Analysis: FPI/FDD: “Towards a Post-Assad Syria”

The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies published a discussion paper prepared for the Syria Working Group entitled “Towards a Post-Assad Syria: Options for the United States and Like-Minded Nations to Further Assist the Anti-Regime Syrian Opposition.” The report asserts that the “Syrian government is now waging a campaign of systematic, internal terror against its own people,” through the killing of 3,500 civilians and imprisonment of 30,000. “Given the deadlock in the international community,” the paper “examines U.S. options for responding, either individually or in concert with other nations, to the Assad regime’s relentless murder of Syrian civilians.”

Among the report’s suggestions for U.S. action are cooperation “with international partners to multilateralize sanctions against Syria’s controversial nuclear and missile programs,” assisting Syrian opposition groups, “limited retaliatory airstrikes,” and “no-fly/no-go zones.” Intervention by “the West and Turkey” is inevitable, and international inaction only further destroys “Syria’s ethnic and religious mosaic.” The paper concludes, “Foreign intervention sooner offers Syria, the Middle East, and the West the likelihood of a much better outcome.”