While sending a strong military signal to Damascus,
Washington should at the same time lay the diplomatic basis for an
eventual peace settlement.
Op-Ed Contributor
AP Photo
A Syrian soldier in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus.
By ANATOL LIEVEN
Published: September 1, 2013
The need for an immediate U.S. response in Syria to discourage the
further use of chemical weapons does not change the fundamental dilemma
of U.S. policy, which is that for very good reasons, the United States
does not want either side to win this war. Victory for either side would
mean dreadful massacres and ethnic cleansing, as well as an increased
threat of international terrorism.
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All of this is well known to policy makers in Washington, which explains
President Obama’s praiseworthy caution. What the administration now
needs to do is to start thinking seriously about the real contours of a
Syrian peace settlement, and to turn the Syrian crisis into an
opportunity to rethink its overall strategy in the Middle East.
In the long run, if Syria is not to disintegrate as a country, there
will have to be a peace settlement that guarantees the sharing of power
among Syria’s different ethno-religious groups. The participation of
Russia, Iran and Iraq in such a settlement will obviously be essential.
Washington therefore needs to separate its immediate moral rhetoric in
justifying an attack from the language it uses toward Moscow, Tehran and
Beijing concerning Syria. It would be helpful in this regard for U.S.
officials to remember two facts.
The first is that Russia’s fears concerning the consequences of a rebel
victory are neither wicked nor irrational, but are shared by very many
analysts in the C.I.A., the State Department and the Israeli government.
The second is that in 1988, when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons
against Kurdish rebels and Iranian troops, Washington remained carefully
silent so as not to help the Iranian side in the war with Iraq.
That silence on Washington’s part does not justify inaction now; but it
should certainly discourage demonization of those who for legitimate
reasons fear the consequences of U.S. actions in Syria. U.S. language
toward Moscow, Tehran and Beijing should be characterized by respectful
disagreement, not arrogant and hypocritical hectoring.
The importance of Russia to the conflict in Syria lies both in its links
to the Baath regime, and its good relations with Iran. A deeply
negative consequence of the intensifying Syrian crisis has been to
undermine the possibility of a new dialogue with Iran that was opened by
the victory of the moderate President Hassan Rouhani in the June
elections.
One of the grave problems of the Syrian civil war for U.S. policy has
been that it has risked entangling the United States even more deeply in
an anti-Iranian (and historically at least, anti-Russian) alliance with
the Sunni autocracies of the Persian Gulf that back the Syrian rebels.
This alliance sits badly with America’s own secular and democratic
values, with America’s commitment to a Shiite-dominated government in
Iraq and with America’s hopes for progress in the Muslim world. The
sponsorship of Sunni Islamist extremism by some of these states poses a
threat to American security, and their pathological hatred for Shiism
has contributed to deepening the Middle East’s disastrous sectarian
divides.
Using Moscow to develop new relations with Iran is therefore necessary
not only for a resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue and (eventually)
of the Syrian conflict, but also in the long run for the restoration of
basic stability in the Middle East.
And it should be noted that while Russia has preserved good relations
with Iran, it has also on occasion been prepared to be tough with that
country. The intensified U.N. sanctions eventually agreed to by Russia
and China had a severe effect on the Iranian economy and seem to have
contributed significantly to Hassan Rouhani’s victory in Iran’s
elections.
Of course, a Syrian peace settlement will be terribly difficult to
achieve, and will probably not be achievable until both sides have
fought themselves into a state of exhaustion.
Nonetheless, the basic contours of any long-term settlement are already
clear, as is the need for Iranian and Russian participation. While
sending a strong military signal to Damascus and other regimes to never
again use chemical weapons, Washington should at the same time intensify
attempts to lay the diplomatic basis for this eventual settlement.
Anatol Lieven is a professor in the War Studies
Department of King’s College London and a senior fellow of the New
America Foundation in Washington. A new edition of his book “America
Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism” was published in
2012.
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