What is President Obama thinking about with a military intervention in Syria?

A phone call to Tehran or even Moscow would ensure a response that was “more than symbolic” without risking the life and limb of whoever the US might decide to point cruise missiles at in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons. Despite the insistence of interventionists to “do something,” no one in the US foreign policy establishment has articulated anything close to a strategic interest in intervention. The former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, has been able to articulate a very clear strategic interest in non-intervention: intervention would make the US akin to “Al Qaeda’s air force,” and even trigger a world war by making a unilateral move in a multilateral conflict. Kucinich zeroed in on the strategic interest that was inherent in not intervening similarly in Libya two years ago; Al Qaeda today has a far stronger presence in the country than it did under Col. Qaddafi (when it was nearly non-existent), and tens of thousands of surface-to-air missiles (and other weaponry) went missing after the US intervention.

Foreign Policy’s Stephen Walt sees Obama as being dragged reluctantly into the Syria conflict by a desire not to appear to be damaging US credibility by drawing red lines that can be crossed without a whim. Walt writes that the notion of Obama lacking credibility on the use of force is “especially silly” given the president’s history of the use of force in places like Afghanistan, Libya, and in the drone campaign. But credibility isn’t just about the use of force. It’s about engagement. And while Obama’s foreign policy has been heavily interventionist, it has avoided engagement. Together, it makes for a sometimes aimless but highly destructive foreign policy. Obama, for example, “escalated” in Afghanistan, as Walt writes, but he did not use the fruits of that escalation to attempt to broker a peace or negotiate an exit. He let the moment come and pass, and is still dithering on a withdrawal, unwilling to commit to it, but unwilling, also, to engage anyone else about it.