Conflict in Syria shows us the perils of a lawless world
In Syria, the use of chemical weapons against civilians, Russia’s military intervention in 2015-16, and President Donald Trump’s recent missile strike against the Shayrat airbase are all symptoms of a flawed ‘do-it-yourself’ approach to international security.
At present the international arena lacks a credible rules-based order for managing conflict within failing states and between warring states.
According to the American political scientist Kenneth Waltz, ‘‘wars occur because there is nothing to prevent them’’. Technically, the United Nations Security Council is the organisation responsible for maintaining peace international peace and security.
But the five permanent members – the US, China, Russia, the UK and France – hold the privilege of a veto, and it is the dominance and rivalries of this elite group which has crippled and paralysed the Security Council in the face of some of the world’s most desperate security problems.
Syria is an example of the mismatch between old diplomatic thinking that the world is a compartmentalised place run exclusively by sovereign states, and the new realities of a globalised world – characterised by instant communications and financial transactions across borders – in which all states are more interdependent and more vulnerable than before.
The Syrian crisis began in March 2011 when the ideas of the Arab Awakening migrated to Damascus and culminated in a brutal civil war after Bashir Assad’s dictatorship crushed the initially peaceful protests against his regime.
Between 2011 and 2012, Vladimir Putin’s government vetoed three US-UN Security Council resolutions calling for the departure of the Assad government and the establishment of a political transition in Syria.
By consistently blocking UN efforts to stabilise a bloody civil war and generously arming the Assad regime, Moscow (and Iran) has helped to keep its ally in power in Damascus, but it has done so at the terrible cost of inflating the threat of Isis in Syria and beyond.
Moreover, there is little indication that the Assad dictatorship can endure for long without continued military assistance provided by Russia and Iran. The alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime against populations in rebel-held areas points to the underlying weakness, not strength, of the position of the Damascus government.
So despite substantial military support for the Assad government, Moscow remains embroiled at great financial cost in a six-year civil war with no end in sight.
Putin’s government has vetoed a Security Council resolution on the reported use of chemical weapons in Syria – demanding the Assad regime co-operate with an investigation into the incident – and indicated to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Moscow would not abandon Assad in the face of US pressure.
Thus, the Security Council has been reduced to a bystander in a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 Syrians and led to over five million citizens fleeing their country to escape the fighting.
Ironically, the marginalisation of the Security Council is due to the permanent members attempting to extract advantage from situations like Syria over which they have little or no control.
The simple truth of the postCold War era is that unilateralism has been shown to be a dangerous fantasy.
Unfortunately, many sovereign states such as Russia, US and China remain in stubborn denial about their declining ability to act alone globally, and therefore the international means for addressing these security challenges remains weak and incomplete. This is the international transition we are living through.
Until the great powers in the 21st Century come to terms with a fundamentally new global environment, a context in which challenges in the security, economic and environmental spheres rarely respect the territorial boundaries of states, the prospects for resolving conflicts like Syria will remain problematic.
At some point, the idea of a selfhelp approach to security based on the doctrine of unfettered state sovereignty will have to be revised in what is an increasingly interdependent world.
A first step in this direction would be the curbing of the veto powers of the five permanent members of the Security Council. These privileges have been abused.
Such a paradigm shift, of course, will require some of the most powerful countries to move out of their political comfort zone. But ultimately that is what is required to make the Security Council more functional and effective in the face of security challenges like Syria.
New Zealand and other likeminded countries should persist in efforts to constrain the vetopowers of the permanent five group on the Security Council, and extend the rule of law to conflicts that have been ignored for too long.
Robert G. Patman is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Otago, New Zealand