Don’t bank on diplomacy yet

President Obama last night tentatively accepted Putin’s paddle and began his effort to paddle away from military action, which faced rejection in the Congress, towards a diplomatic denouement.  This latest turn will disappoint and frustrate opposition Syrians who wanted a decisive military intervention.

But that was not in the cards, and the President’s move cheers those who believe that chemical weapons are the main issue Americans should be concerned about in Syria, as it offers a potentially better outcome than bombing.  Certainly an endstate in which the international community gains control over Syria’s gigantic stockpile of chemical weapons (estimated at 1000 tons) and destroys them safely and securely is better than the uncertainty of a punitive bombing campaign, pinprick or not.

I see two problems with this approach:

1. We are very unlikely to reach the desired endstate, which depends on Syria declaring all its chemical weapons, securely moving them to a relatively few destinations, and giving international inspectors unfettered access while a civil war rages.  Remember what happened to the Arab League and UN observers?  With no US boots on the ground, international control of Syria’s chemical weapons likely means mainly Russian control, which isn’t going to satisfy anyone in Washington.  But it will make military intervention much more difficult.
2. Chemical weapons are not all that is at stake for the United States in Syria.  Continuation of the civil war there threatens the stability of Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey.  The longer the fighting goes on, the more likely it is that Islamist extremists will eventually succeed and make Syria a haven for Al Qaeda’s ambitions.  That will mean threats to Israel as well.

Thousands of civilians will die from conventional weapons in the next month or so, while the diplomats try to hammer out a solution. Read the latest report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry for the gruesome details.

If it is any comfort, this kind of diplomatic delay was also the rule rather than the exception in the 1990s, when NATO intervened from the air first in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.  The decisive intervention in Bosnia came more than two years after the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to protect UN-designated safe areas.  Prior pinprick attacks had little impact.  In Kosovo, force was used only after months of diplomatic efforts (and without a specific authorizing resolution from the UNSC).

President Obama’s enormous reluctance to use military force in Syria is not, as some commentators would have it, a sign of weakness.  It of course behooves us to pursue any diplomatic lead that might accomplish our ends without the use of force, which always causes collateral damage and unanticipated consequences.  The only real signal of weakness came from the Congress’ apparent willingness to back military action.

Where I differ from President Obama is on the breadth of American interests in Syria as well as the odds of a favorable diplomatic outcome.  Chemical weapons are a relatively small part of the problem there.  The real issue is an autocrat who prefers state collapse–so long as he remains in power in Damascus–to stepping aside and allowing the democratic evolution that the nonviolent protests called for.

While he did not mention the Syrian opposition last night, I can hope that the President is quietly trying to ensure that the more moderate forces of the Free Syrian Army have the means to protect themselves and the civilians who live in liberated areas.  The Russians have not hesitated to make sure that the regime is well equipped and armed.  Without an effort to level the battlefield, diplomatic initiatives to end the war are doomed to failure.  Military interventions after diplomatic failures need to be more vigorous, not less.

Give diplomacy a chance, but don’t bank on it yet.