Political Climate More Like 1914

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
Countries no longer go through the formality of actually declaring war, but the U.S. attack on a sovereign state, Syria, was an act of war.

It wasn’t mounted in self-defence, the only military action permitted by the UN Charter, and done without Security Council sanction.

As we know, on April 6, American missiles struck an air base in Syria in retaliation for the gassing of civilians by the Bashar al-Assad regime.

U.S. President Donald Trump also described his decision as part of a broader effort to “end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria,” suggesting that he may consider additional military action.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Russia must end its alliance with Syria and that Assad’s rule was “coming to an end.”

Was the attack motivated by humanitarian reasons or for reasons of national security?

The Kremlin called the attack an “act of aggression,” and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that the strikes put the United States and Russia “on the verge of a military clash.” Iran, Assad’s main ally in the Middle East, also lashed out at Washington.

Yillerson visited Moscow on April 12 and met with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavror, but neither side budged from its positions.

I know, of course, that President Assad is a butcher, and, since he is fighting for his very political (and perhaps physical) life running an Alawite minority regime, he is committing war crimes.

I certainly wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep if he were removed, though the result, given his opponents, will likely be more post-2011 Libya than a Norway, with Islamist gangs and militias running amok and fighting each other.

Syria, Iraq, and many of these post-1920 Middle Eastern Sykes-Picot states, the creations of great power colonialism, will end up being dismembered, I’m afraid, and let’s not hear any foolishness about “nation-building.”

But Russia and China face similar insurgencies, in Chechnya and Xinjiang, respectively, and have also reacted brutally. The same holds true for a large number of countries around the world. Will Trump target cruise missiles at them too?

It was easy to attack Serbia in 1999, Libya in 2011, and now Syria, but the so-called international system is clearly in tatters. Only the strong are safe, and sovereignty, which used to be too sacrosanct, now means nothing. (North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, too, has taken this lessen to heart.)

Russia has invested a lot of energy, money and prestige in Syria. It has a major naval base in Syria, which is critical to the country’s efforts to project power in the Middle East. Putin won’t just let the U.S. humble him. He won’t allow Russia to be driven out of Syria, because for him that would be a return to the Yeltsin years when Russia was a joke run by a drunk.

Clearly the Pentagon and the neoconservatives, for better or worse, are now in charge of foreign policy. Who could have imagined that 26 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union we would be in a new Cold War?

The Russian military is entrenched in Syria and Moscow has placed some of the world’s most sophisticated air defence systems there. How long before there is a clash, even accidental, between American and Russian forces?

The current climate feels more like 1914 than 1939. It was 103 years ago that a war between big powers started, inadvertently, because of the actions of the smaller parties they backed. We know where that led, four years of mass slaughter at places like Vimy Ridge.