Let's be clear: Washington is pursuing regime change by civil war in Syria. The United States, Europe, and the Gulf states want regime change, so they are starving the regime in Damascus and feeding the opposition. They have sanctioned Syria to a fare-thee-well and are busy shoveling money and helping arms supplied by the Gulf get to the rebels. This will change the balance of power in favor of the revolution. It is also the most the United States can and should do.
More...
President Barack Obama does not want to intervene directly in Syria for obvious reasons, and he is right to be cautious. The United States has failed at nation-building twice before in the Middle East. The Libyan example of limited intervention by using air power alone could suck the United States into a protracted and open-ended engagement. One cannot compare Libya to Syria. The former is a relatively small, homogeneous, and wealthy society. Syria has a population four times larger, which is poor and wracked by an increasingly violent civil war across religious lines. Moreover, the chance that the United States can end the killing in Syria by airpower alone is small.
The argument that the United States could have avoided radicalization and civil war in Iraq by toppling Saddam Hussein in 1991 is unconvincing. Similar arguments are now being offered to talk Americans into jumping into Syria. Iraq was not a mature nation-state and was likely to fall apart. The fact that it imploded into civil war when the United States roto-rootered Saddam's regime should have been expected.
U.S.
intervention in Syria will likely lead to something similar: civil war and radicalization.
Syrians have never agreed on basic questions of identity and policy, and it is
unlikely that they will decide these issues peacefully today.
With America's economy in the dumps, its
military badly bruised, its reputation among Muslims in tatters, and its people
fatigued by foreign wars, this is no time to intervene in Syria. Washington has
no staying power if things go wrong. It wants regime-change on the cheap -- to
bomb and withdraw. And if things go wrong, will we leave the Syrians in the
lurch or get sucked into another complicated quagmire? The administration can
ill afford to leave a failed state behind in Syria or to have it unfurl into
civil war.
Even more pressing will be the need for post-conflict reconstruction. Syria is a nation the size of Iraq whose population has outstripped its water and economic resources. Unlike Iraq, it has insufficient sources of revenue to quickly rebuild its infrastructure. What if there is massive looting and chaos? Syria produces little the world wants to buy. It hardly produces enough electricity for three hours of power a day. The school system is in a shambles. Do Americans want to pay for putting Syria back together? More to the point, should they let Washington start what it would not finish?
If anyone tells you they are going to build democracy in Syria, don't buy it. Democracy is unlikely to succeed there anytime soon. The two social indicators that predict the success of democratization with any accuracy are median population age and per capita gross domestic product. According to a recent study, autocracies with a median population age of over 30 years old are most likely to transition to liberal democracies -- Syria has a median age of 21. This is the same as Iraq's and just slightly older than Gaza's and Yemen's. Because of its poverty and youth, political scientists give it small chances of becoming democratic and stable any time soon. Beware of drinking the democratization Kool-Aid.
Anyone who believes that Syria will avoid the excesses of Iraq -- where the military, government ministries, and Baath Party were dissolved and criminalized -- is dreaming. Syrian government institutions and the security forces will fall apart once the revolution prevails. They are overwhelmingly staffed by Baathists, Alawites, and other minorities, recruited for loyalty to President Bashar al-Assad -- no revolutionary government will keep them on. Their dismissal will provide fodder for a counterinsurgency, promoting greater chaos across the country.
Syria's
new rulers will also face a daunting set of challenges upon taking power. They
will be obliged to employ the hundreds of thousands of jobless Syrians who have
sacrificed for the revolution, lost family, and struggled in the face of
tyranny.
If the United States becomes militarily involved
-- destroying the presidential palace in Damascus and military installations --
it will own Syria. Will it discipline the dozens of militias that have sprung
up to represent the revolutionary forces? If the death toll rises after the
Assad regime is taken out, will the United States continue to dedicate itself
to stopping the killing?
SUBJECTS:
