Syria at an eve of a decision

New York is packed, and it is as busy as never before with all the police sirens and protests going on around the city. Still, there are so many events that I am excited to attend.

Without doubt this year's general assembly's hottest subject is going to be the Syrian situation. In my last two pieces, I wrote on why we shouldn't compare Syria and Kosovo, and how this might mislead us, and I promised I would write about the lesson learned from Kosovo, which should be put into practice if a strike happens.

While the situation has changed a great amount since my last pieces in this blog, I will write on a strategy that the US and the international community should follow should they decide to strike. Russia being more cooperative than in the situation of Kosovo I think is a good indicator that the Syrian and Kosovan situations are very different. Nevertheless, what the situation in Kosovo has taught us about a possible intervention is manifold. First of all, we have seen that an air strike without committing any ground troops is a working strategy. It is important to note that in a possible strike no country will want to jeopardize its troops or military power, as they will confront a great opposition at home, so the air strike is the safest way for intervention, which will keep risks to a minimum and its effect at a maximum level.

However, most of the atrocities in Kosovo during the NATO air strikes happened during the day, when NATO was not striking. Because NATO airplanes were striking only during the night, the Serbian forces found enough time to carry out the ethnic cleansing they had in mind during the day. This was due to the strategy of not risking NATO airplanes and troops in the day, but it had many bad effects, nearly 80 percent of the Kosovo refuges were forced to leave Kosovo during the NATO air strikes. The other reason for this was that NATO had foreseen that Slobodan Milosevic would see that NATO was serious and would come around to the NATO terms, meaning that NATO would not have to strike for a long time. This failed, as Milosevic did not sit at the table and NATO air strikes lasted far longer then they thought -- 72 days. America should be prepared for the fact that these strikes might have to last longer than initially thought. This means more money, more opposition at home and more risk. Here again if Bashar al-Assad is hit night and day, his time to survive and possibly win will be shorter. The strike needs to be swift and effective, and this is another lesson we took from the military mission of NATO in Kosovo.

It is very important to gather as many countries' support as possible and the best possibility would be to do this as a part of an international organization such as NATO. The US' limited support and “go it alone” style in Iraq and Afghanistan turned out to be a great failure in both countries, and we don't want to see that in Syria once more.

This week and the next are the most important weeks so far for the fate of Syria and the Syrian people, but I personally think that Assad has managed to buy time, so I wouldn't expect that the US will take any decision. Nevertheless, I expect that Barack Obama will give a strict ultimatum to Assad and seek elections. At best this could be a unanimous resolution with Russia's and China's support, but at worst this can be -- and I think it should be -- a resolution proposed by the US and other allies like Turkey, Britain and other European countries.

While we have nothing to do but wait, we understand now that Kosovo was a unique case and that Syria should be seen as unique too, a case where we cannot copy another mission somewhere else, but we can learn lessons. While these situations are sui generis, I wonder when will the time come when we will start discussing the responsibility to protect a country from a military coup? We have the responsibility to protect human rights, and the basis of other countries' offenses, but what about when one country's own military takes the government in its hand and slaughters its own people? Should NATO be responsible for protecting a country against a coup? I think this could have been a good doctrine for President Obama, who lacks a doctrine of his own at the moment, but I also think that this opportunity is already missed. We have to wait and see.