
Interview with Juan Cole from La Prensa from Panama City:
RM: How is Syria different from Libya?
Syria is different in so many ways… first of all, it’s not clear that
a majority of Syrians necessarily want the government gone of at least
that they would prefer the rebel forces to the government. Syria is a
much more diverse country than Libya, in Syria you have 10-14%
Christians, another 10-14% Shiites, and you have a large sector of
urban, middle-class, relatively secular Sunni Muslims, and together they
could easily form the majority of the country. And while they may not
like the more authoritarian aspects of the Ba’ath government, they might
prefer a secular government to a religious one. Many of the rebels, as
things have developed, are invested in a Muslim Brotherhood, or even
some of them have affiliated themselves with Al Qaeda. So I don’t think
the moral clarity is apparent in Syria in the way that it was in Libya.
Secondarily, there is no UNSC authorization for the use of force in
Syria, and I would have opposed a Libyan intervention if the UN hadn’t
authorized one. I think international law is very important, I think the
one thing that was wrong with Bush’s invasion of Iraq was that there
was no UNSC authorization. If you undertake a military operation at a
large scale in the Middle East without the support of the world, then
it’s probably doomed to failure.
So there’s no authorization –Russia and China don’t want an
intervention— and then Syria’s geography is not like Libya’s, the tanks
are not out on desert roads, they are inside the cities, you couldn’t
take out the artillery and the tanks without risking hitting apartment
buildings with these large bombs and killing a lot of innocent
civilians.
So, for all kinds of reasons I don’t think that an intervention in
Syria is wise. I deeply regret the daily massive loss of life, and I
wish there were a way for the international community to stop this
carnage, but I feel helpless, I just don’t see a way.
RM: You were speaking about the importance of international law. Do
you really think it’s possible to control the anarchy that exists at a
supranational level?
JC: Historians who study the development of international of law and
international treaties are not typically cynical. They find that even
when there’s reluctance to abide by international law, that it’s claims
are often consequential. Even though governments routinely disregard it
or break it, international law still has a lot of weight in world
affairs, and you can tell this because even the governments that do
contravene it, deny that they have done so, they’re embarrassed about
it, they get pressured… I’m not entirely sure that without international
pressure, without the weight of international law, that the apartheid
regime in South Africa could have been made to fall. And I think that
the fact that George W. Bush went to Iraq without international law on
his side meant that a lot of countries –France and Germany— were
unwilling to help him, and he lost a lot of international support, and
that was one of the reasons why he failed.
I understand why there would be cynicism about international law
because it is often disregarded. But I think it often also has weight,
and over time forms a point of pressure that does have consequences.
RM: The whole world is talking about the NSA scandal. How bad is it? Should we be worried?
JC: Well yes, I’m worried! I’m alarmed… of course, this is not in
fact a new revelation, we’ve known about this for some time. Government
surveillance is a problem, it violates basic norms of democracy when it
is carried out without a warrant, without evidence of laws been broken.
On the other hand, they can’t actually surveil everybody. It’s
impossible to monitor everyone. Technically, this information that
they’re gathering is not that they’re watching you or me –- well, they
might’ve been watching me —- but most people are not singled out for
surveillance. It’s data mining, they’re looking for macro patterns, for
certain kinds of connections, but the thing that displeases me it’s not
that they’re spying on everybody at the time, it’s that the potential
for abuse it great. And I don’t believe there’s probably sufficient
oversight to forestall abuse. So, if a politician has a friend in the
NSA and wanted the reputation of his rival to be destroyed by illegal
surveillance, I think that’s something that can happen, and if it can
happen it probably will happen. So that’s what I’m worried about, the
politics of reputation coming out of this destruction of the whole idea
of privacy.
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