Looking past the fig leaf of state sovereignty
Syria’s Assad regime, like others, hides behind an outdated concept
The Syrian war is often described as “confusing,” meaning that there are more than two sides to keep track of. So in the interests of clarity over honesty, here are a few simple facts about the Assad regime according to the Assad regime — well-established facts, even, in the sense that the regime has reiterated them so mercilessly that they are permanently seared into our brains.
The Syrian government doesn’t use barrel bombs. It doesn’t use chlorine weapons. In fact, it doesn’t use any indiscriminate weapons. Indiscriminate attacks just aren’t the regime’s style. Indiscriminate attacks are bad, you see, and the Assad regime isn’t bad. Terrorists are bad, so the Assad regime only attacks terrorists. Of course, all those who oppose the regime are terrorists, and this well-established fact provides incontrovertible proof that the regime never attacks civilians and is, therefore, the staunch defender of all that is good and holy and not-terroristy in this dangerous world.
Unfortunately for Assad, no amount of reiteration of those facts can change the fact that they’re lies. But unfortunately for the Syrians who suffer under Assad’s brutal clinging-on-to-rule, and for anyone who suffered through his brutal interview with the BBC last week, Assad said one thing that’s true enough that he can tell all the lies he likes. Syria, he said, is a sovereign state.
That was it: the dictator’s sole concession to sincerity during 30 minutes of smug mendacity. If it hadn’t been true, then he probably would have been interviewed from inside a jail cell in The Hague, or from beyond the grave. Instead, he was interviewed in a very comfortable armchair.
For that, we can blame 1648’s Treaty of Westphalia: the beginning of state sovereignty and of our failure to sufficiently check the power of sovereign states in ways that are both effective and legitimate.
The world remains largely at the mercy of a concept established at a time when the good people of Westphalia relieved themselves in earthenware pots and threw the excremental contents out the window.
Not that the world has stayed entirely stuck in a pile of excrement: We’ve developed enormously important international institutions, laws and norms since then. But none of them have prevented Assad from presiding over a state in which 210,000 people have died and from which nearly four million have fled. They haven’t acted as strong bulwarks against the dark side of sovereignty in Syria; they’ve fallen victim to it.
That’s not because international institutions and laws and courts are inherently weak. It’s because a faith in human progress alone can’t strengthen legal and institutional checks on power as long as powerful states believe they have a vested interest in weakening them.
While genuinely concerned observers of the Syrian crisis were having legitimate debates over whether and under what conditions an International Criminal Court referral would be wise, and whether and under what conditions military intervention under the principle of the responsibility to protect would be appropriate, Russia and China could relish the power to render these debates totally moot through Security Council vetoes. But countries like Canada and the United States enable this type of obstinacy by failing to invest financial and diplomatic resources in reforming and developing the only institutions and laws that can check the power of those whose power goes largely unchecked at home.
Even democratic states won’t give up power just because they’re feeling generous, though; they have to be convinced that it’s in their interests.
The best people to convince them?
Their own voters. I suspect that very few of them enjoy being stuck in the 17th century, or enjoy listening to foreign dictators arbitrarily assert sovereignty over the truth.