Reiterating what I wrote last night:  Why hasn’t the need to contain and decommission Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile been cited as a legitimate basis for invasion?  (Perhaps not sufficient basis for a US-only intervention but an international one.  For example, an intervention supported by the parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention.)

Spending a significant fraction of your working life on a fairly narrow set of problems can provide you unique insight into important aspects of the world most people have never considered.  It can also lead you to believe that your work is more important than it is.  One condition needn’t preclude the other – the former sometimes increasing the risk of the latter.  Perhaps it’s because I spent fifteen years working on chemical and biological weapons defense problems that I believe chemical weapons counter-proliferation is important.  I understand the health threats, effective deployment, trace-level detection issues, decontamination issues, etc.   Having the technical understanding probably makes me more sensitive to proliferation issues than most people.  Does it make me overly sensitive?  I’m probably not the best judge of that.  More generally:  Does chemical weapons counter-proliferation matter?  Is the fact that the Syrians have a chemical weapons stockpile much ado about nothing?  (That is, is it much ado about nothing provided you’re not a Syrian civilian?)

I have a tough time with the thought that counter-proliferation isn’t in the national interest.  Counter-proliferation is taken seriously when it comes to nuclear weapons.  It should be taken seriously for biological weapons.  It should be taken seriously when it comes to chemical weapons.  (Think a few rounds of VX dispersed in a urban environment would be less horrific than a dirty bomb?  I’m skeptical.)

In terms of counter-proliferation, I think limited military strikes would be worse than useless.   How would limited strikes work?  Hitting storage depots would disperse the agents not destroy them.  That’s well-known.  Bombing storage depots couldn’t have been part of the plan.   Limited bombing of some other targets as a show of force/”shot across the bow”?  Unless the goal is regime change or confiscation of chemical weapons – the former resulting in the latter – I fail to see what military strike would accomplish.  Degrading Syria’s ability to conduct chemical warfare is not counter-proliferation.  Eliminating it would be.

When I went to bed last night I was of the mind that no one in a position of authority thought that counter-proliferation was a (the one?) legitimate objective and would justify military intervention.  And then I read this this morning:

Asked whether Assad could do anything to avert military strikes, Kerry said, “Sure. He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over. All of it, without delay. And allow the full and total accounting for that. But he isn’t about to do it.”

Where was that statement two weeks ago?  No matter.  Better late than never.  And then there’s this:

But [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov followed up on the idea, with a proposal that offered a compromise that could avert an American-led strike in response to a poison-gas attack near Damascus last month. [See here for a summary of the Russian proposal.] Officials in Syria embraced the idea, as did Britain, France, the United Nations and even some Republican lawmakers in Washington…

Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, who was in Moscow, welcomed Russia’s proposal, though he stopped short of pledging that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, would comply. His remarks, however, tacitly acknowledged that Syria possessed a chemical arsenal, something that Syria has never publicly admitted.

It seems almost too easy…  Perhaps.  Let’s pursue it and find out.  Counter-proliferation is a worthy undertaking.  It would be a mistake to pass up the opportunity.

Addendum 9/10/2013:

It probably wasn’t obvious from my comments but it’s a virtual certainty that chemical weapons were used in Syria and I’m convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it was Syrian government forces who used them.   I suppose it’s remotely plausible that rebel forces stole the weapons and conducted the attack but that seems a big stretch.   I would also be very surprised if the US government doesn’t have a lot more detail re the attack that they’re not sharing.  Conceivable they don’t but seems very unlikely.