Opinion Caution,Syria ahead
Why the US is unlikely to rush into Syria with guns blazing.
Why the US is unlikely to rush into Syria with guns blazing.
By threatening enormous consequences if the Syrian regime were to use chemical weapons in its civil war,US President Barack Obama has appeared to be saying that a chemical attack would bring the Americans running in with guns blazing to rescue the rebels. Although the rebels,who seem to be increasingly desperate,might understandably take that to be the message,this is likely to be a substantial misreading of American policy.
There may be some military punishment launched from a distance on the Syrian regime in response to what has been maintained is its use of chemical weapons. However,the US is unlikely to follow that up with serious intervention in the ongoing civil war. Military intervention in Iraq,like that in Afghanistan,was a response to the terrorist attack of September 11,2001,and those experiences should not be taken to be precedents. While they demonstrate that the US may launch an invasion if attacked,its response to problems that are essentially humanitarian has been quite different.
In the decade before those two wars,the US did get involved in some humanitarian missions,but it rarely showed a willingness to sacrifice American lives in the process. In Bosnia and Haiti,for example,intervention on the ground was held off until hostilities had ceased. Bombs,but no soldiers in boots,were sent to Kosovo,and in Somalia the US withdrew its troops as soon as 19 of its soldiers were killed in a firefight. In the case of many other humanitarian disasters,such as those in Rwanda,Congo,and Sudan,the US,like other developed nations,has substantially stood aloof. The intervention in Libya was strained and hesitant,and Washington showed little willingness to do much of anything about the conflict in neighbouring Mali that was spawned by the Libyan venture.
American public opinion is clear on this issue. Asked in 1993 about the statement,Nothing the US could accomplish in Somalia is worth the death of even one more US soldier, 60 per cent of the public expressed agreement. The public was anything but enthusiastic when American peacekeeping soldiers were sent to Bosnia in 1995,and they remained that way for years thereafter even though no Americans were killed in the venture. The Kosovo war of 1999 was a success,at least in its own terms. However,in its wake,when pollsters asked Do you think it will be best for the future of this country if we take an active part in world affairs,or if we stayed out of world affairs? the percentage of Americans who said the country should stay out of world affairs abruptly bolted upwards. It dropped after 9/11,but with the subsequent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan,it currently stands at the highest ever since the question was first posed in late 1945.
Some commentators contend that we witnessed the rise of a new militarism in the US in the last couple of decades. But this overreads the reaction to 9/11. The event did send Americans into something of a militaristic rage. But it did not alter their reticence about becoming involved militarily in humanitarian missions. It seems unlikely that concerns about the use of chemical weapons in Syria however repugnant that might be taken to be will notably change that basic pattern.
The writer is a political scientist at Ohio State University and senior fellow,Cato Institute
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