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| Daily News Brief August 28, 2013 |
Top of the Agenda: UK Drafts Resolution for UN Action on Syria
The United Kingdom is set to submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on Wednesday condemning the alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus last week and requesting authorization to "protect civilians" (FT), while the Obama administration said it is considering limited strikes to "deter and degrade" President Bashar al-Assad's ability to use such weapons (NYT). The UN's special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, urged for any military intervention to be sanctioned by the Security Council (AP). Emerging market currencies and stocks declined on Wednesday and oil prices spiked (WSJ) on concerns of possible U.S. military strikes against Syria.
Analysis
"Obama never needed to go searching for coalition of the willing
for Syria; one comes pre-assembled for him and has been knocking, in
fact, at the door to the Oval Office for quite some time. Israel,
Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab
Emirates, all see Syria as a grave short-term threat to their national
security," writes Michael Weiss in Foreign Affairs.
"Assad's plan this week is fourfold:
hunker down, survive whatever attack is materializing on the horizon,
emerge from his bunker declaring victory over the perfidious Americans
(no matter how many of his army bases and command posts and aircraft are
on fire), and privately internalize the lesson of the American strike,
which is to lay off the gas," writes Jeffrey Goldberg for Bloomberg.
"Of
course ethics, not only laws, should guide policy decisions. Since the
Rwandan genocide and the Balkan mass killings of the 1990s, a movement
has emerged in support of adding humanitarian intervention as a third
category of lawful war, under the concept of the 'responsibility to
protect.' It is widely accepted by the United Nations and most
governments. It is not, however, in the charter, and it lacks the force of law," writes Ian Hurd for the New York Times.
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