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New Yorker writers answer readers’ questions.
May 28, 2012
Live Chat: Philip Gourevitch on Syria
Posted by The New Yorker
In this week’s Comment, Philip Gourevitch writes about the Syria dilemma. On Tuesday, Gourevitch answered readers’ questions in a live chat. A transcript of the discussion follows.
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Greetings—Philip here—I’m looking forward to your questions and to doing my best to respond to them.
QUESTION FROM PEABO GINGRICH: Why shouldn’t the ever beneficent Arab League take care of this on their own, beyond the weapons they have been providing rebels? Given that the “Shia crescent” is really no concern to the US, why don’t we encourage the saudis to roll their tanks into syria, just as they did in Bahrain to intimidate peaceful protestors?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: The Arab League is hardly a unified front—and, I think we can be grateful that it does not run military takeovers of member states that offend it. To say that a massive part of the middle east is of no concern to the US is not serious. It’s precisely because there are so many massive political/strategic concerns at stake that our options for response are so limited in Syria. And the Saudis rolled into Bahrain at the invitation of the regime—not, as your proposing in Syria, as a hostile invasion force, which would set off a cataclysmic regional conflagration.
QUESTION FROM IRWIN GOLDBLOOM: Do we really have a good idea as to who the insurgents are? And is our doubt as to their identity a major factor in our hesitation about acting affirmatively?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: By all accounts—including
their own frequent testimony—the main Syrian opposition groups are not
unified, and do not have coherent leadership, and are often divided
among themselves, etc. Under the circumstances that makes it hard for
the US or other outside governments to support them effectively, much
less to arm them with confidence.
QUESTION FROM SAMANTHA: Is there any way the U.S. commits troops on the ground in Syria?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I would never say never—but I cannot see a scenario in which that would make sense. In fact, I would think that most of our leaders’ military and political calculations are hedged by a powerful desire to avoid ever getting drawn into a ground war in Syria.
QUESTION FROM LYNNE: You illustrate the complexity of the situation but you don’t recommend a course of action yourself. What role do you think the ICC could play?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: To date, after more than a decade in existence, the ICC has never indicted anyone who is not African. That said, there are of course, some ICC advocates calling for the ICC to be instrumentalized against Assad—whose regime is clearly guilty of appalling atrocities. But as soon as the ICC gets involved the political options get rapidly limited. What little leverage outside powers—notably Russia—may have to persuade Assad to step down would be greatly diminished if he were under indictment. Obama at the G8 advocated easing Assad out of power in a scenario like we saw in Yemen—without dismantling his army and state apparatus, and without prosecuting him. Nobody who really backs the ICC can get excited about that prospect.
QUESTION FROM QUEENIE: Why did Kofi Annan’s six-point plan fail since the ceasefire agreement on April 12? How do you see Bashar al-Assad’s commitment to peace and international cooperation?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: The Annan Plan failed because Assad’s word is no good—he has demonstrated no interest at all in a cease fire, and has never abided by any of his agreements to end extreme state violence against the citizenry. And it also failed because Annan is weak, the Plan was toothless, and all the parties—Assad, the UN, the Arab League, and the Syrian opposition—were just buying time.
QUESTION FROM MATT: Given what seems to be unambiguous bad behavior by the Syrian regime, I have to wonder: Is the US hesitant to act because it suspects opposing leaders in the wings are just as bad or worse? Do we fear that the ‘Arab Spring’ will be remembered as the start of a takeover the Muslim Brotherhood, etc?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: No doubt—a fear of unwanted consequences is a strong deterrent to abrupt action. But Obama has been unambiguous in his repeated calls since August for Assad to step down. US policy is that he must go. But, of course, Assad has no incentive to step down, and we have no idea who or what should replace him. I think that, perhaps even more than fear of a Muslim Brotherhood take over, there is concern that Syria could be gripped by a very nasty, very long, very hard to resolve, bloody civil war.
QUESTION FROM FELIX: Do you think the Houla massacre will finally alter Russia’s stance in the conflict?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Russia will change its tone a bit—you can see that already—but the underlying tune is unlikely to change drastically. So we’re seeing statements from Moscow about how they’re not categorically opposed to Assad’s exit—and at the same time they’re saying, slow down, easy does it, we don’t see any acceptable scenario, and we will not condemn him as strongly as everyone else, much less approve any plan to propel him from power.
QUESTION FROM LUCY SHAW: Given the US’s domestic weaknesses which will only be exacerbated by the euro zone crisis,do you think its role / days as international policemen are numbered and if so, who do you think will take over that leadership role?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: On the one hand the US role as “global policeman” has always been limited and selective. On the other hand it has always been important to Washington, even if it isn’t going to police everything, to make sure no other power takes over the leadership role in global affairs. I don’t see that changing. During the Libya war, we saw that NATO is incapable of a sustained military campaign even against a small, fairly weak, and fairly unresisting power, without massive military support from the US. They simply don’t have the means to do it without the US. No other great power is getting stronger as the US goes through its current travails. There will be changes in global power, of course, over time, but not launching a war in Syria is not a sign of American decline.
QUESTION FROM HAYGURL: you mention from an earlier comment the US strategic interests in the region—namely israel and saudi arabia—why isn’t this a good time to disentagle ourselves from the region and its various faultlines, rather than entrench ourselves further in conflicts which are beyond our scope of understanding, let alone control?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I don’t, as yet, see ourselves getting more entrenched. I think that the Obama administration has thus far showed prudent caution, and outright resistance to getting overly drawn into the Syrian crisis. But a moment of great crisis like this is not an optimal time for disentangling from the region either—and the reasons, like them or not, agree with them or not, that the US is entangled as it is have not been changed by Assad’s bloody repression
QUESTION FROM TANYA SLEIMAN: Assad is very persuasive within Syria to convince merchants and minorities that he is their savior. What is your reading of the mood on the ground? Are his supporters clinging tighter to the regime and its rhetoric? Are there cracks in the facade? Thank you for your thoughts.
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I’m not in Syria, I’ve not been, I would not presume to speak of the mood on the ground—and have tried only to make sense of the tension in US and international diplomacy between the desire to do something to check Assad and end the violence and remove a regime that has lost all credit—and the geo-strategic realities of the situation. Our moral outrage is usually a pretty absolute measure—but political judgment always operates in the awkward unsatisfying calculation of our limitations.
QUESTION FROM DAVE: If the Annan Plan is just buying time, what are the UN and member nations who oppose Assad’s continue role buying time towards since the opposition does not seem to have built momentum after a year of hostilities?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow—so if you’re a policy maker and you don’t like any of your options today and you think you can look like you’re doing something that’s not reckless, that looks good-intentioned, that might alleviate the crisis, while you wait for unforeseen/unforeseeable shifts in the balance, well then that’s your interest in buying time. There’s hope that the opposition will get together, that Russia will become less defensive of Assad, that Assad will see it in his interest to comply with some of the UN’s demands—and, perhaps above all, that the very severe sanctions that have been imposed on him, will begin to bite in ways that force a change in the balance of power in Syria. There’s all sorts of hope—but the situation has only got worse.
QUESTION FROM NIRAJ SHRESTHA: Let’s say China and Russia have no objections to a military involvement. Would the western powers have any appetite to put boots on the ground ?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Excellent question. I’m not at all sure that there’s any western appetite to go into Syria. So, at this point, China and Russia are serving a very convenient role for the NATO powers on the Security Council. They give us someone to blame. When Russia and China refused to sign on to a toothless resolution condemning Assad and calling for him to step down early this year, Hilary Clinton called their action (or inaction) “Despicable” and Susan Rice said that any further bloodshed would be on their hands. But without their resistance, we would not look more effective—and we might look much less effective.
QUESTION FROM GUEST: Conditions in Syria differ vastly from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Still, looking at these “success stories” of the Arab Spring—and the successful repression in Bahrain and Iran, what lessons do you think most influence Assad’s cohort, and activists in the opposition?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I think Assad’s view is that you crush the opposition—you do not compromise with it ever in any way—and that’s how you survive. The alternative is not surviving, and that’s not one he seems able to entertain. As I mentioned in a blog post today, he told Russian TV this weekend he doesn’t really care what anyone thinks: “What matters is winning in real life.” His father slaughtered 10,000 people thirty years ago to crush opposition—and it pretty much worked. Assad probably thought he could pour hellfire into opposition strongholds and achieve the same effect. Well, now he’s killed 10,000 too—and there’s no end in sight. I don’t think he needs to see other “Arab Spring” scenarios to feel hellbent on total violent suppression.
QUESTION FROM FABIAN: What do you think possible consequences for Lebanon could look like? Do you think that it is likely that the recent fights in Tripoli or even the west of Beirut will increase and further destabilize the country? As Syria has always had a lot of influence on Lebanon, it seems possible that the chaos is also spreading to Lebanon now…
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: A spillover of sectarian conflict from Syria to Lebanon is a very real anxiety—and it is one reason that the international energy so far has seemed bent toward containment rather than toward any kind of intervention that could ignite a greater war. The reports I read from Beirut, when the fighting flashed up this weekend, were quite alarming—reporters who’d been there for years were shocked by the speed with which old unresolved conflicts and divisions returned. It was a reminder of how close to the surface the dangerous passions are.
QUESTION FROM JOE: How firmly aligned is the army with Bashar al-Assad? Is there any chance the military decides to intercede in the conflict?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Another good question. There have been several thousand highly visible defections from Assad’s military—soldiers deserting and joining the opposition. It seems that these defectors make up a sizable part of the armed opposition at this point. But Assad has hundreds of thousands of fighters still under his command, and a fearsome arsenal. I’m sure that Western policy makers are looking at what fault lines there may be in the Syrian military and how to encourage the sort of shift we saw in Egypt (and differently in Yemen) whereby the military would turn against Assad and effectively stage a coup. But Assad still seems to have considerable power. Today, when the Western powers expelled Syrian diplomats, I was struck by the fact that none of those Syrian diplomats have defected—the way we saw Libyan diplomats doing in the endgame of the Qaddafi regime.
QUESTION FROM JESS: What is the strategic benefit to Russia in supporting the Syrian regime?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: It’s always reported that Russia is Syria’s last friend in international society. But it’s also significant that Syria is Russia’s last client dictatorship—in the old Cold War style—in the Middle East. Russia has military ties with Syria, and has strategic naval facilities there, and if Assad goes, Russia’s influence and leverage is reduced in a very charged region. And there’s another factor behind Russia’s posture on Syria, I think. Quite clearly, the Russians were infuriated that the one time they went against their own principle of non-intervention in internal affairs of other sovereign states—and gave grudging approval to NATO’s air campaign in Libya by not using their veto against it—they felt NATO took advantage of the license. The UN resolution in question authorized NATO to create a NO FLY zone in Libya for humanitarian reasons and instead NATO quickly became the air-force for the anti-Qaddafi rebels. That was an over-reach that the Russians are now keen to punish the West for, however unwise it may seem to hitch the Russian star in the Middle East to Assad.
QUESTION FROM PHIL: How might developments in Syria affect the U.S. election?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: In their current configuration—that is, if the grim status quo drags on, and things in Syria look in November much as they do today, I don’t see a big effect on the US election. If anything I would say that it might be the other way around, that the US election might exert an extra inhibition on any impulse to take military action in the Middle East right now. The Obama administration’s first interest in the region is to avert war between Iran and Israel. The policy is containment—to avoid provoking greater conflict. I don’t see why that should change after November, but until then I would think the Administration’s every effort will be to prevent a situation that would effect the American vote.
QUESTION FROM GUEST: So what’s next? It’s a huge strategic mistake on Assad’s part to create political will against him, and this massacre did just that. But if he learns from this and continues killing on smaller scales, this is going to drag on and on. If this latest massacre and expulsion of ambassadors is not in fact the tipping point and the int’l condemnation dies down, Annan’s peace plan continues to be a bust, and 5 months from now we’re literally in the same position, then what?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Earlier this winter—late last year and early this year—you used to hear a lot of the policy hands saying that Assad was doomed, a “dead man walking,” that it was just a matter of time till he was gone, and that it wouldn’t be that much time either. Well, now that tune is changing. Now, I think the feeling is that we could be facing exactly the sort of long grim stalemate that you describe—that Assad is a more ruthless survivor, a cannier calculator of his own odds, and willing to withstand total condemnation and isolation to hold on to power. That’s a bleak scenario, but he wouldn’t be the first.
QUESTION FROM WYATTBURP: Afternoon, Philip. Is the world actually going to sit back and watch Assad kill off the “terrorist” in his country using so much collateral damage?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: In my Comment this week, I quoted from Obama’s speech at the Holocaust Museum in April—where he went to announce the creation of a new “Atrocities Prevention Board” at the White House. Obviously such a measure is hard to celebrate in the face of the news from Syria, and Obama understood that. He said, We can’t be everywhere, we can’t solve everything… and he said, There will be more senseless deaths that we fail to prevent. So I’m afraid I’m going to end this chat on the same note—saying, yes, there’s no apparent scenario by which we are about stop Assad’s killing. The Syrian opposition will keep trying to do that—and we may support them—but what we are looking at today in Syria is an ugly civil war.
Thanks so much for your questions. I wish I could offer cheerier responses.
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
QUESTION FROM SAMANTHA: Is there any way the U.S. commits troops on the ground in Syria?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I would never say never—but I cannot see a scenario in which that would make sense. In fact, I would think that most of our leaders’ military and political calculations are hedged by a powerful desire to avoid ever getting drawn into a ground war in Syria.
QUESTION FROM LYNNE: You illustrate the complexity of the situation but you don’t recommend a course of action yourself. What role do you think the ICC could play?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: To date, after more than a decade in existence, the ICC has never indicted anyone who is not African. That said, there are of course, some ICC advocates calling for the ICC to be instrumentalized against Assad—whose regime is clearly guilty of appalling atrocities. But as soon as the ICC gets involved the political options get rapidly limited. What little leverage outside powers—notably Russia—may have to persuade Assad to step down would be greatly diminished if he were under indictment. Obama at the G8 advocated easing Assad out of power in a scenario like we saw in Yemen—without dismantling his army and state apparatus, and without prosecuting him. Nobody who really backs the ICC can get excited about that prospect.
QUESTION FROM QUEENIE: Why did Kofi Annan’s six-point plan fail since the ceasefire agreement on April 12? How do you see Bashar al-Assad’s commitment to peace and international cooperation?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: The Annan Plan failed because Assad’s word is no good—he has demonstrated no interest at all in a cease fire, and has never abided by any of his agreements to end extreme state violence against the citizenry. And it also failed because Annan is weak, the Plan was toothless, and all the parties—Assad, the UN, the Arab League, and the Syrian opposition—were just buying time.
QUESTION FROM MATT: Given what seems to be unambiguous bad behavior by the Syrian regime, I have to wonder: Is the US hesitant to act because it suspects opposing leaders in the wings are just as bad or worse? Do we fear that the ‘Arab Spring’ will be remembered as the start of a takeover the Muslim Brotherhood, etc?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: No doubt—a fear of unwanted consequences is a strong deterrent to abrupt action. But Obama has been unambiguous in his repeated calls since August for Assad to step down. US policy is that he must go. But, of course, Assad has no incentive to step down, and we have no idea who or what should replace him. I think that, perhaps even more than fear of a Muslim Brotherhood take over, there is concern that Syria could be gripped by a very nasty, very long, very hard to resolve, bloody civil war.
QUESTION FROM FELIX: Do you think the Houla massacre will finally alter Russia’s stance in the conflict?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Russia will change its tone a bit—you can see that already—but the underlying tune is unlikely to change drastically. So we’re seeing statements from Moscow about how they’re not categorically opposed to Assad’s exit—and at the same time they’re saying, slow down, easy does it, we don’t see any acceptable scenario, and we will not condemn him as strongly as everyone else, much less approve any plan to propel him from power.
QUESTION FROM LUCY SHAW: Given the US’s domestic weaknesses which will only be exacerbated by the euro zone crisis,do you think its role / days as international policemen are numbered and if so, who do you think will take over that leadership role?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: On the one hand the US role as “global policeman” has always been limited and selective. On the other hand it has always been important to Washington, even if it isn’t going to police everything, to make sure no other power takes over the leadership role in global affairs. I don’t see that changing. During the Libya war, we saw that NATO is incapable of a sustained military campaign even against a small, fairly weak, and fairly unresisting power, without massive military support from the US. They simply don’t have the means to do it without the US. No other great power is getting stronger as the US goes through its current travails. There will be changes in global power, of course, over time, but not launching a war in Syria is not a sign of American decline.
QUESTION FROM HAYGURL: you mention from an earlier comment the US strategic interests in the region—namely israel and saudi arabia—why isn’t this a good time to disentagle ourselves from the region and its various faultlines, rather than entrench ourselves further in conflicts which are beyond our scope of understanding, let alone control?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I don’t, as yet, see ourselves getting more entrenched. I think that the Obama administration has thus far showed prudent caution, and outright resistance to getting overly drawn into the Syrian crisis. But a moment of great crisis like this is not an optimal time for disentangling from the region either—and the reasons, like them or not, agree with them or not, that the US is entangled as it is have not been changed by Assad’s bloody repression
QUESTION FROM TANYA SLEIMAN: Assad is very persuasive within Syria to convince merchants and minorities that he is their savior. What is your reading of the mood on the ground? Are his supporters clinging tighter to the regime and its rhetoric? Are there cracks in the facade? Thank you for your thoughts.
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I’m not in Syria, I’ve not been, I would not presume to speak of the mood on the ground—and have tried only to make sense of the tension in US and international diplomacy between the desire to do something to check Assad and end the violence and remove a regime that has lost all credit—and the geo-strategic realities of the situation. Our moral outrage is usually a pretty absolute measure—but political judgment always operates in the awkward unsatisfying calculation of our limitations.
QUESTION FROM DAVE: If the Annan Plan is just buying time, what are the UN and member nations who oppose Assad’s continue role buying time towards since the opposition does not seem to have built momentum after a year of hostilities?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow—so if you’re a policy maker and you don’t like any of your options today and you think you can look like you’re doing something that’s not reckless, that looks good-intentioned, that might alleviate the crisis, while you wait for unforeseen/unforeseeable shifts in the balance, well then that’s your interest in buying time. There’s hope that the opposition will get together, that Russia will become less defensive of Assad, that Assad will see it in his interest to comply with some of the UN’s demands—and, perhaps above all, that the very severe sanctions that have been imposed on him, will begin to bite in ways that force a change in the balance of power in Syria. There’s all sorts of hope—but the situation has only got worse.
QUESTION FROM NIRAJ SHRESTHA: Let’s say China and Russia have no objections to a military involvement. Would the western powers have any appetite to put boots on the ground ?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Excellent question. I’m not at all sure that there’s any western appetite to go into Syria. So, at this point, China and Russia are serving a very convenient role for the NATO powers on the Security Council. They give us someone to blame. When Russia and China refused to sign on to a toothless resolution condemning Assad and calling for him to step down early this year, Hilary Clinton called their action (or inaction) “Despicable” and Susan Rice said that any further bloodshed would be on their hands. But without their resistance, we would not look more effective—and we might look much less effective.
QUESTION FROM GUEST: Conditions in Syria differ vastly from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Still, looking at these “success stories” of the Arab Spring—and the successful repression in Bahrain and Iran, what lessons do you think most influence Assad’s cohort, and activists in the opposition?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: I think Assad’s view is that you crush the opposition—you do not compromise with it ever in any way—and that’s how you survive. The alternative is not surviving, and that’s not one he seems able to entertain. As I mentioned in a blog post today, he told Russian TV this weekend he doesn’t really care what anyone thinks: “What matters is winning in real life.” His father slaughtered 10,000 people thirty years ago to crush opposition—and it pretty much worked. Assad probably thought he could pour hellfire into opposition strongholds and achieve the same effect. Well, now he’s killed 10,000 too—and there’s no end in sight. I don’t think he needs to see other “Arab Spring” scenarios to feel hellbent on total violent suppression.
QUESTION FROM FABIAN: What do you think possible consequences for Lebanon could look like? Do you think that it is likely that the recent fights in Tripoli or even the west of Beirut will increase and further destabilize the country? As Syria has always had a lot of influence on Lebanon, it seems possible that the chaos is also spreading to Lebanon now…
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: A spillover of sectarian conflict from Syria to Lebanon is a very real anxiety—and it is one reason that the international energy so far has seemed bent toward containment rather than toward any kind of intervention that could ignite a greater war. The reports I read from Beirut, when the fighting flashed up this weekend, were quite alarming—reporters who’d been there for years were shocked by the speed with which old unresolved conflicts and divisions returned. It was a reminder of how close to the surface the dangerous passions are.
QUESTION FROM JOE: How firmly aligned is the army with Bashar al-Assad? Is there any chance the military decides to intercede in the conflict?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Another good question. There have been several thousand highly visible defections from Assad’s military—soldiers deserting and joining the opposition. It seems that these defectors make up a sizable part of the armed opposition at this point. But Assad has hundreds of thousands of fighters still under his command, and a fearsome arsenal. I’m sure that Western policy makers are looking at what fault lines there may be in the Syrian military and how to encourage the sort of shift we saw in Egypt (and differently in Yemen) whereby the military would turn against Assad and effectively stage a coup. But Assad still seems to have considerable power. Today, when the Western powers expelled Syrian diplomats, I was struck by the fact that none of those Syrian diplomats have defected—the way we saw Libyan diplomats doing in the endgame of the Qaddafi regime.
QUESTION FROM JESS: What is the strategic benefit to Russia in supporting the Syrian regime?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: It’s always reported that Russia is Syria’s last friend in international society. But it’s also significant that Syria is Russia’s last client dictatorship—in the old Cold War style—in the Middle East. Russia has military ties with Syria, and has strategic naval facilities there, and if Assad goes, Russia’s influence and leverage is reduced in a very charged region. And there’s another factor behind Russia’s posture on Syria, I think. Quite clearly, the Russians were infuriated that the one time they went against their own principle of non-intervention in internal affairs of other sovereign states—and gave grudging approval to NATO’s air campaign in Libya by not using their veto against it—they felt NATO took advantage of the license. The UN resolution in question authorized NATO to create a NO FLY zone in Libya for humanitarian reasons and instead NATO quickly became the air-force for the anti-Qaddafi rebels. That was an over-reach that the Russians are now keen to punish the West for, however unwise it may seem to hitch the Russian star in the Middle East to Assad.
QUESTION FROM PHIL: How might developments in Syria affect the U.S. election?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: In their current configuration—that is, if the grim status quo drags on, and things in Syria look in November much as they do today, I don’t see a big effect on the US election. If anything I would say that it might be the other way around, that the US election might exert an extra inhibition on any impulse to take military action in the Middle East right now. The Obama administration’s first interest in the region is to avert war between Iran and Israel. The policy is containment—to avoid provoking greater conflict. I don’t see why that should change after November, but until then I would think the Administration’s every effort will be to prevent a situation that would effect the American vote.
QUESTION FROM GUEST: So what’s next? It’s a huge strategic mistake on Assad’s part to create political will against him, and this massacre did just that. But if he learns from this and continues killing on smaller scales, this is going to drag on and on. If this latest massacre and expulsion of ambassadors is not in fact the tipping point and the int’l condemnation dies down, Annan’s peace plan continues to be a bust, and 5 months from now we’re literally in the same position, then what?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: Earlier this winter—late last year and early this year—you used to hear a lot of the policy hands saying that Assad was doomed, a “dead man walking,” that it was just a matter of time till he was gone, and that it wouldn’t be that much time either. Well, now that tune is changing. Now, I think the feeling is that we could be facing exactly the sort of long grim stalemate that you describe—that Assad is a more ruthless survivor, a cannier calculator of his own odds, and willing to withstand total condemnation and isolation to hold on to power. That’s a bleak scenario, but he wouldn’t be the first.
QUESTION FROM WYATTBURP: Afternoon, Philip. Is the world actually going to sit back and watch Assad kill off the “terrorist” in his country using so much collateral damage?
PHILIP GOUREVITCH: In my Comment this week, I quoted from Obama’s speech at the Holocaust Museum in April—where he went to announce the creation of a new “Atrocities Prevention Board” at the White House. Obviously such a measure is hard to celebrate in the face of the news from Syria, and Obama understood that. He said, We can’t be everywhere, we can’t solve everything… and he said, There will be more senseless deaths that we fail to prevent. So I’m afraid I’m going to end this chat on the same note—saying, yes, there’s no apparent scenario by which we are about stop Assad’s killing. The Syrian opposition will keep trying to do that—and we may support them—but what we are looking at today in Syria is an ugly civil war.
Thanks so much for your questions. I wish I could offer cheerier responses.
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
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