Syria demonstrates the limits of military strikes, whether using conventional or new weapons. Even though the Obama administration threatened strikes against the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons, it also worried that destroying the stockpiles might pose great risk to civilians. While the Obama administration accepted Russia’s face-saving compromise to remove the Syrian stockpile, western intelligence agencies have reported that the Assad regime subsequently used poison gas in its campaign against rebels.31 The U.S. seemed particularly helpless because it could not reasonably threaten force. President Obama vaguely threatened air attacks, but could not identify any targets while ruling out any ground troops.32 A strike on WMD facilities might trigger a release on nearby civilians, while hitting Syrian military facilities might violate AP I, since the U.S. and Syria were not yet at war and the U.S. would have no right to destroy Syrian military capacity.
The problem goes beyond the immediate impact of a punitive strike on a rogue nation’s WMD capabilities. The Syrian government denied, dissembled, and then returned to using its weapons on both rebels and civilians. A U.S. strike would need to carry the threat of significant destruction and future repetition to deter Syria, in order to intimidate rather than incapacitate. New weapons provide opportunities for imposing coercive pressure by destroying an enemy’s WMD assets, but that may not always be feasible or sensible. It does not follow that every use of new technology must pass muster with psychological warfare experts or grand strategists. But new opportunities will reconfigure the terms of conflict. One of the best reasons for accepting the new risks of new weapons may be reducing the spread of even worse weapons. It is hardly the only application worth thinking about.
Humanitarian Intervention
In 1994, ethnic Hutus murdered nearly a million Tutsi civilians in Rwanda. The word genocide, much abused, was coined to describe horror on that scale. Due to past violence between Tutsis and Hutus, U.N. peacekeepers had already deployed to Rwanda before the murderous campaign. They were promptly withdrawn for fear that an attack on them might entangle their home states (Belgium and Canada) in the conflict. The carnage ended when a Tutsi army, mobilized in neighboring Uganda, invaded Rwanda and overthrew the Hutu government.
There was much soul-searching in the aftermath. President Clinton described the failure to act in Rwanda as the worst failing of his presidency.33 But landlocked Rwanda was not within easy reach of significant western forces. Scholars have disputed how easily the United States or other outside powers could actually have sent ground forces to stop the genocide and whether they were prepared for a long-term commitment. Other African civil wars have yielded even higher death tolls without interference from outside; Sudan’s wars have killed 2 million, while Congo has lost 1.75 million.34
Five years later, the Clinton administration took the lead in mobilizing a NATO intervention to protect the threatened ethnic Albanian population in the Kosovo province of the former Yugoslavia. It feared that an intensification of the conflict between Kosovars and Serbia could lead to genocide. Regrets about Rwanda may have strengthened calls for western intervention, but the terms of intervention also underscored the limits of western willingness to act for humanitarian reasons. To enforce its demands for the withdrawal of Serb military forces from Kosovo, NATO initiated a bombing campaign that lasted ten weeks. NATO planes operated above 15,000 feet to place them beyond the reach of Serbian anti-aircraft defenses. There were no NATO casualties. There was no evidence of genocide or mass murder when international investigators gathered evidence for war crimes charges after Serbia withdrew. A U.N.-sponsored occupation of Kosovo has encouraged claims for independence but has yet to secure international agreement on the division.
An intervening state may claim that it acts solely from “humanitarian” concerns while other states may reject that claim. A democratic state that insists that its intervention has purely good motives may still stir concerns among its own people about the risks and costs. There are always good reasons to be cautious about projecting force into a conflict zone without immediate strategic value. Nevertheless, Rwanda and Kosovo illustrate the challenge to international stability from conflict within, rather than between, states. Since the end of World War II, about two-thirds to three-quarters of all wars have occurred only within one state.35 One study estimates that civil wars account for about 80 percent of all deaths from armed conflict since 1945.36 Another study reports that about 90 percent of postwar casualties are civilians.37 Civil wars cause far more casualties and last on average far longer (six years versus three months) than interstate wars.38
These deaths primarily occur today in failed states. While scholars disagree about the precise definition of a failed state, the concept first described the successor states of the former Yugoslavia and African nations beset by civil wars after the end of the Cold War. Superpower competition had kept some of these nations afloat, thanks to aid from the U.S. or the U.S.S.R., while autocratic governments had kept others from breaking out into ethnic conflict. Failed states arise where government institutions no longer exercise effective authority, the economy has collapsed, and private groups control resources and population and rival the government.39 States without an effective government may provide terrorists or criminal groups with a safe haven from which to recruit and train fighters, organize their arms and finances, and ship money, personnel, and weapons. Somalia’s collapse, for example, not only allowed tribal warlords to divide the country, but it also became a breeding ground for the al-Shabaab terrorist group and other militant extremists. Afghanistan allowed al-Qaeda to operate freely and to plan and launch the 9/11 attacks.
Western interventions often sought to end ethnic strife and create stable governments in areas of little strategic importance. In Somalia and Haiti, for example, the United States sent troops to stop mass suffering and to establish stable governments. From a realist perspective, these actions delivered little benefit to the United States. Somalia had little strategic importance, few resources, and had already suffered through years of civil war. A poor country with few economic resources, Haiti had greater significance because of the potential refugee flows to American shores. Unlike Somalia and more like Haiti, Kosovo involved some security interests, but those of America’s NATO allies rather than those of the United States. The United States certainly faced no threat of attack from Serbia, nor did it have any important strategic or economic interests in the Balkans at the time. In these cases, war served as a tool to combat threats to regional stability rather than as a means for unchallenged control.
The 2011 Libyan conflict provides another example of the challenge posed by failed states. Libya posed little threat to the United States or its forces abroad. Dictator Muammar Gaddafi kept his military deliberately small, limited to about 50,000 troops despite Libya’s large oil revenues, to avoid a military coup. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Libya had voluntarily given up its nuclear weapons program, compensated victims of its terrorism, and normalized relations with the West. In February 2011, the Arab spring movement reached Libya. Gaddafi ordered the Libyan military and security services to fire on demonstrators, sparking a civil war. Rebels quickly freed the eastern half of the country and established their headquarters in Benghazi, but suffered a turnabout in their fortunes. After several weeks of indecision, the United States and its allies intervened when Gaddafi’s forces threatened to snuff out the rebellion. The West had no desire to seize Libya’s oil or territory. Instead, as President Obama said in March 2010, “Gaddafi must go” for wantonly killing Libyan civilians.40 The West resorted to force not because Libya posed any imminent threat to its neighbors, but because of a civil war against Gaddafi’s rule.
There may have been more at stake in Libya than just humanitarian considerations. Before the conflict broke out, Libya pumped 1.6 million barrels of oil per day—2 percent of global consumption—making it the seventeenth largest oil producer in the world.41 Libya exported 85 percent of its daily production to Europe. Notably, NATO did not send its troops to other conflicts, such as those raging in Africa where the loss of life was as high or higher than in Libya but