WarSclerotic

One of the most shocking developments that led the British and French, in an act of submissive appeasement, toward the notorious Munich Agreement of 1938 with Germany happened three years earlier in 1935, in Ethiopia of all places. After his troops invaded the African nation in 1935, Mussolini’s forces began a campaign of chemical attacks against military and civilian targets alike, despite have been a signatory to the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which prohibited the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield.

While the League of Nations was confronted with evidence of the attack, the embarrassing helplessness demonstrated by the organization was part and parcel of the free world’s moral deterioration while Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany challenged the global order of the time. The sanctions were rather moderate; they did not include an oil embargo. An isolationist United States — then a nonmember of the international organization — refused to lend its support even to symbolic punitive measures. This demonstration of impotence and weakness emboldened Hitler and Mussolini, and the results of such appeasement diplomacy translated into the horrors of World War II.

More than five decades later, it turns out that the world in general, and the shapers of American foreign policy in particular, have failed to fully comprehend the devastating implications of appeasement. Saddam Hussein, who gradually became the Reagan administration’s strategic partner during the Iran-Iraq war, ordered the Bloody Friday chemical attack (mustard gas and sarin) on March 16, 1988 against the Kurdish town of Halabja in southern Kurdistan. The merciless Iraqi air offensive claimed the lives of 6,000 people and injured some 10,000 Iraqis, but it failed to appall the civilized world. On the contrary, no less than seven weeks passed before the security establishment deigned to condemn the massacre in Iraq, using the most feeble and delicate language. Not only did the White House endeavor to ignore the mountain of evidence indicating the Iraqi leader’s responsibility for the massacre, but, following the offensive, Washington actually broadened the scope of its strategic cooperation with Baghdad, despite congressional demands to impose economic sanctions on Iraq.

A little less than two and a half years later, Saddam understood American inaction to be a green light from Washington, and in August 1990, he sent his army to occupy Kuwait. The rest, including the George H. W. Bush administration’s decision to go to war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi domination, is etched in history.

Based on this historical background, it is worth asking whether U.S. President Barack Obama is finally going to wake up from his deep slumber and recognize that, regardless of internal politics, the U.S. as a world power has an obligation, both in principle and morally, to punish rogue states for conduct that goes beyond humanitarian standards, beyond the red lines delineated by the international community. In other words, the U.S. hegemon has a duty, and not just within the narrow window of the Syrian context, to radiate resolve and determination after a protracted period of vacillation.

Recent signs in Washington suggest a budding willingness to seriously consider military options in Syria, albeit limited ones, such as a cruise missile attack targeting the forces responsible for the chemical attack near Damascus last week. All we can do is wait to see whether we have reached the first few steps of a new, more resolute chapter in the Obama era, a chapter in which the American hegemon will step up to the front of the global stage to lead, despite strong reservations among the U.S. pubic. The test is laid out in front of us, and the consequences of failure extend beyond the Syrian borders. The results will affect the overall credibility and deterrent capabilities of the faltering world power. Obama already broke the wall of fear at home, we can only hope that he is going to learn the lessons of history and lead the U.S. on a more aggressive march than he has done so far, even if the first steps won’t lead to a Syrian tie-breaker.