Though only the size of New England, the broken and bloody land of Syria contains a universe of misery: The Islamic State dug in around eastern cities. President Bashar al-Assad outlasting a five-year insurrection. Rebels pounded by Russian air strikes.
Pictures show a ruined place. Five years of civil war have claimed 400,000 lives. Civilians unable to flee barrel-bomb attacks by Assad forces hang on amid the violence, going days without food.
As President Obama nears his last six months in office, the mess in Syria appears to await his successor. That timing may underlie frustration within the U.S. State Department, whose leader, John Kerry, has been unable to broker a peace in the face of Russian intervention and strongman Assad’s reign of terror.
This week, an unusual dissent emerged from within the ranks of U.S. diplomats who feel American interests demand that Obama end his reluctance to engage militarily. A draft of the memo, signed by more than 50 State Department officials, urges “judicious” use of airstrikes to undermine Assad. Such attacks, it says, “would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.” A copy of the document was obtained by the New York Times.
Obama is routinely criticized for not blowing things up in Syria in the name of foreign-policy progress. But he entered office promising to show restraint in the use of military power and he’s largely kept that vow.
We have seen what happens in the Mideast when the U.S. military is called upon to achieve political ends.
Have we forgotten?
The State Department memo comes through a channel fashioned during the Vietnam War to give voice to competing views about vexing problems. The message it contains won’t be new to this president, who has been resisting calls to match the Russian military intervention.
To be sure, it contains a heartfelt moral appeal to help end suffering in Syria. And its authors are correct that the administration’s hands-off approach to this conflict – after the collapse of peace efforts in Geneva led by Kerry – means more of the same despair on the ground. The memo argues airstrikes are needed to defend the Syrian partial cease fire. Among the 51 career diplomats signing it are a former Syria desk officer with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the former deputy to the U.S. ambassador in Damascus.
There is no doubt they know their stuff and that what they propose might achieve the limited goals it seeks. There is also no doubt that America’s Cold War adversary, Russia, is chasing its own ends in Syria – and they don’t involve a humanitarian impulse to bring peace to a desperate place. Just Thursday, Russia struck U.S.-backed forces fighting ISIS in southern Syria.
This president has shown his willingness to use American military power, from the raid into Pakistan that killed bin Laden to drone strikes and stepped-up attacks in ISIS territories. In this case, Obama’s military advisers are saying no. They warn that any effort to counter Russian moves in Syria risks an escalating confrontation with Vladimir Putin that could spread beyond the Middle East. According to a report in the Times, they also warn about the power vacuum that would emerge if Assad is ousted. The memo does not explain how the U.S. would respond to that.
The logic behind the memo isn’t necessarily wrong – that being tough in a negotiation helps force a political solution by depriving someone like Assad of a military one. By not countering the Syrian government’s violation of the official “cessation of hostilities,” the dissent State Department voices assert, Assad can continue to suppress domestic opponents and feel no pressure to come to terms in a negotiated settlement.
That may be so, but the cost of a mistake could be profound. Far too often in our history, military moves, for limited ends, become seeds of hostilities that cannot be brought under control. This is not the time for Obama to escalate a fight in Syria, especially when it is uncertain which American president would have to finish it.
U.S. airstrikes would not become a “slippery slope,” the memo asserts. And that’s where it lost us. These veteran diplomats have decades of experience among them. That should have taught them that such a claim is usually wrong.