A serious military option

Chalk up one more for arming Syria’s rebels and creating safe corridors.  To his credit, Roger Cohen also cites the counter-argument:

I hear the outcry already: Arming Assad’s opponents will only exacerbate the fears of Syria’s minorities and unite them, ensure greater bloodshed, and undermine diplomatic efforts now being led by Kofi Annan, a gifted and astute peacemaker. It risks turning a proxy war into a proxy conflagration.

What he does not do is consider a serious military option: decapitating the Syrian regime with a forceful strike against its command and control.

This mystifies me. Safe areas, enclaves, humanitarian corridors–whatever you call them–have consistently and repeatedly failed. They create target-rich environments, which in this case means the Syrian armed forces will attack them vigorously.  Nor is arming the Free Syria Army likely to produce a balance of forces, as Cohen suggests.  Just ask the Libyans:  they’ll tell you they would have lost to Muammar Qaddafi had NATO not intervened from the air.

There is another option: once you’ve taken down the air defenses, a necessary first step no matter what, you can proceed to take down the command, control and communications of the regime. This was what changed the tide of war in Bosnia in the summer of 1995. Specifically, it was when NATO hit the communications nodes of the Bosnian Serb Army that it became incapable of defending the long confrontation line with the Bosnian Army. Something similar happened in the NATO/Yugoslavia war: hitting various security force headquarters in Belgrade and dual-use infrastructure signaled the kind of seriousness that convinced Slobodan Milosevic his regime was in peril.  He yielded in Kosovo.

The problem is that you don’t know what will come next.  Milosevic survived for more than another year, though he then fell to his own miscalculation in calling elections.  There is no guarantee that you’ll get Bashar al Assad in a military attack, and even less certainty about what will happen if you do.  He might well survive and would be unlikely to allow any serious electoral competition thereafter.  These guys do learn from each other.

So here’s a thought:  combine the threat of such a direct attack on the regime with Kofi Annan’s diplomatic efforts, offering Bashar a choice between a punishing attack on his security forces’ command, control and communications and a ceasefire with free access to all areas in Syria for humanitarian relief and international journalists.  If he fails to deliver, you’ve still got the trump card in your pocket.

Of course if he calls your bluff, you’ll have to go ahead with the military attack, even without a UN Security Council resolution.  A bit of diplomacy might at least generate an Arab League request, but it is hard to picture the Russians coming on board.  If they do, well and good–I doubt Bashar survives even 48 hours once Moscow abandons him.  If they don’t, you’ve still got to go ahead.

If you are not willing to do that, you are thrown back, as I am, to diplomatic means, wisely discussed this morning by David Ignatius in the Washington Post.  Let’s not waste analytical talent and high-priced real estate in America’s leading newspapers on half-hearted military propositions that just won’t work.  If you want war, go to war, not to humanitarian corridors.