Columna World Politics Review, 25.03.2022 Faysal Itani, director (New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy) y profesor (U. de Georgetown)
For the community of analysts that have focused on Syria’s civil war over the past decade, the images of bombed out Ukrainian cities, civilian casualties and refugees flooding across the border over the past month are bitterly familiar. As a policy problem, too, the war in Ukraine invites obvious comparisons to the Syrian conflict. Both raise questions about the costs and benefits of U.S. intervention. Both, of course, involve Russia. And in both cases, “realism” has somehow become synonymous with non-interventionism in the U.S. policy discourse.
In fact, those that make a career out of non-interventionism while casting themselves as enlightened guardians of realism are misusing the term. So too, however, are interventionists who have turned realism into a pejorative. Realism is fully compatible with aggressive U.S. military intervention, but as the cases of Ukraine and Syria demonstrate, the realist argument for intervention is clearer in some cases—and places—than others.
The Syrian civil war began in 2011, pitting a coalition comprising the governments of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran and Russia against a broad spectrum of armed opposition groups. In 2015, Russia fully entered the war to save Assad from military defeat, bringing massive firepower to bear against civilian population zones, infrastructure and facilities, as well as against various rebel groups. Over the course of the conflict’s messy, meandering trajectory, endless arguments erupted in the U.S. policy community over whether Assad could hope to win the war, and at times whether in fact he had already lost it. But by 2016, it became clear that Russia had secured its basic objectives in Syria: ensuring the survival of an allied regime or, absent that, preventing the emergence of a hostile and/or pro-American government there.
For much of that time, the U.S. government debated what to do about Syria, and particularly whether it should make a major effort to help the Syrian opposition defeat Assad. There were always people in Washington arguing for doing more, be it arming and training rebel groups, or imposing no-fly zones that would protect civilians and allow opposition groups to set up alternate governance structures.
Many liberal internationalists believed that Russia’s killing of innocents demanded a forceful response, with some even calling for confronting Russia militarily by arming Syrian proxies to shoot down its aircraft. Since the U.S. sees itself as the chief architect and guarantor of the “rules-based international order,” Washington’s inaction was conspicuous. Indeed, its failure to intervene in Syria highlighted for some observers the superficiality and emptiness of claims that such an order even existed.
In contrast, what did a realist reading of U.S. interests in Syria imply? Although the Syria policy debate was deeply polarized, the question of U.S. interests and options in Syria was always somewhat gray.
As far as national interest and power politics go, the U.S. did have some equities in Syria. A more aggressive U.S. posture there might have denied Iran a foothold in a crucial part of the strategically important Middle East, benefiting both the U.S. and its regional partners. The prospect of a friendly Syrian government replacing Assad’s in Damascus was similarly tempting. Finally, the U.S. had an interest in seeing Russia bogged down and humbled in Syria. And as the most powerful actor involved in the conflict by far, Washington could have at least blunted Russia’s ability to achieve its objectives in Syria, whether directly or by proxy.
But the realist case for intervention had to contend with a strong realist case against it, also due to U.S. interests and power politics. As a bridge connecting Iran to Lebanon and Israel, Syria was more important to Tehran than it was to Washington. Iran was also present on the ground and deeply embedded with the regime, as was the Russian military. A U.S.-backed insurgency may have proven too fractured to defeat Assad’s coalition, much less set up a national government should it manage to do so. The landscape of Syrian militias also contained competent groups that were hostile to the U.S. and that would have tried to take advantage of U.S. pressure on Assad’s coalition to strengthen their own position. The most extreme example was the Islamic State, which eventually consumed nearly all the bandwidth of the U.S. military effort in Syria. Perhaps more importantly, unlike Ukraine, there was no friendly sovereign government in Syria.
Of course, just as in Ukraine today, there was also the Russian military. Providing Syrian militias with the means to shoot down Russian aircraft and kill Russian soldiers in high numbers was not without its own obvious risks. A U.S.-imposed no-fly zone may have met with little resistance, but it may also have triggered a direct war with Russia that the U.S. did not want. Again, there was the question of whether Syria mattered more to Russia than to the U.S. Considering Moscow’s decades-long investment in the Syrian regime—its only ally in the Middle East—there was some reason to believe that Russia enjoyed escalation dominance in the Syrian context. There was no way for the U.S. to know for sure, of course, without escalating first. But from a realist point of view, it was difficult to justify the risks involved.
This does not imply that staying out of Syria was the wise or the moral thing to do. From a liberal internationalist or humanitarian perspective, it was an egregious failure. Half a million people have been killed since the war began. Tens of thousands remain lost in the Assad regime’s dungeons, and half the Syrian population is displaced, whether internally or as refugees abroad. The mantra of “never again”—that the “international community” can be counted on to stop mass murderers—seems laughable in light of the Syrian experience.
From a realist perspective, the situation was more complicated, and the realist argument for non-intervention could not be easily dismissed, especially after the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan—both definite failures from a realist perspective. For that matter, the Syrian revolution broke out shortly after the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, which may have killed about as many people. The still-fresh memory of a botched U.S. intervention creating a humanitarian disaster essentially made a humanitarian case against intervention in Syria.
The policy debate over Ukraine has been somewhat different. Self-identified realists have blamed the U.S. for provoking Moscow, both through NATO’s eastward expansion and Washington’s general hostility to Russia under President Vladimir Putin. They warn that a U.S. military intervention in the war in Ukraine might lead to a grave escalation or worse: an apocalyptic nuclear exchange.
On the other side are stalwart defenders of Ukraine who denounce realism as a mere apology for Russia’s invasion. This group includes people who advocate for a no fly-zone and direct confrontation between NATO and Russian forces. While self-styled realists want to offer Putin a face-saving out, interventionists see any offer of an “off-ramp” as cowardly and immoral.
Both the non-interventionists and their opponents are wrong. For one thing, both sides have unfairly weaponized the term “realist.” The anti-interventionists blame the U.S. for provoking the Russian Bear, but realism does not necessarily support reflexive blame or self-flagellation.
To say that Russia attacked Ukraine because it felt threatened by the spread of Western ideologies and power near its borders is partly correct. But seen through a realist prism, that in itself does not mean the U.S. is at fault—expanding its power is simply what a superpower does. Doing so does carry inevitable risks, as the Russian attack on Ukraine demonstrates. But just because there is a strategic logic to Russia’s aggression—that is, an actual realist explanation—does not mean the U.S. should do nothing about it.
Indeed, there are straightforward realist arguments for making the Russian invasion as complicated and costly for Moscow as possible. Russia is a geopolitical and ideological adversary, and Ukraine is a partner. And there is a realist case for keeping our adversaries in check and protecting our partners from them, especially in a region as strategic as Europe.
By acknowledging that realism is a framework for understanding state behavior, and not a mantra for reflexive non-interventionism or capitulation, the U.S. policy debate on Ukraine can begin to produce rational, sustainable proposals. As the U.S. government itself is publicly acknowledging, the U.S. is sending massive amounts of military support to allow Ukraine to defend itself. This should continue and expand to include weaponry, intelligence support, aircraft, medical aid, ammunition and more. The U.S. has strategic depth and robust supply lines into much of Ukraine via European partners, and the resources to sustain such support are essentially indefinite.
To what end? Ukraine is probably too important to Russia—and perhaps Putin’s political survival—for the Russians to abandon all claims there. But it is increasingly clear that, with sufficient U.S. support, Russia is unlikely to be able to force the whole of Ukraine to capitulate and become a vassal state.
Cries that offering Putin an “off-ramp” is immoral and cowardly are misplaced: What counts are the conditions Russia is compelled to accept, not whether an out is provided. The conditions themselves should be harsh, and ultimately any political and territorial settlement should be determined in consultation with Washington’s Ukrainian partners. There are diminishing returns to making certain demands of Russia: Insisting on trying Putin for war crimes, for example, is a nonstarter, as it is basically a promise to jail or execute him. However, as long as Ukrainians can sustain the fight and punish Russia, they should be given the means to do so.
Perhaps the most damning criticism that non-interventionists level at interventionists is that the latter are willing to risk a new Cold War, and even perhaps a hot one, with Russia. There is some truth to that. Any attempt to curb Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine requires a sustained, large-scale U.S. effort to kill Russians by proxy in geopolitically crucial territory. This will have lasting consequences for U.S.-Russian relations, which will be defined by suspicion, hostility and possibly an expansion of competition to other theaters, such as Syria. But the U.S. and its allies are more powerful and wealthier than Russia. Unlike Putin, the U.S. does not face well-armed, hostile Russian allies on its borders.
Yes, it is possible that such a proxy war could escalate into a broader war between NATO and Russia, a dangerous turn of events to be sure. It is not clear, however, that allowing Russian troops to swallow Ukrainian territory and march closer into the heart of Europe would limit that risk. Such a war also becomes far more likely if Putin’s regime or Russia are existentially threatened and trapped without options, which is precisely why finding off ramps is so important.
The U.S. has been given an open opportunity to frustrate Moscow in its near abroad and impoverish an adversary, while rallying the once listless NATO alliance in the process. It should take it. That is realism.
