[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 124 (Thursday, September 19, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1342-E1343]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              SEEKING A VIABLE U.N. PATH FORWARD ON SYRIA

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. RUSH HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 19, 2013

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer for the record and the 
benefit of my colleagues a recent op-ed in the Huffington Post by 
international affairs expert Jeffrey Laurenti. It outlines a sound 
broader approach to bringing the tragic civil war in Syria to an end. 
Although some of the circumstances have changed since he wrote this 
piece, the wisdom of his analysis and recommendation still shows.

               [From the Huffington Post, Sept. 12, 2013]

              Seeking a Viable U.N. Path Forward on Syria

                         (By Jeffrey Laurenti)

       Public consternation in the United States and abroad about 
     President Obama's planned ``targeted, limited, and 
     effective'' punitive strike against Syria confirms the wisdom 
     of his overall approach to the Syrian crisis the past two 
     years.
       In facing down the caws from Washington hawks for arming 
     rebels, bombing missile sites, and trying to impose no-fly 
     zone, Obama has gauged perfectly what Americans--and the 
     world--expected of him: restraint. As he acknowledged last 
     week, ``I was elected to end wars, not start them.''
       The apparent large-scale use of chemical weapons by the 
     forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad certainly adds a 
     new factor to the calculus, both for Obama's personal 
     credibility and international concerns about weapons of mass 
     destruction. It may be enough to sway a critical margin in 
     the Congress to let the president proceed with his planned 
     strike, which we would have to hope might accomplish its 
     objective without widening the war.
       But there is a good chance the public and Congress will 
     remain immovable and reject any kind of military involvement 
     in Syria. With the prudent counsel that St. Luke (14:32) 
     recorded for political leaders facing possible defeat, the 
     president's team should already be working now on Plan B: an 
     ambitious effort to shut down the Syrian civil war 
     altogether.
       Perhaps the administration conceives air strikes as the 
     lever to push the Syrian resistance to the long-promised 
     negotiating table with Assad's government. That might be a 
     plausible strategy for wresting peace from the jaws of wider 
     war. But even if this is the game plan, the administration 
     should be laying the groundwork now for the diplomatic 
     denouement to come--which might even help it on Capitol 
     Hill--in the U.N. Security Council.
       Ah, the United Nations. The institution whose resolutions--
     and, by extension, whose Charter restrictions on the use of 
     force--Obama seemed to dismiss last week as ``hocus pocus,'' 
     delighting his right-wing enemies and shocking the political 
     support base at home that won him his party's nomination and 
     the many publics abroad that had cheered his election.
       (Those most shocked presumably include the Nobel Committee 
     that awarded him its Peace Prize in 2009 for having ``created 
     a new climate in international politics . . ., with emphasis 
     on the role that the United Nations and other international 
     institutions can play,'' with ``dialogue and negotiations . . 
     ., preferred as instruments for resolving even the most 
     difficult international conflicts.'')
       Ambassador Samantha Power, a committed multilateralist now 
     representing America at the United Nations, last week 
     declared, ``there is no viable path forward in this Security 
     Council.'' If the path we want the Security Council to travel 
     is authorizing a U.S. military strike against Syrian 
     government forces for the grotesque use of chemical weapons, 
     she is likely right that Russia and China would vote no.
       But even so, simply securing a nine-vote council majority 
     would itself indicate to the Congress and American people 
     that the red line that U.S. action would be upholding is the 
     world's, not just Obama's. And it would justify a General 
     Assembly call for limited military action, giving the gold-
     standard international legitimation when discord paralyzes 
     the Security Council.
       Perhaps those votes are just not there. President Bush 
     abandoned the effort to win a Security Council majority for 
     his planned invasion of Iraq when he couldn't get more than 
     four votes. But that was surely the canary in the mineshaft 
     in 2003, warning against what proved to be a disastrous war.
       There is another viable path that the United States could 
     usefully pursue right now, taking advantage of both the shock 
     of the Ghouta gas attack and the fears of a U.S. strike's 
     unintended consequences. It could take a page from the 
     Security Council's first successful initiative as the Cold 
     War wound down: its Resolution 598 that forced an end to the 
     Iran-Iraq war (in which, coincidentally, Iraqi gas attacks 
     against Iranians also figured).
       These might be core elements of such an initiative:
       A demand for an immediate ceasefire by all forces in 
     Syria--the government and the various insurgent factions--
     with a short deadline for compliance;
       Imposition of full-spectrum sanctions, especially on arms, 
     on any party that refuses to comply with the cease-fire;
       A summons to the Damascus authorities, the Syrian National 
     Council, and other relevant parties to attend the much-
     postponed Kerry-Lavrov-Brahimi peace conference, to be 
     convened within 30 days, and to negotiate in good faith;
       Dispatch of a capably sized United Nations ceasefire 
     monitoring force to oversee the ceasefire, investigate and 
     report violations, and protect U.N. weapons inspectors;
       Establishment of a U.N. commission of inquiry to determine 
     responsibility for the Ghouta attack and any other reported 
     chemical weapons use, with a demand that the government and, 
     in rebel-dominated territory, insurgent groups permit full, 
     unfettered access for U.N. weapons inspectors to undertake 
     their investigation of sites of alleged attacks--much as 
     Resolution 598 created a commission to certify officially who 
     had started the Iran-Iraq war (surprise conclusion: Saddam);
       Referral of the commission's findings of responsibility for 
     chemical weapons use to the International Criminal Court, or 
     less ideally an internationally vetted Syrian tribunal, for 
     criminal prosecution;
       A demand that Syria declare to U.N. inspectors its chemical 
     weapons stocks for their provisional surveillance;
       A reaffirmation of the need to kick-start the delayed 
     conference on elimination of weapons of mass destruction from 
     the Middle East that was promised at the 2010 nuclear 
     nonproliferation treaty review conference.
       It does not help President Obama's global credibility for 
     Washington to appear to disdain the U.N. inspectors' pending 
     report--especially when his one Western partner, France, now 
     insists on waiting for it And it is certainly awkward for the 
     president to hold the moral high ground when the pope is 
     leading prayer vigils and writing to world leaders decrying 
     the planned attack.
       It may be that the world community places a thicker red 
     line on unilateral use of force than on punishing poison gas. 
     All the more reason for having Plan B in place to pick up the 
     pieces.

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