{"id":466912,"date":"2012-03-09T09:51:42","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T09:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mecouncil.org\/?p=466912"},"modified":"2022-09-21T06:43:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T06:43:09","slug":"debating-intervention-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/debating-intervention-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Debating Intervention in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Economist <\/em>recently hosted a debate on intervention in Syria<\/a>between myself and Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. I argued against the motion \u2013 that \u201cthis house believes that military intervention in Syria would do more harm than good\u201d \u2013 and made the case that the time had come to consider taking military action in Syria. I lost the debate 61-39 percent. That 39 percent was significantly more than I would have expected, which suggested that the pro-intervention position, after being ruled out as wildly unrealistic months ago, was slowly gaining more support and legitimacy.<\/p>\n

In my opening statement<\/a>, I argued that it was wishful thinking to expect that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad might either implode suddenly or somehow be persuaded to stop the killing and negotiate in good faith. I wrote that military intervention was still premature but that the \u201cplanning for a number of military contingencies must accelerate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of the 10 days of online debate, the situation in Syria worsened and the Assad regime intensified its brutal siege of Homs. It seemed that Assad believed he could get away with it. In a sense, he was right: the international community was not serious about intervention. Assad had little incentive to give up power without a fight. Losing power would mean he, and his family, would live the rest of their lives fearing imprisonment or assassination.<\/p>\n

In my rebuttal<\/a>, I wrote that leaving the opposition to its own devices to fight an endless battle of attrition made a mockery of the world\u2019s \u201cresponsibility to protect.\u201d I countered Husain\u2019s claims that an Islamist-dominated Syria would be worse for Israel and America. If anything, the opposite; as it so happens, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has long been a fierce opponent of Iranian hegemony.<\/p>\n

By the time I wrote my closing argument<\/a>, my position had solidified: \u00a0\u201cI have\u2014slowly and with my own reservations\u2014come to believe that military intervention, for all its risks, for all the haunting memories of Iraq, is the best of a set of bad options.\u201d I argued that a credible military threat was the only thing likely to alter Assad\u2019s calculations. If it didn\u2019t, then any intervention \u2013 establishing \u201csafe zones\u201d for example \u2013 would have to proceed in tandem with diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire agreement, which could then pave the way for the deployment of multinational peacekeeping forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Economist recently hosted a debate on intervention in Syriabetween myself and Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. I argued against the motion \u2013 that \u201cthis house believes that military intervention in Syria would do more harm than good\u201d \u2013 and made the case that the time had come to consider taking military… Continue reading Debating Intervention in Syria<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication_archive_type":[297],"class_list":["post-466912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_archive_type-issue-brief","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466913,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466912\/revisions\/466913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466912"},{"taxonomy":"publication_archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_archive_type?post=466912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}