Intervention in Syria and the Myth of the “Exit Strategy”
03.04.2014 at 10:27pm
Intervention in Syria and the Myth of the “Exit Strategy” by Thomas M. Nichols. War on the Rocks
… When someone says “tell me how it ends,” it’s another way of saying: “I just don’t happen to like this particular case for intervention,” for whatever reason. I am not going to look too deeply into Munson’s motives here, and will take him at his word that he thinks that intervening in any way in Syria will do more harm than good. (“More harm than good,” by the way, is not the same as the “prospect for success” criterion.)…
Thomas never quite made his point about success criteria that would justify why we should intervene in my opinion. I can’t speak for Pete Munson’s argument, and I disagree with Thomas’s that the military said it was too hard. The Pentagon always comes up with outlandish claims for force overmatch that can usually be disregarded. Forget the exit strategy, what would we accomplish by weakening Syria’s military and removing Assad? Would that leave us in a better position strategically? Thomas cites Libya was easy, but failed to mention that the fall of Kaddafi was one of the principle enablers of Jihad in Mali and Nigeria due to the proliferation of weapons from Libya.
On the other hand, looking the situation from a purely humanitarian perspective our intervention “may” have saved tens of thousands of lives. Only nation-states currently have the industrial capacity that can be leveraged to kill that many people. We see terrorists kill a hundred here and there, but state’s with their modern weapons can kill thousands here and there.
Thomas also failed to address if making a stand in Syria was worth provoking Russia and Iran, again would that put us in a better position strategically, or should we have save our resources to direct against a more appropriate military objective?
Obviously drawing a line in the sand and backing down was shameful and probably hurt us strategically, but that is a separate issue from the wisdom of actually intervening.
In the recent past, it was thought that populations, freed from governments/regimes/rulers that denied them (the populations) a western way of life and a western way of governance; these populations would, if thus liberated, quickly, easily and, mostly on their own, adopt modern western ways. Thereby, becoming more peaceful, prosperous and productive and a positive example to other outlying states and societies.
It was on this basis, one might suggest, that we intervened militarily — as we did — in such places as Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
Our subsequent experiences, however, in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, proved the hypothesis provided in the first paragraph above to be false.
Now we have no expectation that populations, liberated from their oppressive regimes will, quickly, easily and, mostly on their own, adopt modern western ways. We realize now that these populations, thus liberated may, in fact, adopt ways of life and ways of governance which are even more detrimental to American interests than that of the former, overthrown regime.
This being the now-understood case, the rational/reasoning for military intervention — for the purpose of regime change in the cause of outlying state and societal westernization — this would seem to have evaporated.