good afternoon and welcome to the washington institute. i am the director of the institute and i'm very pleased to welcome all of you to this special policy forum luncheon debate. we don't often do debates and this is a debate among serious people in a serious topic so you won't see the gloves on and the blood flying. but it is an important issue to talk about u.s. policy towards syria. an audience like this and audience watching on c-span knows very well the issues that are at stake, the humanitarian issues that are at stake of course, the political and motels -- military and strategic issues that are at stake and there is a broad national, broad consensus about the urgency of the situation in syria but yet considerable debate about what the united states should do and what the united states should be leading in order to affect the situation on the ground. we at the institute, the washington institute, have been actively engaged in trying to present a broad range of information to the policymaking community in addition to our speakers today from the institute, andrew i want to draw attention to everyone here into our viewing audience at the washington institute's web site which includes data from first-hand visits to the region by institute staff exhibiting all bordering countries around syria, detailed reports based on these investigations and policy prescriptions. today, we are brought together two of the most thoughtful and insightful observers of the situation in syria and as much the situation here in washington about syria because today's discussion is really about what america should do vis-à-vis the conflict in syria. and the springboard for today's discussionism article in the current issue of foreign affairs by the counsel on foreign relations by andrew tabler. andrew senior fellow here at the washington institute and author of a book based on his eight years living in syria and the article that andrew has written is titled syria's collapse and how washington intends to stop it. in that article andrew offers both analysis of the situation in syria and a set of very specific prescriptions of what the united states should do on its own and in concert with partners and allies in order to stop the carnage, stop the violence and bring about a resolution of the conflict. speaking today as well as professor marc lynch. i am happy to welcome marc back to this platform. this is not the first-time marc has spoken at the institute and we are happy to welcome them back. george -- marc is a professor at the -- the prodigious offer of the "abu aardvark" blog and a frequent contributor to foreign policy among many other platforms and if you want to find a coherent alternative about what the united states ought to do vis-à-vis syria then i suggest reviewing a series of foreign-policy posts by marc. so we have today to very smart, too very well respected and consulting experts. i won't go into the details of the consultations each of them has with senior government officials but suffice it to say that the arguments we will be hearing today very much reflect the arguments that are on the table in front of senior government officials. now of course we have a change in american policy in the last couple of weeks with the president's announcement of the beginning of a direct u.s. military support to lethal weaponry to the armed opposition but i think it still suffices to say that the overall strategy remains unclear. what the objectives are, what they have to be and whether we are bringing to bear the resources to meet those objectives. and so in that context i think today's debate remains very much timely and very much appropriate. with that i will turn the podium first over to andrew tabler and then over to marc lynch and then over to you for your questions and comments. >> thank you. >> one more word. if i could please ask everyone here to silence or cell phones, turn them off if you can, silence if you must. >> thank you rob for that introduction and thanks to the washington institute and all of my colleagues here and all of their capacities for helping with today's event. thanks to all of you for coming out and particularly thanks to professor marc lynch for accepting the invitation today to discuss an issue that i think both of us believe is a crisis of the first-order and one that we were discussing a little bit before this began and talking about it behind closed doors for the better part of two years now. that has followed the debate that we have seen inside of the u.s. government or heard about or heard echoes of that, the policymaking about the difficulties in coming up with policy prescriptions to deal with this syrian crisis. and perhaps my list bit of thanks goes to president obama himself for his recent decision to recognize the regime of us are all a shot -- bashar al-assad and as rob mentioned i think we are in an era of policy flux. we don't know all the details and i think that is going to be aware of a lot of the debate is going to be going forward. an article that rob discussed the recent article in foreign affairs about syria's collapse was based on a recent trip i made with my colleague and good friend jeff weise to the syrian border regions. we were in every syrian border region with the exception of iraq and i think the one thing they came away from that trip and this dovetails with our policy report earlier this year, and one thing that struck me and the theme i think will carry us through a lot of my comments today is that the syria that i lived in for so long and one that i have been writing on for quite some time and one that you know very well the direct interaction or indirect interaction or whatever, is just simply -- not to mention clear metaphors here. quite frankly the crisis generated from that environment now i think is a threat to the regional security architecture and is likely to bring in not only a lot more the regional powers but many of the greater international powers as well. this offers major challenges for united states going forward. i'm afraid at the beginning of this conflict, not at its end. i can't see how it would end any time soon. it's a very sad truth. the basis of my argument is fairly simple. it's given the trajectories that i see inside of syria which i will explain here and i think were echoed in recent government announcements, it's not a question of if we get involved in syria but when, how and at what cost. important attention has to be paid to outcomes and goals. we might not be able to completely and the syrian crisis. we might be, but by becoming more involved and assertive and measured approach as i approaches i argue i believe we can shape and outcomes and contain it as much as possible within syria's borders. so my foreign affairs piece i would like to say follows a lot of president obama's recent responses in charlie rose's interview. i'm sure he did not read it and regurgitated to charlie rose. what i want to say here is i think the president outlined clearly what interests were according to the way he saw it. first, there was what he articulated a humanitarian interest. this is the first part of my piece. it talks about the destruction and the death toll in syria. we hit 100,000 killed depending on the numbers just this month in syria. now this is, the number of killed are approximately in bosnia but half the time so as the aid workers in serious say it's a bosnia on steroids. of course this 100,000 marker and is going to be a war that involves a lot of markers sadly comes around the second anniversary of the second war, the second anniversary of president obama saying resident bashar al-assad had to step aside. the death tolls in syria are worse than the death tolls in iraq and the height of the conflict in 2007. they're there are also considerable regional interests the president outlined and i think this is something that had not really entered the policy considerations previously. marc has been writing about the humanitarian situation and the response based on that argument in based on checking iranian influence. i think now he pointed out very clearly that the out of refugees and the jordan where jeff and i recently spent a lot of time was so massive as well as to other countries which we also visited. those countries were simply unable to handle them and somehow the previous arguments and policymaking circles that we could deal with the symptoms of this crisis alone and not the disease itself that those arguments were wearing then based on the numbers we saw coming out of syria so those of you that have been there i think have noted who have been to the north it represents the country's fourth-largest city and i would encourage you to go there if you can. talk with people who are running the camp and you can go into the camp but there is little security and it's a wonder it all stays together inside and that's a different matter. so that is another major area of spillover. then the president outlined what he called a direct interest and this was the use of chemical weapons, chemical agents in the situation. various concentrations of sarin according to u.s. government officials. this is also a major concern and one that threatens to take this crisis and all of the displacement that has been generated from it and to basically supercharge that situation and send people running over the border or into neighboring governance for cover and to stay out of these areas where these chemical agents can be used. that we expect will continue without a check on president assad and trying to deter his escalation in terms of his arsenal. that i think the biggest take away that i had from my trip in the one that a lot of my fellows here at the institute share is that the division of the country into these three general areas that i've outlined, regime controlled area in the west, the sunni-arab controlled area in the center and a provincial areas in the east, in the each one of these areas we see not just u.s. designated terrorist organizations present, we see them as a key part of each area's ability to go on the offensive not only with each other but politically within those areas. hezbollah recently and they capture from the rebel forces. we see the role of -- both in terms of hard power as well as soft power reaching out to the syrian population and then of course we have the p. y. d., and the local pkk also present in kurdish areas. now why does this all matter to americans? many people have pointed to a number of polls which indicate most americans do not want to intervene inside of syria. there are different responses about what the intervention might look like but generally there's a lot of skepticism for various reasons having to do with the recent iraq our involvement in iraq or afghanistan, finances and so on. i think that the biggest that i see strategic threat that is emerging out of all of this really took me back to my original discussions with policymakers when i came to washington about five years ago when i had to leave syria. and that is location, location, location. for the first two years of the obama administration we engaged the regime of president bashar al-assad not because they liked him, not because it's the behavior was particularly good, actually it was awful but it was based on the idea that syria was important not only in signing a peace treaty with israel but also because of serious geographic location. it doesn't have a lot of oil. it doesn't export a lot of goods. the people were very friendly and the food they prepared was very good but by and large we didn't have a lot of u.s. interests there. but we have a lot of interest in the countries that surrounded syria. israel, jordan, iraq where we spent williams of dollars, nato member turkey and lebanon where the u.s. does not necessarily direct interest but a lot of historical interest in the remaining military interest there in very shapes and forms. so i tried to think a little bit about this and i kept on hearing every time they would talk about why those that said we should get more involved in syria would say well look what happened in lebanon. lebanon caught on fire and literally burned down several times for those of you that are from there visiting the country know exactly what i'm talking about. and you know what, in the end it didn't destroy the region. it didn't really threaten things. i think that the analogy that immediately came to mind was that for all the horrific things that happen in lebanon during that time, lebanon is the small roadhouse on the end of the block and i think this is something that everyone here can relate to. the block here's the regional security architecture. the boundaries that have divided up the middle east for almost 100 years. so, lebanon was stabilized in the sectarian dimension of it was contained by the involvement of the to and row houses israel and a much more stable syria, much different demographics. and it was containable and the lebanese war was eventually brought to a finish and really a settlement that has never really been fully implementimplement ed and was not necessarily successful but has brought relative to each teacher the country and it was very much a situation that's leading them down the middle as it were. the case of syria, serious the row house in the middle of a lot. and the problem with what we see inside of syria is that what happens there does not stay there. it's not like whatever happens there stays there. the potential for spillover is so great and has accelerated over the last few months whether it's refugees or the involvement of hezbollah. if you would have told me a couple of years ago and my many friends in the audience that andrew in a short period of time you'll watch hezbollah rock at fire and other arab country for an hour from lebanese territory. you've got to be crazy. it's the equivalent of hell freezing over enough have seen over the last few months. those of you that have been tracking hezbollah have have seen it from inside his country. i don't think what has happened in syria will just stay in syria. i think it's less and less containable and that in and of itself threatens not only serious neighbors but the security architecture as well in the region. right now it's refugees in cross-border fire and in the future could be cross stabilization. the border of jordan comes to mind, seven turkey and it's true things don't often burn down immediately but over time and given we don't have a solution to this crisis and one does not seem to be in the offing, at least an easy one, i think that the potential for this to spread is much greater and i think it then deserves greater u.s. attention. so my prescription is in the paper are ones that i have discussed with marc many times are we have discussed in the meetings we have had either in here outside of government circles and are not unknown to most of you. there are four parts. one is i believe that the first of two all of this is we need to enforce the chemical weapons used deadline with president assad. when you lay down these lines you should enforce them and the choice of not doing so reverberate out beyond this crisis and will affect how we are perceived in the region and beyond. i think that is a big concern of many of those in the military. most importantly if we don't enforce that red line i think the president has every indication based on the evidence that the president assad has moved up the escalation chain. he is already using chemical weapons and has used service missiles are already third most used against a civilian population in the history of the world. adolf hitler, the bullet regime and afghanistan second and the assad regime. whether it's the enemy or its own population it's there and i think unless we deter him from doing that he will cause more people to run over the borders inside of syria and over the borders to neighboring countries and potentially to destabilize them. second, you think in order to contain this crisis and the displacement we need to set up safe havens in the syrian border regions. many of you have seen that i've written about this before. this area adjacent to turkey and jordan could be enforced using patriot missile batteries or aircraft flying there. by the way these are not the only options and i say that in the paper. there are many forces of actions that we have discussed over the last year or so. they vary from using patriot missile batteries to more direct action with u.s. aircraft flying over those areas. with more direct u.s. involvement flying over syria the risks of course go up and it's much more expensive. next i believe if we have decided president assad has to go and president assad going as part of the solution we need to be able to work with the opposition in order to achieve that militarily and politically. the reason why i want president assad to go isn't just because he is a bad guy. the reason why president assad in my opinion has to go is that he lost his chance to reform this country and to deal with the demographic wave that is now for coming that regime. the assad regime has proved very rigid over time. it has been unable to reform a couple of banks and insurance companies which they could not reform and is the name unable to deal with the big elephant in the room here and that is if you notice all the armed fighters, they have black beards and black hair and very little gray and that is because what you are seeing in syria is authoritarian karma. following the massacre of every 1992 there was a massive crackdown as many of you know inside of syria. hard currency dried up. the economy contracted and for that 10 10 years even arab nationalists and communists were arrested and what happened if everyone just stayed home and had a lot of children. during that period of time and i learned this from -- syria was among the 20 fastest-growing populations in a the world. that is why many people inside of syria were pushing bashar all assad to reform. that system and president assad need to go in order to ring true transition from the tyrannical and rigid form of government to a more updated demographics inside the country. that is true stabilization in my opinion one that will work from the inside out. in order to do that we need to work with us. opposition in border regions in turkey and jordan and beyond as well as perhaps in the future in the areas depending on if they are developed and that caird of time. there are a lot of details about that in my paper. at the at the end of this i adve diplomacy. i don't think we should throw it away. i think it's something we should always keep open but i don't think at this point and i think the facts bear me out, that will we see in the geneva to process is going to yield anything that will lead to a true transition that would deal with the difficult situation inside that country. what i see in the future and at the end of this is a syria that remains divided into three areas, the regime controlled in the west sunni-arab in the center and the kurds in the east with various borders and many of these areas nonupdate to this -- nonubiquitous. at the end of this process we should try as this conflict unfolds to bring those pieces back together. that is a very distant goal at this point but i think it's worth trying to keep syria together whether it's in -- i don't think in its current form it's possible that something more decentralized and as part of those negotiations perhaps at long last those who are huddled around the regime of might feel more confident and safe behind their lines to have president assad and his immediate family -- and that might give them the guarantees that they would like in the interim so they didn't feel -- that a transition in syria would mean having their heads chopped off and i can understand that here and i