by Reese Erlich
Right-wing isolationists, on the other hand, used anti-interventionist rhetoric to push a racist and xenophobic agenda. Isolationism has a long history in the United States (see chapter 3). Its advocates oppose America getting politically or militarily involved outside the Western Hemisphere. Conservative isolationists opposed US involvement in World War II, thus objectively helping Nazi aggression. Today political commentator Pat Buchanan carries the isolationist banner. He was a speechwriter and adviser to three American presidents, and he twice sought the Republican nomination for president himself.
Buchanan argued against bombing Syria in September 2013 by accusing the military of being in the pay of Arab sheiks. “The Saudis and Gulf Arabs, cash-fat on the $110-a-barrel oil they sell US consumers, will pick up the tab for the Tomahawk missiles,” he wrote in a column. “Has it come to this—US soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen as the mercenaries of sheikhs, sultans, and emirs, Hessians of the New World Order, hired out to do the big-time killing for Saudi and Sunni royals?”27
Buchanan made both a populist and a racist argument. He blamed Arab rulers for what, in fact, is US corporate/military policy. He expressed no concern for the people of Syria who would become victims of US aggression, while fanning racist images of Arab plutocrats. It reminded me of how right-wing populists blamed Jewish bankers for starting World War II. The ultimate in right-wing isolationism sprang from the lips of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who managed to combine populism, hatred of Obama, and Islamophobia. “Let these radical Islamic countries…where both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line, ‘Allah Akbar,’ I say until we have someone who knows what they're doing, I say let Allah sort it out.”28
Just as Syria has generated conservative anti-interventionists, so, too, has it produced liberal interventionists. Famed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for example, is a master at finding liberal justifications for war. He was a leading apologist for the occupation of Iraq until the policy obviously failed.29 And he did it again on Syria. It's worth quoting his views on Syria at length:
I believe that if you want to end the Syrian civil war and tilt Syria onto a democratic path, you need an international force to occupy the entire country, secure the borders, disarm all the militias, and midwife a transition to democracy. It would be staggeringly costly and take a long time with the outcome still not guaranteed…. My view is that anything short of an external force that rebuilds Syria from the bottom up will fail. Since there are no countries volunteering for that role (and I am certainly not nominating the United States), my guess is that the fighting in Syria will continue until the parties get exhausted.”30
Friedman managed to propose an outrageous plan for imperialist occupation and then slip out of it with a rhetorical flourish. Who could occupy Syria for a long time other than the United States or European powers? He made the racist assumption that Syrians and Arabs can develop a decent society only through occupation. Excuse me, Tom, but didn't that argument go out with the death of colonialism?
Some Syrian Americans and progressives made a more sophisticated argument for humanitarian intervention. They are justifiably outraged at the tactics used by the Assad regime. With the full backing of Russia, the Syrian army laid siege to rebel-controlled areas. Food and medicine were kept out. City services such as water and electricity were shut off. As a tactic to isolate the rebels, civilians were left to starve and die of disease. Some on the left have called for humanitarian military intervention. Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi, of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, wrote in a New York Times opinion article that if the Assad regime didn't lift the sieges, “an external, international force must be introduced to guarantee the safe passage of food and medicine to starving Syrian civilians…. The sieges must be broken by any means necessary.”31
Postel and Hashemi invoked the UN doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, which they define as “the principle that if a state fails to protect its populations from mass atrocities—or is in fact the perpetrator of such crimes—the international community must step in to protect the victims, with the collective use of force authorized by the [UN] Security Council.” They recognize that Russia would likely veto any such authorization in the security council. Therefore “if a multinational force cannot be assembled, then at least some countries should step up and organize Syria's democratically oriented rebel groups to provide the necessary force on the ground, with air cover from participating nations.” In another article, Postel made clear that he opposes US intervention. He wrote that some countries that might participate included France, Australia, Jordan, and Luxembourg. Without international action “hundreds of thousands of Syrians” will be consigned to starvation, he wrote.32
I have great respect for Postel and Hashemi, who have done important work in support of the Syrian people, and before that, in support of the 2009 popular demonstrations in Iran. But I profoundly disagree with the concept of humanitarian intervention. In the foreword to this book, Noam Chomsky discussed the origins and flaws in the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. What powers have the military capability and political will to spearhead an attack on Syria? We can safely eliminate Luxembourg and Jordan. Australia is too far away. That leaves France as the main protagonist, with possible token support from other countries. France had sent troops to fight in its former colonies in central Africa. France might be willing to attack Syria, also a former colony.
First France would have to disable the Syrian air force by bombing airfields and aircraft. Then it would have to land paratroopers into the city under siege and facilitate delivery of aid, presumably by the United Nations or other international agencies. It would have to fight off attacks from the Syrian army in some areas and by extremist rebels in others. Even assuming this can be done with a minimum of civilian casualties, it's a difficult military operation. If significant numbers of French troops are killed or equipment destroyed, it would signal defeat. And, from the French perspective, defeat for intervention would be worse than no intervention at all. So the French military would have to mobilize a very large force. As noted earlier, the Pentagon said up to seventy thousand troops might be needed.
And if by some miracle all of this were accomplished with relatively little violence, would the French troops withdraw? If they did, then the Syrian regime would resume attacks on civilians with a vengeance. So the troops have to stay to prevent future civilian atrocities. You have the classic military mission creep with two stark choices: stay in Syria indefinitely or overthrow Assad and install pro-French rebels in Damascus. There is no humanitarian intervention without regime installation.
We don't have to speculate. What I describe for Syria actually happened in Libya. Civilians in Benghazi faced a vicious attack by Muammar Kaddafi's forces, although claims of impending massacres were intentionally exaggerated. The UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for limited intervention to protect the people of Benghazi.33 France, Britain, and the United States then violated the resolution by waging a seven-month war, functioning as an air force for the rebels. When Kaddafi finally was murdered, a prime minster backed by the West was put in power. But he proved inept, and warring militias took over the country.34
Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco and coordinator of its Middle Eastern studies program, strongly opposed humanitarian intervention in Libya and Syria. He noted the Libyan intervention backfired, in part, because it empowered “al-Qaeda-aligned groups, like the one responsible for the deaths of four US officials, including the ambassador” in August 2012. Referring to Syria, he added, “Even large-scale direct foreign intervention will not lead to a quick collapse of the regime.35
You've heard my sharp-tongued critiques of various groups on the left and right. What, you may ask, should the United States do?
I oppose all outside interference in Syria, whether from the United States,
Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or any other country. The United States, in particular, should stop all military support to the rebels. The United States should join with other nations to provide humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees inside and outside Syria, to be done peacefully, not by force of arms. Both the United States and Russia could play a positive role in reaching a diplomatic solution, possibly through the United Nations. But so far neither country has the credibility to act as an honest broker. Conflict over Ukraine will likely make diplomatic agreements on Syria even more difficult. Eventually, however, there will have to be a political settlement to the civil war.
I also support programs in which Americans directly help the people of Syria. Such people-to-people activities include political support to those Syrians seeking to establish an inclusive, parliamentary system. Groups such as the American Friends Service Committee36 and the Friends for a NonViolent World37 have publicized the work of Syrian activists fighting both Assad and extremist rebels. Other groups are providing food, medicine, and humanitarian aid to civilians in Syria. Sometimes the aid gets through to rebel areas because of local cease-fires with the regime, other times through neighboring Jordan or Turkey. These groups advocate for short-term, local cease-fires that would allow aid to reach civilians under siege.
But no solution will be forthcoming in Syria without Russian cooperation. And Russia's role is what we explore next.
From the opening months of the uprising, the Obama administration blamed Russia for supporting Assad, claiming Russian arms and intransigence at the United Nations have kept Assad in power. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a typical statement, blasted the Russians for continuing to arm Assad. “They are, in fact, enabling Assad to double down, which is creating an enormous problem.”38
Without doubt, Russia has backed Assad, enabling the regime to brutally repress its own people while maintaining Russian influence in the region. And like the United States, Russia has its own perceived national interests at stake. The former Soviet Union allied with Syria back in the 1960s because of a common antipathy to Israeli and US policies in the Middle East. There was some ideological affinity between the nationalist and anti-imperialist Syrian Baathists and the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Soviet Union. In 1971 the two countries signed a military pact, and the Soviet Union established a naval base in the port city of Tartus. It consisted of little more than a pier and ship-repair facilities, but it represented the Soviet Union's only Mediterranean naval base.
Over time, military and economic ties grew. The Soviet Union resupplied arms to Syria during the 1973 war with Israel. Soviet leadership regularly supported the Arab cause in the UN Security Council while criticizing Israel. Hafez al-Assad briefly broke out of the Moscow orbit in 1990 as the Soviet Union was collapsing. Syria sent troops to support the United States in the Gulf War. Assad had hoped that his new alliance with the United States would lead to the return of the Golan and resolution of the Palestinian issue. That never happened. So Syria stepped up its alliance with Iran and reestablished good ties with Russia.
By the 2000s Russia agreed to forgive three-quarters of Syria's Soviet-era debt, or $9.8 billion of the $13.4 billion total. By the time the Syrian uprising began, Russia had $20 billion in trade and investment with Syria, $8 billion of which was arms sales. “Russia is now a business-oriented country, and the Russian government obviously wants to protect the investments made by its businessmen in Syria,” Yevgeny Satanovsky told the Christian Science Monitor. He was president of Moscow's Institute of Middle Eastern Studies.39
The Moscow Times reported that Russian companies had big investments in Syria infrastructure, tourism, and energy industries. Arms going to Syria accounted for about 10 percent of Russia's total arms sales. The Syrian regime bought MiG-29 fighters, Pantsir surface-to-air missiles, artillery systems, and antitank weaponry, much of which was later used to attack rebels and civilians.40 “Syria has been a traditional ally and arms importer from Russia, and so Russia has a very different view from the West's hope of overthrowing the ruling regime there,” Igor Korotchenko told the Monitor. He's director of the Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade in Moscow. “Therefore, Russia has put its stakes on providing political and military support for the Syrian regime, and Russian leaders believe this corresponds to the long-term national interests of Russia itself.”41
Russian leaders, like their American counterparts, also saw Syria in a geopolitical context. After the devastating collapse of the Soviet Union and decade of turmoil in the 1990s, President Vladimir Putin had campaigned on promises to make Russia strong again. Russia had been steadily losing influence as some countries of Eastern Europe joined NATO and/or became part of the eurozone. Russian leaders were particularly wary of the rose revolution in Georgia and the orange revolution in Ukraine. While the West supported these color revolutions as struggles for democracy, Russian leaders said they were manipulated by the West to further weaken Russia.
Russians thought the Syrian uprising was cut from the same cloth. Alexander Golts, a military expert at Yezhednevny Zhurnal, an online newspaper, wrote, “Putin has a real paranoia about colored revolutions.” Such uprisings are the “result of Western conspiracies. The attitude is, we're not going to be fooled anymore.”42
Russian leaders also thought they had been suckered by the March 2011 UN vote on Libya. Both China and Russia abstained on the UN Security Council vote to establish a no-fly zone to protect civilians in Benghazi. Kaddafi had purchased billions in Soviet/Russian arms, and the two countries had close relations at one time. His overthrow resulted in huge Russian losses economically, politically, and militarily. “We made a big mistake on the Libya vote,” one Russian diplomat told me. “We won't make it again on Syria.”43
In the early days of the uprising, Russian leaders worried that Assad might not survive. But by 2013 they had poured in weapons to Syria and gave full political support to the Assad regime. Russia vetoed or threatened to veto every UN Security Council resolution critical of Syria. The Russians had firmly cast their lot with Assad. “We see serious reasons to believe the Assad regime can survive,” said Georgi Mirsky of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. “Even if it's discredited, it could still hold on for a number of years. So there's no sense of urgency in Moscow to change policies.”44
Following a circuitous route from Saudi Arabia up through Jordan or Turkey and then crossing a lawless border, thousands of young Saudis have secretly made their way into Syria to join extremist groups fighting against the Assad regime. With the tacit approval from the House of Saud, and financial support from wealthy Saudi elites, the young men took up arms in what Saudi clerics called a jihad, or holy war, against the Syrian regime.
The Saudis were part of an inflow of Sunni fighters from Libya, Tunisia, and Jordan that constituted a significant problem. Analysts in Damascus told me that over 100,000 foreigners were fighting in Syria. The Assad regime wildly inflated the numbers in an effort to discredit the rebellion. However, the thousands who did arrive were particularly dangerous because they joined extremist factions, according to Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “Most of the foreigners are fighting with al-Nusra or Ahrar al-Sham,” Zelin told me45 (see chapter 6). The Saudis hoped to weaken their regional competitor Iran, which is backing Assad. Saudi officials also hoped to divert demands for democracy at home by encouraging young protesters to instead fight in Syria, according to Saudi government critics.
The government sought to “diffuse domestic pressure by recruiting young kids to join in another proxy war in the region,” said Mohammad Fahd al-Qahtani, a human-rights activist and economics professor at the Institute of Diplomatic Studies in Riyadh. He told me they are joining ultraconservative groups who “definitely are against democracy and human rights. The ramifications could be quite serious in the whole region.”46 Saudi authorities have a strategic goal in Syria, he said. “Their ultimate policy is to have a regime change similar to wh
at happened in Yemen, where they lose the head of state and substitute it with one more friendly to the Saudis,” Qahtani said. “But Syria is quite different. It will never happen that way” because the Syrian army has remained unified.
In March 2013 a Saudi court sentenced Qahtani to ten years in prison for sedition and providing false information to foreign media. Human-rights groups immediately defended Qahtani, saying he was being persecuted for his political views and human-rights work.47
For many months Saudi officials denied any knowledge of their citizens fighting in Syria. But then, at the end of 2013, they admitted that some 1,125 Saudi citizens went to Syria over the previous two years and about 180 had died.48 Those numbers look suspiciously low to me, but at least the government admitted for the first time that significant numbers of their citizens were fighting with the rebels.
And sometimes, Saudi authorities were directly responsible for sending the young fighters to Syria. In one case I documented, a Saudi judge encouraged young antigovernment protesters to fight in Syria rather than face punishment at home. Twenty-two-year-old Mohammed al-Talq was arrested and found guilty of participating in an antigovernment demonstration in the north-central Saudi city of Buraidah. After giving nineteen young men suspended sentences, the judge called the defendants into his private chambers and gave them a long lecture about the need to fight Shia Muslims in Syria, according to Mohammed's father, Abdurrahman al-Talq.
“You should save all your energy and fight against the real enemy, the Shia, and not fight inside Saudi Arabia,” said the father, quoting the judge. “The judge gave them a reason to go to Syria.” Within weeks, eleven of the nineteen protesters left to join the rebels. In December 2012, Mohammed al-Talq was killed in Syria. His father filed a formal complaint against the judge late last year but received no response.49