More than 200.000 Syrian refugees are seeking shelter in Germany, the highest number compared to all other European states. To tackle this major problem, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is busy almost around the clock. She is negotiating the issue with other EU countries and dealing with domestic pressure, especially from the far right. This situation mostly prevented her from taking on the core of the "refugee crisis" in Europe, which is the unfolding crisis in Syria. This conflict made 11 Million inhabitants flee their homes and made 4.5 million people refugees abroad.
Therefore, it is mainly the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is determining Germany’s approach on the crisis itself. He is regarded as the driving person behind the German -- and because of Germany’s leading role in the EU -- also the European approach towards finding a solution for the raging war in Syria that killed more than 450.000 so far.
And here comes the problem. Frank-Walter-Steinmeier is a diplomat who at some point in his long career forgot that leading diplomacy must include the element of power to be successful, especially in conflicts involving unreasonable and merciless regimes like the one of Bashar al-Assad. Power in the context of international relations is defined as "a credible threat of force", which does not necessarily mean force has to be used.
His now five years mantra-like repeated slogan "There is no military solution to the conflict in Syria" excludes this element of power and thus excludes the chance to implement peace by pressuring the Syrian regime as well as other actors in and around Syria.
But his "purely by negotiations" approach is not only dysfunctional in a conceptual and theoretical manner. It is also a non-starter in a very practical way, simply ignoring the evolution of the deadly conflict on the ground. Since shortly after the start of the peaceful revolution, respectively its bloody suppression by dictator Assad in mid 2011, every single step by the involved parties included the element of force and thus a "military solution".
- From mid 2011, the Free Syrian Army - civilian volunteers and defectors from Assad’s forces - liberated towns and cities across the country - by force.
- Ever since, dictator Assad - first on his own, later with Shiite militias from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan etc.- tried and partially managed to regain ground - solely by force.
- The rise of an Islamist-extremist rebellion, encouraged by the regime’s brutality and western ignorance of it, which resulted in the reign of the so-called "Islamic State", happened - by force.
- When Assad was almost done after losing Idlib and other important areas in mid 2015, Russia intervened on his side. Not by negotiating on his behalf, but by throwing its political heavyweight behind him with devastating air power and ground support, so - you guess it - by force.
When Frank-Walter Steinmeier says after more than five years of war "there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria", he either didn’t open his eyes for the last five years of exclusively military solutions being implemented in Syria, or simply ignores everything he has witnessed for political, economic and last but not least ideological reasons.
The whole futility of Steinmeier’s approach on Syria could be witnessed in a statement by the German Foreign Office in late April. Following a devastating Assad (or Russian) air force attack on an Aleppo hospital, Steinmeier’s said in a statement: "The Syrian Government has to decide whether it wants to participate seriously in the negotiations, or to keep on laying waste to its own country."
This sentence seems inadvertently honest, showing the whole extent of the west’s paralysis when it comes to stopping Assad from slaughtering the Syrian people. Neither the internationally established minimum standards for armed conflict nor humanity, advocated by those who claim to take up their cause, decide whether or not to "lay waste on" Syria, but Assad himself and only Assad. He is the one to decide whether to continue finding a "military solution to the conflict in Syria" or not - by each and every mean he chooses to do so.
If this standard would be implemented to national law, a convicted rapist would get the choice, whether he wants to stop raping people or continue his crimes. In any case, he would know perfectly well, there will be no consequences and no punishment for his deeds, no matter which choice he makes.
Assad is no rapist. He is a genocidal mass murderer who never showed any kind of restraint when fighting the ones he sees as a danger to his claim to power. Saying "there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria" is the biggest favor one could do to him as it gives him a carte blanche to continue the slaughter. This futile policy approach is not only a guarantee for further atrocities by the current regime; it is also a guarantor that whoever prevails in the end of the war will know what to think of the west’s "values" and its willingness to defend them.
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Julian Röpcke is a newspaper editor and political commentator, based in the German capital, Berlin. With a degree in Political Geography and Sociology, Mr. Röpcke started analyzing geopolitical conflicts after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He covered the “Arab Spring” as well as the evolving conflicts in Syria and Ukraine from their very beginning. Julian Röpcke currently works for BILD, the largest newspaper and leading online news portal in Germany (@JulianRoepcke).
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