Politics Military Intervention in Syria?

[Drmke]

I'm sure most people here in this section are aware of the current situation in Syria, but if not, here's a quick overview.

Now what I want to ask is whether or not you would support military intervention to stop Assad's murder of his own people, favor letting Syria solve it's own problems, or another solution?

Personally, from what I've seen, at the very least harsher sanctions need to be imposed on Syria, and I won't rule out supporting some mild military intervention from the U.S. and other larger nations. I feel like it's the duty of strong, "free" nations to protect oppressed people in situations where they have seemingly no hope of solving their problems by themselves especially when their government is killing them by the thousands.

 

[Kaiten]

Harsher sanctions are definitely in order though given the politics of the situation international action may proceed slowly. Sanctions imposed by the security council may be slow to come, if they come at all, due to China and Russia vetoing a UN resolution condemning Asad and calling for his immediate resignation. I do expect sanctions to be tightened and a new resolution to be proposed before long. In the meantime piecemeal sanctions imposed at the national level is the best we can expect. Last week a summit was held in Tunis to coordinate international response and discuss a unified plan for pressure but I have not heard if further sanctions were agreed to.

What was rejected, at least for now, were calls from the Saudi envoy to arm the Free Syrian Army. Should fighting continue that is a solution I would support. I would not support air strikes or full scale military intervention. The potential blowback would be to great, in my opinion. Russia and China may acquiesce to tougher sanctions if the violence continues but there is little chance they would agree to a Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention of any kind. Russia maintains a naval base at Tartus and Syria remains their loan ally in Western Asia. While I am not aware of close ties with Syria, China generally does not like UN military interventions of any kind. At best they abstain from voting when resolutions come before the Security Council. Both states felt that the use of air strikes to support and cover Libyan rebels overstepped the boundaries of Security Council Resolution 1970. Neither are likely to support further military interventions in an Arab state. Military intervention without UN approval will suffer from a legitimacy gap, appearing more like the 2003 Iraq invasion. Iran is also a factor. The Assad regime are there sole allies in the Arab world, maintaining that alliance is key to Iranian foreign policy. It is very difficult to predict how Iran would react to a key regional ally being overthrown. There is potential for the conflict to widen into full scale war with Iran. Given how unpredictable Iran's foreign policy has been of late, military intervention against an ally may be playing with fire.

 

[Gats]

We have nothing to support a foreign military intervention now. It's not like Libya. China and Russia are in the way (Tst. How surprising. -_-) and Al Quaida is officially supporting the rebellion. Which doesn't help at all. I don't think that a sole arabic military intervention will be accepted by Russia and China either.

Iran is unpredictable at almost every level. Especially since there is a harsh confrontation between Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Guide. However I believe that those two share roughly a same foreign policy. I don't think Iran would make a military invasion, the country already has enough problems to deal with right now.