Misguided Policies: Syria in Retrospect

Western policies on Syria were misguided. And they were not in line with basic responsibility to protect principles.

Syria is the latest large-scale humanitarian tragedy. Syria, today, can be described as a ‘failed state’. 470,000 have died, 4.8 million have fled the country. Syria’s cumulative economic loss since the outbreak of the war stands at 229 percent of the country’s 2010 gross domestic product. Militant religious extremists are freely roaming large parts of its territory. The damage to Syria’s infrastructure is enormous: half of all hospitals within Syria have been ‘partially or completely’ destroyed. The population is politically polarised. Rebuilding and political reconciliation – once a stable political settlement has been reached – will take decades. Syria will not return to pre-war prosperity for many years to come. This, plainly, is the worst of all possible outcomes.

Whilst the primary responsibility for this outcome obviously rests with the warring factions in Syria who, in the long run, will have to face international criminal law charges, a secondary responsibility rests with the permanent Security Council members that failed to reach a timely, political consensus on a common approach towards the Syrian civil war, the Assad regime, and the militant opposition groups. The US and Russia missed the brief window of opportunity that existed in the early months of 2011; a window of opportunity in which a political settlement could have been reached, and that could have prevented a full out civil war. Today, genuine political negotiations are finally underway, but they come five years too late, and the tragedy has already played out.

Great power politics aside, and despite the fact that ‘tragedy’ in the colloquial sense of the term was, by 2012 largely pre-determined, Western policies towards Syria were bad – in the sense that they made a bad situation worse – and they were wrong because they were not in line with the responsibility to protect; a principle that Western states had endorsed at the 2005 World Summit, and which they had worked hard to promote at the level of international policy since then. Given that humanitarian concerns play a primary role in shaping the foreign policies of most liberal democracies today, what went so wrong in these states’ policies towards Syria?

Viewing the conflict and Western options through the prism of tragedy can help us conceptualise the problems states faced in formulating their policies towards the crisis in Syria. The classical, ancient Greek meaning of the term denotes a profound moral dilemma; a situation in which the protagonist – regardless of their character, or their intentions – finds themselves confronted with a situation in which there is no right course of action, just a limited range of choices. There is an element of tragedy in all foreign policy decision-making, but in the case of Syria, the tragedy was pertinent. Liberal democracies once again found themselves asking whether full-out war and state failure was acceptable in return for the fall of a brutal tyrant who has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The responsibility to protect had been devised to overcome this problem. The core tenets could not have been stated more clearly: respect sovereignty where possible; act sooner rather than later (avoiding the use of force); act multilaterally; respect and support regional conflict resolution mechanisms. These tenets are clear but they can be ambiguous and contradictory, and using them wisely requires good judgment. The principle recognises that there is a delicate balance between compromise on the one hand, and confrontation on the other. The entire point of the responsibility to protect was to suggest that the right mix of measures, at the right time, in the right circumstances, could halt mass atrocities, or prevent them altogether. The aims were thus limited in scope: applying the principle would not necessarily lead to regime change.

However, the liberal democracies in the club of permanent five of the Security Council failed to see the case of Syria through this lens. Faced with a truly tragic scenario, a real moral dilemma in which there could be no right course of action, responsibility to protect rhetoric was employed, but the actions that ensued were not in line with the principal responsibility to protect tenets. Western states failed to see that – under the circumstances – they were pursuing regime change at the expense of the protection of civilians. Based partially on a lack of understanding of regional politics but – more importantly for the argument here – on an ethical perspective that prioritised a purist approach to the quest for the spread of liberal values, at the expense of the protection of civilians, the West pursued a policy of regime change in Syria. The approach of most Western states was one based on the assumption that anything other than regime change was morally inacceptable – and, with that, demonstrated that they were back in a mode of thinking that the responsibility to protect had tried so hard to overcome. Leading Western policy-makers negated this reality, even once it became clear that their policies were headed in the wrong direction. Instead of pursuing civilian protection objectives in line with responsibility to protect principles, the US, France, and Britain armed militant opposition forces, increasing the number of arms in circulation in Syria and in this way contributing to an overall escalation of hostilities. These policies were counterproductive and harmed civilians.

Western states’ policies would have been more effective from a human protection perspective if they had heeded the responsibility to protect principles that leading Western policy-makers had been promoting. International actors today have a wide range of tools legitimately at their disposal for pursuing protection of civilians and responsibility to protect objectives in ways that will not harm populations at risk: arms embargos, asset freezing, travel bans, and targeted economic sanctions are effective tools for putting pressure on regimes, for promoting a negotiated political settlement, and for realising human protection objectives. Such measures have been imposed, but without great power consensus their impact has been limited.

What can still be done – in line with the responsibility to protect – now that this tragedy has played out? The International Commission on Intervention and Statebuilding that first coined the idea of a responsibility to protect recognised rebuilding as an important component of the concept. The responsibility to rebuild entails international support to rebuild the economy and the infrastructure on which it depends; to reform the political apparatus, the legislative, executive, and judiciary; to ensure justice has been done and to promote reconciliation. All of this will not be easy, given that, at least for the time being, Assad is likely to remain in power. But in the spirit of the responsibility to protect, international actors will need to pursue limited, realistic peacebuilding objectives. The compromises that will be necessary may be hard to accept – but they will be necessary if Syria is to have any hope of recovery and, ultimately, a stable future.

Noële Crossley holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of ‘Evaluating the Responsibility to Protect: Mass Atrocity Prevention as a Consolidating Norm in International Society’ (Routledge, 2016).