Friday's night U.S., British, French air strikes target Syrian chemical capabilities
Three locations were targeted: Barzah Research and Development Center, Him Shinshar Chemical Weapons Storage Site, and Him Shinshar Chemical Weapons Bunker.
The strike was preceded by a Donald Trump's tweet who predicted the attack
This military action has obviously triggered a series of reactions and debates on the need to intervene or not in the Syrian situation. Especially after French President Macron has declared that he has “proof” Assad used chemical weapons
On this subject, I read an interesting analysis on the “Military Balance Blog”, which identify French, UK, and US combat assets in the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant. This is the situation at the moment:
Trump's tweet also generated heavy criticism from experts and commentators in the US. In the Washington Post, Andrew Rudalevige argues that attacking Syria is not legal. More specifically, “Article I of the US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. The title of commander in chief does not supersede that responsibility”
Trump's tweet also generated heavy criticism from experts and commentators in the US. In the Washington Post, Andrew Rudalevige argues that attacking Syria is not legal. More specifically, “Article I of the US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. The title of commander in chief does not supersede that responsibility”
I also found very interesting the argument of Jack Goldsmith and Oona Hathaway. They argue that bombing Syria is wrong for five main reasons: 1. A unilateral use of force here by the president, without congressional authorization, would be premised on an astonishingly broad conception of the president’s Article II powers.
2. The coming air strike will violate international law. The United Nations Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
3. It is far from clear that an air strike intervention will improve the situation on the ground for Syrian civilians.
4. Unless we are willing to stay and help rebuild, there is no guarantee that life will be better for the Syrian people even if we succeed in ridding Syria of Assad.
5. Lastly, and perhaps most dangerously, the coming air strikes raise the foreseeable possibility of sparking a much larger and more dangerous conflict with Russia or Iran or both
On Donald Trump's foreign policy more generally, I read an interesting article by Dan Drezner on the role of “audience costs”. More specifically, Political scientists suggest that leaders who back down after ratcheting up a crisis are likely to suffer “audience costs.” It is presumed that domestic audiences judge a vacillating president harshly. Drezner argues that we need to look at this factor if we want to understand Trump's erratic foreign policy.
Dan Nexon, instead, focuses on “analytical normalization”, namely the act of explaining and assessing Trump’s presidency as if we were dealing with a typical president and a typical administration. This is dangerous because “the alpha and omega of Trump’s interests are twofold: self-enrichment and feeding his need for adoration. Evaluating Trump foreign policy requires different guidelines than those that Beltway pundits, foreign-policy analysts, and reporters reflexively turn to. It’s time to stop using them”
European Defence
First, a bit of self-promotion. I wrote an article on the Permanent Structured Cooperation in Security and Defense (PESCO) and the risks and challenges for the Italian defense policy. In that analysis, I also highlighted the role of the US as a possible destabilizing factor in this process, given their concerns about the impact of these initiatives on EU / NATO relations and on defence-industrial issues
In this regard Ronja Kempin and Barbara Kunz write that Washington should facilitate and not hinder the achievement of EU strategic autonomy. An EU with a more defined role from the military point of view could serve broader US goals.
The same argument is carried out by Jonathan Caverley, in a rich piece on US Arms export as a means to conduct a responsible foreign policy, and not to promote US economic interests. It's really worth reading!
Finally some scattered things, which are worth noting:
An interesting roundtable on Max Boot’s The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam. The critics of the academics are rather severe, so much to have generated this reaction from the author:
I invite everyone to read the interesting paper of Kimberly Merten on “Reconsidering NATO expansion: a counterfactual analysis of Russia and the West in the 1990s”. Through a remarkable empirical work she shows “that domestic politics were the dominant factors explaining policy directions on both the US and Russian sides; that NATO enlargement was probably inevitable given US domestic political factors and West European acquiescence; that Russia’s turn against the West preceded the NATO expansion discussion in the US; that the tenor of the Russian turn is explained by status concerns rather than military threat perceptions, and that it was aggravated most by Western unilateral airstrikes rather than NATO’s geographical enlargement”
Last but non least: an interesting working paper on Autonomy in Weapon Systems by Michael Horowitz and Paul Scharre and an article on standardization in NATO and internal hegemonic control of the alliance.
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