Unlawful Aggression Against Syria

Five years ago I posted a short entry explaining why it would be wrong for the United States to intervene in Syria's civil war. A year after that I posted another entry explaining why it indeed was wrong for President Obama to go down that road. It's time to re-visit this subject for the Trump administration because the situation keeps getting worse, what with the news that the United States has shot down a Syrian jet fighter.

The law governing the international use of force is well-established, thanks in large part to the United States following World War II. As I've outlined in detail and repeatedly in my entries under the label "war," international force may be used only when: 1) a state is defending itself from attack; 2) a state is defending another state from attack; and 3) the Security Council authorizes force. As I've also discussed on prior occasions under the label "war," the United States consistently has disregarded, violated, and trashed these rules ever since helping establish them, a sick irony that is playing out again. Syria is in the midst of a civil war, which is not an international conflict and does not trigger any right of the United States to use force. Yet the United States illegally has inserted itself into this conflict on the side of the rebels.

By committing this sort of aggression, the United States has vested every other country on Earth with a legal right to come to Syria's defense by attacking us. This is how self-defense and collective-defense work. Russia is well within its rights to serve warning that it will take action if necessary.

It's unfortunate that Trump has not delivered on his promise to end these foreign misadventures and re-focus our energies at home, but then again, the entire weight of the entrenched establishment (and its mindless followers) is against him, so I doubt he can change course even if he truly wishes to do so. We are on the verge of chaos in both the international and domestic spheres. All of it is the natural and foreseeable consequence of modern man's impetuous inability to maintain the rule of law. But conflagration is also nature's way of clearing out deadwood and making room for new growth, I suppose.