THE MIDEAST IN THE NEWS

Syrian Intervention is Justifiable, and Just

This article, written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, appeared on The Washington Post on June 09,2012

Anne-Marie Slaughter is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University and former dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She was the State Department’s director of policy planning from January 2009 to January 2011.

Henry Kissinger recently argued against intervention in Syria [“The perils of intervention in Syria,” Sunday Opinion, June 3] on the grounds that it would imperil the foundation of world order. His analysis was based on a straw man, one put forward by the Russian and Chinese governments, that outside intervention would seek to “bring about regime change.”

The point of an intervention in Syria would be to stop the killing — to force Bashar al-Assad and his government to meet the demands of the Syrian people with reforms rather than guns. If the killing stopped, it is not clear what shape the political process would adopt, how many millions would take to the streets or whom different factions would support. The majority of Syrians would almost certainly demand that Assad leave office, but by the ballot box or a negotiated political settlement that would leave the Syrian state — in the sense of bureaucracy, the army, the courts — largely intact. The chaos and horrific violence in Iraq resulted in large part from the U.S. determination to destroy those institutions along with Saddam Hussein.

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