Charles W. King

Assessment by American and Israeli intelligence agencies of the April 13th strikes against the chemical weapons facilities of Bashar Al Assad have revealed that the stikes did little to impede the regime's ability to use chemical weapons against its people. This prompts the question of what was the point of these strikes, and why has the United States, France, and United Kingdom not continued attacking Syrian facilities. The cessation of strikes suggests that their objective was not to render the Assad regime incapable of using chemical weapons, but a number of possible objectives remain. One is that the strike made the regime unwilling rather than unable to use chemical weapons in the future. Time will tell if the strikes did deter the future use of chemical weapons, but current indications are not encouraging. Even if Assad does not use chemical weapons again, that does not mean that deterrence was the intent, in total or in part, of strikes.

Being seen to done something, and something violent, in response the use of chemical weapons is important for the Trump Administration both at home and abroad. Abroad the United States needs to demonstrate that it’s longstanding threats of harsh treatment for any government that uses chemical weapons are credible. With little ability to implement harsher sanctions or further isolate the Syrian government, military strikes were the logical choice to demonstrate American resolve and ensure credibility. However, the relative ineffectiveness of the strikes dents this credibility somewhat.

The Trump Administration also has obvious domestic political motivations for using military force against Syria, it puts the Administration in direct contrast to their bête-noire, the administration of Barack Obama. Assad’s forces also used chemical weapons during the Obama Administration, crossing what that administration described at a “Red Line”. The Obama Administration was roundly criticized for its response to this line being crossed, which was to implement, through the United Nations, a disarmament program we now know to be ineffective.

Making foreign policy based on domestic political considerations is dangerous. Neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have come to the aid of France and the U.K. if they had relied on the opinion of the American people. William McKinley was unable to resist the overwhelming push for war with Spain in 1898.

While the resulting victory in the Spanish-American War proved beneficial for the United States as it expanded its reach in the Caribbean and Western Pacific public opinion rarely coincides with good strategy. The First and Second World Wars are prime examples of when the United States had clear strategic interests but was prevented from acting on them by domestic politics.

At the end of World War Two Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which remain controversial to this day. Having advocated for its development and worked on producing atomic weapons, dozens of scientists signed a petition against the use of atomic bombs against people. Despite this, and the fervent belief of Generals like Curtis LeMay that the Japanese would surrender due to conventional bombing before an invasion was necessary, Truman chose to use the atomic bombs against Japanese cities.

Especially in democratic systems doing nothing can be extremely difficult, despite it often being the best way to secure long term strategic objectives. Frequently the premise that advisors are presented with is to recommend a course of action, which excludes the possibility of restraint. Policy-makers should not conflate restraint with inaction or indecision. Choosing not to act is a valid and important strategic choice that must be part of the full range of options for foreign policy.

Charles W. King

On April 13th, 2018, the Trump administration bombed a number sites in Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in the ongoing Syrian Civil War. In the aftermath much has been made of the fact that the United States warned the Russian government that the strikes were incoming. In the current political climate in the U.S. this kind of coordination with Russia is being characterized in some quarters as further evidence in support of the allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia. Regardless of these allegations, the act of warning the Russian government of the April 13th strikes is not unusual. De-escalation procedures like this are common, and are a specific strategic choice that the United States and other have made in the past for good reason.

Throughout the Korean War and the Vietnam War both North Korean and North Vietnamese forces received substantial aid from the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Both sides maintained that American forces were not engaged with, killing, and being killed by Chinese and Russian forces. This was a fiction agreed upon by all sides, particularly in the air wars over Korea and Vietnam. Many of the pilots were Russian or Chinese, as were the crews and officers of much of North Korea’s and North Vietnam’s air defenses. The American, Chinese, and Soviet governments understood that if they admitted that their pilots were regularly engaged with forces of the opposing super-powers the conflicts would escalate from regional one to global, and likely nuclear, wars. Despite the intense competition between the world powers, this kind of escalation was not something they desired, and the mutually agreed upon fiction allowed that. A famous example of this is illustrated in the theatrical depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days. An American pilot returns from taking pictures of missile sites in Cuba with what are clearly bullet holes in his aircraft, but having received instructions from the White House he jokingly tells his ground crew that he, “Ran into a flock of sparrows.” Admitting he had taken anti-aircraft fire would have precipitated a response that would have escalated the conflict just as the United States and Soviet Union were attempting to reign it in.

Warning rivals or even the targets of incoming attacks is also a long standing de-escalation practice, though not always a successful one. On July 22, 1946, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed. The southern wing of the hotel housed the central offices of the government of the British Mandate of Palestine, the target of the bombing. The attack was carried out by the Irgun, a right-wing militant zionist organization. Attempts were made by the Irgun to warn the British, but what happened remains controversial. What is for certain is that the hotel was not evacuated and ninety-one people were killed. The attempted warnings are nonetheless important for understanding the Irgun’s objectives. The bombing would doubtless be an escalation, but the target was the hotel, a symbol of British rule, rather than the people. By trying to mitigate the loss of life the Irgun attempted to escalate the conflict, but not too much. The destruction of building and other capital expenditures without killing the people who work there remains an important, if difficult practice in the conduct of warfare.

The decisions to inform the Russian government of incoming strikes against chemical weapons facilities in Syria is in keeping with a long-standing practice of de-escalation. Preventing the direct engagement between forces of two global powers in a warzone where they both possess a military presence is difficult but essential. The use of warnings to ensure that attacks destroy capital investments in things like weapons programs without loss of life is a feature of modern warfare along with precisions weapons and advanced surveillance. Warning the Russians of this particular attack demonstrates its limited objectives and the desire to prevent escalation to a conflict between the United States and the Russian Federation.

Charles W. King

The recent failure of the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar Al-Assad, let alone take action against it, raises the specter earlier UN inaction. The most gruesome example is the 1994 Rwandan Genocide where almost a million people were killed between April and July of that year. Despite many successes with long term peacekeeping operations throughout the world over its history the United Nations has repeatedly found itself unable to act in a rapid manner to prevent these kind of tragedies. The UN has received significant criticism for its inability to prevent such fast moving atrocities.

The United Nations was not designed to be able to take the swift and decisive action that would be required to intervene to prevent events like the Rwandan Genocide and the use of chemical weapons on civilian populations in civil wars. The post-World War Two institutions created by the Allied powers—the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, European Coal and Steel Community, and International Court of Justice—were each created to preserve the post-war balance of power by accomplishing a specific purpose. The UN’s purpose is both broad and limiting. The United Nations exists to prevent World War Three.

Like the American Congress and Senate, the structure of the UN is designed to hamper, not facilitate, efficient passage of resolutions. The General Assembly of the United Nations is a forum for debate and discussion with little concrete power. The UN Security Council has more concrete powers to act, but has five permanent members, each of which possesses veto power. This is a recipe for deadlock, not action. The UN’s largest international action, to intervene in the Korean War, was only possible because at the time the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council due to the seat for China being held by the Republic of China on Taiwan. The return of the USSR to the Security Council and the accession of the People’s Republic of China to the Council in Taiwan’s place have prevented further decisive actions.

The United Nations inability to mount such a decisive action since the Korean War belies the fact that it has succeeded at its primary objective. There has not been a direct conflict between the world’s great powers since 1945. While there have been numerous proxy wars between client states, the great powers took great pains to make sure they did not engage directly. This is in part due to the specter of nuclear war, but that ignores the role that the UN plays as a forum. The United Nations played an important role in the peaceful resolution to multiple Cold War crises, including the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis. As an official forum for nations to address each other the UN served a key role in preventing any of these crises from escalating to a nuclear war.

The United Nations’ inability to take rapid decisive action to prevent atrocities is not a fatal flaw. It is a side effect of the organization’s specific objective, preventing crises from escalating into another World War, and how it was structured to accomplish that goal. It is increasingly effective in its other efforts to help refugees, promote human rights, and mitigate famine and preventable disease, but its primary purpose remains the same. The UN remains an important breakwater against escalating tensions in the 21st century.

Further Reading

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, (New York, NY: Vintage, 1996).