SEEKING A VIABLE U.N. PATH FORWARD ON SYRIA; Congressional Record Vol. 159, No. 124

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SEEKING A VIABLE U.N. PATH FORWARD ON SYRIA

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HON. RUSH HOLT

of new jersey

in the house of representatives

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer for the record and the

benefit of my colleagues a recent op-ed in the Huffington Post by

international affairs expert Jeffrey Laurenti. It outlines a sound

broader approach to bringing the tragic civil war in Syria to an end.

Although some of the circumstances have changed since he wrote this

piece, the wisdom of his analysis and recommendation still shows.

\\\[From the Huffington Post, Sept. 12, 2013\\\]

Seeking a Viable U.N. Path Forward on Syria

(By Jeffrey Laurenti)

Public consternation in the United States and abroad about

President Obama's planned \\\`\\\`targeted, limited, and

effective'' punitive strike against Syria confirms the wisdom

of his overall approach to the Syrian crisis the past two

years.

In facing down the caws from Washington hawks for arming

rebels, bombing missile sites, and trying to impose no-fly

zone, Obama has gauged perfectly what Americans--and the

world--expected of him: restraint. As he acknowledged last

week, \\\`\\\`I was elected to end wars, not start them.''

The apparent large-scale use of chemical weapons by the

forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad certainly adds a

new factor to the calculus, both for Obama's personal

credibility and international concerns about weapons of mass

destruction. It may be enough to sway a critical margin in

the Congress to let the president proceed with his planned

strike, which we would have to hope might accomplish its

objective without widening the war.

But there is a good chance the public and Congress will

remain immovable and reject any kind of military involvement

in Syria. With the prudent counsel that St. Luke (14:32)

recorded for political leaders facing possible defeat, the

president's team should already be working now on Plan B: an

ambitious effort to shut down the Syrian civil war

altogether.

Perhaps the administration conceives air strikes as the

lever to push the Syrian resistance to the long-promised

negotiating table with Assad's government. That might be a

plausible strategy for wresting peace from the jaws of wider

war. But even if this is the game plan, the administration

should be laying the groundwork now for the diplomatic

denouement to come--which might even help it on Capitol

Hill--in the U.N. Security Council.

Ah, the United Nations. The institution whose resolutions--

and, by extension, whose Charter restrictions on the use of

force--Obama seemed to dismiss last week as \\\`\\\`hocus pocus,''

delighting his right-wing enemies and shocking the political

support base at home that won him his party's nomination and

the many publics abroad that had cheered his election.

(Those most shocked presumably include the Nobel Committee

that awarded him its Peace Prize in 2009 for having \\\`\\\`created

a new climate in international politics . . ., with emphasis

on the role that the United Nations and other international

institutions can play,'' with \\\`\\\`dialogue and negotiations . .

., preferred as instruments for resolving even the most

difficult international conflicts.'')

Ambassador Samantha Power, a committed multilateralist now

representing America at the United Nations, last week

declared, \\\`\\\`there is no viable path forward in this Security

Council.'' If the path we want the Security Council to travel

is authorizing a U.S. military strike against Syrian

government forces for the grotesque use of chemical weapons,

she is likely right that Russia and China would vote no.

But even so, simply securing a nine-vote council majority

would itself indicate to the Congress and American people

that the red line that U.S. action would be upholding is the

world's, not just Obama's. And it would justify a General

Assembly call for limited military action, giving the gold-

standard international legitimation when discord paralyzes

the Security Council.

Perhaps those votes are just not there. President Bush

abandoned the effort to win a Security Council majority for

his planned invasion of Iraq when he couldn't get more than

four votes. But that was surely the canary in the mineshaft

in 2003, warning against what proved to be a disastrous war.

There is another viable path that the United States could

usefully pursue right now, taking advantage of both the shock

of the Ghouta gas attack and the fears of a U.S. strike's

unintended consequences. It could take a page from the

Security Council's first successful initiative as the Cold

War wound down: its Resolution 598 that forced an end to the

Iran-Iraq war (in which, coincidentally, Iraqi gas attacks

against Iranians also figured).

These might be core elements of such an initiative:

A demand for an immediate ceasefire by all forces in

Syria\\--the government and the various insurgent factions--

with a short deadline for compliance;

Imposition of full-spectrum sanctions, especially on arms,

on any party that refuses to comply with the cease-fire;

A summons to the Damascus authorities, the Syrian National

Council, and other relevant parties to attend the much-

postponed Kerry-Lavrov-Brahimi peace conference, to be

convened within 30 days, and to negotiate in good faith;

Dispatch of a capably sized United Nations ceasefire

monitoring force to oversee the ceasefire, investigate and

report violations, and protect U.N. weapons inspectors;

Establishment of a U.N. commission of inquiry to determine

responsibility for the Ghouta attack and any other reported

chemical weapons use, with a demand that the government and,

in rebel-dominated territory, insurgent groups permit full,

unfettered access for U.N. weapons inspectors to undertake

their investigation of sites of alleged attacks--much as

Resolution 598 created a commission to certify officially who

had started the Iran-Iraq war (surprise conclusion: Saddam);

Referral of the commission's findings of responsibility for

chemical weapons use to the International Criminal Court, or

less ideally an internationally vetted Syrian tribunal, for

criminal prosecution;

A demand that Syria declare to U.N. inspectors its chemical

weapons stocks for their provisional surveillance;

A reaffirmation of the need to kick-start the delayed

conference on elimination of weapons of mass destruction from

the Middle East that was promised at the 2010 nuclear

nonproliferation treaty review conference.

It does not help President Obama's global credibility for

Washington to appear to disdain the U.N. inspectors' pending

report--especially when his one Western partner, France, now

insists on waiting for it And it is certainly awkward for the

president to hold the moral high ground when the pope is

leading prayer vigils and writing to world leaders decrying

the planned attack.

It may be that the world community places a thicker red

line on unilateral use of force than on punishing poison gas.

All the more reason for having Plan B in place to pick up the

pieces.

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