President Obama surprised everyone today by deciding to wait for a declaration by the Congress on an attack against Syria. The decision was a surprise in light of the very strong statements yesterday by both Obama and Kerry. The decision, however, is a good one given the decision by the British House of Commons to not support a strike. It is unclear right now how the Congress will vote: some members of Congress do not believe that a strike is warranted; others believe that the strike does not go far enough. Russian President Putin has derided the position of the US and has strongly opposed any use of force against Assad. The same position has been taken by China.
The Atlantic has an article on the neuroscience of chemical weapons that might be of interest to many. Interestingly, it suggests that sarin gas is not always deadly (I had thought otherwise). Nonetheless, it remains a heinous weapon well-deserving of a universal ban.
Congress has declared war 11 times in US history, and it has authorized the use of force 11 times without declaring war formally. Of the latter category, 7 authorizations have occurred since 1955, and 8 of the formal declarations of war occurred in the 20th century (all of which were related to either World War I or II.
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The article in The Atlantic raises two points that I’d be interested to hear your take on.
First, Hamblin seems to hold the opinion that the use of sarin gas is not obviously less moral than the use of conventional weapons, since sarin is evidently often not fatal and does not permanantly injure those who survive. What is the basis for treating chemical weapons differently than conventional ones?
Second, Hamblin notes that the risks to Assad seem to oughtweight the benefits of using chemical weapons, which raises the question of whether forces opposed to Assad are responsible for the sarin attack. If this is the case, then US intervention against Assad will increase, not decrease, the chances that chemical weapons will be used in the future.
If the goal of our intervention is to dissuade people from using sarin gas, wouldn’t it be better simply to distribute gas masks and “decontamination lotion” to likely targets in Syria, rather than to entagle ourselves through military action?
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The prohibition against chemical weapons dates back to the late and early 20th century, when warfare was very different. The basis for its moral approbation, however, remains pretty much the same. The laws of war were established when there was more or less a moral equality among soldiers, and certain rules governed that arena. Soldiers were not permitted to kill civilians (although they did–the law was designed to reduce that carnage) and soldiers were required to acknowledge the essential humanity of other soldiers. Thus, for example, soldiers were supposed to be given the right of surrender (“I yield”) and soldiers are not allowed to kill soldiers who could not offer immediate harm (such as being asleep). The Prisoner of War status protected the moral status of soldiers.
Chemical weapons violate both of these principles. They cannot discriminate between combatants and noncombatants, and they offer no opportunity of surrender. Thus they are regarded as illegal. Why they are considered to be especially heinous is a sociological and psychological issue, which I think most people feel to be true.
The Russians have made a similar argument concerning Assad’s need to use chemical weapons. It is true that the tide of battle had been turning in his favor. I don’t think there is any way to respond to this argument without looking at the evidence–the military use of chemical weapons is very limited, perhaps restricted to the single circumstance of confronting a “wave” assault of soldiers who do not care about dying (such as in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88). So the use of chemical weapons has a political objective which may be quite separate from “winning” a war.
The US brief on the chemical weapons attack asserts that satellites detected the missiles being launched from Syrian military bases. I will wait until the UN issues its own report before I make any judgment about who used the weapons.
Finally, the ostensible goal of an intervention (which can only be legitimized by the UN Security Council) would be to establish a precedent for enforcing the ban on chemical weapons. Thus, Syria is not the only “object” of the intervention. Nothing precludes the world from distributing gas masks and lotions, but amelioration is a different act than deterrence. I’m not sure that an intervention is effective deterrence, but non-action is almost an invitation to others to use the weapons.
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