The unknowns surrounding Syria
This week has produced an important development concerning the situation in Syria: The United States, which has been weighing a potential military strike against government forces in the Syrian civil war, now seems open to the possibility of a Russian-backed intervention aimed at removing Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons.That shift may have been driven by reflection upon the profound uncertainties that would accompany any military action at this point, a group of foreign-policy and weapons experts said Wednesday at a public forum at MIT. Those uncertainties include the circumstances in which chemical weapons appear to have been used in Syria’s civil war — especially in an Aug. 21 attack that left many Syrians dead — as well as the unknown composition of any new government in Syria, should the current one be forced out.Barry Posen, the Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT and director of MIT’s Security Studies...