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Geopolitics

Syria, Why The West Can't Turn Back Now

After the chemical attacks, military intervention is a question of humanity, but also of realpolitik. That does not, however, mean it will resolve the situation in Syria.

A mother and father weep over the body of their child, killed in a suspected chemical weapons attack on Damascus
A mother and father weep over the body of their child, killed in a suspected chemical weapons attack on Damascus
Laurent Joffrin*

-OpEd-

PARIS — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s latest crime changes everything. This time, a Western intervention is not a possibility, a hazardous temptation or a more or less justified imperative. It is something obvious.

Apart from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it has been almost a century since any country has used chemical weapons in combat. An international convention bans its use, and it is one of the rare ones that is properly respected — although it bears reminding that Syria did not sign it. But can we do nothing and tolerate such an exception that contradicts all these nations’ tacit agreement?

Alongside his allies, President Barack Obama had solemnly declared that the use of gases was the red line not to cross. What would his word be worth — and democracies’ words in general — if he remained inert when the evidence of such a monstrosity is piling up? And how would we put pressure on Iran on the nuclear question if we left the use of a forbidden weapon in Damascus unpunished? Western abstention would open a highway to barbarity for all the dictators in the world. It would largely ruin the democracies’ credibility on the international scene. It is not only a question of humanity, but also of realpolitik.

A warning to tyrants

Let’s say the interventions in Iraq and in Afghanistan were unsuccessful and the operations in Libya have led to a dangerous mess. And let’s say we’re right. Each intervention is conditional, and here’s the main reason why: If the country in question cannot rapidly set up acceptable political institutions and local armed forces that guarantee public order and ensure compromises between factions, any foreign intervention, however technically perfect, is bound to fail.

In other words, any large-scale offensive, which would include the use of ground troops and bombings, involves major risks. Bringing Western armies into Syria would amount to walking around a powder keg carrying a lit torch. The civil war would also be unlikely to end, and an extended intervention would soon turn a large part of the region’s population against the Western countries.

In these circumstances, there is only one solution: issue a severe warning to this senseless and barbaric regime that gases its own people, and bring more efficient help to the non-Islamist opposition. These policies, which should have prevailed from the beginning, are now essential. They will not solve the Syrian crisis, and they will certainly not bring harmony to the region. But they will issue a salutary warning to tyrants.

*Laurent Joffrin is the editor-in-chief of Nouvel Observateur.

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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