So You Want to Intervene in Syria Without Breaking the Law?

Foreign Policy ^ | JUNE 20, 2013 | Rosa Brooks

[nickcarraway]

Good luck with that.

So let's say you're the president of the United States and you want to use military force to intervene in Syria. I'm not saying you do (it sorta looks like you don't), and I'm not even saying you should (you're not wrong to worry that military intervention might not end well).

But let's say you become convinced that military intervention is the only way to protect Syrian civilians from being slaughtered by government forces, or that it's the only way to prevent Iran and Hezbollah from becoming dangerously emboldened, or the only way to prevent factions with links to al Qaeda from gaining the upper hand within the Syrian rebel movement, or the only way to prevent the conflict from spilling over into neighboring countries, or the only way to do all those things. And let's say that Russia continues to block every U.N. Security Council resolution that might pave the way for a civilian-protection intervention á la Libya.

You're a president who respects international law -- or, at any rate, you're not inclined to thumb your nose openly at international law. You're not Dick Cheney, and you don't like being compared to Cheney. That means that if you decide America should intervene militarily in Syria, you want to be able to tell the world, with a straight face, that the intervention is legal. At a bare minimum, you want to at least feel confident that what you're doing isn't blatantly, manifestly, obnoxiously illegal, in a darn the U.N. Security Council and the horse it rode in on" kind of way.

Can you do it? Would it be lawful, as an international law matter, for the United States to use military force in Syria without a Security Council resolution authorizing the intervention?

The short answer: Probably not.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Congress declaring war is so Eighteenth Century.

[Slings and Arrows]

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

So You Want to Intervene in Syria Without Breaking the Law?

I do not want to intervene in Syria. I have never wanted to intervene in Syria and I can think of very few scenarios that would leave me wanting to intervene in Syria.

Let the devil sort it out.

[Vermont Lt]

The LAST thi g you want is to officially declare war with this moron in office. The Chinese could be marching down Ventura BLVD and I would not want a formal declaration of war.

You guys need to understand that with that declaration, you hand the President almost unlimited and unrestrained power. If he got his hands on that he would declare himself a near god, and our country would end as we know it.

That was the real reason for the WPA. No one wanted Nixon as dictator.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks nickcarraway.

You're not Dick Cheney, and you don't like being compared to Cheney.

That's twice in one day.

[kenavi]

It is pretty clear that Russia has strategic interests in Syria and is drawing a red line of their own. So be it, leverage that.

To get there however the opposition needs to be strong enough to check Assad. That's the argument for our arming the rebels, albeit indirectly (e.g. Saudi Arabia sends arms to the rebels, we send arms to Saudi Arabia to replace them).

The contras in Nicaragua committed a lot of unsavory actions, but was justifiable in that Nicaragua at that time was an outpost of the Soviet empire.

Islamists, both Al Qaeda and Iran/Hezbollah, are now a greater strategic threat to us than Putin's Russia.

[SJackson]

The contras in Nicaragua committed a lot of unsavory actions, but was justifiable in that Nicaragua at that time was an outpost of the Soviet empire....Islamists, both Al Qaeda and Iran/Hezbollah, are now a greater strategic threat to us than Putin's Russia.

The Contras weren't our enemies, al Qaeda, Iran, Hizbollah are. I'd suggest letting them kill each other for a few years isn't the worst solution. If we're going to insert ourselves, credibility requires we do it with the intention of our side winning, and I'm not sure al Quaeda and other assorted Sunni terrorists are "our side". If the idea is supplying arms to prolong a stalemate, better to let the Saudi's do it. I don't think that's our intention, but if it is, that's fine.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Ah yes, The Democratic Socialist of America founder marxist. Also member of the older Socialist Scholars Conferences of the 1960’s.

Another Saul Alinsky contempary.