[Prefatory Note: The post below is written as a congratulatory message to Ahmet Davutoğlu. Prior to his entry into government Davutoğlu built a strong following among intellectuals around the world for his scholarly breadth and depth that involved an unusual command over both social science and the humanities, with a special focus on philosophies of history, and their application to the Turkish past and present realities and future prospects. I publish here also a significantly modified article originally written a week ago at the request of AlJazeera Turka, and heretofore only available in Turkish.]
The Ascent of Ahmet Davutoğlu
Richard Falk
So far most commentary on Ahmet Davutoğlu’s selection as Turkey’s new Prime Minister has been focused on what will be his relationship with the country’s new president, Recip Teyyip Erdoğan. Especially opponents of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) tend to portray Davutoğlu as certain to play second fiddle to Erdoğan who is both fiercely resented and feared, and regarded as a ‘Turkish Putin.’ The fact that Erdoğan seems to have handpicked Davutoğlu to succeed him at party leader and prime minister, and acted deliberately to sideline the popular prior president, Abdullah Gul, adds to the concern about what to expect from a government led by Davutoğlu. I believe that such speculation is profoundly wrong, that Davutoğlu is an admirable person of strong beliefs and an adherent of a political vision that has evolved over the years on the basis of study and experience. In my view Davutoğlu will turn out to be a historically significant Turkish leader by virtue of his thoughtful style of governance and through the assertion of his own priorities and programs. Few countries can claim leadership of the quality provided and record achieved by Erdoğan, Davutoğlu, and Gul over the last twelve years.
For Davutoğlu to reach the peak of political power is the latest stage in his remarkable ascent within governing circles in Ankara. Coming to government after a deep immersion in the scholarly life of a university professor is unusual enough, but to rise to such a level of prominence and influence without casting aside his academic demeanor is unprecedented, not only in Turkey but anywhere.
Searching for recent comparisons, I can think only of Henry Kissinger, and he never rose above the level of Secretary of State, although he did serve as architect of American foreign policy during Richard Nixon’s presidency, a period of undoubted global leadership. Unlike Davutoglu, Kissinger treated the moral and legal dimensions of foreign policy as instruments of propaganda rather than as matters of principle. Kissinger as a scholar never achieved the distinction nor the national impact that resulted from Davutoğlu’s Strategic Depth, which incidentally, was planned to be the first of three monumental studies, the other two being devoted to historical depth and cultural depth. One of the costs of entering government has been the deferral of this project, which if completed, is almost certain to be a work of exceptional significance.
Starting out in 2003 as Chief Advisor to the Foreign Minister, and later to the Prime Minister, Davutolğu’s role as a highly influential and respected expert was quickly recognized. Long before Davutoğlu became Foreign Minister in 2009, he was widely respected in Turkey as the architect of its energetic and effective foreign policy, which was causing a stir in the region and around the world.
Davutoğlu’s contributions were particularly notable in three domains of foreign policy. First, he understood and clearly articulated the importance for Turkey to adapt to the new regional setting created by the end of the Cold War, appreciating that it was now possible and desirable for Turkey to be an independent actor in the Middle East and beyond without awaiting clearance from Washington.
Secondly, Davutoğlu from almost the beginning of his role in government became Ankara’s chief emissary in trying to clear the path to Turkish membership in the European Union, working out the important ‘Copenhagen Criteria’ that turned out to be also useful as a roadmap for desired domestic reform. This functioned as an important mandate that was linked to a domestic program of reform, which included protecting human rights and featured the containment of the deep state in Turkey during the early years of AKP leadership when relations with the armed forces were tense, and rumors of an impending coup were in the air. Satisfying the EU requirements gave Erdoğan the justification he needed for impressively strengthening the civilian control of government in Turkey. Because of its private sector interests, the Turkish military turned out to be as eager for EU membership as was the AKP, and even the harsh Kemalist opposition went along with this part of the AKP program.
Thirdly, these moves to civilianize the Turkish government removed altogether the earlier role played by the Turkish armed forces as custodian of the republic through the medium of coups against elected political leaders. In retrospect, substantially removing the armed forces from the political life was a great step forward in democratizing Turkey even if this momentous development was not acknowledged in Brussels, and elsewhere in Europe. For quite independently Islamophobic reasons Europe was becoming adamantly opposed to accepting Turkey as a member of the EU, no matter how successful the Turkish government might be in satisfying the standards laid down for accession. It might also be noted that the secular opposition in Turkey also has never credited Erdoğan with this achievement, which might turn out to have be his greatest contribution to Turkey’s political development as a vibrant constitutional democracy. While praising this central achievement it needs to be noted that the overall record of the AKP on human rights is mixed, with particularly regrettable encroachments on political freedoms via the imprisonment of journalists, pro-Kurdish activists, and others.
From the outset of his time in government, Davutoğlu was also extremely active in doing everything possible to resolve the Israel/Palestinian/Syrian conflicts, and led a comprehensive Turkish effort to bring peace to the region. Davutoğlu’s attempt to have Hamas treated as a normal and legitimate political player after its 2006 electoral victory in Gaza would have saved much grief in the Middle East had it been accepted in Washington and Tel Aviv. After these conflict-resolving initiatives collapsed, Turkey has almost alone in the region played a principled and constructive role by challenging the Israeli blockade of Gaza and seeking to end the collective punishment and humanitarian ordeal of the Palestinian population. This role was resented in the centers of Western power and even in most Arab capitals, but it has endeared Turkey and its leaders to the peoples of the region and beyond. It also gave expression to Davutoğlu’s insistence that a successful Turkish foreign policy should be as principled as possible while at the same time being creatively opportunistic, promoting national interests and values, and in all possible situations seeking engagement rather than confrontation.
More famously, and controversially, Davutoğlu saw the opportunities for Turkish outreach in the Arab world, and beyond. Unlike the failed efforts in the 1990s to incorporate the newly independent Central Asian republics in a Turkish sphere of influence, the AKP effectively approached the expansion of trade, investment, and cultural exchanges throughout the region, an approach given the now notorious doctrinal label by Davutoğlu of ‘zero problems with neighbors’ after he became Foreign Minister in 2009. At first ZPN seemed like a brilliant diplomatic stroke, a dramatic effort to rest Turkey’s ambitions on the dynamics of ‘soft power geopolitics,’ that is, providing benefits, attracting others, and not depending for influence on military prowess or coercive diplomacy. Given what appeared to be the frozen authoritarian political realities in the region, constructive engagement with mutual benefits seemed superior to postures of hostility, tension, and non-involvement that had for so long been characteristic of Turkish foreign policy, and descriptive of the sterile political atmosphere throughout the Middle East.
Then in early 2011 came the Arab Spring that surprised everyone, including Turkey. It created excitement and turbulence throughout the region, but also the promise of far greater democratic and more patterns of governance. Davutoğlu as much as any statesman in the world welcomed these Arab anti-authoritarian upheavals as benevolent happenings, pointing especially to the extraordinary events in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011 that overthrew two long serving authoritarian and corrupt leaders by relying on largely nonviolent mass mobilization. Davutoğlu was especially impressed by Arab youth as a revolutionary force that he believed was well attuned to the changing tides of history.
This optimism did not last long. Events in Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen made it clear that there was not going to take place the smooth and quick transitions that deceptively seemed to be taking place in Egypt and Tunisia. It was soon clear that it would become necessary for Turkey to choose sides as between the authoritarian elites seeking to hold onto or restore their power and the earlier Ankara approach of accommodating the governing authorities of Arab states without passing judgment on how these governments treated their own citizenry.
Syria posed the most severe challenge in this respect. The Assad regime in Damascus had earlier been the poster child of ZPN, and now dramatized the non-viability of such a posture as the Damascus regime became responsible for committing one atrocity after another against its own people. Turkey abruptly switched sides, losing trust in Assad, and aligning itself with rebel forces. Both the pro and anti-Assad postures proved controversial in Turkey. The main secular opposition party, CHP, accusing Erdoğan of playing sectarian politics by supporting in Syria an insurgency that was increasingly dominated by Sunni militants associated with a Syrian version of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Davutoğlu skillfully and reasonably reformulated his ZPN by saying that when a government shoots its own citizens in large numbers, Turkey will side with the people, not the governmental leadership, which lost its legitimacy through its actions. From now on the doctrine associated with his outlook could be more accurately understood as ‘zero problems with people,’ of ZPP. The same logic guided Turkey in its eventual support of the NATO intervention in Libya as the Qaddafi regime seemed poised to engage in genocidal onslaught against the entrapped population of Benghazi to quell a popular uprising. The mass mobilization against the elected Morsi government in Egypt illustrated another kind of difficulty, leading Turkey to stand out in the region, joined only by Qatar, in its refusal to give its blessings to the military coup that brought General Sisi come to power in July 2013.
The touchstone of Davutoğlu’s approach to foreign policy is the effort to blend principle and pragmatism in relation to shifting policy contects, doing what is right ethically while at the same time exploring every opportunity to promote Turkish national interests, including enhancing its international reputation as a responsible and strategic player. This blend of goals was well-illustrated by the seemingly frantic Davutoğlu diplomacy in many settings, including the Balkans, Crimea, Armenia, Myanmar, and Latin America, seeking wherever possible to resolve regional conflicts while lending support to humanitarian goals, and in the process establishing Turkey’s claims to be both a constructive international actor and a valuable partner for trade and investment.
The most impressive example of such an approach was undoubtedly the major initiative starting in mid-2011 to help out a crisis-ridden Somalia when the rest of the world abandoned the country as a ‘failed state.’ Erdoğan and his wife, together with Davutoğlu, visited Mogadishu at time when it was viewed as dangerously insecure and then put together a serious financial aid package to highlight the continuing Turkish commitment. From this bold and imaginative gesture of solidarity came a major opening to Africa for Turkey, which produced an immediate rise in Turkish prestige that brought with it major opportunities throughout the continent.
In reflecting on the Erdoğan/Davutoğlu approach to foreign policy, this Somalia initiative helps explain, as well, how and why Turkey after an absence of 50 years was elected to term membership for 2009-2010 in the UN Security Council with strong African backing. Turkey is again investing an enormous effort to being elected to the Security Council for a 2015-2016 term. It also explains why Istanbul has become a favorite site for major international meetings, often displacing the earlier tendency to choose Western European cities for such gatherings. Both of these involvements at the global level are expressive of Turkey’s ambition to be a global political actor, as well as a strong state and regional influence.
Despite an extraordinary record of achievements, the Davutoğlu foreign policy experience also has its share of blemishes, even taking into account the difficulties that all governments faced in adapting to the abrupt sequence of unexpected changes in the Middle East during the last several years. Perhaps because his plate was so full with an array of diverse undertakings, Davutoğlu didn’t sufficiently focus on the daunting complexities of the aftermath of the Arab Spring, leading him to make on behalf of Turkey several costly miscalculations.
Undoubtedly the most serious of these blunders concerned Syria, not the underlying impulses, but the lack of nuance. In my view, Turkey’s mistakes can be understood in two phases: first, the excessive enthusiasm attached to the initial effort to dissolve the tensions that had dominated Turkish-Syrian relations for many years, affirming the Assad regime well beyond what was necessary for the normalization of relations thereby creating unrealistic expectations; and secondly, not only repudiating the government in Damascus that had been so recently befriended, but giving all measure of aid and comfort to an ill-defined insurgency without any seeming appreciation of the internal balance of forces in Syria. Ankara acted as if the Assad regime would soon collapse if pushed even slightly by the uprising. Turkey seemed continuously surprised by the resilience of the Assad regime and by the internal, regional, and international support it was receiving. Turkish policy was wrong for several reasons, and embroiled Turkey in a prolonged civil conflict with no end in sight, as well as damaged its image as a prudent and calming diplomatic influence throughout the region.
A similar line of criticism can be applied to Davutoğlu’s overall response to the Arab Spring and its aftermath. While it was consistent with the principled side of the foreign policy approach he was pioneering to welcome the events of 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt as transformative, it was premature to pronounce these developments as irreversible, and to anticipate their continuous deepening and regional spread. It soon became evident that Davutoğlu did not adequately appreciate the political will or capabilities of counter-revolutionary forces in the region, and did not seem to take account of the impact of an anti-democratic preoccupation that pervaded the dynastic politics of the well-endowed monarchies in the region. The role of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for instance, in using their petroleum wealth and political leverage to promote a military takeover and bloody crackdown of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt altered the political balance in several countries, and took an unquestionable precedence over even the sectarian impulses of these political actors in their opposition to Shiite Iran. Shocking in this regard is the tacit strategic compact of these Arab governments with Israel that even went so far as to endorse the 50 day criminal onslaught directed at Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza that commenced on July 8th.
More difficult to analyze, but at least somewhat questionable, was the degree to which Turkey, despite trying to pursue its own distinctive brand of diplomacy in this Davutoğlu era also seemed to be going along with some dubious policies of the United States. In this regard, I would mention a limited collaboration with the failed military interventions in Afghanistan, Libya, and of course, Syria. It is also debatable as to whether Turkey should have consented to NATO’s deployment of defensive missile systems on its territory, which Moscow understandably viewed as provocative. What seems called for in the future is greater selectivity in maintaining Turkey’s strong alignments with the United States and NATO.
All in all, Ahmet Davutoğlu has had a remarkable run as Foreign Minister, and as Turkey’s new Prime Minister, is almost certain to embellish further his many notable contributions to the success of post-Kemalist Turkey. His thoughtfulness about policymaking combined with his personal integrity and decency combined with the highest levels of professional competence make him a rarity among politicians. I have long been impressed by Davutoğlu’s clear understanding of how Turkey’s effectiveness internationally is an outcome of the confidence generated by domestic success. This requires achieving political stability, economic development, protecting human rights and the environment, as well as creating and the further strengthening of the procedures and substance of an inclusive democracy that is fair and beneficial for all citizens regardless of their ethnic and religious identities. With such leaders committed to this progressive worldview, Turkey can look forward to a bright future. Turkey is poised to play a crucial role as a force for peace and justice in the roiled waters of the Middle East, in surrounding regions and sub-regions, and even in the world.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
The Obsolescence of Ideology: Debating Syria and Ukraine
23 MarI have been struck by the unhelpfulness of ideology to my own efforts to think through the complexities of recommended or preferred policy in relation to Syria, and more recently, the Ukraine. There is no obvious posture to be struck by referencing a ‘left’ or ‘right’ identity. A convincing policy proposal depends on sensitivity to context and the particulars of the conflict.
To insist that the left/right distinction obscures more than it reveals is not the end of the story. To contend that ideology is unhelpful as a guide for action is not the same as saying that it is irrelevant to the public debate. In the American context, to be on the left generally implies an anti-interventionist stance, while being on the right is usually associated with being pro-interventionist. Yet, these first approximations can be misleading, even ideologically. Liberals, who are deliberately and consigned to the left by the mainstream media, often favor intervention if the rationale for military force is primarily humanitarian.
Likewise, the neocon right is often opposed to intervention if it is not persuasively justified on the basis of strategic interests, which could include promoting ideological affinities. The neocon leitmotif is global leadership via military strength, force projection, friends and enemies, and the assertion and enforcement of red lines. When Obama failed to bomb Syria in 2013 after earlier declaring that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime was for him a red line this supposedly undermined the credibility of American power. My point is that ideology remains a helpful predictor of how people line up with respect to controversial uses of force, although relying on ideology is a lazy way to think if the purpose is to decide on the best course of action to take, which requires a sensitivity to the concrete realities of a particular situation. Such an analysis depends on context, and may include acknowledging the difficulties of intervention, and the moral unacceptability of nonintervention.
On a high level of abstraction, it is true that the hard right tends to find a justification for military action as the preferred solvent for any challenge to American foreign policy and the hard left is equally disposed to dismiss all calls for humanitarian intervention as sly anti-imperialist maneuvers, recalling Noam Chomsky’s dismissal of the Kosovo War in 1999 as ‘miltary humanism.’ In this sense it seems easier to proceed by dogma than to engage seriously with the existential complexities and uncertainties of the specifics pertaining to a conflict setting, and thus be willing to conclude either that ‘the situation is horrible, and something must be done’ and yet still believe that ‘the situation is horrible, but military intervention will only make it worse.’ This is the kind of conundrum that has perplexed and troubled me ever since the Syrian uprising in 2011 turned violent, unleashing the criminal fury of the Damascus regime, and attracting a variety of predatory outside forces on both sides. Often those on one side or the other of the debate fail to recognize the consequences of either a failed intervention or a refusal to intervene.
There are at least two problems that bedevil interpretation in these setting. To assess particularities of context requires a genuine familiarity with the specifics and changing dynamics of a conflict if persuasive policy recommendations are to be grounded in relevant knowledge rather than on knee jerk reactions. And secondly, no matter how expert, core uncertainties will persist, and the difficulties of making choices that involve killing and dying of others is a huge weight of responsibility if the policy risks and alternatives are carefully weighed.
I would add a third caveat—in the last fifty years military intervention has rarely worked out well for the target society or for the intervener; that is, historical experience would seem to call for what lawyers call ‘a presumption against intervention.’ This presumption is not intended as an absolute prohibition, but it does impose a burden of persuasion on the advocates of intervention. Often, also, the evidence pro and con intervention is doctored and manipulated one way or another to reflect the views of the government or of special interests. This was spectacularly illustrated by the lead up to the U.S. led attack on Iraq in 2003 where governmental efforts to strengthen the public case for intervention produced notorious fabrications. Rwanda in 1994, did present an exceptionally strong humanitarian case supportive of a limited military intervention with operational responsibility entrusted to the United Nations, but the bad experience of the Clinton presidency with the Somalia intervention during the prior year led the United States to oppose effectively a UN effort to prevent, or at least mitigate, a genocidal onslaught.
It would seem against such a background that the best solution in such situations might be procedural, that is, leaving the final policy decision in each instance up to a determination by the UN Security Council. If the Bush Administration had accepted the outcome of the Security Council vote that withheld approval for intervening in Iraq it would have been spared a humiliating strategic defeat that damaged America’s status as world leader. Allowing the Security Council to decide whether or not international force is required and justified also is consistent with the presumption against intervention due to the possibility that any of the five permanent members casting a negative vote counts as a veto.
The Obama approach has not fared much better than that of Bush. It induced members of the Security Council opposed to military intervention to accept the plea of NATO countries in 2011 to engage in a humanitarian operation to save the besieged civilian population of the Libyan city of Benghazi by way of establishing a No Fly Zone. Once the operation got underway, it completely ignored these UN guidelines, and used its air dominance to widen the scope of violence and carry out an unauthorized mission of regime-change. The aftermath in Libya casts further doubt on the overall wisdom of authorizing intervention in such a circumstance of internal strife. As well, the spillover from the refusal of the interveners to adhere to the limited UN mandate has been to undermine trust in such a way as to weaken any prospect for the UN to play a more robust role in resolving the Syrian conflict where the case for interference has become stronger than it ever was in Libya.
Beyond this issue of trust are questions of geopolitical alignment, especially encounters that align the U.S. and NATO on one side and Russia and/or China on the other. As yet, fortunately, there is no second cold war, although the neocons, and some in Europe, are beating the war drums in relation to the Ukraine in such a way as to point in that most unwelcome and totally unjustified direction. Russia’s sensitivity to hostile developments on its borders, previously expressed a few years ago in the 2008 crisis over Georgia, is now more potently evident in relation to the Ukraine and breakaway Crimea, which contains a strategic Russian naval base at Sevastopol that is the only Russian warm water port, as well as home to their Black Sea naval fleet.
American exceptionalism, or put differently, the geopolitical asymmetry that generates one set of rules for the United States and another for secondary geopolitical actors such as Russia, pushes the United States to claim a license to act against Russian borderland encroachments that would never be tolerated in reverse, if say a radical anti-American takeover took place in Mexico, and Russia was audacious enough to object to American extra-territorial interference, dire consequences would follow. Recall the American readiness to risk World War III to prevent the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba back in 1962. The problems of both Syria and Ukraine are intensified by geopolitical antagonism that restricts the UN role to the margins and prevents a diplomatic consensus from allowing international cooperation to bring pressure to bear that will move parties away from violence and toward a political settlement.
It is true that geopolitical antagonism is not an absolute political obstacle to intervention. The Kosovo War was undertaken despite the perceived inability to gain authorization from the Security Council due to anticipated Russian and Chinese opposition. The interveners relied on the combined legitimating weight of ‘a coalition of the willing’ and a regional consensus that favored intervention to protect the endangered Albanian majority population. A further legitimating factor in Kosovo was the plausibility of undertaking a military operation that could probably succeed quickly, and not produce many casualties on the intervening side. An important additional justification for intervention was the credible prospect of ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces of the sort that had actually taken place in Srebrenica a few years earlier in the midst of Bosnian strife. Finally, in light of this Serbian prior criminal behavior, the aspirations of the Kosovars for an independent political community seemed reasonable. A further post hoc vindication of intervention resulted from the large-scale return to Kosovo of most Albanian refugees after the Serbian control ended, reinforcing the interventionist rationale after the fact by showing its consistency with the dynamics of self-determination.
Nevertheless, a questionable precedent was set in Kosovo by bypassing the Security Council. In effect, the Kosovo intervention involved recourse to non-defensive force without a mandate from the UN, and thus amounted to a deliberate violation of the core articles of the UN Charter and international law that unconditionally prohibits non-defensive threats or uses of force. An effort was made in the Kosovo context by the interveners to stress emergency conditions: the harsh memories associated with inaction in relation to Srebrenica and Rwanda were strong inducements to act beyond the law, and a quasi-legal reliance on a NATO consensus were argued as sufficient to prevent the formation of an unfortunate precedent. When a few years later, the United States, with only the United Kingdom as a credible ally, invaded and occupied Iraq, some negative implications of the Kosovo circumvention of international law became evident, and led the anti-interventionists to reassert their skepticism.
Putting ideology to one side, the question of what is to be done is daunting in the very different challenges poses by Syria and Ukraine. Syria is above all a horrifying humanitarian catastrophe that is also destroying some of the country’s ancient and most cherished cities. It is a situation in which the opposition to the regime is disunited and itself guilty of atrocities, and in which both the governing authorities and insurgency are supported by external actors that treat the civil strife as primarily a proxy war engaging regional interests, and these external forces seem unlikely to yield significantly to their adversary regardless of the humanitarian ordeal being inflicted on the Syrian people. In this respect Syria illustrates regional and global geopolitics in its most cynical and destructive form. One revealing aspect of the disheartening complexity has led the anti-Assad governments to exclude Iran from the Geneva diplomacy that is supposed to be dedicated to finding a war-ending transition to a terrain of political competition. Iran’s exclusion seems irresponsibly submissive to the views of America’s regional allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and works against surmounting the admittedly difficult set of diplomatic obstacles in the quest for peace and political compromise relating to Syria.
The geopolitical realities of the Ukraine are totally different, raising risks of a new cold war, or at least renewed great power rivalry, and is threatening to produce an uneven military encounter between Russia and the Ukraine over moves by Moscow to annex Crimea on the basis of a hastily arranged referendum that went, as expected Russia’s way by an overwhelming (95%) of the vote. Even if the lopsided outcome partly reflected pro-Russian intimidation there is little doubt that the people of Crimea strongly prefer being part of Russia than remaining an autonomous province in the Ukraine. The Western media gives little attention to the strong historical and cultural affinities between Russia and Crimea. It should be remembered that the Crimea had long been part of Russia, its population mostly Russian speaking, and its shift to the Ukraine accomplished by a capricious Kremlin decree in 1954 issued under the authority of Nikita Khrushchev who himself was part Ukrainian. From an international law standpoint the applicability of self-determination is ambiguous in light of this background. From a Ukrainian point of view, the transfer of Crimean sovereignty was a valid legal act 60 years ago, and the population of Crimea do not seem to qualify as ‘a people’ entitled to claim a right of self-determination. Besides, self-determination is not applicable if its exercise fragments an existing state, in this case Ukraine. But as we have seen, when self-determination is asserted successfully, as in former Yugoslavia, the resulting political entities, although fragmenting an existing state, which was a member of the United Nations, the political outcome will be generally accepted, although maybe not formalized immediately.
Putting aside the geopolitical dimension, there are other problems with action (granting the unacceptability of inaction) in the Syria setting. First of all, the regime is not isolated from popular support, although the breadth and depth of the support is controversial, and probably belongs in the domain of the unknowable. Secondly, because the regime is well armed, it would require a major undertaking to have any assurance that intervention would produce regime change, security, and political transition rather than escalation. As recent history has demonstrated over and over again, in the post-colonial era a Western intervention is likely to provoke prolonged, and in the end, effective national territorial resistance, with highly unpredictable political consequences. In Syria, with minimal strategic interests of the United States at stake, the difficulties of achieving regime change by intervention seem too great, especially, as is the case, tactics would be relied upon that cut the casualties on the intervening side to an absolute minimum.
We are left, then, with the other part of the challenge: the unacceptability of doing nothing in relation to Syria, and a debate about what could be done to promote a more sustainable and satisfactory outcome in Ukraine. It has been proposed for some time to undertake a series of humanitarian initiatives on behalf of the Syrian people, including a No Fly Zone to protect a humanitarian corridor that would be capable of delivering food and medicine to beleaguered communities in Syria. Such a course of action is beset with problems stemming from a lack of trust giving rise to suspicions about the authenticity of the humanitarian motivations. Concerns also exist as to the control of the scope and magnitude of the forcible action once undertaken, as well as about the genuine difficulties of making such a zone secure without expanding the scale and scope of the use of force.
In the Ukraine, there seems to be no constructive role for the West to play at this stage. Granting that anti-Russian sentiments prevail in the Ukrainian speaking, Catholic, portions of Ukraine, it seems that the upheaval that led the Viktor Yanukovych government to collapse can be viewed as consistent with the internal sovereignty of the country, although not without some inappropriate Western encouragement of destabilizing political opposition. Even granting this kind of interference, it does not create an occasion justifying Russian intervention, and this is so, regardless of the degree to which the new leadership includes a strong fascist component. Fortunately, there is no current prospect of a Russian intervention designed to break up Ukraine, but the impact of Western anger, expressed by the imposition of sanctions personally directed at Putin and some of his close associates seems designed to hurt Russian investment and trade. Such hostile moves could easily trigger Russian retaliation, and give rise to an unpredictable and dangerous escalation of tensions. Given the way the world is organized on the basis of statist logic, reinforced by geopolitical zones of influence, it would be a major move in the direction of global hegemony if the West were to mount a provocative challenge to Russia’s relationship to what was previously known as their ‘near abroad,’ and from any point of view threatened vital Russian security interests.
In relation to both Syria and Ukraine there are internationalist frustrations because of the inability to protect vulnerable people in severe distress. At stake are opposing principles of respect for sovereignty and human rights, as well as the hostile interplay of dangerous geopolitical rivalries. The effort to uphold the collective rights of weaker countries and their peoples is opportunistically pursued, making current frustrations mainly a reflection of the dysfunctional operations of a structure of hard power world order that accords primacy to state sovereignty, the pursuit of national interests, and the hegemonic claims and conflicts of geopolitical actors having varying ambitions, claims under international law, and diplomatic and military capabilities.
Further in the background is the presence of weapons arsenals filled with nuclear weapons that makes hardly any political or moral goal worth the risk of major inter-governmental military encounters. Until the political cultures of the main countries in the world are prepared to reorient their priorities around concerns with a species sense of identity and solidarity we are stuck with this territorially delimited structure that was initially established in 17th century Europe and then over time exported to the rest of the world. Such a world order is being challenged by functional considerations of sustainability, climate change, and weaponry of mass destruction, as well as by normative considerations associated with human rights, equity, and species survival. The breakdowns of such an order in Syria and Ukraine are emblematic failures of this system, but also in many respects, human tragedies entailing massive suffering and trauma.