adminGeoffrey McDonald
Since the start of the civil war in Syria, America’s official position has been that the evil dictator must go, yet in announcing its intention to strike Syria as a punishment for its use of chemical weapons, America says that it is not intervening in the civil war, just enforcing its “red line.”
All along, Obama says he wants to get rid of Assad, and then he seriously maintains that it is only about giving him a warning ticket.
When Russian president Putin takes Obama at his word and announces a plan for getting rid of Syria’s chemical weapons which Assad agrees to, Obama accepts the plan, but can barely suppress his annoyance. He proclaims the plan a success for his threat of force even as he expresses his doubts that it will work. This is curious. What’s going on?
Pundits read these shifts as Obama’s newest “off the cuff” diplomatic style or a policy in disarray. What they don’t notice is that these dilemmas are brought on by an imperialist claim of the highest kind: America’s need to demonstrate that it defines and enforces the world order in Syria. America’s dilemmas over Syria do not show any confusion in its aims, but its difficulties making them “credible” in a situation it is not so sure about.
In the eyes of the United States, the original “red line” transgressed by the Syrian government was in coming to power 40 years ago as an Arab nationalist state. It wanted to challenge the lack of sovereignty in the Arab world because the West had already established its interest in controlling the region. Syria wanted the Arab nations to unite and become an independent force in world politics.
To achieve this, it needed a power that could stand up to Israel, which aimed to weaken the new Arab states. Syria’s sovereignty from the beginning was hostile to Israel and the states that backed it. Its national program therefore included opposition to the US and its world order. It formed alliances on the basis of this common anti-Americanism: first as an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and more recently with Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and China.
That’s the simple reason the US wants to destroy the Syrian government. It wants to replace it with a pro-American government that makes America’s interests an integral part of its own national project. Of course, that the sovereignty of Syria should serve America’s interests is a contradiction. The US does not just say: they don’t accommodate us. Rather, the US represents its demands ideologically, as the world’s demands. It says: they violate universal norms. They are not a democracy. In other words: they violate the human rights of their citizens by not fulfilling their duties to America.
From the start of the “Arab Spring,” America supported those states that are friendly to its world order and opportunistically encouraged rebels in those states that stand in its way. The ideological view among the American public is that a rebellion broke out in Syria and then the US responded. The truth is that the Syrian rebels are the outcome of American policy. The US has a standing offer in countries that it defines as its enemies: make a rebellion and we will support you.
The rebellion could not have developed into the kind of civil war that it did without America’s help. To succeed in overthrowing an established state, means are necessary — supplies, logistics, weapons. For the Americans, having others do its dirty work is a great advantage.
At the start of the rebellion, a variety of opposition movements emerged; some even avow socialism. Of course, the US does not favour socialism any more than Sunni dominance for the Saudi-backed groups. It subsumes these groups’ different reasons for opposing Assad under the principle “my enemy’s enemy is my potential friend.” Movements and programs which under different circumstances would not be freedom fighters are in this circumstance: the legitimate fighters against an illegitimate regime.
The plan to have Assad ousted by the locals with as little effort as possible from Washington has not been successful for various reasons. Russia and China finance Assad while Qatar and the Saudis finance jihadist rebels. The next task for America is bringing the opposition under its control: the tricky business of trying to find a pro-American element among them. America soon suspected the wrong people are leading the revolt.
Many fight for a state that will be loyal to Allah, not Uncle Sam. America’s message to the rebels is: if we recognise you, it is not because of your interest, but only because you are willing to form a coalition that is capable of fulfilling its functions for us.
Good manners in war
What is the difference between chemical weapons and the conventional weapons of destruction that the Assad government has used for the last two years? Syria never signed the international treaties on chemical weapons — the best weapons a poor country can afford if it can’t get nuclear ones, and Syria’s insurance policy against Israel — so it hasn’t violated any agreements. The chemical weapons ban is the ideal of a community of states that has established norms for civilised warfare. America uses it as a weapon against Syria.
The “red line” America draws has nothing to do with chemical weapons per se, but signals the outlaw character of the Syrian leadership. America says: according to us, you have illegal weapons. This puts all parties on notice that the US reserves the right to be the final judge over the rules of war and the outcome of this conflict. The red line is crossed when America says so. It could have been set anywhere else.
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