William Polk suggests that climate change and the associated drought, draining of the aquifer, collapse of farming, and hunger is a precipitating cause of the Syrian civil war.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/your-labor-day-...

Syria has been convulsed by civil war since climate change came to Syria with a vengeance. Drought devastated the country from 2006 to 2011. Rainfall in most of the country fell below eight inches (20 cm) a year, the absolute minimum needed to sustain un-irrigated farming. Desperate for water, farmers began to tap aquifers with tens of thousands of new well. But, as they did, the water table quickly dropped to a level below which their pumps could lift it. 

In some areas, all agriculture ceased. In others crop failures reached 75%. And generally as much as 85% of livestock died of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms and fled to the cities and towns in search of almost non-existent jobs and severely short food supplies. Outside observers including UN experts estimated that between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabitants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”

The domestic Syrian refugees immediately found that they had to compete not only with one another for scarce food, water and jobs, but also with the already existing foreign refugee population. Syria already was a refuge for quarter of a million Palestinians and about a hundred thousand people who had fled the war and occupation of Iraq. Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers. And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive.

Survival was the key issue. The senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Syria turned to the USAID program for help. Terming the situation “a perfect storm,” in November 2008, he warned that Syria faced “social destruction.” He noted that the Syrian Minister of Agriculture had “stated publicly that [the] economic and social fallout from the drought was ‘beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.’” But, his appeal fell on deaf ears: the USAID director commented that “we question whether limited USG resources should be directed toward this appeal at this time.” (reported on November 26, 2008 in cable 08DAMASCUS847_a to Washington and “leaked” to Wikileaks )

Whether or not this was a wise decision, we now know that the Syrian government made the situation much worse by its next action. Lured by the high price of wheat on the world market, it sold its reserves. In 2006, according to the US Department of Agriculture, it sold 1,500,000 metric tons or twice as much as in the previous year. The next year it had little left to export; in 2008 and for the rest of the drought years it had to import enough wheat to keep its citizens alive.

So tens of thousands of frightened, angry, hungry and impoverished former farmers flooded constituted a “tinder” that was ready to catch fire. The spark was struck on March 15, 2011 when a relatively small group gathered in the town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them. Instead of meeting with the protestors and at least hearing their complaints, the government cracked down on them as subversives. The Assads, who had ruled the country since 1971, were not known for political openness or popular sensitivity. And their action backfired. Riots broke out all over the country, and as they did, the Assads attempted to quell them with military force. They failed to do so and, as outside help – money from the Gulf states and Muslim “freedom fighters” from the rest of the world – poured into the country, the government lost control of over 30% of the country’s rural areas and perhaps half of its population. By the spring of 2013, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), upwards of 100,000 people had been killed in the fighting, perhaps 2 million have lost their homes and upwards of 2 million have fled abroad. Additionally, vast amounts of infrastructure, virtually whole cities like Aleppo, have been destroyed.

With the first bomb dropped the United States will incur the responsibility for every death, every atrocity, every refugee and every day that this civil war continues

More and more I am convinced that this is really the crux of the problem. Jon Lee Anderson does a good job of writing on that today.

Here's what I am thinking. Since the U.S. developed a C.I.A., there was always the conspiracy theorizing but it maintained a certain level where the majority of the world did not buy into it. A president like Clinton could lob missiles and not get conspiracy theorizing up the kazoo by everyone in the world because one hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake, or another hit a factory in Sudan that turned out not to be exactly as described.

The post 9-11 worlds seems to have changed that. Major major blame should go to the Bush administration with Iraq.

But there is also the "Arab springs" where the tendency to heavy conspiracy theorizing developed under dictatorial reigns has not had the time to wear off yet. While the internet revolution offers long-term promise in that regard, short-term, conspiracy and sectarian suspicion of "the other" can be fed by the internet to the point of flames. (An example: blasphemy and The Prophet.)

Enter Edward Snowden. (Pre-emptive: I am not blaming Snowden for creating that which he is revealing, OK?  That's a given. It's the timing that's the problem.) The whole fucking world now mistrusts the U.S.

Put it all together in one package. And it ends up like this: it's hard to envision an example of a situation where the U.S. can intervene militarily without being totally counter-productive.  I.E., something like Kosovo > military intervention > Dayton accords can no longer happen. Our reputation is currently ruined for doing anything like that. Obama's methods in foreign policy, as well as his allowing the growth of the surveillance state, have not helped that, but made it worse.

Back to right now.

It's just intuition, based on what has happened so far. And there are many variables in the coming week(s) that could change things. We still have votes and debates to go, the administration's lobbying effects, a speech by the President to the American public, a U.N. chem weapons report coming, etc. But here's what I think right now: the President could drop his quest to act militarily tomorrow and will have accomplished the main goal: Assad's name is Mudd for using chemical weapons. And after vigorously continuing a fight to act at the G-20 meeting, if Assad uses them again, Obama can say to the world: I told you so. So the affect has already been achieved by the threat of action, there is actually no need to go through with it. And though he might continue to fight for the right to do so, he may very well chose not to.

I couldn't agree more. It's a very well reasoned and very well written piece.

Just found the more sophisticated form of the Kerry talking points here, "a senior State Department official" talking to Michael Gordon @ NYTimes. Gordon says

The official introduced some of the arguments American officials are expected to make to their European counterparts during Mr. Kerry’s four-day trip. He asserted that the failure to act militarily presented graver risks than a limited military intervention.

The points were:

 ‘I don’t expect huge, huge change on the day after on the ground,” said the official, who is traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry to a meeting here with European Union foreign ministers on the Middle East.

“That grinding war of attrition will continue and the regime’s manpower shortages will continue to grow, but I would not expect a breakthrough on the ground.” [....]

 “We have been very explicit to the Syrian opposition that any military action that we might take in response to the chemical weapons attack is going to be limited and very focused solely on re-establishing the deterrence,” said the official, who requested anonymity as per diplomatic protocol.

“Do they all welcome that?” he said. “No, some would like us to do more than that. They will be disappointed, therefore.”

Even if the strikes are somewhat limited, the official asserted, they would discourage the Assad government from again using chemical weapons and that, in any case, the condition of Syrian forces would weaken over time.

But he suggested that the push to improve the rebels’ fortunes on the battlefield, and ultimately foster the condition for a possible political settlement, would depend more on increasing efforts to arm the opposition and improve its ability to govern the area it has captured.

 Even if the strikes are somewhat limited, the official asserted, they would discourage the Assad government from again using chemical weapons and that, in any case, the condition of Syrian forces would weaken over time.

But he suggested that the push to improve the rebels’ fortunes on the battlefield, and ultimately foster the condition for a possible political settlement, would depend more on increasing efforts to arm the opposition and improve its ability to govern the area it has captured. [...]