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Diplomacy or military intervention in Syria? 7 opinions from around the globe.

Military intervention expensive, risky

  • By Whitney Eulich Staff writer

National Post (Canada)
Column: Matt Gurney, columnist for The National Post
In face of Syrian aggression, NATO deploys sympathy and platitudes 

Turkey called an emergency North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting on Tuesday [June 26], after a Turkish plane was shot down by Syrian forces. Turkey is a member of NATO, which includes in its charter a stipulation that an attack on one member of the alliance be considered an attack on all members, requiring them to respond accordingly – but only if the country that was attacked invokes the article.

Turkey surprised some in the international community when it did not call NATO members to action. Instead: “Turkey ... briefed its allies on the situation without declaring the incident an attack that would activate the treaty.... NATO clearly has no interest in getting involved, and is happy to get off as lightly as they did,” writes Matt Gurney.

“There’s little reason to think that any ... intervention would actually make things better in [Syria]. It’s more likely we’d just make it possible for a different group of Syrians to get killed instead of the ones currently getting killed, without any real net lowering of the death toll or overall improvement in human rights (See: Libya).”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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