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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Philip Gourevitch and John Cassidy on Obama’s Syria options.
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Philip Gourevitch and John Cassidy on Obama's Syria options.
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- [00:00]
A
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B
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Friday, September 6th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. Last week, President Obama surprised almost everyone by seeking approval from Congress for milit in Syria.
- [01:32]
C
My credibility is not on the line. The international community's credibility is on the line. And America and Congress's credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.
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B
That was the president speaking in Sweden on Wednesday on his way to the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. Filip Gurevich and John Cassidy are here to discuss the political dynamics of the situation. John why did Obama decide to seek congressional approval? He didn't do that when he decided to attack Libya a few years ago.
- [02:04]
D
It's still a very good question. I mean, I think it's still a question some of his most senior aides are asking. From all we know, it was a personal decision. He doesn't seem to have consulted the vice president or the Secretary of State before he took it. And there was a Lot of internal opposition inside the White House to it too. By all accounts, it looks like that Obama basically took on board the criticisms of, you know, people like, like ourselves, that before you go to war, you should have a, or something that might well resemble a war. You should have a congressional resolution. He is, after all, a professor of constitutional law, lecturing constitutional law. And I think he just felt very exposed, especially after the British vote against participating in the Syria raid, about going it alone. So he knew people in Congress would criticize him. He tried to bring them on board.
- [02:51]
C
Philip, I can't help thinking that he's giving off all the signs of somebody who was cornered in the days before he made this move. He had to make a case for a military action in Syria that is extremely risky, that has at best a small chance of achieving its intended consequences. In fact, he was unable to articulate the intended consequences in a completely concise.
- [03:15]
B
Fashion, in large part because he himself has grave reservations about it.
- [03:19]
C
Yeah. And he's a man. Everything he's done in the last week is to try to disassociate himself from an action that he has committed himself to taking. And it looks to me like so far in his presidency, Obama's big mistake. And the kind of fascinating thing about it is, it seems to me from a political point of view, is that it's not really in character. Usually when people make a big tragic mistake or a character flaw or a sort of over exaggerated move in a direction that we've always seen the tendencies for, but this has none of those. Obama got himself into a corner with his red line. A red line is taking an option off the table. And that option is being able to make your judgment when the time comes. It's committing yourself in advance to a limited set of possibilities. And now he's trying to make it the world's red line. In fact, he said that is a red line to me, the famous red line quote.
- [04:07]
B
What exactly do you think the mistake was? Was the mistake in announcing the red line to begin with?
- [04:12]
C
I think he made a mistake in getting, getting himself so close last Saturday, making the announcement that he was going to make these strikes. He effectively made that announcement. The White House signaled that it was going to make these strikes. It signaled it through John Kerry. And one got the feeling that the President did not want to fully make that case at that moment. His Rose Garden appearance where he said that he was going to Congress. Basically he avoided talking about Syria at all in any meaningful way. He didn't say what we hope to achieve he didn't say how we would achieve it. He didn't make a case for it. He didn't make a case for the necessity in some deep way of this. And the selling of this at Congress by John Kerry particularly, and others has not gone well. They have not been able to answer very fundamental questions. I think he's boxed himself in left, right and center with a set of options that he's very unhappy with, and rightly so, because they're bad.
- [05:04]
D
Yeah, I mean, Obama's really doing this, you know, against his own best judgment, it seems his body language, his actual language, everything about him, suggests he really doesn't want to be doing this, but he feels like he has to in order to sort of preserve U.S. credibility. But of course, by saying that out loud, you sort of, to some extent undermine your credibility. I think he really should have. If he was going to do something, he should have just done it and then taken the political flack for not acting without Congress. I mean, if it was a limited missile strike, it might not have been very successful, but he wouldn't be in the.
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C
Just.
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D
I'm talking politically here, not morally or strategically, but just politically. It would have been much better for him to just do it straight away and, you know, take the hit and move on. Now he's in this terrible situation where he sort of raised expectations. He's having to assure John McCain and people that it's not just going to be a pinprick, that it's going to be a significant strike which sort of alters the balance of power in Syria. At the same time, he's having to reassure people on the right and the left that actually, no, we're not going into war here. There aren't going to be any boots on the ground. It's not even an attempt to overthrow Assad. So what is it? As Philip said, the President can't really answer that question. If we're not trying to bring down Assad, and it's not just a pinprick, what is it? They talk about degrading and deterring his chemical weapons capability. What does that mean?
- [06:22]
C
John's absolutely right. If it's about degrading and deterring, the military experts make it quite clear that you can't do that with these Tomahawk missiles. You need manned aircraft flying over, dropping a whole different level of ordnance. We're already seeing an escalation. Before anything started, just this debate has had an escalation within it. And the incoherence of the positions in this, where you have the defense Department putting together a war plan, and you have the State Department supposedly pursuing a policy of diplomatic efforts to achieve regime change. This doesn't make a lot of sense. And he's basically risked an enormous amount or bet an enormous amount on something that he doesn't seem committed to. And imagine there is a no vote, and he doesn't do it for that. He's denounced the Security Council, alienated all sorts of people around the world, given Assad something to crow about, made himself domestically very vulnerable, and achieved zero. There have never been any good options on Syria. He's been very clear about that. He has restrained himself up until this particular chemical attack and then found himself, in a way, holding onto his conviction that there were no good options while having to march forward as if he felt genuinely convinced of something. And I think that we're seeing him caught in that bind and our policy caught in that bind.
- [07:45]
B
Philip, before this particular debate began, Obama said that preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States. So that is a big premise for whatever foreign policy he is pursuing, is it not?
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C
Yes, but it was rhetorical to some degree, because he, I think, said that when he was at the Holocaust Museum setting up his Atrocities Prevention Board about a year and a half ago in the spring of 2012, at which point the death toll in Syria hovered around 10,000, by the best estimates, a tenth of what it is now. And even as he said that he was setting this up and that this was a core national interest, which no other president has ever put it out there quite so bluntly, he also said, but we cannot do everything, we cannot prevent everything, and there will continue to be unnecessary and meaningless deaths that we cannot stop. So he maintained the kind of realism, and what you see right now is this attempt to say we will never expand this into a larger war, and yet nothing about the action that's contemplated can achieve the kind of ends that are stated without getting into a much larger war. And we all know that that carries immense risks of it going very much out of control rather than becoming much more controlled.
- [09:10]
B
And, Philip, you've written about many of the subjects that we are touching on here. Tell us a little bit about the role of the UN in catastrophes like this. You know, its missions are multilateralism and peace. Just walk us through that.
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C
The Security Council is this bizarre club that was invented at the end of World War II. I mean, it's not bizarre for the end of World War II, but it is. China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, which was sort of shoehorned in as if it were a victorious power in World War II, when in fact it was not. And us, these are not five countries that have the same idea of multilateralism, of international security, of anything. And they are supposed to be, in a sense, the arbiters of a moral and legal international order. And what you've seen throughout both the Cold War and the post Cold War period is they come together when none of them feel that their particular national security interests take priority over whatever the contemplated UN action is. But when we wanted to go to war in Iraq and the Security Council didn't, we did it. When we wanted to do Kosovo and we didn't get Security Council approval, we did it. You know, the Russians didn't exactly ask for Security Council approval to go into Chechnya or previously into Afghanistan. I don't think the Chinese are going to see what the Security Council thinks if they have a national security interest with, say, Taiwan or where have you. And so what you have is a system that really is reserved for those places and those crises that are second tier for these major powers.
- [10:47]
B
So why did the UN authorize force in Libya?
- [10:50]
C
Well, there's some debate about that. I think the biggest reason, honestly, is that Gaddafi had no friends left. Nobody gave a damn about saving him. They all thought might as well. The Russians and the Chinese then made a huge outcry when they saw that in fact this was a NATO war to unseat Gaddafi and achieve complete regime change for the whole country that had been sold to them as a no fly zone for Benghazi to protect the city from an immediate peril, as it was perceived at the time. The Russians and the Chinese said, you know, we've been completely bamboozled and completely had. And the Americans and the others on the Council said, oh, come on, you knew perfectly well what you were authorizing. It said, by all necessary means in that resolution. And they said, nope, you used that by all necessary means to be given an inch and take a mile and, and you've seriously worn out your welcome with us and we're not going to be hooked like this again. So many people have felt that that has been used at least as an excuse by the Russians for sort of blocking on Syria. But it certainly points to the fact that whether the Russians were bluffing when they said, we're shocked, we're shocked that you're doing this. It gets at the fact that these tussles are very intense that they're not all in favor of these kinds of actions. And Russia's relationship to Syria is one of patronage and towards Gaddafi was not.
- [12:18]
B
So, Philip, we keep reading about the violation of international norms in Syria. Does that term have any meaning anymore?
- [12:24]
C
I think when it comes to chemical weapons, it does. That core argument, as Steve Call wrote so powerfully this past week, is the best case for action in Syria. It's not then about Syria or the larger war in Syria or about US Prestige or power or anything. It's about chemical weapons. And if one could actually take an action that was coherently directed strictly at that, I think that that would be the strongest case. But that case has gotten very messy and sprawling and diluted and frankly, lost.
- [13:02]
D
I totally agree with Philip there. I mean, obviously that's Obama's by far most strongest moral case. The problem, as Philip also said, is, you know, Obama got himself in terrible trouble by drawing this red line a year ago. Imagine he hadn't said that now if he just said, look, you know, it's going to be a very big deal if you use chemical weapons and, you know, we'll take whatever actions we can to punish you. But without saying, you know, basically committing himself to military action, then when this attack took place, assuming it was, as most people think, a Syrian government attack, the US could have gone to the un Put a lot of pressure on the Russians. The Russians don't want to be seen around the world defending the use of chemical weapons. Maybe got the Chinese on board and tried to put some real pressure on the Syrians. There's an international court in the Hague which could have indicted Assad for crimes against humanity or whatever. There are multilateral ways to do this. Now, the argument against that was it wouldn't get rid of Assad. But we're not trying to get rid of Assad. That's not an explicit aim of the U.S. the aim is to stop him using chemical weapons and to try and force him to the negotiating table. So I think it just highlights again how inadvertently Obama got himself into this position, because everything about him and his entire history would suggest that he would much rather be going down the sort of UN multilateral route, which we'd definitely have the support of the British, or we'd have the support of the Germans and all the Europeans, if that was the sort of line we were going down.
- [14:34]
B
But, John, can Assad be Shay? I mean, can that happen with him now at a point where he seems to feel that he's stronger than ever?
- [14:42]
D
I think the Russians do have leverage with him. I mean, you know, they can't survive without support from the Russian regime, I don't think. I mean, maybe he can rely on the Iranians, you know, to some extent, but he really needs Russian support. And if the Russians were at least prevailing on him not to use chemical weapons, I think it would have had some impact.
- [14:59]
C
I think John's absolutely right also about the failure of American diplomacy on this. I mean, we talk endlessly about Russia because Russia is obviously leading at the UN in blocking any action about this or any kind of unanimity on the council, but China has Russia's back on this. What about trying to erode China out from under or use China's interests and say to China, look, you know, you should be leaning on Russia to find some kind of middle ground here. Let's all get to some place where we get what we need here, which is that we're all reinforcing the chemical weapons regime. We get as far as we can with this, we get some kind of condemnation. Now, none of that's going to prevent the appalling death toll and atrocity that we've seen in Syria, because that's really not about chemical weapons. That's the larger war. But there's a lot that hasn't been done.
- [15:49]
B
But wait, Philip, wasn't that exactly. Well, I don't know what he was saying about China, but wasn't that in effect, what John Kerry was doing in trying to convene some kind of international group to find a diplomatic solution?
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C
Yeah, but it's very, very, very late in the day, after we had effectively said we're going to hit them militarily. And then he goes to Congress and starts talking about Munich and kind of sprawling this way, that way, discussion of boots on the ground and saying we're not going to war, and make sort of scare quotes with his fingers in the conventional sense. These were all the kinds of things that raised the alarm of everybody who's trying to say, please define this for us. I mean, frankly, the one thing that John Kerry did very effectively in Congress this week was remind me certainly of why he wasn't elected in 2004. The kind of inability to stay really tightly on message and the desire to throw out sort of big moral posturing on tight national security issues.
- [16:46]
B
I also want to ask you, Philip, because you've thought about this so much for so many years. We've seen a number of catastrophic civil wars in recent decades, including Rwanda. And of course, you've written about at great length, including a whole book, and you're working on another book have we learned anything from those disasters?
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C
The problem with all the analogies with the past is that these cases are very, very particular. One of the things that one looks at when there's this debate about, well, how can we stand around or sit on our hands while these terrible things are happening is what could we do realistically? Well, in Rwanda, the decision of the Clinton administration was to withdraw a UN Force that many believe could have been effective at preventing a lot of death. We withdrew. It's not that we didn't intervene in Bosnia. We saw that at a certain stage there was going to be a partition of the country. We weren't going to keep the country together, and we could take out who we thought were the key aggressors without a great risk to ourselves. And there was no risk of this becoming vastly worse. In some ways, I think we thought that the ability of Milosevic to do his worst had been achieved by then. Here we're looking at a situation where we say we want to prevent worse things from happening.
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D
We.
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C
But the risk of provoking vastly worse things and getting drawn into a vastly larger war with a vastly less clear outcome and no ability, in fact, to articulate what we'd like the outcome to be means that I don't see a lot of value for the moment, unfortunately, in precedent. I don't see that precedent has taught us anything except the hyper particularity of these decisions.
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D
It really is going to be a remarkable week next week, Dorothy. I mean, the president's going to return from the G20 summit to what looks like the biggest crisis of his presidenc as of this weekend. You know, the sort of conventional wisdom is that he's facing defeat in the House. If you look at the reports in Politico, the Washington Post and Times, et cetera, you know, there doesn't seem to be a way out in the House for him to get this through. Presumably, there's going to be a full court press for a week to try. And every, you know, every conceivable type of arm twisting, every conceivable moral argument is going to be made, and it's going to be an enormous test.
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B
Okay, here we are at this terrible moment. How do you balance moral obligations against the potential for exacerbating the instability in Syria and in the entire region?
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C
I don't think it's actually that ambiguous an issue. I think one acknowledges that it's morally outrageous what is taking place, and it's indescribably frustrating to feel that there isn't a clear course of action, but we don't have a clear course of action. The one thing that everybody seems to agree on is that we don't want to get sucked into an actual ground war there. And look, in the spring of last year, 15 months ago or so, the Russians at a G8 meeting at Camp David said, there's one inescapable question here. If you want to get rid of Assad, who do you want to replace him? There's never been an answer for that, not just a who or a what do you want to replace him? Washington has never had a clear answer for that. And looking at the rebels, we know that they're a very, very mixed bag and that the second they don't have Assad as a common enemy, they're likely to turn on each other in very ugly ways. To move into this without any clear idea of where you would like it to go is very, very reckless and backwards.
- [20:11]
B
Okay, so, John, let me just rephrase it a little bit. It sounds like what both of you are advocating, in effect, is if it's not too late, put enough pressure on Assad to isolate him diplomatically to force at least a stop in the use of chemical weapons. Is that right?
- [20:27]
D
Ideally, sure. I'm totally in favor of using diplomacy and stopping short of using military action, simply because in this case, we don't know what the military action is intended to do. As you know, as Philip said, I mean, great irony, you know, the rebels are already moving out of the way because they think we're attacking them. You know, the jihadis, they can't believe we're actually going into intervene on their side, so they think it's all a sort of American plot, and when the bombs actually start falling, they'll be falling on their sides of the lines. That sort of shows you what a tangled situation it is inside Syria that we're getting embroiled in. So I, like Obama, until a couple of weeks ago, just recoil from the idea of getting in there without knowing exactly what we're going to do. And as I say, the President clearly agrees with that instinctively, but he's now got himself in this awful situation where he's made the decision to go in there and the country at the moment doesn't appear to be behind him, and he's got a week left to turn it around.
- [21:26]
C
John's absolutely right about that. And I also think that the interesting thing about this as a political fight within the United States is that it's not on some kind of strictly predetermined political lines. There's substance to it. People are responding to a deep wariness, skepticism, and dissatisfaction with the case that's been made both popularly and politically. It cuts across all kinds of political divides, and I think that that really is an unusual thing and makes it all the more significant for Obama.
- [22:01]
B
Okay, we're going to come back to this, obviously, but thank you both John Cassidy and Philip Gurevich are staff writers. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker, Dorothy I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [22:10]
C
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E
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun. I want a shark that that eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
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C
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [23:15]
E
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D
From.
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C
PRX.