Power, Power and Rice
While some are predicting (or hoping for) big changes in American foreign policy in the liberal interventionist/human rights first direction with the appointments of Susan Rice as national security adviser and Samantha Power as UN ambassador, I doubt it.
Both have already left marks on US foreign policy, Samantha through the Atrocities Prevention Board and Susan in the Libya intervention and many other efforts at the UN, including the successful use of its Human Rights Commission to report on atrocities in Syria. I wouldn’t suggest these are enormous departures from the past, but they certainly reflect the view that saving foreigners from mass atrocity has its place in US p0licy and needs to be given due consideration along with more traditional national interests of the military, political and economic varieties.
The main “to intervene or not” issue today is Syria. Susan and Samantha have both already been involved in internal debates on Syria, where President Obama ignored the advice of Hillary Clinton, David Petraeus and Leon Panetta. They all advised a more interventionist stance. It is the president, not the advisers, who is choosing not to try to stop the Syrian civil war, largely because of issues unrelated to Syria: Russian support on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and in the nuclear negotiations with Iran, not to mention the American public’s war weariness and the parlous budget situation. No doubt someone at the Pentagon is also telling him that allowing extremist Sunnis and Shia to continue killing each other in Syria is in the US interest.
The President’s judgment on this question could of course change. I imagine that both his new appointees will be sympathetic to those who point to the prospect of regional destabilization (of Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and possibly even Turkey) as arguing in favor of intervention. Both will likely argue that the fall of Bashar al Asad would be a strategic blow to Iran. And both will also likely prefer nailing the Syrian air force to the tarmac (and destroying its Scuds) to arming the rebels, since the latter is not a formula for promoting respect of human rights and might well lead to mass atrocities in the future. The State Department has long wanted a game changing move of this sort, if only to increase the prospects for a successful negotiated settlement.
But none of these arguments is new. What might make them more weighty?
One thing is continuing regime military success on the ground in Syria. With the fall of Qusayr on the Lebanese border, the regime has both cut off a rebel supply route and put itself in a position to secure the road between Damascus and Syria’s western coast, where its Alawite minority homeland is located. If Homs, which is mostly surrounded, falls completely, Asad will be in a position to endure for a long time, whittling away at the liberated areas and making them impossible to administer and govern. The opposition is already fragmented. It could splinter and collapse under pressure.
Another possibility is a mass atrocity of unusual dimensions, possibly caused by chemical weapons. We have gotten used to 200 people and more dying per day in Syria. What happens if suddenly 1000 or 2000 are killed in a particularly heinous fashion in a single incident? Smaller incidents have precipitated intervention in the past and they might again, though Russian and Chinese vetoes in the UN Security Council stand in the way. For the US to undertake a serious military intervention without UNSC approval would require at least a wink and a nod from Moscow and Beijing. They haven’t been winking and nodding lately.
I don’t envy those who have to make difficult decisions today about the use of American power. One distinguished US diplomat said to me long ago about the Balkans, appalled that NATO had intervened there:
Don’t these people understand that American power is at its strongest when it is not used?
Ultimately, it is the President who makes the decision to intervene, or not. Power and Rice are loyalists. They will argue whatever case they believe in, and then accept his decision.
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