reduced to innovative proposals

Hope considered as a strategy:

USIP intends to release a report on the project in the coming weeks that will serve as a transition strategy document to be used by the next government. The next phase is to stand up a transition support network "to begin to implement these recommendations about stuff that needs to happen now," Heydemann said.

In addition to security-sector reform, the group has come up with plans to reform the justice sector and a framework for the role of the armed opposition in a post-Assad Syria. The idea is to preserve those parts of the Syrian state that can be carried over while preparing to reform the parts that can't. For example, large parts of the Syrian legal system could be preserved.

The group has come up with a few innovative proposals to make the post-Assad transition less chaotic. One example Heydemann cited was the idea of mobile judicial review squads, which could be deployed to do rapid review and release of detainees held by the regime after it falls.

This is just comedy, isn't it? Hold off on that epuration, liberators, the mobile judicial review squads are in town. One thing about China and Russia's blocking of UN action on Syria which hasn't been considered is the fact that it gives the Saudis and the GCC states a free-er hand in shaping a post-Assad Syria through direct military support to their favoured rebels without wider international oversight. It therefore cements relations between China and the countries which sell it a lot of its oil. Beyond that level, it pulls the US and the gulf states apart by protecting the Saudis and the Gulfies while they act independently. I have no idea whether this is an objective of Chinese policy, but it does seem to be a motive for carrying on in the same way.

Comments

[Netbrian]

I'm all for this. I much prefer hope as a strategy to most of the other options on offer. I think preparing transition strategy documents is likely to have a far better outcome than loose talk of a no fly zone.