With the crisis in Syria dominating the news, the Crown Center for Middle East Studies hosted its kick-off event for the year to discuss Syria. The panel, moderated by Judy and Sidney Swartz Director of the Crown Center Prof. Shai Feldman (POL), touched on all aspects of the crisis including American interests in Syria, the patronage of Iran and Russia to Syria and the ethical implications of an American military strike.

The event, titled "Syrian Catastrophe: Regional Implications," was the first of the Crown Center's kick-off events to focus exclusively on a particular crisis in the Middle East, according to Feldman.

Feldman opened the discussion by asking the panelists about their views on the current state of affairs in Syria.

The panelists uniformly painted a grim picture of human suffering in Syria and warned of the conflict's spillover into neighboring countries.

Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser on the Middle East at the Stimson Center, said that "there are no winners right now in Syria."

Yacoubian emphasized the number of refugees created by the conflict. At the moment, she said, about one third of Syria's population has been displaced, and that number is expected to rise.

"It is a conflict that is no longer contained to Syria but has had adverse effects [on] basically just about all of Syria's neighbors," said Yacoubian. "Today I would characterize the situation in Syria as being one of a sectarian civil war."

Yacoubian called the situation a "protracted military stalemate," as neither the Syrian regime nor the rebels can prevail.

Frederic Hof, a former State Department official and now a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said the "most salient aspect of war in Syria today is the [Bashar al-] Assad regime using artillery, aircraft, rockets and missiles against civilian populations in areas that it does not occupy."

"This in my view is the main obstacle to any kind of a political, negotiated way forward," he said.

Joseph Bahout, a professor of Middle Eastern Politics at Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris, a Parisian university commonly known as Sciences Po, agreed with Yacoubian and Hof's assessment of the situation but added that it is "asymmetric warfare," and that the rebels' guerilla warfare is more successful than is usually portrayed in the Western press.

Bahout warned that if the situation continues as it is, Syria could become permanently fragmented and partitioned.

The panelists differed in some respects in their assessments of the interests of the United States in the conflict.

Hof said that the United States has national security interests in Syria, as the chaos there has the potential to spill over into surrounding countries and harm U.S. allies in the region. Moreover, Hof said that "there's the specter of Syria just becoming frankly what it may have already become, a total failed state-a carcass," that al-Qaeda and terrorist groups can feed on. "Syria can become to its neighbors what Somalia has become to Kenya," he said.

Hof also raised the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect as a potential U.S. interest: "How does the U.S. react to incidents of mass murder in faraway places?"

Prof. Eva Bellin (POL) focused on the moral dimension of intervention: "America's intervention should not be limited to just when our national interests are threatened. I think we have a moral obligation to step in when there are huge moral outrages like genocide ... however we are not omnipotent," and cannot always respond to incidences of moral outrage, said Bellin.

She proposed a two-pronged test to help guide decisions on intervention. First, there must be a reasonable chance of success, and second, the operation cannot be unreasonably costly.

Yacoubian responded with an outline of what she views as three core interests that may draw a response from the United States: Syria's geostrategic importance, the presence of chemical weapons in Syria and the burgeoning arena for jihadists in Syria.

Yacoubian said her concern regarding intervention is whether U.S. action would "help to protect Syrian civilians or ... further endanger Syrian civilians."

The discussion then turned to Russia, a major international player whose president, Vladimir Putin, helped pursue a diplomatic solution as President Barack Obama was pushing for the use of force in Syria.

Hof said he thinks Putin is interested in the survival of the Assad regime so that Putin can show the strength of Russia when it stands by its allies.

Yacoubian had a slightly different view, and questioned whether Assad's use of chemical weapons could have been "beyond the pale" for Russia.

In this respect, Yacoubian said the U.S. and Russia have shared interests in preventing the spread of chemical weapons and the spread of jihadists.

On Iran, Yacoubian similarly said that Assad's use of chemical weapons might have crossed a line for Iran.

Overall, the panelists painted a dire picture of Syria, but Bellin said she was more optimistic after the discussion than she had been previously because she sees possibilities for encouraging Russia to step away from supporting Assad.
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