I totally agree with Walt. People who propose for a humanitarian intervention, even if their intention is good, often disregard the fact the military aspect of the intervention and just focus on the end goal where sun shines and rainbows suddenly appear.

I mean people just need to stop for a moment and take a step back. Intervention would be a disaster. Not that Turkey, or US can handle Assad's army, they can handle easily without a doubt, but Assad's suppression of civilians and massacres would hasten the moment first airstrikes start to hit Assad's forces. I didn't even mention possibility of war's spill over effect on neighboring countries, which is another disaster in itself.

Steve Walt wrote:

"A prominent example was a New York Times op-ed last week by Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning at the State Department...."

It's a damn discouraging thing when you find you have to argue the innumerable costs, danger and even great potential evils of the well-known little historical horror of interfering in another country's civil war not just with anyone, but with the bigestablishment" people in your country's foreign policy.

Nuts,you'd think they'd at least learned a little something if not also be a little chastened by seeing Quaddaffi himself sodomized with a knife by the Boy Scouts they backed the last time around....

Apparently however the appropriate metric is only how noble one looks in calling for our interference here or there, and not at what costs, dangers and evils might almost certainly spring from same.

as if its not completely transparent...everything you hear in most mainstream media, is corrdinated by the white house and disseminated through their friends at the time, post, huff, politico, abc, nbc, cbs, charlie rose and of course, here on foreignpropaganda.com ..

Its just amazing that you can honestly spew the notion that the nytimes is a credible paper...they long ago ceased to be one...they only trade on that old reputation....they are decidedly partisan, and are full force a part of the dnc/obama re-election team. to deny it is frankly, beneath even you.

Walt, you are admitting that these dudes are r.e.b.e.l.s.

I'm curious in what way you think an armed r.e.b.e.l.l.i.o.n. should be immune to attack from the armed forces of the central government. Care to expand?

After all, would the US government have accepted that notion with regard to the Branch Davidians at Waco?

Answer: No, and that wasn't even an armed rebellion.

If you r.e.b.e.l. against the central government then you have got to expect that this central government will send in the troops to quash your r.e.b.e.l.l.i.o.n., and in that regard I agree with Russia and China that nobody else has any "right" to intervene in that fight.

Never trust anyone named Slaughter when it comes to limiting violence! Of course what she says is equal to sticking our noses into a civil war. How could it be otherwise? Foreign intervention will happen anyways covertly (at least it always has in the past), but overt assistance yields reprisal. Moreover, a big bear opposes any assistance at all, for reasons of its own, likely its restive Sunni population that favors overthrowing Mr. Assad.

Leave bad enough alone.

Paul Staniland’s PRIMARY FLAW in strategic reasoning is thinking this is about capturing territory. Stephen Walt joins him in the Monkey Cage. Both self-proclaimed experts on R2P have an ideation that R2P and regime change are inexplicably separate without entertaining the possibility of a reality that encompasses A, B, Both, Neither, or Other as an expansion of their binary reality.

As realists both fail to acknowledge that incomplete theories of sovereignty continue to provide points of friction in a world where human rights are coalescing around sovereignty theory’s failings. The missing pieces are more than missing elements on a table of human periodicity. The dynamics are analogous to the seemingly immiscible realities of General Relativity and the Quantum world where the tiniest “billiard balls” are probabilities. Human rights and the sovereignty of the person exist apart from the contemporary constructs and practices of nation states’ legitimacy and state sovereignty. In such a construct where the consent of the governed is divorced from the exercise of sovereignty, this disingenuous and archaic dialectic will continue to bear the same bitter fruit. Walt and Staniland have proven themselves incapable of treading this changing terrain.

Let’s delve further, and expose unconscious male presumptions of military prowess.

The specification of AT, counter-sniper team materiel, and MANPADs speak directly to the tools needed to protect urban areas from bombardment and then to clear the cordoned area of snipers. Having advisor on the ground to reduce the level of needless dying by armed untrained as well as new or inexperienced rebel commanders learning OJT with other people’s lives is the alternative.

People in the resistance are using assault rifles like hoses while unnecessarily exposing themselves to hostile fire, and Staniland sees no need for tempering advice. Staniland asserts that aggregate deaths and wounding will have a net increase simply based on advisors on the ground. This is non-reflective thinking and hardly qualifies for serious analysis. Walt is also unconscious of his gender bias in assuming males have a preternatural gift for understanding military affairs.

Professional military advisors on the ground would explain it’s not about killing as much as prevailing over an opponent. Both Walt and Staniland illustrate otherwise while demonstrating thinking with the lower set of auxiliary heads.

Military considerations dismissed by Staniland, and seconded by Walt and characterized as offensive actions:

Protecting a cordoned urban NKZ is a defensive action. Using counter-sniper teams to clear areas to make it safe for everyone is part of the task related to the objective of PUBLIC SAFETY, e.g. NKZs. Killing snipers saves lives and is integral to returning civilian control to the streets. Using AT teams to discourage further incursions by SA and Shabiha gangs is also defensive. Likewise, putting people on tall buildings post-clearing ops so that snipers can’t re-infiltrate is defensive. Communicating situational awareness is defensive and part of civil defense. Disseminating & utilizing real-time fused intelligence product to track SA & Shabiha gang movements and the interdiction of LOCs to protect NKZs is defensive.

Staniland posited that this means holding territory in an ignorant understanding of asymmetrical warfare. Only stupid and soon to be dead insurgents would follow thinking which doesn’t accommodate the possibility that the other guy wants to kill you. Staniland assumes much with his thin operational understanding of conflict. Sadly, Walt consumes Staniland’s imprecations without any reflection since he, unlike Slaughter, is also a male with a swinging member as proof of belonging to the club.

Paul Staniland’s PRIMARY FLAW in strategic reasoning is to begin by thinking this is about capturing territory when it is secondary to PUBLIC SAFETY as legitimizing NKZs and protecting people, all people. The strategic focus is the people, and the objective is PUBLIC SAFETY. Territory is a secondary aspect of an effective strategy of population denial. This elementary aspect of conflicts of this type eludes Staniland & Walt’s ken. Pity. It is fundamental.

R2P isn’t military, NGO, the Global Logistics Cluster, Govt Agencies, commo technology, or fused Intelligence products, it all of them and more in a variety of warps and weavings according to the unfolding crisis at hand. Stop looking for a one size fits all Holy Grail; it doesn’t exist.

Old thinking is not suitable for finding our way in a world where the legal edifices of 1648 Westphalia are crumbling and a Human focused sense of sovereignty is emerging with equally nascent approaches.

As further evidence of Staniland’s blithe pronouncements posing as fact, Kaman Aerospace privately developed K-MAX drone helicopter is capable of sorties delivering 3.5 tons to up to 4 separate locations per sortie. MQ-9 drones are able to lift a 3,750 payload and have MIL-STD-1760 capable pylons. The issue of pylon compliance to the interface is as relevant as the redundant Mil Std 1773 glass fiber bus of the MQ-9. Flexibility of under-wing pylon load is important to delivering emergency med supplies. Staniland and Ward are blind leading the blind.

Staniland never addresses the fact that rebels don’t control the cargo drones or the MQ-9s, so how in hell can they use them as they please against the SA? It is clear you don’t understand drone technology and the command and control of such aircraft. The support of such aircraft is also problematic, but both Ward and Staniland waved their male ‘Jedi hand wave’ and it all became true because of their utterances.

As to the SEAD mission Staniland refers to in such a sage tone, the SIGINT aspect, including using drones to encourage emissions is ALREADY underway so the point about SEAD is moot. Again, Staniland misleads.

Slaughter mentioning revenge attacks is exactly the point. Ultimately, this is a struggle for legitimacy and related sovereignty. Neither Ward nor Staniland appear capable of recognizing the inconsistencies in current theories of sovereignty and the gaping holes unable to unify personal rights and innate sovereignty and a state’s sovereignty, much less the question of legitimacy.

Realists like Walt and Staniland support a construct where the consent of the governed is divorced from the exercise of sovereignty, this disingenuous and archaic dialectic will continue to bear the same bitter fruit.

In our form of government the people confer legitimacy upon the government. If we truly believe this to be so, and our founding documents declare universality, as does the subsequent Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then sovereignty is also inalienable, if not always expressed in action.

And speaking directly to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nowhere in its 30 articles is sovereignty addressed, save in the 30th article, which proscribes states limiting these freedoms that are inalienable

Addressing Sovereignty, not avoiding it, is part of the solution. I suspect that part of the intellectual and legal conundrum the R2P community is looking at is the issue of sovereignty. If sovereignty rests with a sitting government which subsequently loses said sovereignty in the eyes of its peers as a result of violence upon it’s people, does Sovereignty suddenly disappear as though it is conferred by the observer(s)? Perhaps the R2P community ought first develop a cohesive understanding of sovereignty in the 21st Century.

Sovereignty must rest somewhere with human beings, not as an enabling document detailing structure or some sort of nation-state intestate transition. There is no probate in the fall of a government; it tends to be highly ad hoc.

If one deconstructs the placement of government in the moral firmament, a Nation-state is formulated on an Empowering document that a People nominally tied to a Territory have used as an instrument of expressing sovereignty. So where does sovereignty reside? Ultimately it resides not in relation to other nation-states but onto itself. It doesn’t vanish into theoretical intestate plasma.

It exists, even if not actualized. A country’s sovereignty may be fractured or Balkanized, but it nonetheless lies latent or convulsive, residing within its people.

To delve deeper, discard the ideation that sovereignty is a theoretical status of state and entertain a fluid de facto consignment.

The problem is that the paradigmatic diplomatic approach is too structured & inculcated to see the actuality of sovereignty as also an aggregating process. Diplomacy clings to theory during a so deemed ‘intestate’ period.

This incomplete theory lacks support.

To clarify, possessing hegemonic power does not confer legitimacy or true sovereignty. It is the consent of the governed that legitimizes the conditional sovereignty bestowed upon the state as agent of the people.

Walt and Staniland describe a landscape alien to the reality above. Pity

http://www.jillstanek.com/political-antilife-bias/latest-on-the-m.html

We give them weapons and the next time we hear anything about them would be in Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and the West Bank.

"I share Slaughter's anger and disgust at what Assad is doing."

Professor: Do you then not believe that a state has a right -- an obligation -- to protect its citizens from an armed insurgency funded from abroad?

Do you harbor any anger or disgust at what the armed rebels are doing?

Have you read the Arab League mission report, clearly stating that the rebels were killing both state security forces and civilians?

Had a look at how "our" insurgents are running Libya these days?

I am a big fan of yours but frankly I am perplexed by the above statement.

As realists both fail to acknowledge that incomplete theories of sovereignty continue to provide points of friction in a world where human rights are coalescing around sovereignty theory’s failings. The missing pieces are more than missing elements on a table of human periodicity. The dynamics are analogous to the seemingly immiscible realities of General Relativity and the Quantum world where the tiniest “billiard balls” are probabilities. Human rights and the sovereignty of the person exist apart from the contemporary constructs and practices of nation states’ legitimacy and state sovereignty. In such a construct where the consent of the governed is divorced from the exercise of sovereignty, this disingenuous and archaic dialectic will continue to bear the same bitter fruit.

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The same reason Clinton took the job after saying Obama had no experience in leading this country. They do what they want regardless of what they said in the past..

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MaximB

I mean people just need to stop for a moment and take a step back. Intervention would be a disaster. Not that Turkey, or US can handle Assad's army, they can handle easily without a doubt, but Assad's suppression of civilians and massacres would hasten the moment first airstrikes start to hit Assad's forces. I didn't even mention possibility of war's spill over effect on neighboring countries and the Perseverance Quotes, which is another disaster in itself.

If a country from the Arab League, let's say Qatar or Saudi Arabia, sends "remotely piloted helicopters" into Syria to deliver arms, Syria and Iran may counter-attack the attack bases in these countries with missiles. We need to practice some Forgiveness Quotes and letting go quotes. Never mind, if there is some collateral damage, like accidential hits on oil installations of those countries setting the oil industry of these countries out of business for a while. So, unsurprisingly, these countries are not eager to intervene neither.