WorldWatch: Syrian 'rumours of war'

Headlines about the escalating conflicts in the Middle East keep reminding me of a biblical passage I'd learned many years ago as a child: "And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars ... nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom." (Matthew 24:7)

Over the past month, the mainstream media outlets - Sky, Fox, CNN, BBC - have saturated us with a non-stop drumbeat of reports on deteriorating conditions in Syria. Urgent daily stories inform us that 'Syrian Activists Claim 100 Deaths In One Day', 'Senators Say US Should Arm Syrian Rebels', 'Blasts Hit Syria's Aleppo as Tanks Roll into Homs', 'China Accuses West of Stirring Up Syrian Civil War as Iranian Warships Dock', 'Sunday Times Journalist Killed In Syria', and 'Syria - Full War Coming'.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refers publicly to the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, as a "tyrant". Elliot Abrams calls Syria a "vicious enemy". In the US Senate, Lindsey Graham proclaims: "If the Syrian regime is replaced with another form of government ... the world is a better place," and recommends "breaking Syria apart from Iran". Senator John McCain favours "weapons being obtained by the opposition," and France's UN ambassador proclaims, "Horror is hereditary in Damascus."

relentless drumbeat

The drumbeat towards confrontation seems relentless. Constantly repeated, heart-rending 'rumours of war' converge into a relentless march by dominant western powers (Europe, North America) towards the 'necessity' of a 'humanitarian military intervention' required to save a people from an evil, merciless regime, hell-bent on murdering its own.

But wait a minute. Haven't we heard this somewhere before? This sounds vaguely familiar. My eyes keep playing tricks on me while reading the headlines - seeing 'Iraq' and 'Libya' where it says 'Syria'. Didn't the media trumpet similar stories of the absolute moral necessity of the major powers intervening, leading into the Iraq invasion and, more recently, Libya?

And in both of those cases, didn't the end result of Western military intervention turn out to be massively more destructive to people's lives and their national resources than the harm imposed by the original regime?

Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction' - which Bush and Blair assured us Saddam was about to use to launch Hitler-like attacks on the US, Europe, China, Russia and the moons of Jupiter - never materialised. And Gaddafi's "slaughter of innocent civilians" was quickly overshadowed by NATO's more devastating bombing and regime-change efforts. Both nations remain in shambles following the interventions.

us military bombings

Come to think of it, since becoming a major world power in the 1940s, the US military - sometimes with help from other Western powers, sometimes alone - has bombed Japan (nuclear), China, Korea, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. No doubt I've missed a few, but it's difficult to recall many instances among those where 'humanitarian military intervention' instantly resulted in a more peaceful life and enlightened leaders democratically representative of all sectors of the society.

In the present Syrian conflict, if the US, NATO, Israel, and the UN Security Council are, as they say publicly, genuinely interested in securing 'peace' and 'democracy' for Syria, a number of things don't add up very well. One is that Assad's repeated offers to negotiate a peaceful settlement, and similar offers by Russia and China, have fallen on deaf Western ears.

Both the Syrian opposition and the involved Western powers have declined invitations to talk openly about this in a forum that would involve all parties. If the interest is in achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict, why not make a thorough effort to exhaust all possibilities for negotiation first, before rushing to threats of coercive sanctions and war?

Similarly, if the interest is in promoting democracy, why not allow it a chance to work, once offered by the regime? Assad's scheduling of a popular referendum this month on the new Syrian constitution, followed by multi-party democratic elections shortly thereafter, has been met with derision by the opposition forces and Secretary Clinton. Official response from the White House dismissed the proposed referendum and elections as "laughable," adding that the Assad government's "days are numbered".

Then there's the odd double standard in reporting the escalating casualties of the conflict. There has been almost universal US, UN and media condemnation of the Syrian regime's killing of what it calls insurgent 'terrorists' staging attacks against the government (ruthlessly brutal, but also historically typical of governments when under direct siege).

However, as was also a problem in Libya before, where are the comparable attempts by Western powers and international media to honestly document the violence wrought by the insurgent forces - leading to very one-sided accounts of who is actually initiating the bloodshed? It takes two sides to make a violent conflict.

And earlier this month, both Russia and China, wary of Western motives, vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have paved the way for a military intervention similar to Libya. The US, Israel and other Western powers reacted indignantly, even angrily - almost as if their post-invasion designs on Syria had just been thwarted. US Ambassador Susan Rice whined that she was "disgusted that a couple of council members" had successfully prevented the body from taking action. Again, this reaction seems odd, if their primary objectives were truly to achieve peace, democracy and self-determination for the Syrian people.

What is going on here? In the post-World War II period, the US and UN have portrayed themselves as beacons of democracy and peaceful negotiation among nations in the modern world. Yet now (in Libya, Syria) they decline setting up peaceful negotiations to prevent wider conflict, and openly lampoon any offers to hold democratic elections?

Whether or not it is actually so, they are making the undiplomatic mistake of letting it appear to the international community that their underlying motives are actually to grab geopolitical influence and/or access to oil resources, at any cost, and that democracy and peace are just values of the past to them.

desperate world powers

The US, Britain and France also come across as being desperate enough, as economically weakened world powers in the post-2008 era, to risk igniting a wider war by intentionally provoking conflicts with Syria and, possibly, Iran, Russia and China over this matter.

How else does one explain a president who was earlier granted a Nobel Peace Prize, and a secretary of state who penned the book It Takes a Village about the importance of cooperation in building human community, now being so willing to stir international waters, recklessly encouraging such 'rumours of war' and their potential consequences? Is the US actually becoming that desperate as a declining 'empire' that policymakers now feel they have to resort to aggressive neocolonial conquest over the Middle East and its energy-producing resources, in order to counter the rising prominence of China, Russia, India, Brazil, etc.?

Or, are they just rattling their sabres to impress voters in the upcoming election - that Democrats can be as bellicose on foreign policy as Republicans? And, of course, Sarkozy, with sagging poll ratings, is also trying to rally support at home leading into the upcoming French election, as is Cameron, owing to the Tories' unpopular domestic policies. Whatever it is, this is playing with fire ... in a volatile world.

Lawrence Alfred Powell is an honorary research fellow at the Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences (COMPASS) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and the former polling director for the Centre for Leadership and Governance at UWI, Mona. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and lapowell.auckland@ymail.com.