Tracking the Syrian Crisis
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Times will provide updates, analysis and public reaction from around the world.
- The Ship That Didn't Stay
- South African Leader Insists on U.N. Leadership
- Libyan Suggests Arab League's Support Has Limits
Decision Syria
Tracking the Syrian crisis and the international response.
Highlights
- Latest
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Defense Department officials said Tuesday that the Navy had ordered one of the five destroyers deployed near Syria’s coast to return to its home port of Norfolk, Va.
It may have just been a coincidence, but the vessel, the Mahan, is named after the American naval historian who helped advance “gunboat diplomacy” — the military theory of sea-power supremacy — at the turn of the 20th century.
Rear Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan, who was a lecturer in naval history and president of the United States Naval War College, published a revolutionary analysis of the importance of naval might in 1890. That analysis, “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783,” helped to explain the reasons for the dominance of the British Empire, according to the Web site of the State Department’s Office of the Historian.
“Mahan and some leading American politicians believed that these lessons could be applied to U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the quest to expand U.S. markets overseas,” the Office of the Historian said.
Admiral Thayer died in 1914 at the age of 74. According to the Web site of Naval History and Heritage Command, Admiral Thayer wrote 20 books and 23 essays on the significance of naval power, and his work had “tremendous influence all over the world.”
The destroyer Mahan, launched in 1996, is the fourth naval warship to bear his name. The first was launched in 1918, in a ceremony attended by Admiral Mahan’s niece, and spent its first year of service patrolling near Cuba.
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JOHANNESBURG — South Africa, Africa’s biggest economy and a country that carries considerable weight on the continent, has pushed a multilateral approach to Syria. It abstained from voting on a July resolution in the United Nations Security Council because it felt the draft was “unbalanced,” in the words of a senior South African diplomat, because it criticized the government but not the rebels.
Since then, South Africa has come out strongly against any military action against Syria without the imprimatur of the United Nations.
Speaking to journalists in Pretoria on Tuesday, President Jacob Zuma warned that the United States must not act without the consent of the United Nations.
“The Security Council must intervene properly on behalf of the Syrian people and find a peaceful solution,” Mr. Zuma said. Bombing Syria is “likely to start a war,” he continued. “We are looking for collective leadership.”
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CAIRO — Two days after the Arab League passed a resolution calling for unspecified international action in Syria, the Libyan diplomat who presided over the session said Tuesday that the league never intended to support the kind of Western military operation President Obama has proposed.
The diplomat, the Libyan foreign minister, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, may not speak for all Arab states, some of whom favor Western action and may have sought a deliberately ambiguous resolution. But his comments are not helpful to the Obama administration, which has cited the Arab League resolution as evidence of broad regional support for Western airstrikes to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The White House says it has evidence that his forces killed more than a thousand civilians in an assault with chemical weapons, which Mr. Assad denies.
Although many Arab rulers — notably in Jordan and the Persian Gulf monarchies — have privately urged Western action, no government other than Saudi Arabia has publicly called for Western military action. The idea is deeply unpopular among citizens across the region. But with the United Nations Security Council unable to pass a resolution authorizing military force, because of the veto power of two Syria allies, Russia and China, mustering evidence of Arab support has become increasingly important to the Obama administration’s arguments for the legitimacy of a missile strike.Read More
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Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to stray from the administration’s promise that a strike on Syria would be limited as he considered scenarios in which Mr. Assad retaliates against a strike. However, Mr. Kerry later said he was merely “hypothesizing,” and that the authorization under consideration would allow for “zero troops on the ground.” Mr. Kerry’s initial comments came in response to questions by Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. More video: opening statements by Mr. Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
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ROME — Top Vatican officials have intensified their calls for dialogue and negotiation as the only viable solution to the conflict.
Pope Francis called on warring factions in Syria to put “courageously” put aside personal interests, overcome “blind contrapositions” and negotiate a solution to the conflict; dialogue and not armed intervention will end the war, he said Sunday.
His words echoed Tuesday, when Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, warned that the situation in Syria could spiral out of control in the case of military intervention. “Stop before it is too late,” he said, in remarks carried by the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. “The logic of violence and retaliation sets off a chain of accusations and vendetta that do not take account of the blood that has been shed, and increase rancor and hatred,” he said, warning that Syria would “be transformed ever more as a hell on earth.”Read More
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As Congress prepares to take up the question of military action against Syria, two new polls find Americans opposed to United States involvement.
Though both surveys — conducted by the Pew Research Center and ABC News/Washington Post — found public opposition to involvement in Syria, the results differed based on the wording of the questions.
Pew found 48 percent opposition and 29 percent support for airstrikes, and ABC/Washington Post found 59 percent opposition and 36 percent support. Yet, support increased when ABC/Post asked whether the United States should intervene if other countries like Britain and France were to join in launching missile strikes. In that case, opposition dropped to 51 percent and support rose to 46 percent.
In the Pew poll, support for military intervention was slightly higher among Republicans than among Democrats and independents. The poll fleshed out what was behind the opposition to United States intervention: most Americans think airstrikes would result in long-term involvement in Syria, would create a backlash against the United States and its allies in the region, and would not discourage the use of chemical weapons in the future.
Pew found that 53 percent of the public (including majorities of Democrats and Republicans) thinks there is clear evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians. Still, those who say there is clear evidence of chemical weapons use are about evenly divided in their opinion of whether the United States should take military action.
Both polls offered alternate hypothetical plans, which were met with varying results. The ABC/Washington Post poll found that 7 in 10 did not want the United States and its allies to supply Syrian rebels with weapons. But Pew’s possible chain of events was more palatable to the public – 6 in 10 Americans would like the United States to get a United Nations resolution authorizing the use of force before taking military action against Syria.
The polls were in the field while the Obama administration was formulating and publicly announcing its plan for dealing with Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons against its own people. Both nationwide telephone surveys were conducted on land lines and cellphones, and have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The Pew survey interviewed 1,000 adults Aug. 29 to Sept. 1, and the ABC/Post survey interviewed 1,012 adults Aug 28 to Sept. 1.
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has remained carefully mum on the question of a military intervention in Syria, but an aide to Mrs. Clinton said Tuesday that she supported President Obama’s decision to seek Congressional approval to intervene in the escalating crisis.
“Secretary Clinton supports the president’s effort to enlist the Congress in pursuing a strong and targeted response to the Assad regime’s horrific use of chemical weapons,” a Clinton adviser told The Times. (This adviser first issued the statement to Politico.)
Mrs. Clinton came under media scrutiny on Monday after she declined to comment on Syria, but wrote a supportive message on Twitter to Diana Nyad, the 64-year-old who successfully swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.
“Flying to 112 countries is a lot until you consider swimming between 2. Feels like I swim with sharks — but you actually did it! Congrats!” Mrs. Clinton wrote.
As the country’s highest-ranking diplomat, Mrs. Clinton had supported arming the Syrian rebels who wish to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
Former President Bill Clinton, who will deliver a speech about Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul in Little Rock, Ark., on Wednesday, has not commented on the situation in Syria. In June however, Mr. Clinton argued that the United States should pursue a more robust intervention.
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