Caroline Glick |
Over
the past week, President Barack Obama and his senior advisers have told
us that the US is poised to go to war against Syria. In the next few
days, the US intends to use its air power and guided missiles to attack
Syria in response to the regime's use of chemical weapons in the
outskirts of Damascus last week.
The questions
that ought to have been answered before any statements were made by the
likes of Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck
Hagel have barely been raised in the public arena. The most important of
those questions are: What US interests are at stake in Syria? How
should the US go about advancing them? What does Syria's use of chemical
weapons means for the US's position in the region? How would the
planned US military action in Syria impact US deterrent strength,
national interests and credibility regionally and worldwide? Syria is
not an easy case. Thirty months into the war there, it is clear that the
good guys, such as they are, are not in a position to win.
Syria
is controlled by Iran and its war is being directed by the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps and by Hezbollah. And arrayed against them
are rebel forces dominated by al-Qaida.
As US
Sen. Ted Cruz explained this week, "Of nine rebel groups [fighting the
regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad], seven of them may well have
some significant ties to al-Qaida."
With no
good horse to bet on, the US and its allies have three core interests
relating to the war. First, they have an interest in preventing Syria's
chemical, biological and ballistic missile arsenals from being used
against them either directly by the regime, through its terror proxies
or by a successor regime.
Second, the US and its allies have an interest in containing the war as much as possible to Syria itself.
Finally,
the US and its allies share an interest in preventing Iran, Moscow or
al-Qaida from winning the war or making any strategic gains from their
involvement in the war.
For the past
two-and-a-half years, Israel has been doing an exemplary job of securing
the first interest. According to media reports, the IDF has conducted
numerous strikes inside Syria to prevent the transfer of advanced
weaponry, including missiles from Syria to Hezbollah.
Rather
than assist Israel in its efforts that are also vital to US strategic
interests, the US has been endangering these Israeli operations. US
officials have repeatedly leaked details of Israel's operations to the
media. These leaks have provoked several senior Israeli officials to
express acute concern that in providing the media with information
regarding these Israeli strikes, the Obama administration is behaving as
if it is interested in provoking a war between Israel and Syria. The
concerns are rooted in a profound distrust of US intentions,
unprecedented in the 50-year history of US-Israeli strategic relations.
The
second US interest threatened by the war in Syria is the prospect that
the war will not be contained in Syria. Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan
specifically are threatened by the carnage. To date, this threat has
been checked in Jordan and Lebanon. In Jordan, US forces along the
border have doubtlessly had a deterrent impact in preventing the
infiltration of the kingdom by Syrian forces.
In
Lebanon, given the huge potential for spillover, the consequences of
the war in Syria have been much smaller than could have been reasonably
expected. Hezbollah has taken a significant political hit for its
involvement in the war in Syria. On the ground, the spillover violence
has mainly involved Shi'ite and Shi'ite jihadists targeting one another.
Iraq
is the main regional victim of the war in Syria. The war there
reignited the war between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq. Violence has
reached levels unseen since the US force surge in 2007. The renewed
internecine warfare in Iraq redounds directly to President Barack
Obama's decision not to leave a residual US force in the country. In the
absence US forces, there is no actor on the ground capable of
strengthening the Iraqi government's ability to withstand Iranian
penetration or the resurgence of al-Qaida.
The
third interest of the US and its allies that is threatened by the war in
Syria is to prevent Iran, Russia or al-Qaida from securing a victory or
a tangible benefit from their involvement in the war.
It
is important to note that despite the moral depravity of the regime's
use of chemical weapons, none of America's vital interests is impacted
by their use within Syria. Obama's pledge last year to view the use of
chemical weapons as a tripwire that would automatically cause the US to
intervene militarily in the war in Syria was made without relation to
any specific US interest.
But once Obama made
his pledge, other US interests became inextricably linked to US
retaliation for such a strike. The interests now on the line are
America's deterrent power and strategic credibility. If Obama responds
in a credible way to Syria's use of chemical weapons, those interests
will be advanced. If he does not, US deterrent power will become a
laughing stock and US credibility will be destroyed.
Unfortunately,
the US doesn't have many options for responding to Assad's use of
chemical weapons. If it targets the regime in a serious way, Assad could
fall, and al-Qaida would then win the war. Conversely, if the US strike
is sufficient to cause strategic harm to the regime's survivability,
Iran could order the Syrians or Hezbollah or Hamas, or all of them, to
attack Israel. Such an attack would raise the prospect of regional war
significantly.
A reasonable response would be
for the US to target Syria's ballistic missile sites. And that could
happen. Although the US doesn't have to get involved in order to produce
such an outcome. Israel could destroy Syria's ballistic missiles
without any US involvement while minimizing the risk of a regional
conflagration.
There are regime centers and
military command and control bases and other strategic sites that it
might make sense for the US to target.
Unfortunately,
the number of regime and military targets the US has available for
targeting has been significantly reduced in recent days. Administration
leaks of the US target bank gave the Syrians ample time to move their
personnel and equipment.
This brings us to the
purpose the Obama administration has assigned to a potential retaliatory
strike against the Syrian regime following its use of chemical weapons.
Obama told PBS on Wednesday that US strikes on Syria would be "a shot across the bow."
But
as Charles Krauthammer noted, such a warning is worthless. In the same
interview Obama also promised that the attack would be a nonrecurring
event. When there are no consequences to ignoring a warning, then the
warning will be ignored.
This is a very big
problem. Obama's obvious reluctance to follow through on his pledge to
retaliate if Syria used chemical weapons may stem from a belated
recognition that he has tethered the US's strategic credibility to the
quality of its response to an action that in itself has little
significance to US interests in Syria.
And this
brings us to the third vital US interest threatened by the war in Syria
- preventing Iran, al-Qaida or Russia from scoring a victory.
Whereas
the war going on in Syria pits jihadists against jihadists, the war
that concerns the US and its allies is the war the jihadists wage
against everyone else. And Iran is the epicenter of that war.
Like
US deterrent power and strategic credibility, the US's interest in
preventing Iran from scoring a victory in Damascus is harmed by the
obvious unseriousness of the "signal" Obama said he wishes to send Assad
through US air strikes.
Speaking on Sunday of
the chemical strike in Syria, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned,
"Syria has become Iran's testing ground.... Iran is watching and it
wants to see what would be the reaction on the use of chemical weapons."
The
tepid, symbolic response that the US is poised to adopt in response to
Syria's use of chemical weapons represents a clear signal to Iran. Both
the planned strikes and the growing possibility that the US will scrap
even a symbolic military strike in Syria tell Iran it has nothing to
fear from Obama.
Iran achieved a strategic
achievement by exposing the US as a paper tiger in Syria. With this
accomplishment in hand, the Iranians will feel free to call Obama's
bluff on their nuclear weapons project. Obama's "shot across the bow"
response to Syria's use of chemical weapons in a mass casualty attack
signaled the Iranians that the US will not stop them from developing and
deploying a nuclear arsenal.
Policy-makers and
commentators who have insisted that we can trust Obama to keep his
pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have based their
view on an argument that now lies in tatters. They insisted that by
pledging to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Obama staked his
reputation on acting competently to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
To avoid losing face, they said, Obama will keep his pledge.
Obama's
behavior on Syria has rendered this position indefensible. Obama is
perfectly content with shooting a couple of pot shots at empty
government installations. As far as he is concerned, the conduct of air
strikes in Syria is not about Syria, or Iran. They are not the target
audience of the strikes. The target audience for US air strikes in Syria
is the disengaged, uninformed American public.
Obama
believes he can prove his moral and strategic bonafides to the public
by declaring his outrage at Syrian barbarism and then launching a few
cruise missiles from an aircraft carrier. The computer graphics on the
television news will complete the task for him.
The
New York Times claimed on Thursday that the administration's case for
striking Syria would not be the "political theater" that characterized
the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq. But at least the
Bush administration's political theater ended with the invasion. In
Obama's case, the case for war and the war itself are all political
theater.
While for a few days the bread and
circuses of the planned strategically useless raid will increase
newspaper circulation and raise viewer ratings of network news, it will
cause grievous harm to US national interests. As far as US enemies are
concerned, the US is an empty suit.
And as far
as America's allies are concerned, the only way to prevent Iran from
becoming a nuclear power is to operate without the knowledge of the
United States.
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