Foreign Policy Archives

*This article originally appeared in RVA Mag #34, on the streets now at all your favorite spots.

When Ian Svenonius and I started talking about ISIS, I knew my interview questions were dead. Originally I planned on talking with him about the musical movements of the mid-20th Century. Instead, I found myself veering into uncharted territory; a place where foreign policy, technological malaise, and radical leftist politics all collided. Which shouldn’t have been shocking to anyone who has kept up with Svenonius.

A progenitor of all things scene, Svenonius’ movement is one that combines style, sound, and substance, an unholy trinity of intellectual violence that took shape in the late 1980’s, in Washington D.C. with his first band, Nation of Ulysses. Since then, his projects — Cupid Car Club, The Make-Up, Weird War, Chain and the Gang, and now Escape-ism — have become part of a lived manifesto, brought to bear through performances of cosmic disassembly.

What follows is a transcript of deep unpredictability drawn across parts of a conversation that remain manifest and evidentiary.

PHOTO: Nation of Ulysses, Dischord Records

Svenonius: The newspaper never really came clean about the U.S. presence in Syria, and it was like Nixon in Cambodia. Everyone knows it, but no one wanted to say it… How secret was it?

Shroder: Obama actually dropped more bombs in the Middle East than most people remember, something conveniently forgotten in the age of Trump.

Svenonius: Yes, we’re talking about team sports. When we talk about politics, there is no anti-war left anymore. What you thought was an anti-war left during the Iraq War disappeared during Obama, when Syria was being destroyed. That was convenient. Because it was done under a Democratic leadership. Politics are grotesque.

Shroder: Trump has said we’re not getting into any more wars. There is an argument for that.

Svenonius: Trump’s rhetoric about foreign policy is bullshit. Whatever he believes, he’s not in control. The circus that is American politics is not about policy making. Trump is a symbol and was put in power by this new class of Libertarian billionaires who hate government. He’s their clown who is there to discredit the idea of governance, because the corporate state is in control. That’s the point of Trump. That any idiot can be president.

Shroder: It is very dystopian from a certain perspective.

Svenonius: This is the new ruling class. The oil barons don’t rule the world anymore, technology does. It is very Ayn Rand[ian]. Their wealth is something we can’t comprehend because they don’t have to pay for any infrastructure. They’re not investing, they’re creating a system where everybody just pays rent.

Shroder: Chain and the Gang’s song “Rome Wasn’t Burnt in a Day” says, “Everyone had a turn to make Rome burn.” Does that song apply to our current situation?

Svenonius: In the sense that we are living through imperial decline. “Rome Wasn’t Burnt in a Day” is a cultural anthem about destroying civilization.

Shroder: Are we at that point? How does the world look through your own experience when touring – even globally?

Svenonius: The world is upside right now because what used to be leftist arguments are now in the domain of the ultra-right wing. Things have become confusing for everyone. The demarcations are all in the air. Getting out of the bubble of fear, the way in which the hysterical news cycle in America is based on paranoia, is solved by communicating in actual space. This puts things in perspective. If you spend your time just reading the comments, you’ll just be suicidally depressed all the time.

Shroder: Everything is binary right now, isn’t it?

Svenonius: Everything is binary. But the binary is very twisted and jumbled, psychotic. The thing about Trump is that it did happen. And there is very little accountability.

Shroder: Is there any place for radical politics in music in 2018?

Svenonius: You know, rock and roll is endlessly fascinating, because there has always been this tension between the populist and democratic expression of the underclass. It is inculcated with a version of social realism. There is also this decadence and reactionary aspect to it that can be very right-wing. Rock and roll has always been this paradoxical thing. But the real question is, what is the place of music in people’s lives? When things are free and ubiquitous it loses its worth to people. That’s what music is now; it has become immaterial.

Shroder: Do musicians have a responsibility to address social and political realities, or is it just escapism?

Svenonius: There is a larger context, and things shift very quickly based on social circumstance. In a sense, you make things because they feel important to you. Music shouldn’t be based on ‘what’s the zeitgeist?’ And the less money music has, the more social power it will have. Right now art is a frenzy, but does art feel like it is on a moral mission right now? No, it feels like a money-making circus.

Shroder: Is there a generational connect in seeing younger bands that have a musical or social alignment with what you created?

Svenonius: I try to do things that feel fun and vital, and that is what I’m interested in. As far as the scene, people’s values are so different in music [nowadays] and the community that everything used to be based around – or the idea of community – is an archaic idea. People can get notoriety now in a way that used to be impossible.

Shroder: Do you think technology and social networks have made the scene irrelevant?

Svenonius: Yes. The whole idea of the scene or community is not what people are focused on, because it’s not necessary anymore. A scene used to be necessary because that’s where your resources were, and that is not important in the same way anymore.

Shroder: Any advice you want to leave to young people struggling to make sense of these complex times?

Svenonius: I’m sure they can tell me more than I can tell them.

This is going to prove hugely provocative, but it needs to be said anyways; we should be applauding President Trump’s authorization of military strikes against the murderous regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad. Given the commander-in-chief’s inability to command anything, it is hard to write those words, but it is also necessary. Yet buried deep within the cacophony of noise from the punditry and the bloodsport take no prisoner social media contests over the last 48 hours, there is a signal waiting to be found.

What is the signal? Before we journey to find it, we’ll have to decipher some of the complex realities which govern normative international relations theory. However, before we get to that, I can simply say: You cannot massacre your own people with chemical weapons.

For those who are taking full advantage of the first real spring weekend in the Commonwealth (or the Action Patrol reunion gigs) and might have missed the headlines, here is a quick recap.

At around 8:30 PM on Friday evening with support from British and French allies, the US military launched a multi-axis attack on chemical weapons facilities inside of Syria. According to the Pentagon briefing on Saturday morning, 105 missiles were launched in a combined naval and air campaign – from the Red Sea, North Arabian Gulf, and Eastern Mediterranean. The briefings also suggested that all assets landed on their intended locations and targeted research and storage facilities that produce and store chemical weapons.

This strike was in response to a chemical attack launched by the regime on April 11 in Douma, a Damascus suburb, which killed 70 people and wounded over 500. Yet this was not the first chemical attack by the regime. There is documented evidence that the regime first started using these weapons against their population as far back as December 2012. Then in August 2013, there was a sarin gas attack that left an estimated 1,400 people dead.

Video image by the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets) of the April 11, Chemical Attack.

Time for some of that tediously boring international relations theory: All foreign policy is a calculated long game, one that must effectively balance hard (military) and soft (diplomatic and economic) power over the course of multiple years – sometimes even decades. When then President Obama failed to enforce his “red-lines” on the usage of chemical weapons in August 2013, he opened up a vacuum (like nature, international relations also abhors a vacuum). This vacuum was filled by bad-actors such as Russia and Iran who have a strategic long-game and are not afraid to use all means available to them – chemical weapons included – to achieve their goals and objectives.

Most foreign policy professionals will agree that the failure to enforce the Obama “red-lines” was a disastrous decision for our emerging strategy in Syria. Former Secretary of State John Kerry even went so far as to say publicly in 2016 that “it cost us significantly” in terms of resolving the conflict. Unfortunately, the problem is that without the threat of force, the Syrian regime never really had any incentive to dismantle their chemical weapons programs.

Where does that leave us now in 2018? Let’s circle back to the signal buried in the noise.

The coalition strikes against the chemical facilities of the Syrian regime had to happen, the same way they should have happened in 2013 after the sarin gas attack. There are prohibitions against the usage of chemical weapons going back to 1925, commonly referred to as the Geneva Protocol. Why? Because the extensive use of these agents during WW1 led to the deaths of an estimated 100,00 combatants and wounded up to a million more. This international convention was reintroduced in 1997 as the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits “the large-scale use, development, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons” – the Syrian regime is in violation of most if not all of these conventions.

Soldiers in WW1 where chemical weapons were used extensively

So the problem is less about the righteousness of taking out chemical weapons facilities, but having to reconcile it against the entire Trump presidency. He actually said, “mission accomplished” in a tweet in a bout of mind-mumblingly cliched braggadocio. Anyone remember George Bush saying the same thing about the Iraq War? Anyone else wanna comment on how that turned out?

The first thing to remember is that chemical weapons deployment is a method of waging war which cannot be normalized or accepted by the community of nations. Yes, countries will continue to wage war and yes, the methods in which they wage war will still end with countless civilian lives lost in the process. But there is a difference, which is the reason why we also have prohibitions against the use of biological and nuclear weapons.

Chemical weapons and their capacity to kill civilians at a disproportionately higher rate is what separates them from other conventional weapons. According to an analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “Under ideal conditions 1 ton of Sarin dropped from an airplane could produce 3,000 to 8,000 deaths”. They are also indiscriminate in their usage, given the inability to control the agent once it has been dispersed, making them not only a weapon of mass destruction, but also a weapon of mass terror. The same analysis also cited a UN report which claimed, “a chemical weapon of 15 tons might kill 50 percent of the people in a 60 square kilometer area.” Then there is the long-term effect of the chemical agents, such as visual impairment, chronic dermatological conditions, long-term respiratory problems, and cancer.

To assume that “red-lines” on chemical weapons should not be enforced, would be to assume that the very same “red-lines” on biological and nuclear weapons should also not be enforced – should that terrifying scenario ever come to pass. Is this something we’re willing to negotiate on as the world becomes more complex and dangerous? That is the conundrum we’re facing and the reason why we cannot allow chemical weapons attacks to go unanswered -Trump or no Trump.

Pentagon Press Briefing, Saturday Morning

There is no strategy for Syria (not under Obama, not under Trump) and this strike, like the US strike in April last year, was only a tactical pin-prick meant to degrade capabilities not end the conflict. That does not mean we have to let Syrian civilians be killed with weapons of mass terror by a murderous regime that has wholesale slaughtered its own people since 2011.

Trump is a reckless, loutish president, but in authorizing the Pentagon’s strikes on Syria he was justified. Our feelings on foreign policy should not be conflated with our feelings about the president – remember the long game. Nonetheless, there is a bitter irony to all of this. The man who said there were a “few good people” in Charlottesville and the man who demonized refugees is also the same man who can intervene to save civilian lives from chemical attacks.

Regardless of the reasoning, the net result can still be the same: countless lives have potentially been saved by destroying facilities used to make weapons of mass destruction. If ever there was a reason for the awesome power of the US military apparatus to be applied, this is surely it. Progressives who are committed to cooperation among allies and internationalism, as a means of supporting human rights can support this kind of intervention without supporting the president. These two things can exist simultaneously.

Fingers crossed this kind of attack won’t happen again, but recent history has shown us that without consequence there is little hope that we won’t have a repeat of it.

The Cosmic Disassembly of Ian Svenonius

Opinion: Why Progressives Should Support Intervention in Syria