[Prefatory Note: This post is a somewhat modified version of the text published on the Middle East Eye website on September 9, 2015, and here by prior arrangement.]
On its surface Syria offers seems an ideal case for humanitarian intervention. An incredible half of the 23 million Syrians are either internally displaced or refugees living in dire circumstances, aggravating the migrant crisis currently overwhelming Europe. What is worse, mass atrocities have continued under the authority of the Damascus regime since March 2011, and to some degree by actions of the opposition. Further, for more than a year ISIS has emerged as a principal opposition force in Syria, and is responsible for unprecedented barbarism in large areas of the country under its control.
Beyond this, a diplomatic resolution of the conflict has so far failed miserably. The UN has appointed several distinguished Special Envoys who have resigned in disgust unable to rely on ceasefire reassurances from Bashar el-Assad. The two Geneva inter-governmental conferences that were convened with great effort ended in utter frustration. The United States is far from blameless, seemingly avoiding Russian compromises early on because it believed that the insurgency was on the verge of victory, and diminishing prospects later by insisting that Iran be excluded from the diplomatic process because of Israeli and Saudi sensitivities.
To complete this depressing picture, the parties to the conflict seem badly stuck, neither having a path to victory nor displaying any willingness to work toward a credible compromise. The opposition to the Assad government remains incoherent and disunited, and certainly seems incapable of offering Syria a workable alternative.
Not surprisingly given this overall situation, especially the spectacle of persisting civilian suffering, with its regional spillover effects destabilizing Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey, is prompting a renewed call for humanitarian intervention, most influentially, in the form of a no fly zone (NFZ). It is contended that a well implemented NFZ could protect Syrians from the ravages being wrought by notorious barrel bombs. These terrible weapons are mainly used by Damascus to make civilian governance impossible in rebel held areas of the country. Proponents of intervention argue that once a NFZ is established it will ease civilian suffering, and might in due course exert sufficient pressure on the Syrian leadership to produce a political climate in which an acceptable diplomatic solution is finally attainable and this dreadful war brought to an end, a result that might even have at this point the benefit of a nudge from Iran and Russia.
Responsibility to Protect
The UN recently held a self-congratulatory session celebrating the 10th anniversary of the R2P (or responsibility to protect) norm, while acknowledging that there was work to be done considering the existence of ongoing killing fields as Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and North Korea. Notably absent from the list, a supreme instance of diplomatic tact at its hypocritical worst, was Gaza, and more generally, occupied Palestine, which since 2012 is after all a ‘state’ in the eyes of the General Assembly. Such other geopolitical touchy places as Kashmir, Rakhine, Xinjiang were also conveniently ignored in this effort to assess the record of R2P’s first decade. Leaving these awkward silences aside, at least the question should be asked: ‘Why has the R2P norm not been applied to Syria?’ The answer illuminates what is wrong with the cynical way world order operates in a post-Cold War setting, being more protective of trade and finance than it is of people, more motivated by oil than by a genuine humanitarian rescue mission.
The superficial obstacle to a R2P operation in Syria is the geopolitical standoff between states continuing to back the Assad regime and those supporting the opposition. This means that approval of an NFZ as a tactic compatible with the UN Charter is unavailable because of an anticipated Russian veto. Thus any use of force, such as establishing a NFZ, in either the north or south of Syria, or both, would neither have the backing of the UN Security Council nor qualify as self-defense under international law. This means that such an undertaking would violate the Charter on its key principle of prohibiting recourse to non-defensive international force without authorization from the Security Council, thereby disregarding the requirement of UN approval that is a critical feature of the R2P approach.
Proceeding outside the UN would further undermine the authority of international law with respect to war/peace issues. A less legalistic and constitutionalist explanation of this blockage arises from the dark side of the R2P precedent set in Libya back in 2011 when Russia and China and other SC members, despite their reluctance, were persuaded to allow a proposed humanitarian NFZ in Libya to be established only to find that the UN debate was a notorious instance of bait-and-switch. It was obvious that NATO’s intentions from the outset were far more expansive than the authorizing resolution in the Security Council, and once the military operation began immediately employed tactics seeking regime change in Tripoli rather than civilian protection for Benghazi. What seemed to skeptics of the R2P approach as an outright deception in its first test of R2P left a bad taste that has definitely discouraged a cooperative approach to Syria that engaged Russia. The Libyan precedent is not the whole story of relative passivity of the international community by any means. Syria’s antiaircraft capabilities also inhibited coercive action by making it more problematic to suppose that air power could shift the balance quickly and at moderate costs against the Assad regime.
Kosovo—A Poor Precedent
Then there is the earlier Kosovo precedent in which a humanitarian intervention was controversially carried out without UN approval, under the authority of NATO before the R2P norm existed and in the face of strong Russian opposition. Arguably, the operation was a success, Serbian oppressive rule ended, Kosovo and its people saved from an impending episode of ethnic cleansing similar to the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian males (1995), and despite being ignored in the undertaking, the UN willingly entered the post-conflict scene in a big way to help Kosovo achieve transition to political independence. One influential appraisal of Kosovo pronounced the NATO intervention to be unlawful, yet legitimate, because it effectively removed a credible threat of imminent threat of mass atrocity at a moderate cost.
Several problems arise if relying on Kosovo to justify establishing a NFZ in Syria. First of all, Syria is a much larger country within which a civil war has been raging for more than four years causing an estimated 300,000 deaths, the Syrian government is reported to have sophisticated antiaircraft capabilities. Secondly, Europe was unified with regard to an anti-Serb intervention in Kosovo, with the partial exception of Greece, whereas the Middle East is so deeply divided with respect to Syria as to be engaged on opposite sides of a proxy war with sharp sectarian dimensions. Thirdly, the opponents of NFZ, unless persuaded to change their position, are more deeply involved, and have the capabilities to offset the impact of such an operation against their ally in Damascus.
Fourthly, assuming that a Syrian NFZ would be effective, the elimination of Syrian air power might actually work to the advantage of ISIS, which operates exclusively on the ground. Fourthly, unlike Kosovo where the U.S. was eager to demonstrate that NATO still had a role in the post-Cold War world, the geopolitical motivation in Syria remains confused and weak, being uncertain despite the passage of time. Also, the U.S. has had bad experiences with its recent interventions in the region, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, and wants to avoid being drawn into yet another war in a predominantly Muslim country. And fifthly, the present scene in Libya and Iraq show that handling the effects of even a militarily successful intervention can lead to prolonged chaos and militia governance. Such experiences of sustained chaos are not viewed by most of the affected population as improvements over the old authoritarian orders held together by the brutality of Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein, or Assad. When the alternatives are chaos or order, populist sentiments generally opt for order. This pattern has been evident throughout the region, especially in the aftermath of the short-lived Arab Spring.
Further in the background are considerations associated with state-centric world order in a post-colonial setting, which in the Middle East has left many bad memories of the harm the European colonial powers did to the region after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. To override the sovereignty of a state, and its capacity for national resistance, ignores the experience of the world in the period since 1945 where almost every Western intervention has ended in political failure.
The West’s Dilemma
So here is the dilemma: to stand by doing nothing while mass atrocities occur year after year in Syria with no end in sight is an intolerable international failure of moral responsibility for human suffering of this innocent civilian population. Yet to do something that will actually improve the situation is far from obvious, and the record of NFZs in the kind of situation that exists in Syria is not encouraging, nor are other coercive alternatives. General Martin Dempsey, the American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned against establishing a NFZ in Syria, pointing out that the government’s antiaircraft capabilities are at least five times greater than what Libya possessed, including some high end systems capable of shooting down high altitude planes.
There are some alternatives that try to find tactics that do something without making the situation worse. One sort proposal is to propose a more assertive approach by the United States, comprehensively advocated in a recent report of the International Crisis Group, believes that a series of non-military and covert initiatives could make a difference. It argues that this approach should start with what is logistically easier, a focus on the South of the country where moderate anti-regime forces are in greater control, and then if successful, extending such tactics to the more contested Northwest where Syrian antiaircraft pose a greater obstacle and ISIS has its strongholds.
All in all, the West cannot stand one more failed intervention in the Middle East, nor can it leave unattended a deep humanitarian crisis that spilling over Syrian borders. The burden in such a tragic situation should be placed on pro-interventionists to show convincingly how a NFZ can be established and maintained in the face of expected resistance from within and opposition from without. So far this burden has not been sustained. There are other ways to help alleviate civilian suffering and to exert greater pressure on Damascus that do not rely on such a blunt and unreliable instrument as a NFZ. In the background is the steadfast refusal of the United States or its European allies to be willing to contemplate an occupation of Syria via a ground attack, not because of legal or moral inhibitions, but due to the lack of political support for any military operation likely to result in significant casualties for the intervenor.
There exists a more drastic diplomatic approach that should have been tried long ago, and still seems worth the effort: bringing Iran and Russia into a peace process as major players, overriding objections by Saudi Arabia and Israel. Such a diplomatic atmosphere might at last create the war-ending conditions for compromise and cooperation that include putting pressure on Damascus. In such an altered setting, either a NFZ, or an equivalent proposal could find support within the Security Council or such a measure would no longer be needed. This diplomatic initiative is admittedly a long shot, but better than the alternatives of doing nothing or acting outside the framework of the UN and international law with scant prospects of success and big chances that things would go badly wrong. There are reliable reports circulating that the U.S. Government rejected a Russian backed initiative 2012 that would have included Assad being removed from power because Washington was then so convinced that the Damascus government was about to collapse in any event, and no diplomatic compromise was needed. At least, there is now a more realistic understanding of the balance of forces in Syria, and what form of compromise has any chance of being sustained. Unfortunately, however, with the emergence in the meantime of the al-Nusra Front and ISIS, difficult questions arise as to whether in the situation that prevails at present any compromise is sustainable unless externally maintained by a major international presence, which itself seems politically unattainable.
What this prolonged dilemma in the face of mass atrocity shows is the deficiency of state-centric world order if appraised from the perspective of human wellbeing rather than national interests. The failures in Syria are not just the shortcomings of diplomacy and manipulations of geopolitics, but also a severe mismatch between structures and capabilities of global authority and the vulnerabilities of the peoples of the world. Until these structures are transformed on the basis of the human and global interests Syrian dilemmas in one form or another are bound to recur.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
As usual there. Is partiality in the equalization of blame by even the most distinguished of Scholars such as Richard Falk.
Did the USA create the Taliban by training and arming the Fedayeen to get the USSR out of Afghanistan. (Correctly so or not)
Did the USA and NATO contribute to the situation in Libya by supporting Heart Eating and Baton Sodomizing Opponents of Ghaddaffi
Did the USA finance and support the Coup D’Etat which removed Egypt’s First democratically elected government.
And so on and so on, including what is worst IS in Bessarabia or Assad.
What is worst Likud and Bibi or a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian struggle for Self Determination.
What is worst Israel alone having nuclear weapons while the West turns a blind eye and thus remains the cherry picked bully on the block.
Professor Falk in my Caribbean Integration Lectures, my Public International Law Lectures, my Private International Law Lectures you always figure.
However I tire at the transparent or opaque apologia for an intellentually bankrupt Western Foreign Policy which has been perhaps the single biggest contributor to the Human Trafficking/Migration/Refugee problem facing the EU.
And of course the USA is an ocean away.
Sheldon A. McDonald
A Student of Yours from My years at Carleton in the mid-eighties.
Sent from my BlackBerry® device from Digicel
Thanks, Sheldon, for this intriguing comment, and the personal dimension. Your rhetorical questions
raise deep and difficult questions relating to the contradictions and structures of power that control
our perceptions to a significant degree.
In any event, wishing you well, and appreciate the renewal of contact.
Dr. Falk – before some idiot call me antisemite – let me quote British Jewish journalist and author, Ben White: “When it comes to creating refugees – no one can beat Israel.” Let’s not forget, Netanyahu refused to accept Syrian refugees because they’re not Jewish.
http://rehmat1.com/2015/09/15/jewish-author-israel-makes-refugees/
A note:
Can Middle East refugees also stay in Bosnia because there is many places that are empty and can be re-populated for short, as well as long term? It depends on how long refuges want and like to stay.
I know that around my hometown areas, exiled people do not want to come back home, and our for years now our priests are devasted that no one wants to return and take care of their property. Thing just look awful in the neighborhoods.
There is no near by Mosk, but the Mosk can be built and well as areas around there. There is at least one Mosk about 15 miles away – a local city. There are Churches, as well if there are some Christians with the refugees. I am sure that local citizens, as well as local public servants, would be more then tankful to receive refugees, and they are so virtues to clean things around very fast. Two Years ago – there was a local flood because the river that hardly ever has flooded in the past came out of its banks and flooded everything around. They fixed it up in the matter of months. Grandma’s were very impressed and happy to be in their gardens sipping coffee. Likewise, the population there is very much integrated from other areas due to prior war, so having more refugees would be no problem, at all. Because the cultural atmosphere in Bosnia, refugees could adapt without difficulties there in our areas.
Likewise, Srebrenica seems to be never re-populated, and that town and areas would have to be consecrated / exorcism of grounds would have to take place. (Church-Charismatic-Catholic would have to do that). They should open these areas for people that are in needs.
I am sure that UN donations for the rebuilding of the areas can be trucked in into Srebrenica and rebuild the areas, just as has trucked out our people from there – locals should ask for a lot. I mean luxury and luxury they should ask for.
Bosnians should receive Muslim refugees with joy and repentance – just in memory to their late president, who visited the city-council in Srebrenica before people were trucked out and then shortly after they ere killed.
And maybe then they only will they be able to brake off satanic claims of the wicked and their ancestors over the Land in the name of God and in the name Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
YES -Syrian Muslims and Christians could be settled in Bosnia, though it’s already over-populated. But, the Bosnian Serb and Croat leaders would act like Netanyahu: “We don’t have enough land for new Muslims as that would change country’s demographic landscape.”
I know, Israeli lobby would be happy to through Syrian refugees in front of their fellow Nazi thugs. The ‘Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC)’ has already Croats being Nazis.
http://rehmat1.com/2015/06/01/jewish-lobby-croatia-supports-nazis/
I think and believe that Bosnia is not overpopulated. I believe that Bosnian’s have some human conscience to themselves, as well.
Also, I believe that Demographics is such nonsense when lay-people handle such things. It is purely scientific research that lay-people should not mull around with, at all. Demographics are scientific measurements that can be controlled science, just as well.
In reality – there are only people, humans. Lay-people can and should focus on that – it is so much beneficial for them.
We do and can respect religious and ethnic backgrounds – but why should lay-people go about that? Why should one use demographics to abut that respect religious and ethnic backgrounds? I do not know that it should – or just how much it should be relevant and reveled to lay-people?
Further, our villagers (who were Croatians) in Bosnia hid German soldier who run away from the German troops – deserted. He was my sisters in law Grandfather. He stayed in the village, all his life. He was not a Nazi, nor were the villagers. No such thing in the Church. They were hiding all from the radicals in the fields under the haystacks – regardless if they were Serbs or Croats (WWII).
They do not know what they are talking about – but I told you about Nazi-spiritismus, already. I just do not want to go about that again.
Re Kosovo, the casualties significantly increased when NATO intervened. There were the well-documented biases of the ICTY (and ICTR). Dr. Falk focuses on state and UN institutions. Also highly culpable is the international arms trade with profits deposited in unregulated banking and mixed in with other more legitimate savings and investments. Canada just sold over $15b arms to Saudi Arabia; plus huge military-industrial complexes of U.S. and Israel, and of course there are all the weapons left in Iraq now distributed widely. Beyond diplomacy and the repeated atrocities concealed by NFZ and R2P, how about absolutely stopping the arms trade, with moves in the direction (originally set out by the UN Charter) to eliminate the military altogether, to differentiate policing from military intervention. At least these things should be part of the necessary discussion — along with the steps proposed by Phyllis Bennis (including reparations), radical re-distribution of wealth (and capping of wealth)
Kosova is Israel’s ally. So watch out before you’re declared antisemite by Abe Foxman.
In December 2010, Israeli daily Ha’aretz had reported that Interpol is hunting two Israeli Jews involve in harvesting and buying Kosovan body-parts and selling them in Israel for as much as US$137,000.
http://rehmat1.com/2011/02/18/kosova-israel-and-the-islamic-threat/
Regarding other fundamental changes (see my comments above), the young men on all sides, men whose lives are sacrificed or profoundly derailed by becoming soldiers (and cannon fodder), it is necessary to provide them with resources — land re-distribution first, and of course health care/ some guaranteed income. The dangers of annihilation are so extreme now that finally the underlying problems need to be fixed.
Judith, thanks for this valuable commentary..richard
We Can — and Should — Do More to Help Syrian Refugees
by Chris Toensing
If tiny Lebanon can receive over 1 million, surely the wealthiest country in the world can follow suit.
If I were a Syrian refugee I’d think twice before trying to find a safe haven in the US. You might end up in one of the US private prison system’s solitary confinement cells. Or in one of the 800 FEMA concentration camps scattered around the country: http://fusionlacedillusions.com/2015/02/02/agenda-21-exposed-american-concentration-camps/
Hi, Gene. I hope you have a wonderful evening/morning/day. I did find that post interesting. I am still thinking and praying about what part of it should I pass on to my teens to read about.
A reflecting note :
I am sure that all those things are in stock and bond currency.
All these things are built and reserved for US citizens (remember that they mainly deport Non-american citizens. But again, Non-american citizens should not swear and raise hands in some manners to no one based on any type of witchcraft in order to become citizens).
So, I am sure that those things are reserved for reserved for US citizens.
I am sure of it because when Satan is done roaming and tramp the world – it will come back viciously on its own citizens. At least it will try as vicious as it can. Nazi spirit is Nazi spirit, and you just can’t rid of it – all that was in times of Nero it is also now. Some Gentile Tribes that did suppose to be Evangelised by the Church never where nor they are now. They are doing all kind of things passing on for the Church or civil order of American society when they are not. It could be easily termed as Neroism.
Americans and Jews are so deep into their nonsense with their hocus-pocus after Nazism that they even don’t know that Nazism is all in their face. I have no doubt that continuing so they will be able to repent in hell. They do not even know what forces do rule them. They are on craze and haze and love to entertain them selfs with their own works. They are like a body without a head, extremely in a dumb spirit. They will look one in their face and will accuse them of evil things that they are. It happened to me personally so many times that I can not even number it.
Ironically, people of Iran rightly say, “Geat Satan.” However, immigrants make it “lesser Satan” – for sure. While the US is the worst place to send Immigrants and refugees I think and believe that the sanity of America could depend on persistent immigration. Still, only as long as immigrants can navigate away from Satanism in the land and not be in exactly same marching. If they are not authentic Roman-Catholic-Charismatic Church – and spiritually immature there are in grave harm. One is consistently under spiritual attack, and air around is so thick and satanic and have – almost like you live in the midst of Satanic legions and throne of Satan.
As Church Charismatic Roman Catholic, I personally, have observed in the various devils in vicious virtuousness, and I know all that to be the case.
But again, I happened to be ordained by the recklessness of the wicked – so my overview of evil is so much different then a lay-folks.
Still, I there are some historical events that are relevant now.
I have this video directly from this website:
http://mrparana.weebly.com/section-19.html
It’s telling, but typical, that our Solons in DC have only military/”diplomatic” options for Syria – or have I missed all those creative proposals to give the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, to give them a break beside the Golden Door? Joint military exercises with Russia have all the appearance of a prelude to Armageddon, shades of the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact, or the marriage on the eve of St. Bartholomew.
The identity crisis is rapidly increasing in Bangladesh and that may become a cause of discrimination in the country and may give a sense of being deprived to any specific ethnic, national, religious group, which is not the ideal situation as far as the overall peace of the country is concerned. Click this link for more details: Syria Opposition Groups Proposel