My grounds are fairly straightforward. We don’t have the backing of a major Arab ally, let alone a major regional organization or the U.N. Security Council. The first is certainly not sufficient but that we lack it is terrifying. In Libya our initial action did have the backing of the Security Council and we got support from the Arab League to go further. That support weakened as time went on, to be fair, and similarly I will note that the verdict is still out on Libya’s outcome.
I’ll also note that while horrific video is out there, let’s get the report from the U.N. inspectors. They’re there; they won’t be attributing responsibility, but it isn’t for the U.S. to judge whether their arrival was sufficiently timely.
Ultimately, while I think there are good political science and economic cases against, I actually found Noah Millman’s breakdown decisive:
Since the creation of the United Nations, the only legitimate justification for the unilateral use of force is self-defense. Nobody alleges that a strike against Syria is an act in self-defense.
Nobody is even seriously defending it under “responsibility-to-protect” which was the justification for the Libyan intervention (and the Kosovo war before that). RTP extends the concept of self-defense to the defense of others. It’s a highly suspect doctrine with obvious potential for abuse – potential that was very arguably realized in the Libyan case. But even this expansive mandate for intervention doesn’t apply to Syria, where we are not proposing to protect the rebels but to punish the Syrian government for its reported use of chemical weapons against civilians.
If we launch an attack on Syria, it will not be under any legal warrant whatsoever. But the entire public justification for an attack is the to punish Syria for a crime of war – that is to say, the justification is the need to uphold international law. In other words, an attack would be an open declaration that the United States arrogates to itself the right to determine what the law is, who has violated it, what punishment they deserve, and to take whatever action is necessary to see it carried out. If that’s liberal internationalism, then I’m a kumquat.
I favor building a legal case against Assad. I don’t believe that will hasten the end of the war, but nor will this bombing.
As ever, I speak for myself and not my employer.
Recent Comments