Aaron David Miller has an essay in Foreign Policy arguing that intervention in Syria would be a disaster. It is not a comfortable analysis since we all would like to think that there is some option to help the Syrian people. But Miller’s arguments are tough to refute. Somehow we have to figure out how to address his concerns so that humanitarian intervention can become a more viable policy alternative.
The UN has begun talks on a new treaty to control the sales of arms globally. This measure is long overdue, but it is easy to imagine the difficulties in forging such a treaty. Illicit arms are easy to procure in the world and they are used mostly by war lords in local conflicts. But the normal state-to-state arms sales are also highly problematic–just because legitimate authorities are involved is no reason to think that the weapons are not badly used as well. We’ll see what the National Rifle Association says about the proposed treaty.
We have a mainstream liberal narrative of the Arab Spring–that the Arab nation was embracing secular society and throwing out old-fashioned dictatorships. The narrative has many, many flaws and inconsistencies, but the narrative has been hard to shake. Nasser Rabbat of MIT has a very insightful alternative explanation which deserves a close read.
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