other countries, had the legal authority to attack a sovereign state in a circumstance other than self-defense.
- Fourthly, although the decision against involvement by the British Parliament was noted, there was no consideration as to whether such an outcome should bear on American policy. Nor was the German or Italian unwillingness to join in the attack noted, nor that of the Arab League. But the French support was duly appreciated, including a dig at the United Kingdom, by reminding his listeners around the world that it was France that was America’s “oldest ally.” (It is worth noting that the roles of these two European friends were directly reversed in the context of the Iraq War; then, it was the French more conservative led government that opposed participation, while now a socialist leader in Paris supports an attack against Syria).
- Fifthly, and in the most dramatic passage in the speech, Obama announces that because the United States is a proud democracy he has made “a second decision: I will seek the authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress” by calling for a debate and vote. No mention is made of a time frame, nor how he would react in the event that authorization was not forthcoming. Such an eventuality would set up a potential tension between his duties to uphold national security and an obligation of deference to a decision by Congress on the vital matter of authority to wage war. Obama touched all the bases by saying, “Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.” In effect, there is no constitutional legal requirement to obtain Congressional authorization, but doing so will create a more effective response. But what if authorization is withheld? Or Congress is split with approval by the Senate, and disapproval by the House?
- Sixthly, there is an implicit endorsement of American exceptionalism. After saying that the case for an attack will be made internationally, as well as domestically, Obama reaffirms a national prerogative of illegal unilateralism. He uses this phrase: “But we are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus.” That is no matter that others disagree, the United States alone has the duty to act as it sees fit. It is correctly presumed that such discretion is not vested in other sovereign states. Otherwise the world would be in flames. In effect, Syria, Iran, North Korea are bound by international law, as interpreted by the United States, while the United States and its closest allies are guided by assessments of their national security interests.
It is this double standard that is at the core of American exceptionalism, and also underpins the debate as to whether it is more instructive to view the United States as ‘global leader’ or ‘imperial power,’ or possibly some blend;
There is something rather sinister about announcing an intention to strike a vulnerable country with which the United States is not at war, coupled with the announcement that the needed military capabilities are in place, but will not be used until convenient; in effect, a lethal strike against Syria can take place at any point from now on until a time weeks or months from now, depending only on the workings of the internal American political process and the disposition of its Commander-in-Chief. If this is deemed to be in the interest of the Syrian people, I would like to know how.
Even if the controversy as to the facts is ignored, and the problems associated with double standards as to the relevance of international law to the use of force, there are some other reasons for concern about the approach adopted by President Obama:
- It denies constitutional status to the request for Congressional authorization, making it a discretionary presidential judgment call that is not necessitated by the Constitution, but is an expression of Obama’s belief in democratic procedures. To not rest this request on the Constitution itself is a missed opportunity, and thus amounts to yet another reassertion of excessive authority by the Executive Branch of government;
- It makes no effort to assess what would be of benefit to the people of Syria, and rather makes the case for a narrow strike as a combination of punishing (without intending to displace) the Assad regime and abstract American national security interests in its self-appointed role as preventing the use and spread of WMD;
- It fails to advocate in a serious manner a diplomatic approach to ending the violence of the conflict by calling for a second Geneva conference with the full participation of Iran that would deal with regional peace and security issues, as well as the war in Syria;
- It undermines the authority of the UN and international law by vesting in the U.S. Government the final word on when it is appropriate to use international force in non-defensive modes and fails to make war a matter of ‘last resort’;
- It draws an overly sharp a distinction between this incident involving chemical weapons and other massacres that have occurred during the course of two years of strife in Syria; regardless of the weaponry deployed both forms of violence are crimes against humanity that deserve a serious and effective response, if available.
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It is as yet possible that Congress will rescue Obama from having to respect a red line he ill-advisedly proclaimed a year ago. It would be ironic if this one time the anti-Obama Republicans saved him from the worse foreign policy excess of his presidency!
It is possible that Obama will be pushed by pro-interventionists to override a Congressional failure to give authorization. It is also possible that Congress will authorize, and public opinion strongly oppose. And we are left to wonder whether Congress can constitutionally authorize a use of force that violates international treaty law. Of course, we would be unlikely to find out given the passivity of the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to challenges directed at legally dubious foreign policy and national security matters.
All of the above suggests that the revitalization of American republicanism requires, as a matter of urgency, a constitutional convention with an explicit mandate to restore the separation of powers and checks and balances in relations to war/peace issues. The U.S. Government has longed strayed from this vital pillar of republican democracy.
Nothing would do more to restore confidence in the United States as a global leader! Such a momentous event will not happen without massive grassroots pressure; it will never be decreed from on high.
A final word of blurred appreciation: CNN talking heads are very fond of referring to Obama as epitomizing ‘the reluctant warrior.’ And reluctant he is, but also warrior he has been, and continues to be, casting a rather dark shadow over the Nobel Peace Prize decision process. The reluctance is articulated over and over again in his words and sometimes reflected in his policies, and certainly seems sincere. And such reluctance may be credited, at least subconsciously, with this welcome move to broaden the domestic authorization process with respect to this non-defensive use of international force. Obama would deserve less ambiguous praise if he had recognized the role of Congress prior to the decision of the British Parliament. And prior the many demands from Congress for a greater role gathering political momentum. More
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Editorial
I question how the international community can discipline a States Party to the United Nations for acting unilaterally? States that carry out drone strikes, committing extra-judicial killings, allegedly as part of their war on terror, a 'war' that the said state may be at least partially responsible for causing.
There has to be accountability, or as Richard Falk points out; Obama reaffirms a national prerogative of illegal unilateralism. He uses this phrase: “But we are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus.” That is no matter that others disagree, the United States alone has the duty to act as it sees fit.
The international community must uphold the Rule of Law, the United National and all International Organizations have an obligation to uphold the Rule of Law. The mandate of the Geneva Conventions must be upheld. I argue that it is a human right for all states to be held accountable and for there to consequences for illegal actions. Editor