With Syrian rebels now gathered at the gates of Damascus, Russia has emerged as Bashar Assad’s noisiest and most influential defender. In particular, Moscow is deeply suspicious of a Security Council resolution, backed by Western powers and Arab nations alike, that calls for the hated Syrian dictator to give up power. “The Russian policy is not about asking someone to step down; regime change is not our profession,” explained Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov. “The decision should be made by … the Syrians themselves.”
Russia’s motives are, of course, deeply cynical. Syria is a Russian client state, providing both a market for Russian weaponry and a Mediterranean port for its warships. But — even if it’s for all the wrong reasons — the Russians are correct to urge caution. Syria is about to fall apart, no matter what the rest of the world does. Do we really want it to fall apart under the auspices of a Western-backed regime-change plan? You break it, you own it, is the operating principle of nation-building, and Syria is not a nation that anyone should want to own.


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The obvious counterargument is the humanitarian one — that Western action is necessary to end the bloodshed that Assad’s “iron fist” has let loose upon the residents of Homs and other rebellion flashpoints. But if on-the-ground Arab monitors didn’t discourage Assad from massacring his own people, why would we expect better from a UN resolution? Assad will go on killing Syrians — but this time the stakes would be higher, because he would be doing so in defiance of the UN Security Council, just as Saddam Hussein did in the 1990s. And we know how that unfolded, and is still unfolding, car bomb by car bomb.
Even if military intervention against Syria isn’t on the table, the Russians aren’t wrong to suspect that it may come to that: No one ever thought Western planes would be dropping bombs on Libya and Serbia, either. But humanitarian demands emanating from NATO and the UN tend to find their own momentum. Demands for a ceasefire inevitably lead to demands for a no-fly-zone. And what good is a no-fly zone unless you enforce it? And how can you enforce it unless you first destroy a target nation’s anti-aircraft capabilities … not to mention the command-and-control system behind them? The path from well-intentioned UN resolutions to war is a short one.
Sometimes, Western nations invoke the break-and-own principle because it is the best of bad options. This was the case in Afghanistan, where the only other choice was permitting the continued existence of a de facto sovereign Islamic Republic of al-Qaeda in the heart of Central Asia. and in Iraq, which the West (falsely) believed was on the cusp of fielding apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction. But there are no similar considerations at play in Syria. The country is Iraq without the oil — a warmongering Baathist powder keg with a restive Kurdish minority, ruled by a minority Islamic sect. It is theoretically possible that this country could transition to democracy after Assad falls — but don’t bet on it. With its long-repressed Sunni majority, it might easily become one giant Anbar.
The violent status quo in Damascus, horrible as it is for Syrians themselves, actually has proven a strategic boon to the West. Because Hamas refuses to support the Assad regime, the group’s leaders have been kicked out of Damascus, and are now effectively homeless. Iran’s continued support for Assad has cast Tehran into moral disgrace throughout the Arab world — and has made an absolute mockery of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim to speak moral Islamic truth to Western neo-colonial power. The same is true of Iran’s Lebanese client Hezbollah, which has taken sides with the Assads. For once, mobilized Arab activists in the Levant are more interested in taming one of their own than with flinging blood libels at Jews or Israel or America. If Western powers were to take the same cynically self-interested approach as the Russians, they would encourage Syria’s civil war (for that is what it already has become) to linger for months, and even years.
That won’t happen, because Syrian lives have meaning to Western leaders — even if they don’t to Mr. Assad himself. Even so, Syria is not a mess that Barack Obama or anyone else should want to make their own. And any UN Security Council resolution passed on the matter should reflect that reality.
National Post