The failure of the G-20 meet at St. Petersburg to effectively address
the Syrian crisis indicates that it is now headed for its short-term
denouement in the form of an American military attack in the coming
days. Leaving aside its allies, the United States’s plan was met with
scepticism at St. Petersburg: Russia was openly hostile, with President
Putin actually accusing the U.S. Secretary of State of lying to the U.S.
Congress.
The U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, felt compelled to
urge the U.S. to seek the approval of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC).
The EU’s response was mixed with Britain, France and Germany pulling in
different directions. China was against any military strike, and
preferred to keep quiet on the issue, while India made it clear that
there should be no action without U.N. authorisation.
The division was reflected by a joint statement issued on the margins of
the summit by America’s allies who constituted 10 of the 20 members of
G-20. In the statement, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the
Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and
the U.S. condemned the Syrian government for the chemical weapons attack
of August 21, bluntly blaming the Syrian government for breaching “the
international norm against the use of chemical weapons.” It demanded a
tough response from the world community, observing that the U.N.
Security Council “remains paralyzed as it has been for two and a half
years.”
At the formal level, the G-20 was set up to deal with economic issues in
the wake of the 2008-2009 economic crisis. But like its predecessor,
the G-8, it was also expected to be a global high table where the
political issues could also be resolved in a collegial manner. Its
failure on Syria reveals the persistent failure of the international
system to create an effective mechanism for global governance. In such
circumstances, we are back to old-fashioned power politics where the
rules of the game are set by the global hegemon, in this case, the U.S.
U.S. position
The U.S. plan to attack Syria is rooted in imperial hubris. When you are
the sole superpower, you are expected to take the lead. Battered by
Afghanistan, befuddled by Egypt and pressed by the rise of China, the
U.S. feels that it needs to assert its global leadership. The breaching
of a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) taboo is an opportune pretext.
This is the time to make an example out of a country, to prevent the
next one from crossing the threshold. The subtext is the Iranian nuclear
programme which affects key American allies like Israel, the Gulf
sheikhdoms and Saudi Arabia. So, President Barack Obama finds himself
bound by his own declared red line of August 2012 when he explicitly
warned Syria against the use of chemical and biological weapons. There
are several problems with the U.S.’s position. First, we know that
chemical weapons were used, but it is not at all clear as to who
employed them. The U.N. inspectors returned from Syria a week ago, but
it will be some more time before their report is made available to the
public. However, their mandate is to merely report on whether or not
chemical weapons were used; not who employed them or why.
In May in Switzerland, a U.N. human rights investigator, Carla del
Ponte, revealed that testimony made available to U.N. investigators in
an earlier investigation, had revealed that Syrian rebels had used
chemical weapons, specifically the deadly sarin gas. It is no secret
that some of the caches of Syrian chemical weapons are under the control
of rebel forces. It would be counter-intuitive to suggest that the
Syrian government forces used them now, because in recent months the
tide of the civil war was turning distinctly in their favour. This is
the argument being made by the Russians as well who, insofar as Syria is
concerned, also have good intelligence sources there.
Legality
Second, like it or not, the manner in which the U.S. and the U.K. fudged
the evidence to wage war against Iraq in 2003 has undermined the
credibility of their intelligence services. This was not just a matter
of one report being misused or misinterpreted, but a pattern of
deception which went all the way up from the bottom to the highest
levels of the two governments.
The third and not unimportant issue has to do with legality. Under the
U.N. Charter, the use of force against another State in almost all
circumstances must be authorised by the UNSC. Given Russia’s stated
position on the issue, the U.N. is unlikely to authorise any action
against Syria. Another route could be the Responsibility to Protect
(RtoP) resolution of the U.N. General Assembly of 2005 which enjoins
states to protect their populations from mass-killings and ethnic
cleansing, but its enforcement mechanism against states who shirk this
responsibility rests with the U.N., specifically its Security Council.
Syria is a party to the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibiting the use of
poison gases, but the treaty is relevant to interstate conflict, and
does not expressly prohibit their use during civil war. There is another
treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which bars the
stockpiling, production and use of chemical weapons; 189 countries have
signed the CWC, but Syria, along with Angola, North Korea, Egypt and
South Sudan, has not signed it. The prominent Arab holdouts — Egypt and
Syria — argue that they have signed the NPT as non-nuclear states, but
Israel has not and is believed to possess nuclear weapons. So, they
would not sign up to the CWC.
Therefore, from the legal point of view, the U.S. cupboard is bare. It
could have, as in the case of 9/11 invoked the doctrine of self-defence
as in the case of Afghanistan, but it would be a tough sell to claim
that it has been attacked by Syria. Even in Afghanistan, the U.S. did
get U.N. authorisation two months after it launched Operation Enduring
Freedom in 2001.
For India
As far as India is concerned there are several issues that we need to
take into account. Legality is certainly one of them, though we need not
get our knickers in a twist over them. When push comes to shove,
regional powers like India have shown little inclination to heed the
U.N. India has intervened in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives,
without U.N. authorisation. On the other hand though, paradoxically, as a
weak global actor, it is in India’s interest to emphasise the
importance of the U.N. when it comes to the use of military force
internationally.
As a global actor it is in our interest to prevent the use of WMD by any
party against anyone. But in this case, there seems to be a genuine
problem as to whether the issue can be untangled from the geopolitics of
the region. Equally important for India are worries that the conflict
could spiral out of control and disrupt oil supply lines from the
Persian Gulf. This is a serious matter as it could have a devastating
impact on our economy which is already reeling from the effects of an
economic slowdown.
The one big lesson of every war is that it is easy to start it, but very
difficult to predict the course or consequences. But the main lesson
from the sorry events in Syria is that the taboo against the use of
weapons of mass destruction was breached, and the world community has
been found wanting in providing a tough, but legal response to it.
The Hindu September 10, 2013
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