LITTLE ROCK — Successful military interventions are sufficiently rare as to induce utmost caution when contemplating the use of force in Syria, a country as populous as Iraq or Afghanistan and no less divided along religious and ethnic lines. Yet the legal, political, strategic and military conditions for an international operation are being fulfilled, which is in turn creating an opportunity to bring down Bashar Assad’s bloody dictatorship.
In legal terms, Syria’s border violations have created a new situation, one in which the Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN Security Council would no longer prevent the legitimate use of force by Turkey. These Syrian violations have been denounced in strong terms by NATO and an unusually unanimous Security Council; yet Syrian attacks continue.
Turkey’s security is further imperiled by an unabated flow of refugees prompted by the Assad regime’s mindless repression. The regime has simultaneously created the conditions for a sharp rise of cross-border attacks by Kurdish activists against Turkish army and police personnel. Turkey could credibly invoke Article51 of the UN Charter, entitling it to exercise its right of self-defense. This would allow Turkey to request military assistance from its NATO partners. The burden of proof would then be on Russia and China if those countries sought to override Turkey’s Article 51 claim in the Security Council.
From a strategic standpoint, the civil war in Syria is in a stalemate, with Assad’s forces unable to crush the rebellion and the insurgency militarily incapable of overthrowing the regime. A realistic objective of intervention would be to tilt the balance in favor of the rebel forces to help expedite Assad’s fall.
In military terms, this would be achieved by establishing a 50-mile no-fly zone along the Turkish-Syrian border. No allied aircraft would need to fly in Syrian airspace, as air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles fired from Turkish airspace and territory would have the necessary range to shoot down Syrian bombers or helicopters in the exclusion zone.
And with no boots on the ground, this intervention would not require an exit strategy.
Such an intervention is becoming desirable as well as feasible, for want of a better option. Letting the civil war fester will lead to further destabilization in Syria and the wider region and a radicalization of the conflict. Providing the rebels with weaponry, notably anti-aircraft missiles, raises the dread prospect of blow back, given our inability to control the ultimate destination of such transfers.
Even an intervention of the kind suggested here won’t guarantee a positive and stable outcome in Syria, any more than the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi meant that milk and honey were to flow in Libya. But the alternatives are worse.
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Frangois Heisbourg is a special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a Paris-based think tank.
Editorial, Pages 84 on 10/28/2012