When
Barack Obama was an inexperienced presidential candidate back in 2008,
one question that was repeatedly raised was whether he was qualified to
competently carry out the duties required of the executive. Upon
announcing that - contrary to Bush's belligerent approach - he favored
negotiating with foreign leaders, Obama invoked John F. Kennedy’s failed
attempt to negotiate with then Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev in
Vienna in 1961. Confirming the suspicions of many, Obama's example
betrayed a profound lack of knowledge of US history. For, among other
things, Kennedy was famously out of his depths in that 1961 summit. Not
only did Khruschev bully and belittle Kennedy, in Kennedy's own words
Khruschev treated him "like a little boy."
Telling New York Times reporter James Reston that Khruschev "beat the
hell out of me," and "savaged me," Kennedy added that his dealings with
Khruschev at that 1961 summit amounted to one "of the worst experiences
of my life."
Needless to say,
John F. Kennedy's foreign relations debacle would not seem a very strong
precedent to invoke if one wanted to encourage confidence in one's
capacity to handle international affairs.
Five
years later, as Obama trains his tomahawk missiles on Syria – pursuing a
war path certain to lead to further horror for untold Syrians, and the region in general – one cannot
help but wonder whether President Obama is as ignorant of early 20th
century history as candidate Obama was of the Cold War.
Though
Obama seems confident that a strike against Syria would amount to a
"limited", controlled, conflict, it is hardly arcane knowledge that
unpredictability and dissimulation are not only the most elementary of
warfare tactics, but invariables of military conflict. As that master
militarist Napoleon Bonaparte put it, "War is a lottery, and one should
risk only small amounts." In spite of this maxim, however, and Obama’s
assurances to the contrary, a war with Syria risks very large amounts.
Not only does it carry the potential to fuel a long, drawn out
conflict in the already destabilized region, anyone paying attention to
the Middle East over the past few years must recognize that such a
strike could easily lead to thermonuclear war as well. Though this may
sound sensationalistic, the probability of such a catastrophic outcome
is so real that it should not be dismissed out of hand. As is well
known, Israel is not only in possession of nuclear weaponry, the US ally
(and the US itself for that matter) has been gunning for war with Iran - one of Syria's most important allies -
for years. Pakistan, another nuclear power, has meanwhile stated that it
would oppose the US should the latter attack Iran, potentially dragging
India, another US ally (and nuclear power) into the fray as well. Seen
from this perspective, it is beyond foolhardy to predict a quick, easy
outcome - not that that is what Obama actually wants.
By
all accounts, a quick outcome was never the Obama Administration's top
goal. Rather than preventing a humanitarian crisis, until recently Obama
et al. were primarily interested in keeping the war going as long as possible, encouraging
the belligerents to bleed themselves dry. According to the Wall Street
Journal, "The Obama administration [didn't] want to tip the balance in
favor of the opposition for fear the outcome may be even worse for U.S.
interests than the current stalemate." It seems a prolonged war,
rather than peace, would, ironically, have created the most stable
situation - at least as far US interests are concerned.
As conditions shifted,
however, and insofar as Obama seems to be following the George H. W.
Bush, post-Cold War "New World Order" associated with the Cheney,
Wolfowitz, et al., Project for the New American Century (one major aim
of which is the initiation of war against Iraq, Iran, and Syria, among
other nations), there are plenty of reasons to suspect that the US would
not shrink from taking advantage of an opening in the fluctuating Syria
situation - allowing the US to not only shore up its control of the
Middle East, with its vast resources, but to contribute to its
encirclement of China to boot.
Notwithstanding
such grand designs vis-a-vis Syria, and with the caveat that one can
never really know what is being planned, as the pitch for war
intensifies it seems safe to presume that the Obama team does not
necessarily plan to restrict US involvement to the "limited scope"
heretofore discussed. To be sure, as the New York Times reported, when
Saudi and Syrian opposition leaders complained about the potential lack
of forcefulness implied by the pledge to deliver limited strikes, John
Kerry assured them that language involving limitations was only designed
to mollify the US public.
Additionally,
instead of the delay attached to Obama's decision to wait for
congressional approval for a US strike leading to cooler, more pacific
heads, the delay appears to be producing a predictably contrary effect;
instead of cooling down, feelings are heating up. As retired US General
Jack Keane told the BBC, goals are being reassessed. Rather than simply
talking about restoring a chemical weapon-free norm, talk has turned to
not only "deterring" but "degrading" Assad's military capabilities. At
the same time that the military is discussing degrading Assad's forces,
talk has turned as well to "upgrading" the opposition - all of which
sounds far closer to advocating the "regime change" that, just days ago,
was dismissed as being outside the "limited scope" of the intended
strike.
In spite of all this, even
if the US could, hypothetically, simply and quickly "restore" the
chemical weapon-free "norm" which was - in the words of National
Security Adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes - the principal rationale for air
strikes, and even if US forces could quickly withdraw from the war-zone,
there is still no way to ensure that a military intensification of the
sort involving missile strikes won't inadvertently widen the conflict.
Indeed,
while Obama's argument in favor of launching a military strike against
Syria - specifically his position that his and US credibility is at
stake - brings to mind JFK's Cuban Missile Crisis, the parallel is in
fact far closer to an exponentially far more severe conflict, one that
started nearly one hundred years ago: the first World War. This,
however, should not lead one to dismiss all comparisons to the Cuban
Missile Crisis; by launching an attack on Syria, Obama would not be
merely potentially instigating a world war, he would be setting in
motion what could very well amount to a world war fought with nuclear
weapons.
Though this may sound
dramatic, it should not really be too contentious a claim. For, in
addition to the likely involvement of Israel (and possibly Pakistan),
the US - the only country to attack another with nuclear weaponry - has
already been using low-grade nuclear weaponry in the region, in the form
of depleted uranium, since the 1991 Gulf War. Moreover, in another -
though less well-known - capacity that Obama shares with Kennedy, Obama
has in fact already brought the world to the verge of nuclear war.
Though not widely reported, Operation Neptune Spear - the 2011 invasion
of Pakistan that resulted in the extralegal assassination of Osama bin
Laden - involved violating Pakistan's sovereignty. Because the
Pakistanis were unaware of the incursion into their territory, and had
good reason to fear that their rivals the Indians (or the US even, in
what are referred to as “snatch and grab” operations) could have been
seizing nuclear weapons, the Pakistan government was nearly provoked
into launching a nuclear strike, precipitating nuclear war.
In
spite of the potential for staggering human harm, like his predecessors
Obama continues to assert US hegemony, selectively referencing and
selectively enforcing international norms. As he vivifies a pivotal
component of the US system of power, this should really not seem too out
of the ordinary, nor should it seem strange that Obama should
increasingly come across as a veritable pastiche of presidents past.
Beyond his nods to Reagan and Lincoln, his Nixon-esque war crimes, and
the aforementioned JFK resemblances, it has been widely noted that
Obama's claim that Syria is using "weapons of mass destruction" echoes
Bush II's similar, 2003 claim. Moreover, the legal argument for bombing
Syria absent UN sanction is also remarkably similar to the argument
Clinton - and NATO - put forward for bombing Kosovo absent UN approval
in 1999. In that purportedly humanitarian mission, NATO forces attacked
the Serbs, notoriously inflaming the conflict there as well as
exacerbating harm to civilians. Yet while the present situation is
indeed similar to the conflict involving Kosovo and Serbia, it may in
fact be related less to the NATO bombing of Kosovo than to events that
transpired in Serbia nearly a century earlier. For inasmuch as the
present tangle of alliances creates an extremely volatile situation,
Syria resembles Serbia in 1914, at the time of the Austro-Hungarian
invasion that triggered World War I.
Ninety-nine
years ago, the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled over not only
a large expanse of Central Europe, but over a considerable portion of
the Balkan Peninsula as well. Controlling much of this territory since
the 16th century, by the early 20th the Austro Hungarian Empire was
sandwiched between its ally, the German Empire, and its rivals, the
Russian and Ottoman empires. When the nationalistic furor of the late
19th century infused its client-states with a desire for national
autonomy, the Slavic Kingdom of Serbia - allied with their fellow Slavs,
the Russian Empire - was not alone in agitating for political
independence. And when the nationalist assassin Gavrilo Princip shot and
killed the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, he
set off a chain reaction of alliances and counter-alliances that brought
all of the major powers to war with one another.
When
the Austro Hungarian Empire invaded Serbia to punish its regicidal
transgression, the Russian Empire - a Serb ally - was drawn into war
against the Austro Hungarians. And since the Russian Empire was allied
with France and Great Britain in their Triple Entente as well, the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and its allies - the German Empire and the
Ottoman Empire (from whose conquered territory Syria would be carved)
found themselves at war with the French, British, and Russian empires.
Fueled by nationalistic sentiment, and by imperialist competition for
economic expansion, as well as for natural resources, like oil, the
ensuing offensives quickly engulfed the world in one of the most
devastating wars of human history.
Yet
in spite of the massive arms race leading up to it, and the
unprecedented toll the Great War would ultimately take, many initially
predicted that it would be a short war. Though it is unclear as to
whether Kaiser Wilhelm II truly believed that it would be a brief fight,
or whether he was merely attempting to raise morale among his subjects,
he reputedly told his troops - in a phrase reminiscent of Obama's
assurances concerning the limited scope of war with Syria - that the
troops would be "home before the leaves have fallen from the trees."
In
another echo from WWI, in a recent interview with Le Figaro, Syrian
dictator Bashar al-Assad described the war torn region as "a powder
keg." Though it has arguably become a cliche, the expression "powder
keg" is most famous for designating the Balkans on the eve of WWI. And
though these correspondences, not to mention competition over resources,
may be germane to most military engagements, the case with Syria shares
an analogous complex of highly volatile alliances that could, with
minimal provocation, lead to a metastasization of violence comparable
to, or even surpassing, that of WWI.
For
instance, since Syria is allied with Iran - a nation nearly as populous
as Egypt - an attack on Syria could very easily drag that pivotal
nation into the war. The fact that the US has been ratcheting up
pressure on Iran for the past few years only increases the likelihood of
war with one of Syria's principal allies. Indeed, one of the reasons
the Obama Administration appealed to congress to authorize attacks on
Syria in the first place was that, according to the New York Times' Mark Landler, they feared that a unilateral strike
could potentially destroy their chances for obtaining permission to
launch a later war with Iran. Beyond the US, however, one of the United
States' closest allies - Israel - is also itching for war with Iran.
Although
it seems likely that Israel will stay out of a war with Syria, as it
stayed out of the 1991 Gulf War, it is hardly a stretch to imagine that
Israel - whose leadership is far more bellicose now than it was in 1991 -
and has been pressing for war with Iran for
years - would take advantage of the "legality" that the opportunity of
war provides and attack Iran. Indeed, as of the morning of September
3rd, Israel and the US confirmed that the two just concluded joint
military exercises, testing Sparrow target missiles in the Eastern
Mediterranean.
While this in
itself may not be unusual, the extremely hawkish rhetoric of Netanyahu,
among others in the Israeli government, may be indicative of plans for
attacking Iran. And while recent studies have cast doubts as to
Germany's unilateral belligerence back in 1914, few would be surprised
if Israel were to mimic Germany's World War I invasion of France -
invading Iran, Syria, or Lebanon (where Hezbollah, whose effective 2006
military performance against Israel caused no small degree of
embarrassment for Israel, is ensconced) all under the legalistic cover
provided by a state of war.
Russia, meanwhile,
whose power is arguably stronger than it's been since the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, is another longtime partner of Syria. Having
supported Syria throughout the Cold War, political, economic, and
military ties between the two nations are still close. And while Russia
has not indicated that it would enter the war, according to Bloomberg
Russia has moved several warships - including two destroyers, an
anti-submarine ship, and a missile cruiser - into the eastern
Mediterranean in a show of force.
Of
all the alliances, however, the strangest is arguably that of the US
and the Syrian opposition. Among others in the coalition of Syrian rebel
forces, the Al Nusra Front - which is among the strongest of the rebel
forces - is allied with al Qaeda. Since al Qaeda happens to be the US'
principal enemy in its so-called War on Terror, by aligning with the
Syrian opposition, the US will place itself in the peculiar position of
being - in some respects - at war with itself. What makes this alliance
all the more strange, however, is that rather than the Assad government,
evidence suggests that it may be the rebels who are responsible for
launching the August 21st chemical weapons attacks that Obama and Kerry
argue require a punitive response.
To
be sure, despite Obama’s humanitarian rationale for bombing Syria,
there is in fact no credible evidence to support the finding that the
horrors Obama saw in a series of YouTube videos were launched by the
Assad regime. As was the case with the lead up to the Iraq War, instead
of strong, persuasive evidence, the US government has been building its
case for war on contradictory and incomplete evidence, filling the gaps
with conjecture. In spite of these shortcomings, Obama is proceeding
with his case anyway. Arguing that, in addition to stopping a
humanitarian disaster, US involvement is necessary to maintain Obama's
and US credibility. Of course, in putting forth such an argument, Obama
and his supporters have missed the fact that they cannot lose what
they never possessed in the first place. For, in addition to the
flimsiness of their evidence, the US has lost nearly all of its
credibility already. Preemptively dismissing a UN weapons inspection
report on the matter, maintaining that the time lapse of five days would
preclude the UN team from collecting unadulterated evidence (contrary
to the claims of experts who note that, though evidence may lose some of
its freshness, highly relevant information can be collected months and
even years after an event), did little to bolster US credibility
either. To be sure, rather than engaging in a good faith analysis
of what is actually happening vis-a-vis chemical weapons in Syria, and
who is actually to blame, and where the attacks in fact occurred, and
which faction indeed controlled the area at the time, repeating Bush
II's arguments regarding weapons of mass destruction Obama is rushing
into another war.
Yet
even if the Assad regime did use chemical weapons, as Obama claims, as
horrifying as such an attack may be, it would still not suffice to
provide the US with legal justification for an attack on Syria. That is,
if the US Congress sanctions Obama's use of force, that may lend
legitimacy to Obama's war; but because the US is proceeding without UN
Security Council consent, and is not acting in self-defense, a US strike
itself would constitute an extra-legal - criminal - act of war.
None
of the above, however, should distract attention from what ought to be
the topmost concern - the human crisis unfolding in the Middle East.
With over one hundred thousand casualties in two years of fighting, and
over two million refugees (and over triple that amount displaced within
Syria) the Syrian people are no doubt suffering the depredations of not
only the brutal Assad dictatorship but the persistent, deadly attacks
committed by the rebel forces. As the former attempt to hold onto power,
and as the latter attempt to assume it, not only are the belligerents
killing thousands of innocent people; held hostage to the Assad dynasty
for generations, the Syrian people are now held hostage by the rebel
opposition as well.
While
concerned people argue that something must be done, those expecting US
strikes to initiate human rights in Syria may find themselves as
disappointed as enlightened Prussians were when Napoleon's defeat of the
Prussians in the first few years of the 19th century failed to initiate
human rights there. Instead of bringing liberté, egalité and the other
universalistic ideals of the French Revolution, Napoleon brought brutal
occupation. Similarly, the US does not extend the ideals suspended in
its Declaration of Independence to the lands it divides and conquers.
One needn't point to the atrocities committed in Vietnam or the war
crimes - revealed by Chelsea Manning, among other imprisoned
whistleblowers - committed in Iraq and elsewhere to demonstrate this;
one need merely refer to the US justice system, or the ongoing Snowden
affair to see that the US doesn't realize these ideals, or its very own
laws, within its very own borders. As Global Cop, the US' principal
function is the dissemination of Global Order - a function which,
insofar as it simply maintains order (as opposed to justice), amounts as
well to a mere semblance of politics. With such a conflation of
politics and war in play, one can expect the Syrian people - along with
so many others throughout the world today - to be held hostage by the
US, as well as by Assad and the rebels.
Among
its other attributes, and contrary to Carl von Clausewitz's formulation
that war is the continuation of politics by other means, war (which is
fundamentally force) is qualitatively distinct from politics. For though
politics may often be conducted dishonestly and manipulatively,
politics differs from war to the extent that it relies on some measure
of consent and participation. As such, rather than the continuation of
politics, war marks politics' failure. In spite of this, though, this
conflation of war and politics tends to pass for our very notion of
politics. Not only is war regarded as the continuation of the
political, in many respects politics (and economics) has become
indistinct from a variety of war.
Not
only have normalized hostility and competitiveness become pervasive
aspects of everyday life, to the degree that these are taken as natural,
what pass for conditions of peace in the US, and elsewhere, are often
indistinct from a variety of slow-burning cold war - a class war in
which social classes (and so-called races) regard one another not as
neighbors, but more or less as enemies competing for the same "scarce"
resources - from vital resources, including water, homes, and food, to
completely arbitrary resources, like jobs. Popular say in how these
resources are distributed is taken for granted as being outside the
scope of the political.
Because
the internalization of these norms involves conceiving of (not only the
natural world, but) the poor, the working class, and organized labor,
among others, as enemies to be dismissed, such groups tend to be
regarded as obstacles to be removed rather than as political partners
with whom to negotiate a shared existence. As opposed to an actually
egalitarian politics, then, which would attempt to collectively rectify
collective problems, contemporary ideological hostility not only
rationalizes the attack on labor and the poor, but leads in turn to its
complementary egalitarianism - a regressive egalitarianism in which all
are dragged to the same impoverished level.
An
actual politics, on the other hand, is distinct from war. And insofar
as this is the case, an actual politics - in which all are equal
partners - is anathema to Global Order. Indeed, to the extent that an
actual politics emphasizes inclusion (as opposed to
exclusion), and justice (which requires constant adjustment -as opposed
to order and stability), rather than a pseudo-political regressive
egalitarianism, an actual, egalitarian politics would champion a
critical egalitarianism in which global resources would be equitably
distributed. This, in turn, would necessitate a disruption and adjustment of the existing Global Order. Not
only did something akin to this type of critical egalitarianism arise
with the Arab Spring (among other popular, emancipatory, political
movements), somewhat ironically it provided the Syrian opposition a
veneer of political legitimacy in the first place. And though the
initial Syrian uprising may have been related to the emancipatory
political movement that swept through North Africa and the Middle East,
the opposition in Syria very quickly turned into a force at
odds with the universal, emancipatory ambitions characteristic of the
Arab Spring. Much like the Morsi government in Egypt (which was
less a deviation from the old game of neoliberal political economics
than a new party to it, that merely wanted a seat at the old game of
exploitation) the Syrian opposition, like Assad's regime, along with the
US, are but facets of the existing Global Order.
As
recent events in Egypt have demonstrated, this Hostage-Order relation
is a systemic problem that cannot be simply reversed, or inverted.
Indeed, any such inversion still maintains the principal relation -
i.e., though they may be different, it still continues to hold hostages.
While it cannot be reversed, however, this does not mean that it cannot
be neutralized altogether. Neutralization, though, only ever acts as a
type of political defibrillator, momentarily pausing pathological
rhythms. That is, after a defibrillation, a new rhythm of life must
proceed. And in order for a salutary rhythm to emerge, among other
things those national, international, and economic institutions that
perpetuate rhythms of coercion and exploitation, and preclude salutary
modes of life from arising, must be dismantled. In a
political landscape dominated and determined by the institutional and
physical parameters of the nation state, these determinants must be
dismantled as well.
It takes
little insight at this point to see that a US strike will not only not
induce any such salutary situation, it is likely to exacerbate
monumental harms. Insofar as it is pursuing Order - an Order indistinct
from systemic ecological and human harms - this should not come as any
surprise. Yet, whether it will be because of anthropogenic, ecological
disasters, such as Fukushima, or war, or whether it will be the result
of emancipatory political and social movements, this Order is itself
destined to fade.
To be sure, as Obama argues his case for bombing Syria it
is interesting to reflect upon the fact that at least since the death
of Louis XIV, in 1715, there has been a major shake up in European
western power every hundred years. In 1815, after the defeat of
Napoleon, the alliance largely established at the Congress of Vienna
maintained a balance of power that persisted until an industrializing,
unified Germany upset it, leading to World War I in 1914, after which a
new Order arose. And now, in 2013, over 20 years since the end of the
Cold War, one cannot help but wonder whether an overextended,
historically unpopular US will precipitate its own demise, joining
Napoleon's Empire, and the Austro Hungarian Empire, and so many others
in the clutter of the dustbin of history.
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