Liberals arguing that the U.S. should give weapons to Syrian rebels underestimate Assad's power

[Douglas Carpenter]

This article is from more than a year ago - but I think the points are still very, very relevant. I strongly recommend reading this article in full - in salon.com by Gary Kamiya:

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/dont_arm_syrias_rebels/singleton/

snips:

This is not a knee-jerk left-wing response. It has nothing to do with Iraq. Nor does it have anything to do with the proxy war between the U.S. and its allies and Iran and its allies. It is not driven by pacifism or opposition to all war. All U.S. wars are not axiomatically foolish, evil or driven by brutal self-interest (although most of them since World War II have been). The airstrikes on Kosovo and the Libya campaign were justified (although the jury is still out on the latter intervention). If arming the Syrian opposition would result in fewer deaths and a faster transition to a peaceful, open, democratic society, we should arm them.

That analysis has been provided by a number of in-depth reports, most notably a new study by the International Crisis Group, as well as the excellent on-the-ground reporting of Nir Rosen for Al-Jazeera. The bottom line is simple. The war has become a zero-sum game for Assad. If he loses, he dies. But the only way he can lose is if he is abandoned by his crucial external patron, Russia, which is extremely unlikely to happen absent some slaughter so egregious that Moscow feels it has to cut ties with him. Assad has sufficient domestic support to hold on for a long time, and a huge army that is not likely to defect en masse. Under these circumstances, giving arms to the rebels, however much it may make conscience-stricken Western observers feel better, will simply make the civil war much bloodier and its outcome even more chaotic and dangerous.

The key point concerns Assad’s domestic support. Contrary to the widely held belief that most Syrians support the opposition and are opposed to the Assad regime, Syrians are in fact deeply divided. The country’s minorities – the ruling Alawites, Christians and Druze – tend to support the regime, if only because they fear what will follow its downfall. (The grocery on my corner in San Francisco is owned by a Christian Syrian from a village outside Damascus. When I asked him what he thought about what was going on in his country, he said, “It’s not like what you see on TV. Assad is a nice guy. He’s trying to do the right thing.”) As Rosen makes clear, Syria’s ruling Alawite minority is the key to Assad’s survival: Absent an outside invasion, the regime will not fall unless the Alawites turn on it. But the Alawites fear reprisals if the Sunni-dominated opposition, some of whose members have threatened to “exterminate the Alawites,” defeats the Assad regime. The fear of a sectarian war, exacerbated by the murky and incoherent nature of the opposition, means that the minorities are unlikely to join the opposition in large numbers.

...

Our national instinct is to come riding to the rescue. It goes against our character to simply sit on our hands. Our sincere, naive and self-centered belief that America can fix everything, and our equally sincere, naive and self-centered belief that moral outrage justifies intervention, is a powerful tide, pulling us toward getting directly involved in Syria’s civil war.

But in the real world, we cannot always come riding to the rescue. Sometimes, we have no choice but to watch tragedy unfold, because anything we do will create an even bigger tragedy.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/dont_arm_syrias_rebels/singleton/

[pampango]

1. It's more than a year old but still a great article. Only a fool would underestimate Assad's power.

The ICG report recommends “a more pragmatic, consensual approach, a controlled, negotiated transition that would spare the country additional bloodshed … a middle course between chaos without the regime and chaos with it – a controlled transition that preserves state institutions, thoroughly reforms the security services and puts squarely on the table the issue of unaccountable family rule.” To get there, it suggests strengthening some of mediator Kofi Annan’s general ideas, including a monitoring mechanism to ensure that cease-fires are not violated, freezing of weapons smuggling across the border, and a pragmatic compromise on demonstrations that would allow them but not in the center of Damascus, where they would become Tahrir Square-style mass movements that would topple the regime. In the long run, the radioactive issue of the Assad family’s rule and legitimacy and the sectarian makeup of the security forces would have to be addressed. But in the short term, Assad would remain in power.

An Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by two law professors, Asli Bali and Aziz F. Rana, made the same point: The most humane thing for the Syrian people, the authors argue, would be to engage with Assad – which means leaving him, at least for now, in power.

This means that the best-case scenario is that the fighting winds down, the opposition eventually gives up the armed struggle, contents itself with whatever crumbs Assad throws it, and waits for the political winds to shift enough so that real change can start taking place.

For this, thousands of men, women and children gave their lives? Such an outcome seems morally outrageous. It’s unthinkable. But the alternative – an all-out sectarian civil war between evenly matched adversaries, both of them fighting to the death – is even more unthinkable.

I wholeheartedly agree that negotiations are the only constructive way to resolve this. I am not sure that an unending supply of arms and ammunition for Assad coupled with ending military supplies to the rebels is the best way to bring about negotiations. Arms suppliers for all sides should tell their clients that the gravy train is over. That would be a strong motivation to negotiate.

If Assad had been willing to accept the recommendations of the ICG in 2011 - "a controlled transition that preserves state institutions, thoroughly reforms the security services and puts squarely on the table the issue of unaccountable family rule - one could argue that uprising would have stayed peaceful. In the beginning demonstrators were asking for reforms not Assad's immediate removal.

Assad's army and security services are among the largest and strongest in the region. As with any dictator, they are key elements in his strategy to survive and retain power. Anyone who underestimated his strength would be a fool.

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. another kick

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Yes, it complex

And support for the regime is deep in areas.

[geek tragedy]

4. The side that loses will lose absolutely.

History does not favor minority rulers who seek to murder the majority into submission.