The United States would be embarking on a dangerous fool’s errand if it attempts to wipe out Syria’s chemical weapon capability, according to a new peer-reviewed study by the RAND Corporation, a respected global policy think tank.
But the study, which provided an operational overview of the situation on the ground, also concluded that U.S. air strikes have the potential to reduce the regime’s ability and its incentive to deploy such weapons in the future.
“In spite of often casual rhetoric about ‘taking out’ Syria’s chemical weapon capability, the practical options for doing so have serious limitations, and attempting it could actually make things worse,” write authors Karl P. Mueller, Jeffrey Martini, and Thomas Hamilton.
RAND’s findings serve as a reminder as the risks and limitations facing the U.S. as Congress debates whether or not to approve President Barack Obama’s call for a limited military strike against regime leader Bashar al-Assad, who according to U.S. intelligence launched a sarin gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds.
The study warns of “substantial” collateral damage if the U.S. attempts to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons, arguing that locating and striking the relevant facilities would require “very precise and detailed intelligence.” It concludes that the prospects for scrapping Syria’s chemical weapons via air strikes alone “do not appear promising” and “would require ground forces” in order to have a realistic chance at success.
The authors find, however, that air power — given the right intelligence and execution — has potential to deter Syria from using chemical weapons in the future and diminish its ability to do so.
The RAND conclusions offer a glimpse as to why a limited intervention is what the Obama administration is eying; it opposes boots on the ground and has not called for regime change. Obama’s push got a major boost Tuesday with the endorsement of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Lawmakers in both parties and chambers have said they want to ensure the mission has a narrow scope and avoid an open-ended commitment.
The study elaborates on the risks of intervening in Syria:
Because the Assad regime is involved in an existential fight for survival, history suggests that merely punishing it for using chemical weapons is not likely to be an effective deterrent if it perceives the chemical attacks as having great benefit. However, in the present situation, in which the regime appears to have the upper hand even without using chemical weapons, creating the impression that its prospects will be better if it refrains from further chemical weapon attacks is not an implausible objective. […]
Aside from the risk that bombing chemical weapons might cause chemical agents to be released or that attacking aircraft might be lost, the principal risk associated with such attacks is that gradually gnawing away at the Assad regime’s chemical weapon stockpiles would create a powerful “use-it-or-lose-it” incentive to relocate chemical munitions to places where they could not be bombed or, worse, employ them while it still had the opportunity to do so. In addition, attacks that damaged chemical weapon storage sites without destroying the weapons would increase the chances of unsecured chemical weapons falling into more-dangerous hands than those of the Syrian regime.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the President does not want to get “whole hog involved in Syria’s civil war” and that “this is a targeted action to deal with Syria’s use of chemical weapons.”‘
