This post was written by Hatchet Reporter Elise Lee.
As top government leaders mull a potential strike on Syria, GW professors clashed over how the U.S. could justify its strike on legal grounds.
While a law professor argued that the U.S. would be acting in self-defense, an international affairs professor said chemical weapons use did not necessarily precipitate an armed attack.
Andrew Bell, a visiting fellow at GW’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies, told the 80-person crowd that interfering on humanitarian grounds was “illegal but legitimate.”
“We have a system now where the majority of people think it is just to support human rights yet there is a legal system that explicitly rejects that,” Bell said.
But law professor Sean Murphy argued that the U.S. would be protecting itself from a chemical weapon attack similar to Syrian government’s use of poisonous sarin gas against thousands of people.
“At some point it’s a serious threat to U.S. national security. I think that might be what’s going on. I think that’s what’s motivating the White House and Congress,” Murphy said.
In the wake of Syria’s chemical weapons attack, President Barack Obama decided last week that he wants the U.S. to strike back and help bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Michael Matheson, an international law professor, said the national debates on Syria parallel the decision to take action in the small European nation Kosovo in the 1990s.
While Syria clearly violated international law, he said the nation’s “crimes against humanity” were not enough for the U.S. to enter the country under international law.
But Bell said Obama’s full-court press for action in Syria may have a strategic backdrop, with the president assuring a hardline stance against chemical weapons.
“I think Obama is trying to drive home that any action needs to be taken against chemical weapons use. It is the act,” he said.
