Earlier this year, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, supplied Senator Levin options for intervention in Syria. What could the U.S. and what would be involved. The PDF is still available as is a similar letter sent to a member of the House. General Dempsey outlines five different options in increasing order of expense and effort:
- Train, Advise, Assist the Opposition
- Conduct Limited Stand-off Strikes
- Establish a No-Fly Zone
- Establish Buffer Zones
- Control Chemical Weapons
Those eager for an intervention might take a look at this letter to get a sense of what is involved. Here is what is involved with the second option:
This option uses lethal force to strike targets that enable the regime to conduct military operations, proliferate advanced weapons, and defend itself. Potential targets include high-value regime air defense, air, ground, missile, and naval forces as well as the supporting military facilities and command nodes. Stand-off air and missile systems could be used to strike hundreds of targets at a tempo of our choosing. Force requirements would include hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines, and other enablers.
Depending on duration, the costs would be in the billions. Over time, the impact would be the significant degradation of regime capabilities and an increase in regime desertions. There is a risk that the regime could withstand limited strikes by dispersing its assets. Retaliatory attacks are also possible, and there is a probability for collateral damage impacting civilians and foreigners inside the country.
The last option involves ground troops. Last year, the Pentagon said 75,000 ground troops would be required for securing chemical weapons.
One should also be aware of Syria’s air defenses which are considerably more developed than Libya’s were. As recently as 2007, the Israelis took out a Syrian nuclear reactor. That raid gave the regime ample motivation to beef up its defenses:
MIT’s [doctoral candidate Brian] Haggerty identifies nearly 450 likely targets for a suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) campaign, including more than 20 C2 (command and control) and early warning facilities, 150 surface-to-air (SAM) sites, 205 aircraft shelters, and 32 additional airfield-related targets, as well as dozens of additional surface-to-surface or anti-ship missile targets that could threaten bases or ships in the theater. Libya had only 31 comparable SAM sites, some of which were already in rebel-controlled territory, and just five airfields required serious strikes, because some were under rebel control. Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) appear to offer an easy solution to initial SEAD needs, but limitations exist.
In his letter to Senator Levin, General Dempsey makes clear that there are significant political and strategic decisions involved in deciding whether to intervene in Iraq. A useful summary of the difficulties in the latest proposal is provided by three writers at the European Council on Foreign Relations. A useful overview is provided by their statement:
Given the dominance of the CW [chemical weapons] prism in western messaging, the potential consequences of military action for the Syria conflict and for a dangerously polarised and destabilised region are being paid insufficient attention. Less than one per cent of casualties in Syria are even being attributed to CW claims – if there is a plan involving military action to reduce the suffering of Syrians and improve the situation, then presumably that would be aired irrespective of proof of CW use. The assumption therefore has to be that no good plan exists. Nevertheless and as is known to decision-makers, any action will have consequences well beyond the CW issue – so any proposed action should also be measured against broader criteria of prospective implications for Syria and broader regional issues (including sectarian escalation, refugee flows and instability in Iraq and Lebanon, radicalisation and diplomacy with Iran).
U.S. policy in the Middle East brims with unintended consequences: the coup we engineered in Iran has resulted in a hostile government there; the intervention in Iraq resulted in giving Iran a shiny new ally. An intervention in Syria could actually have even worse unintended consequences:
Another CW [chemical weapon] danger in the Syria arena is likely to be the scenario of such weapons falling into the hands of irregular and notably AQ [al Qaeda] affiliated or AQ-Style salafi jihadist groups. There are good reasons that the West has sought to avoid a total collapse of the Syria state, an ill-considered military option could undermine that goal and accentuate the danger of CW capabilities reaching multiple users.
General Dempsey also warns that prescribing the limits of any given action can be particularly difficult. This happened, for example, with the bombing of Serbia.
The writers at the European Council on Foreign Relations argue strongly that diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the Syrian conflict are urgently needed, and that Syria’s neighbors could play a useful role in that effort.
is available at the Center for American Progress:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2013/05/14/63221/the-structure-and-organization-of-the-syrian-opposition/
we engage in bombing Syria.
Ezra Klein points out that it is not difficult for errant bombs to kill over 1400 people, the number slaughtered by the gas attack.
He then sites a study, more fully excerpted at Erica Chenoweth’s site, that pro-rebel intervention tends to incite the defending government to increase civilian casualties by 40%. This is based on studies of past experience.
After all, the United States Air Force has just successfully bombed a parking lot in Maryland. Certainly the people in the neighborhood must have been impressed that the bomb went around hospitals, nursing homes, playgrounds, wedding and funeral ceremonies to get to its intended target. Surely, the enemies of America rallying in Maryland parking lots are thinking twice about doing anything harmful to the “Land of the Free”.
No doubt all our glorious weapons of freedom will land on their targets from Ankara to Alexandria to Teheran. (or close by…)
/snark
“Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs always hit the ground.” –US Air Force Military Quote
the same as a military invention in Syria?
Would we be using the same weapons, under the same conditions, as that test?
Can we be sure Assad won’t put guns to thousands of people’s heads, forcing them to camp at potential bombing sites?
missed your snark at the end.
Except that if we turn a blind eye to chemical weapons in Syria, we run the risk of them being used again, and being used elsewhere, for decades to come. Question 8 in this primer gives some pretty good reasons as to why chemical weapons are a good reason to get involved.
Otherwise, I would be totally against any involvement here… which is not to say that I’m convinced we should do something, just that it’s worth some serious consideration.
If it actually knew what it was talking about. It claims that the idea of limiting the horribleness of war is under 100 years old. Not even close. First Geneva convention was signed 1864, and a lot of the “gentlemanly” conduct of European warfare that the American revolutionaries upended (e.g. using bright colors instead of camouflage) was meant to have a similar restraining effect.
The article also fails to address the fact that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in the 80s-90s without punishment, and it doesn’t seem to have inspired anyone else to do the same, unless you count Assad now. But one use 30 years later hardly indicates a pattern.
The professor of international relations and history at Boston University was interviewed by its radio station:
And he is right about the red line. President’s say things that signal to the world our intentions. Just rewatched a PBS documentary on the Cuban Missile Crisis today and JFK was quite cautious in his language to keep the situation from escalating, and even then, barely kept us out of war.
Unfortunately our senior Senator is joining our junior Senator down the path to war
There’s definitely a lot I didn’t know about Syria. If it will indeed take that many ground troops to secure the chemical weapons, it doesn’t seem to make sense to do it without some other UN countries, or NATO, helping us with equal commitments.
A lot of information to consider. I admit that my initial sentiments on this may have been rash and mistaken.
Thank you
To Farnkoff, Christopher, Sabutai, and perhaps David and others
We know you aren’t being callous and capricious with US lives like the Bush administration was. Frankly I could add Secretary Kerry and President Obama to this list as well. That said, consider all the long term ramifications of the proposed strikes and ask yourselves if it will a)be effective at it’s objective b) worth pursuing unilaterally and c)worth risking American and Syrian lives over. These are very important questions that too few members of the media or policymaking communities are asking. So it’s up to us!
A) I certainly believe it can be; I wouldn’t advocate it otherwise.
B) Maybe, though coalition action is preferable.
C) Yes, though minimizing these should be part of any objective.
I’m concerned about the consequences of inaction as well. Assad, or possibly others down the line could decide that all anyone will do is saber-rattle without any backup and thus declare open season on the use of these weapons.
is the actions of the Syrian people. They stood by as their leaders invaded Israel and Lebanon. They stayed in the latter for 30 years. No protest from Syrian citizens. Assad has been involved in state sponsored terrorism. Still no outcry from the equivalent of John Q. Public. Even the present crisis grew out of more economic reasons than political ones. So now they are reaping what they have sown. This too is not right, but since they fostered this type of regime, they should fix it.
In fairness, that was something invented by the French. It wasn’t a division held over from the Ottoman Empire. The French colonialists carved out Lebanon to create a majority Christian state in the Levant. This is similar to the mess Britain created with the boundaries of Iraq. The treaty of Sevres was supposed to create a Kurdistan, too, but instead we have Kurdish regions in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The relationship of the Kurds to the Syrian civil war is complicated.