On more than one occasion, the American administration has made it perfectly clear that Assad’s use of chemical weapons in the ongoing conflict in Syria would be a game changer and would provoke a decisive response from America.
Senior US officials said Washington has evidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale. If this is true then the administration’s red line seems to have been crossed. This development has led many observers to argue that President Obama needs to enforce his red lines with regard to chemical weapons in Syria.
Now the administration is on the horns of a dilemma. The administration has avoided a deeper engagement in the events taking place in Syria. Over the last two years, the American administration has been hesitant to take concrete steps to end the crisis in Syria. While the United States along with its allies in the region could intervene to put an end to the Syrian regime’s slaughter of its own people, President Obama thought such an intervention to end the civil war in a positive way would involve huge efforts. In such a situation, US needs to stay in Syria for a while to prevent the slide back into the civil war.
Not surprisingly, President Obama is wary of intervention, as this requires a huge commitment on the part of administration.
But, the use of chemical weapons poses an immense challenge to the Obama administration. It is as if the Syrian regime is calling the Obama administration’s bluff. Now the vexing issue is that if the Syrian regime gets away with that, Bashar Assad may get emboldened. If Assad’s rogue regime exploits the inaction of the international community to use the chemical weapons, it will demoralize the rebels.
Implicit in the American talk about the chemical weapons is a desire to check Assad once and for all.
And yet, Assad is not expected to act rationally. In his bid to win this desperate war, he may use a bigger dose of chemical weapon. If this continues unchecked, it will make precedence for other players in the region to follow the suit in future.
The cost of inaction is difficult to measure right now. But think of Iran for instance. The failure of President Obama to back up his self-proclaimed red line would make Iranians less inclined to buy the American concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. But equally alarming is that Israelis may conclude a different lesson on American commitment to the stability in the region.
Doing nothing may be a bad option for the American administration. Some even think that the American administration needs to demonstrate its will to live up to its commitment. Some even suggest that the administration should pick one valuable target for the Syrian regime and obliterate it using cruise missile! The running argument is that such a strike would be an enough warning to the Syrian regime that worse is yet to come if the regime uses chemical weapon one more time.
Nonetheless, such an action may prove to be catastrophic. The regime in this case may use everything at its disposal to avert a defeat. The question here is whether the United States has any alternative plan for this.
In a letter to the Congress, the White House warned “The stakes involved and what we have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient. Only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision making.”
This letter reflects the dilemma the administration is experiencing. The pressure is coming from the republican hawks such as Sen. John McCain. In his response to the administration announcement that Assad has used chemical weapon, McCain said, “The president of the United States said that if Bashar Assad used chemical weapons that it would be a game changer, that it would cross a red line…I think it is pretty obvious that red line has been crossed.”
It remains to be seen how the administration is going to address the issue. Obviously, the red lines once articulated by President Obama have been crossed. It is up to the president to decide what is next, but the credibility of the American threats and warnings are at stake in the Middle East.
