Syria: It’s not what we should do now, it’s what we should have done then

In March 2011, I wrote a long piece on the military intervention in Libya in which I summarised academic research on intervention in intrastate conflicts. Since proponents of the responsibility to protect doctrine typically argue for it via an account of one or two notorious cases where we should have but failed to intervene, the debates typically overrate the lessons of those few cases and ignore all the rest. Consequently, I disregarded theoretical and anecdotal accounts of, or arguments for, military intervention and focused exclusively on empirical studies where the authors analysed dozens or hundreds of conflicts across the past century or more to calculate whether the consequences of such intervention are usually positive.

While I’m hoping to discuss our mistakes in the Syrian situation here, the issue of military assistance to the Free Syria Army (FSA) will soon begin to dominate the discussion. So before I proceed, I will summarise the findings on military intervention.

1. The majority of genocides and politicides occur when armed rebels challenge the state, and the likelihood of such an occurrence rises significantly when the rebels are supported by the civilian population. (Harff and Gurr (1988 in Kuperman 2008; Valentino et al. 2004 in Kuperman 2008).
2. Military intervention prolongs intrastate conflicts. (Balch-Lindsay and Enterline 2000; Regan 2000, 2002; Elbadawi and Sambanis 2000).
3. Even if military intervention never materialises, the very expectation of military intervention prolongs intrastate conflicts, primarily because the party who will be supported by the intervention refuses to negotiate or drop their maximalist demands. (Elbadawi and Sambanis, 2000; Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski 2005; Kuperman 2008).
4. If the government of the target country expects military intervention to be carried out by a state with which it has poor relations, the effect in 3. is even stronger. (Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski 2005).
5. While foreign military intervention in general tends to prolong conflicts, neutral interventions prolong them the most. That is, the shortest conflicts are those without foreign military intervention, and the longest are where foreign powers militarily intervene in a way that is neutral between the government and the rebels. (Regan 1996, 2002; Balch-Lindsay and Enterline, 2000).
6. A foreign military intervention that supports the militarily weaker side is likely to prolong the conflict the most. (Dixon, 2001; Balch-Lindsay, enterline and joyce, 2008).
7. Compared to negotiated settlement, a military victory is more likely to result in post-war massacres and is less likely to lead to democracy. (Licklider, 1995; Dixon, 2001; Gurses and Mason, 2008).
8. Foreign military intervention has the initial effect of reducing the chance of a negotiated settlement. (Mason, Weingarten & Fett, 1999).
9. Foreign military intervention on the side of the rebels has the lowest likelihood of a negotiated settlement. (Gent, 2005; Balch-Lindsay, enterline and joyce, 2008).
10. Counter intuitively, but confirmed by both studies that tested it, foreign military intervention on the side of the government increases the chance of settlement relative to government military victory. That is, the most likely result of a government-biased intervention is a negotiated settlement, with a government victory second most likely. (Dixon, 2001; Balch-Lindsay, enterline and joyce, 2008).
11. Foreign military interventions do not typically give rise to democracies in the target countries. Some studies claim that the likelihood that a democracy will emerge after a foreign intervention is no greater than chance; that is, that target countries gain no democratic benefit over similar countries that do not experience such intervention (Pickering and Kisangani, 2006; Pickering and Peceny, 2006; Downes and Monten, unpublished; Pearson, Walker and Stern, 2006). Other studies show that, after an initial flurry of post-intervention democratic activity, interventions led to a reduction in democracy compared to what the target country would have had without the intervention (Bueno de Mesquita and Downs, 2006; Easterly, Satyanath and Berger, 2008; Gleditsch, Christiansen & Hegre, 2004).
12. Foreign military intervention typically causes target countries to be less peaceful and stable than they would have been without the intervention. (Gleditsch, Christiansen & Hegre, 2004; Piec and Reiter, 2010; Downes, working paper).
13. Interventions that damage state infrastructural power the most by installing a wholly new government result in the largest increase in the chance of subsequent civil war. (Piec and Reiter, 2010; Downes, working paper).
14. The effect in point 13. is much stronger in poor and ethnically heterogeneous countries. (Downes, working paper).

These findings should make anyone think carefully before proposing military assistance to the FSA. But the question that I want to discuss here, especially in the light of the near universal condemnation for this weekend’s Chinese and Russian United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vetoes, is what action is open to us in situations like Syria and Libya if military intervention is a bad idea. I will again turn to research, but this time studies on mediation and negotiations.

After examining 153 conflicts between 1945 and 1999, Patrick Regan and Aysegul Aydin (2006) found that diplomatic intervention was likely to reduce the duration of civil wars. They found that mediation attempts early in a conflict increased the likelihood of compromise without increasing the likelihood of a government victory. Marie Olson and Frederic Pearson )2002) reached a similar conclusion. Since most of us think that the authoritarian Assad regime should make way for a democratic government in Syria, this would have been a good place to start. Russia is making belated efforts in that direction, but the amount of time that has passed will make mediation very difficult.

There are two forms of mediation that have been found to be especially effective. Barbara Walter (1997) found that the offer of a security guarantee by a third party was a necessary condition for civil war settlement. In the Syria case, this would require NATO to encourage the FSA to put down their arms so that violence could stop, with a guarantee that NATO would step in if the Assad forces continued the violence. it would similarly require NATO to guarantee the safety of regime officials and minorities once they laid down their arms. This could allow for peaceful conditions during which parties could negotiate a settlement, and would ensure the safety of both sides after a settlement.

The second type of mediation that has been found to be effective is one that few Westerners will appreciate. According to Isak
Svensson (2008), mediation by non-democracies are more likely to lead to a settlement than mediation by democracies. The most likely reason for this is that democracies, due to the popularity contest that their governments are involved in, are more likely to moralise and choose sides early in a conflict. Accordingly, the Turkish government, who strives for popularity inside Turkey as well as in the rest of the Middle East, came under heavy criticism for their conciliatory stance towards the Syrian government, whereupon they changed their stance from engagement to hostility. Russia would not have been seen as a neutral mediator, and neither would Iran, Iraq or the sectarian GCC countries.

What is required here is that the UN should develop the responsibility to protect doctrine further to spell out the diplomatic measures that should be pursued before even talk of military intervention is permitted. It would shift the emphasis from military intervention and sanctions, to negotiations and foreign mediation. It would clarify the immediate steps that should be taken, which might prevent situations where violence increases while the international community sits on its hands while aimlessly shooting off from its mouth. It would change the approach from an haphazard to an evidence-based one. And it would prevent political movements from using humanitarian intervention to achieve their political goals, since those that refuse to negotiate will not, except possibly under special conditions, be helped. It leaves room for political movements who want to pursue their political goals through violence, but it at least removes the incentive that they currently have to draw state violence onto their civilian populations in the hope that the international community will help.

The UN should have a standing mediation committee with members drawn from several countries, and those members should temporarily suspend their membership when mediation is required in a case where their countries have special interests. This will bypass the problems that democracies have when trying to mediate, and it will remove the concern about intervening countries’ interests that might dominate discussions.

For those who worry about excessive international meddling in countries’ domestic affairs, especially with the disproportionate amount of influence that some countries have in the UN, these type of situations almost always gives rise to international meddling anyway, a lot of which is far from transparent or unbiased. Others might object to negotiations and mediation as forms of airy-fairy idealism, to which I will simply refer them back to the empirical evidence and remind them that this strategy does not rule out military intervention; it merely creates conditions under which the evidence-based approach, which backs negotiations and mediation, will become the default position.

When we get to the stage that the Syrian situation has now reached, the question that countries like India, Brazil and South Africa have to answer is this: if our position is consistent with research and is therefore the nearest to being right, but the actions of others render that position impractical, do we hold onto the correct impractical position or do we join the misguided consensus? In cases like Libya and Syria the former option would leave ill-equipped rebels and civilians at the mercy of a ruthless regime, and the latter would enable the international community to act, but will reinforce the misguided position of the consensus for the future.

If they stand by the correct position, most of the world will despise them, but the international community will learn, firstly, that the UN Security Council cannot be used for regime change and, secondly, that countries should work hard from the beginning to find negotiated solutions to conflict. The long-term consequence of standing by the correct position will thus be to reinforce a negotiation trend, and will therefore be positive. The UNSC can then be used for cases where the evidence-based position does not succeed. China’s explanations for their UNSC veto have been quite muddled, and Russia’s have been a combination of principle and self-interest. But broadly speaking their vetoes will reinforce the correct position for future cases.

But, as South Africa and India probably calculated, in the Syrian case adherence to the correct position and reinforcement of a negotiation trend will in effect authorise a bloodbath. Assad knows that the international community is paralysed, he knows that non-universal sanctions will take years to do substantial damage, he has watched Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir remain in place notwithstanding his nauseating record of mass civilian killing, so he will finish the crackdown until civilian protesters stay at home, and until the FSA is wiped out, or until his own army is depleted, or until the minority Christians and Alawites are exterminated. One has to be brave to think of “long-term trends” and “ultimate reinforcement of correct principles” while so many are dying. And this time they are dying in front of our own eyes on citizens’ media, it is not Nicaragua or Rwanda or even Iraq where we can leave the painful reality to the locals and celebrate the ignorance that makes our non-involvement so much easier to bear.

While it is currently fashionable to scream at Russia and China for their UNSC veto, they do not carry sole responsibility for placing us all in the position where there is no safe course between the current Scylla and Charybdis of the correct principle and the incorrect consensus. Citizens’ media and 24-hour news television have turned revolutions and uprisings into a spectator sport, with everyone stuck in front of their televisions cheering on their team. And who can blame us for acting like this when the world is finally set to get rid of oppressive regimes like the ones that have been tormenting Middle Easterners for decades?

But in case the Libyan and Syrian episodes have not demonstrated this clearly enough, this is not a harmless game with the team having to be cheered on to the goal. It’s always deadly, it always sows massive dissension often to the point of hopelessly splintering a society, it shatters security because it pits society against its security forces, it destroys infrastructure, it devastates the economy, and often all that destruction achieves little. In an exhaustive study of major historical uprisings, Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth (2011) found that unarmed revolutions succeeded 51% of the time, while armed revolutions had a 3% chance of success. If the point is not clear, even the more successful type of revolution succeeds only half of the time.

So far as I can see, major revolutionary efforts have three likely courses: First, if the opposition incorporates into their strategy strikes and other forms of non-cooperation (as opposed to just protests that are easy for security forces to attack), then the government and the opposition have to negotiate and devise a compromise plan whereby some of the protesters’ demands will be met and others will remain unmet. South Africa, where the black population received political rights but little financial benefit, is one example. And even if those crazy courageous Egyptians manage to throw off military rule, their government will probably not adopt economic policies from which the population, as opposed to international investors, will benefit. These are the type of cases that the Stephan and Chenoweth study labeled successful. So while negotiations can often prevent extreme violence, it results in compromises that leave protesters unhappy.

Secondly, if one or both sides refuse to negotiate, the most likely outcome is state and opposition violence on each other. Since this struggle will always pit poorly funded and equipped civilians against a fully trained and equipped army, it will yield what we’re currently witnessing in Syria. If the opposition fights for long enough and manages to pull off an unlikely victory with the help of some army defectors, then there is a 3% chance that the country will democratise, which is a poor outcome for so much destruction.

Thirdly, in case a rebel army cannot pull off the job and international military intervention is required, then the likelihood of consequent democracy drops to below 3% (Bueno de Mesquita and Downs, 2006), the majority of countries suffer a 33% decline in democracy (Easterly, Satyanath and Berger, 2008), the likelihood of post-war massacres exist (Licklider, 1995; Dixon, 2001; Gurses and Mason, 2008), the war is likely to be longer than it would have been if the intervention had not taken place (Balch-Lindsay and Enterline 2000; Regan 2000, 2002; Elbadawi and Sambanis 2000), and so forth. This is also an awful deal for the amount of destruction. But more importantly, it is not, as anti-imperialists would currently have it, so much worse than a purely local violent revolution, with its 3% chance of success.

For economic leftists and anti-imperialists, I have not come across studies that examined the likelihood of the adoption of a strict IMF-style neoliberal economic program or submission to a US-led world order under each of these three scenarios. Under the second and third international domination is almost certain; the radical destruction and instability that a war brings leave a state with little with which to resist the outsiders who offer them money, military equipment, military training, and so forth. Under the first, like South Africa, Namibia, Angola and many others can testify, a locally-led change does not preclude neoliberalism and its accompanying poverty.

A strong argument can thus be made that a negotiated solution, though in many ways unsatisfactory, remains by far the superior option. People can always re-visit their demands at a later stage and push for further change once enough time has passed to evaluate the initial phase. but, as seen above, mediated negotiations work best to achieve compromise if it is employed early on.

That is what is irritating about being asked: “so what do you suggest should be done now?” It is not what should be done now, it is what should have been done then.

Most of the world’s civil society carries some responsibility for not wanting negotiations in the early stages of the Syrian conflict. It has become quite fashionable for the political left and the right and everything in-between to claim that one should not negotiate with a regime that is killing its own people. Further, the spectator-sport aspect of these uprisings makes us cheer on our team towards their goal, instead of pausing and reflecting on what would work best to achieve that goal. That is also partly responsible for the protest movements’ prioritising vulnerable demonstrations over workers’ strikes and other forms of non-cooperation. After all, how would al-Jazeera cover a workers’ strike and how can it give rise to dramatic YouTube videos?

Responsibility is shared by world governments who generally overlooked the idea of mediation, from the start supported the opposition who refused to negotiate, and heavily criticised the government even though it was more or less prepared to negotiate. If the majority of world countries or the more powerful countries support a movement that will not negotiate, then they are paving the route to violence. And since less militaristic countries’ evidence-based position hinges on the negotiations that have then been ruled out, they can do nothing to prevent the violence.

The question should accordingly not be whether we will fulfill our responsibility to protect the Syrian people. The question should be why we have already failed to fulfill that responsibility. And while we are at it, we should remember to accept some of the blame which everyone is now so furiously piling on China and Russia.

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