Day: September 9, 2013

Peace picks, September 9-13

Here are this week’s peace picks, courtesy of newly arrived Middle East Institute assistant Sarah Saleeb.  We are still working out some kinks, so some links are missing in this posting.  Be sure to register on the website of the sponsoring organization. 

1.  Pakistan Elections and Regional Stability: How Foreign Assistance Can Help

September 10, 2013 – 9:30 am

1030 15th Street NW, 12th Floor
Washington, Dist. of Columbia
Please join the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and International Relief and Development for a discussion entitled “Pakistan Elections and Regional Stability: How Foreign Assistance Can Help.”Pakistan’s historic elections ushered in promises to improve security, address the energy crisis, tackle economic issues, and build a stronger and more prosperous Pakistan. Now three months into the new administration, the leadership has missed several opportunities and faces mounting challenges. Moreover, as the United States ends its active military engagement in Afghanistan, US interest in the country’s stability and regional role take on special prominence, as these are keys to peace and long-term development. Currently, more than $1 billion of foreign aid per year has been appropriated but not yet disbursed for Pakistan’s development efforts under the Kerry-Lugar Berman Act, due to end next year.Panelists will provide their perspectives on steps the new government should take to build stability and the role foreign assistance may play in the process. The session will feature commentary on the current political and economic climate and the future of foreign assistance, followed by an expert panel and Q&A to dissect these issues.Be sure to follow @AtlanticCouncil and @IRD_Voices on twitter and use the hashtag #PakAid. Read more
Tags : , , ,

Crisis breeds strange ideas

Secretary of State Kerry today floated the idea that has been kicking around:  Bashar al Asad can avoid an American attack if he gives up his chemical weapons, within a week.  The Secreatary was quick to add that he does not expect Asad to do this.  Now the Russians are suggesting that Syria’s chemical weapons be put under international control.

Does the idea have virtue?

Not on the face of it.  There are lots of chemical weapons and precursors in Syria, perhaps as much as 1000 tons according to French intelligence.  Moving even one ton of such material securely in the conditions that prevail in Syria at the moment would be a challenge.  Moving hundreds of tons would take months.  Where would you move them to?  A special facility would have to be built to destroy the material.  I somehow doubt any of the neighbors is prepared to host it, and store the stuff until the facility can be built.

The Russian proposal focuses not on moving the material but putting it under some as yet undefined international control.  I suppose that means international observers or inspectors to watch the chemical weapons stockpiles and report if they are used.  The difficulties of doing this even in peacetime conditions are apparent from the difficult history of nuclear inspections in Iraq.  How would anyone know that all the chemical weapons stocks had been reported?  But doing it under wartime conditions seems truly impractical.  I don’t think I’d want to be the international inspector embedded with Syrian forces protecting the chemical weapons stockpiles and trying to ensure they are not used.

German intelligence is suggesting that Bashar al Asad did not himself authorize the chemical attack on August 21.  But that contradicts what Bashar al Asad has said to Charlie Rose:  Bashar claimed that any such chemicals, if they existed, would be firmly in centralized control.  That is surely true, as these weapons exist above all to protect the regime and to strike at Israel in a regime-threatening situation.  If control of the chemical weapons has loosened to the point they can be used without the regime’s approval, things are worse in Syria than we had imagined.  Intervention might be justified on that score alone, though it could not be limited to air attacks.

The main virtues of John Kerry’s floated idea, and the Russian proposal, are to delay further the prospect of an attack and to demonstrate that the Obama Administration is prepared to go the extra diplomatic mile to avoid military intervention.  The time may well be needed to twist arms in the House of Representatives, which is playing its assigned role by reflecting the reluctance in the American population.  The extra diplomatic mile is needed to show that there is no alternative to military action, or to provide a face-saving alternative if the Administration fails to get Congressional approval.

On the diplomatic front, the US needs to go, once again, to the UN Security Council to lay out its case and seek its concurrence in military action.  The Russians and Chinese will not go along, but there is really no harm in demonstrating to Moscow and Beijing, and to the world, that they do not control the use of American power any more than we control the use of theirs, which Moscow has used against Georgia and Beijing uses often to assert its territorial claims against American allies in the East and South China Seas.

But going that route requires prior approval of military action in the US Congress.  That seems a tall order at the moment.  John Kerry is trying to convince us that the effort will be a small one:

We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing – unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.

The trouble with that argument is it is inconsistent with going to Congress for approval and with the notion that Syria’s use of chemical weapons puts American security at risk by breaking an international taboo.  Nor is there any guarantee that things can be kept small.  The enemy has a vote.  If Bashar escalates, we’ll need to respond.

Bashar giving up his chemical weapons, putting them under international control, a small intervention to solve a big problem.  Crisis breeds strange ideas.

Tags : , , ,
Tweet