The folly of a Syrian intervention

American policy toward the Syrian civil war over the past few years has vacillated between passive diplomacy and outright neglect. After standing by idly for years as approximately 100,000 Syrians have perished, we are now to believe that an alleged chemical-weapons attack by the Syrian government on its own people is the final straw necessitating American military involvement.

To support a policy of intervention, arguments have been mounted to appeal to the left and right of the American political spectrum. Progressives are being urged to support an armed response out of a sense of humanitarianism, not unlike the justification that led the U.S. to join a coalition to topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Meanwhile, war advocates are hoping to pull conservatives into their corner by appealing to a sense of national pride and international responsibility. For instance, on today’s Wall Street Journal’s opinion page, Eliot Cohen, an academic and sometime bureaucrat, urged America to act in Syria both to protect its “primacy” in the world and to strike a symbolic blow against tyrants that might serve as a cautionary tale to others who trample human rights. Nearby in the Journal’s pages, Bret Stephens finds occasion to reference the seldom-remembered Robert Taft, the political avatar of mid-century American isolationism, as a warning to the Republican Party to avoid the perils of inaction, stating that we need to “mak[e] an example of a thug who flouts U.S. warnings and civilized conventions.”

Despite a particular reading of history that attempts to impart a humanitarian purpose behind some of America’s conflicts, I never have bought into the concept of “humanitarian wars.” Creeds, confessions, dollars, deutschmarks, markets, heaven, hell, and Helen of Troy – these things I understand, but the notion that we fight to relieve our fellow human beings of suffering strikes me as exceedingly naïve. So much so that I won’t attempt here to outline the manifest stupidity of such thinking and the inevitable failure resulting from it. As an aside, I would point out that our “humanitarianism,” as a matter of historical record, is so inconsistently applied and ill-defined such to render the point moot. From the open sore of North Korea to the killing fields of Pol Pot, America has routinely stomached tyrannies abroad; to declare that Syria is the cause we wish to take up in the name of humanitarianism is at best arbitrary and at worst a cover for some deeper, less altruistic goal, however nebulous it may be.

I would like to spend a few moments, however, exploring the appeals currently being made to conservatives to join the war caucus.

The prime example of specious reasoning used to support armed intervention recalls Mr. Cohen’s “primacy” argument; that is, if we don’t intervene, it makes us look weak and invites similar acts of defiance. We are urged to remember the sacrifices and hardships that placed America in its privileged position and to avoid taking our position for granted. Of course, this argument has been mounted before in various shapes and sizes. For instance, the Cold War “domino theory” was at the heart of American rationale for becoming embroiled in Vietnam; similar arguments were advanced prior to the Iraq debacle, as well.

What all of these instances share – including this latest version – is the fallacy of a false dilemma. It is a kind of either/or reductionism that would have us act now or forever lose our place in the world. It simply isn’t true. Of course, President Obama has made it more difficult to grasp how fallacious this line of reasoning is due to his intemperate drawing of “red lines,” but salvaging the honor of a loose-lipped politician is a really bad reason to send in the military. The reality is that there are several options available to us, but we need to define what, precisely, the goal is. Are we trying to oust the Assad government? Are we simply striking out at Syria as a kind of punitive measure?

Goals notwithstanding, those alternative options I spoke of involve something seemingly in short supply in Washington – patience. Geopolitical gamesmanship is a marathon; getting the desired results often involves setting in motion events that are measured in years, not the ticks of the 24-hour news cycle. The challenge of patience becomes more difficult when emotions run high, but military adventures premised on emotion – whether of the humanitarian or nationalistic ilk – rarely achieve anything of lasting value and are often textbook examples of how foreign governments can manipulate feckless politicians.

For instance, suppose we drop a few bombs in Syria. Maybe we destroy a chemical factory; maybe we ground the Syrian air force. These aren’t nugatory, but neither are they decisive. The Assad regime will survive such attacks and will probably look all the stronger for it. “Go Big or Go Home” was often heard during the Iraq War, and there is a logical consistency to it. Unless you’re prepared to unleash unassailable military force, unless you’re prepared for the expenditure of blood and treasure necessary to the task, a war of half-measures will not achieve the desired political goals and actually harms your standing in the world. When the Eliot Cohens of the world demand that we protect our honor and “primacy,” ask them how Iraq worked out for us.

This line of inquiry also clarifies why the humanitarian casus belli is wrong-headed. Once you grasp the utility of the Go Big or Go Home mindset, military action then becomes subject to a cascading series of cost-benefit analyses. How does one begin to quantify a “humanitarian war”? Must we, then, go to any length to relieve the suffering of a tyrannized people? Where is the line that Mr. Obama is fond of drawing?

Today’s New York Times reports that the U.S. may be engaging Iran in an effort to solve the Syria situation, and in some ways, this is more distressing than the imminent military intervention. It also sets in stark contrast the game Iran is playing against our own efforts. Iran is in this for the long haul; success will be measured in generations. Meanwhile, we move willy-nilly, prompted by short-term considerations, from conflagration to conflagration, seeming to suffer from a kind of strategic attention deficit disorder.

In the short term, perhaps we need to come to terms with the notion that there isn’t much that can be done in Syria – certainly not on the time line and budget that our government seems to be contemplating. Rather than throwing ourselves into another Mid-East civil war, perhaps we would do better to figure out what we want and how to get it. No doubt, a first step in the right direction would be finding a little patience, understanding that the wheel of History doesn’t move in tidy four-year election cycles.