NATO Chief: Option of Attacking Syria Must Stay Open

Diplomatic Momentum Depends on Threats, Insists Rasmussen

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen today ruled out ending military threats against Syria, insisting that diplomatic progress depended entirely on continued threats of imminent attack.

“Irrespective of the outcome of the deliberations in the UN Security Council, the military option will still be on the table,” Rasmussen added, during comments made at the conference.

Efforts by the US, Britain and France to get NATO to authorize a war against Syria have so far failed, and despite Rasmussen’s determination to keep the threat “open” the reality is that there is strong opposition to the war among NATO members and that will make an aggressive war by the alliance virtually impossible.

Rasmussen’s comments reflect a popular narrative among Western officials which attempts to attribute the Syrian disarmament deal to their threats to attack, despite the US simultaneously claiming that the proposal was something they’d secretly been working on since the 2012 G20.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.