Democracy in America | Syrian intervention

Overlearned lessons from Bill Clinton

Hopefully President Obama's decision to help Syrian rebels has nothing to do with fears of looking like a wuss

By M.S.

THE scariest possibility regarding Barack Obama's decision yesterday to begin providing limited military aid to the Syrian rebels would be if it had something to do with the advice he was getting from Bill Clinton. In a recent conversation with John McCain that he didn't know was being recorded, published on Politico, Mr Clinton made two basic points. The first was that one shouldn't "overlearn the lessons of the past"; intervention in Syria would involve less risky commitments than in Afganistan or Iraq, since there is little public or international pressure to commit American troops. The second was that if Mr Obama doesn't intervene in Syria and the result is a "calamity", he risks looking like a "wuss". Essentially, high levels of public opposition are not a good reason for Mr Obama to refrain from intervening.

I dearly hope that the policy documents the State Department is now drawing up regarding American military aid to Syrian rebel groups do not read "Goal: Keep POTUS from looking like a wuss." Mr Clinton is an extremely good politician, and he may well be right that the best political move for Mr Obama is to do something military in Syria to protect himself against accusations of passivity. But the president shouldn't be basing Syria policy on domestic political considerations; he should be defining America's humanitarian and strategic goals, and assessing what policies will serve them. The problem here may, in fact, be that Mr Clinton has "overlearned" some of the lessons of his own administration.

In terms of substantive policy, Mr Clinton supports supplying the rebels with arms, based on the premise that a little bit of military action is better than none at all.

“Some people say, ‘Okay, see what a big mess it is? Stay out!’ I think that’s a big mistake...Sometimes it’s just best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t overcommit—like, as long as you don’t make an improvident commitment.”...

“Nobody is asking for American soldiers in Syria,” Clinton said. “The only question is now that the Russians, the Iranians and the Hezbollah are in there head over heels, 90 miles to nothing, should we try to do something to try to slow their gains and rebalance the power so that these rebel groups have a decent chance, if they’re supported by a majority of the people, to prevail?”

This position sounds like a reaction to the bitter experience of the Bosnian stalemate of the early years of Mr Clinton's own administration, when America went along with a United Nations arms embargo that prevented the Bosnian army from fighting effectively against the better-armed Serbs. This approach guaranteed the continuation of the civil war and set the stage for genocide in Srebrenica. Mr Clinton was pilloried for this policy by liberal critics like Mark Danner and Samantha Power, now Mr Obama's nominee for ambassador to the UN. Mr Clinton's administration put those lessons to use in aggressively forcing a negotiated settlement in Bosnia in 1995, and then in the 1999 decision to go to war in Kosovo.

But that was a different time and place. NATO ultimately intervened in the former Yugoslavia to make it clear that ethnic cleansing was a war crime, and would not be part of the politics of post-communist Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The fact that Yugoslavia was in Europe is important: powerful states can credibly and effectively intervene in their own regions to defend their interests. It is not clear how to replicate that experience in a region where the local powers, especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have ideological and strategic visions diverging sharply from America's. And Mr Clinton's desire in Syria to "rebalance the power" without making "an improvident commitment" actually risks recreating the same sort of stalemate as in Bosnia. As this newspaper argued last month, "doing something hesitantly in-between, by helping the rebels a bit, but not enough to bring down Mr Assad, may be the worst of all worlds."

The problem here, as Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group argues, is that America still needs to figure out what the goal of an intervention is. Do we want to safeguard civilians? Then we should establish a no-fly zone and humanitarian safe areas with sufficient military strength to ensure Mr Assad cannot overrun them. Do we want to topple Mr Assad's dictatorial government? Then we should arm the most effective jihadi rebel groups. Do we wish to prevent the spread of anti-American jihadi terrorist groups? Then we should arm the more moderate groups. Do we want to enforce the international ban on the use of chemical weapons? Then we should attack Mr Assad's forces directly. Do we wish to simply shorten the civil war and end the killing? But what if the fastest route to a stable, unified Syria were actually a rapid government victory?

This newspaper backs the establishment of a no-fly zone to protect civilians. Mr Obama explains his decision to supply some arms to the rebels as a response to the use of chemical weapons by Mr Assad's forces, which the administration earlier described as a "red line". These are limited measures connected to clearly delineated goals. They also, as my colleague wrote last month, entail great risks. Unlike Libya, Syria has excellent air defences, and American efforts to impose a no-fly zone could lead to a full-fledged war between America and the Syrian government. Supplying light weapons to some Syrian rebel groups is unlikely to decisively shift the balance of power in the war, and may simply prolong the stalemate while Syria disintegrates and civilians are slaughtered.

Mr Malley warns that the Syrian civil war has been increasingly incorporated into the broader Sunni-Shiite sectarian clash, in which America must not be seen to take sides. But the biggest risk of all would be for Mr Obama to allow his policy to be guided by considerations of so-called "credibility". Ironically, Mr Clinton advises Mr Obama not to base his policy on public opinion, but then justifies that advice by warning he could end up "looking like a fool". Mr Obama shouldn't worry about looking like a fool. He should worry about making foolish decisions.

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