Germany to keep up pressure on Syria

World leaders are expressing dismay - and even outrage - after Russia and China blocked a United Nations Security Council resolution on Saturday that called for an end to the violence and a peaceful transition of power in Syria.

With the veto coming the same day as troops under Bashar al-Assad reportedly killed hundreds of protestors around the country, activists said the Russian and Chinese rejection of the resolution was effectively handing the Syrian president a license to liquidate the opposition.

Speaking at this weekend's International Security Conference in Munich, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said that Germany and its allies would not be deterred, and that Assad had to go.

"We regret the veto and think it's a big mistake," Westerwelle said in an exclusive interview with DW. "But we will not stop our engagement because we think we owe this to the people in Syria. This means there is no future for President Assad. He should allow for a peaceful transformation in his country."

But when pressed for details about what Germany could do to hasten Assad's departure, Westerwelle was vague.

"It's possible that we will go to the Security Council with another initiative in the next [few] days," Westerwelle said. "We'll wait and see whether the visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov [on Tuesday] brings any progress and then discuss it with our partners."

The West, of course, would like to see a change in regime in Syria comparable to those in other parts of the Arab world, most notably Libya. But while the vast majority of world leaders and experts agree that the Syrian strongman will have to go at some point, Assad's position is much stronger than former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's.

And that leaves the West in a quandary about what sort of strategy to pursue.

The military option

One scenario that would likely be acceptable to the West is for an armed liberation movement within Syria, perhaps with NATO assistance, to topple Assad. That's the Liyan model.

"The only possibility is to conquer some territory, establish some autonomy and then attract international support, following the example of Libya," Mohamed Rahim, a Syria expert at Munich University's Institute for the Near and Middle East, told DW in January. "And in my opinion, the only hope is to win over important figures from the Syrian military. If they see that the ship is going to sink anyway, they may decide to change sides."

The problem is, of course, that Assad keenly followed events in Libya and will do everything in his power to hinder such a scenario. In the run-up to the Security Council vote, Lavrov repeatedly stated that it would never allow the UN to sanction international military action against Assad.

Both Russia and China are worried that the revolutions in the Arab world will decrease their own influence in the region to the benefit of their competitors in the West.

Thus far, the anti-Assad opposition has been fractured, and despite claims by prominent Syrian defectors that Syria's military is weak, there have been few signs that an armed national liberation movement - like the one last year in Libya - is coalescing in Syria.

The negotiation option

But if the use of force is unlikely in the short term, the prospects of reaching a negotiated settlement look equally dim. If he's confident of Russian and Chinese backing, Assad has little incentive to compromise.

"After everything that he has done and his disregard for the Syrian people, I believe that he won't hesitate to defy international criticism," Ruprecht Polenz - a foreign policy expert for Germany's governing conservative party, the CDU - told DW in January. "I am very skeptical about whether following this path will put an end to the bloodshed."

Efforts to stem the violence in Syria by sending Arab League observers there in January were an utter failure, so it's hardly reasonable to expect a solution to emerge from the Arab world. Instead some experts are looking across Syria's northern border.

"When it comes to Syria's international relations, I believe the most influential countries are its immediate neighbors, including Turkey," Polenz said. "Turkey has made it clear how strongly it opposes what is currently happening in Syria. Whether sanctions and, crucially, more international pressure can make a difference, remains to be seen."

Thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to Turkey, and Ankara remains very concerned about violence between government troops and Assad opponents, some of which takes place very near its borders. Turkey's foreign minister, who was also attending the Munich Security Conference, was among the first to condemn China and Russia's UN veto.

"If the United Nations Security Council continues to be unable to do anything effective, it could be that Turkey becomes the key actor in the Syrian conflict," Frederic Volpi - the director of the Institute of Middle East and Central Asia Studies at the University of St. Andrews - said in an interview with the newspaper The Scotsman on Sunday. "The Turks are unlikely to do anything tomorrow but, in the longer term, it is a realistic possibility that they may well do."

Volpi added that, in the short term, he expected more bloodshed within Syria. And sadly, that indeed seems to be what most leaders and experts anticipate for the near future.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Spencer Kimball