菅義偉官房長官は３０日の記者会見で「北朝鮮のように日本周辺にも化学兵器を保有する国があり、シリアの化学兵器使用の問題は無関係ではない」と述べ、アサド政権の化学兵器使用が明らかになった場合には日本政府として厳しい姿勢を示す方針を表明した。政府関係者も同日、化学兵器使用を受けた軍事介入が実施された場合には「『理解する』などと中途半端なことはやらない」と指摘した。
【ワシントン＝今井隆】米政府が日本政府に対し、シリアへの軍事行動に踏み切った場合には、速やかに支持を表明するよう求めたことが３０日、分かった。
日米関係筋が明らかにした。米政府としては、同盟国である日本など各国から幅広い支持を取り付けることで、国際社会に軍事行動の正当性を訴える狙いがある。
自民党の石破幹事長は３１日午前、米国がシリアに軍事介入した際の対応について、「米国からきちんとした説明を受け、国民にも説明できれば、行動を支持することが必要だ。得心すれば、支持する選択を安倍首相はするのではないか」と述べた。鳥取市内で記者団の質問に答えた。
（2013年8月31日14時44分 読売新聞）
米リベラルや米リベラル寄りの日本人の人たちがわりとゴー・サイン出してるのがシリア。ユーゴ紛争のときと同じ議論だなと。エコノミストも早く空爆しろバカ！という議論。
日本政府高官「（シリア軍事介入について）基本的には米国と歩調を合わせる」
日本、プリンシプルなさすぎだろ。
優秀な外国人留学生を取り込む戦略案
世界から優秀な人材を獲得する戦略を議論してきた文部科学省の検討会は、東南アジアやインドなどを重点地域として留学コーディネーターを配置し、工学や医療などの分野に学生を呼び込むという取り組みの方向性をまとめました。
文部科学省は、世界的に人材獲得競争が激しくなっているとして大学教授や経済団体などで検討会を作り戦略を議論してきました。
このほど取り組みの方向性がまとまり、外国人留学生を呼び込む分野として、工学、医療、法律、農業に力を入れることになりました。
東南アジアやインド、それにアフリカなど９つの地域を重点地域として留学コーディネーターを配置し、インターネットを使って試験を受けるなど日本に来なくても入学を決められる仕組みを整えるということです。
外国人留学生の数は去年５月現在およそ１４万人で、検討会は７年後の平成３２年までに年間３０万人の受け入れを目指して、ことし中に最終的な戦略をまとめることにしています。
文部科学省は「中国や韓国に留学する人が飛躍的に増えているが日本は遅れをとっている。優秀な人材を取り込む戦略を早急にたてて日本の発展につなげたい」と話しています。
ケリー国務長官は、３０日午後、日本時間の３１日未明に国務省で会見し、シリアの首都ダマスカスの郊外で今月２１日に化学兵器が使われたとされる問題について、アメリカの情報機関が集めた情報を明らかにしました。
この中でケリー長官は、「政権側が攻撃の３日前から化学兵器による攻撃を準備していた」と述べたほか、政権側がガスマスクを装着して攻撃に備えるよう指示を出したことや、化学兵器を搭載したロケット弾がいつ、どこから発射されたのかなどもアメリカ政府は把握していると説明しました。
米政府報告書を発表
アメリカ政府は、３０日、内戦が続くシリアで化学兵器が使われたとされる問題について、アメリカ政府の分析結果をまとめた報告書を発表しました。
それによりますと、今月２１日にシリアの首都ダマスカス近郊で神経ガスの化学兵器が使用され、１４２９人が死亡し、このうち少なくとも４２６人は子どもだったとしています。
そのうえで、アサド政権が攻撃の３日前から神経ガスの一つであるサリンを含む化学兵器を製造している地域の近くで攻撃を準備していたほか、攻撃の当日は、ガスマスクを使用して化学兵器に備えていたことなどを明らかにしています。
一方で、反政府側が化学兵器を使うような兆候はなかったとしています。
さらに、化学兵器の被害を受けた地域に政権側がロケット砲弾などの攻撃を仕掛けていたことが偵察衛星などで裏付けられたとしているほか、化学兵器の使用を確認した政権の会話も傍受しているとしています。
そして報告書は、すべての情報を公開することはできないが、数多くの情報からアサド政権側が化学兵器を使用したことを強く確信していると結論づけています。
しかし、報告書は、オバマ政権の主張を列挙しているだけで、その主張を裏付ける物的証拠は盛り込まれていません。
American intelligence agencies had indications three days beforehand that the Syrian regime was poised to launch a lethal chemical attack that killed more than a thousand people and has set the stage for a possible U.S. military strike on Syria.
The disclosure -- part of a larger U.S. intelligence briefing on Syria's chemical attacks -- raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions for the American government. First and foremost: What, if anything, did it do to notify the Syrian opposition of the pending attack?
In a call with reporters Friday afternoon, senior administration officials did not address whether this information was shared with rebel groups in advance of the attack. A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the information had been shared.
But at least some members of the Syrian opposition are already lashing out at the U.S. government for not acting ahead of time to prevent the worst chemical attack in a quarter-century. "If you knew, why did you take no action?" asked Dlshad Othman, a Syrian activist and secure-communications expert who has recently relocated to the United States. He added that none of his contacts had any sort of prior warning about the nerve gas assault -- although such an attack was always a constant fear.
Razan Zaitouneh, an opposition activist in the town of Douma, one of the towns hit in the Aug. 21 attack, said she had no early indication of a major chemical attack. "Even the moment [the attack hit], we thought it was as usual, limited and not strong," she told The Cable in an instant message. That only changed when "we started to hear about the number of injuries."
"It's unbelievable that they did nothing to warn people or try to stop the regime before the crime," Zaitouneh added.
"In the three days prior to the attack, we collected streams of human, signals and geospatial intelligence that reveal regime activities that we assess were associated with preparations for a chemical weapons attack," said a U.S. intelligence report the Obama administration released Friday.
2 things we did not hear from Secretary Kerry. (1) What is our military objective? (2) What legal justification is the Administration using?" Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, tweeted after the secretary's remarks.
The military options are all bad. Shipping arms to rebels, even if it helps them topple Assad, would ultimately empower jihadists and worsen rebel in-fighting, probably leading to lots of chaos and possibly a second civil war (the United States made this mistake during Afghanistan’s 1980s civil war, which helped the Taliban take power in the 1990s). Taking out Assad somehow would probably do the same, opening up a dangerous power vacuum
9. Hi, there was too much text so I skipped to the bottom to find the big take-away. What’s going to happen?
Short-term maybe the U.S. and some allies will launch some limited, brief strikes against Syria and maybe they won’t. Either way, these things seem pretty certain in the long-term:
• The killing will continue, probably for years. There’s no one to sign a peace treaty on the rebel side, even if the regime side were interested, and there’s no foreseeable victory for either. Refugees will continue fleeing into neighboring countries, causing instability and an entire other humanitarian crisis as conditions in the camps worsen.
“Bungled by Cameron,” said one.
“Embarrassing,” said another. “For Cameron, and for us.”
True, Britain stayed out of Vietnam ― it was dealing with issues in the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia at the time ― and there was no need for Britain in small actions in Panama and Grenada. Ronald Reagan angered his close partner Margaret Thatcher by providing minimal assistance in the Falklands War. But the Middle East, site of Britain’s former empire, is a different matter ― territory in which Britain and the United States have long history and deep interests.
もし、米国が「他国の事情などは、どうでもいい。アジアであれ中東であれ、どんな混乱が起こっても、米国には与り知らぬことだ」という姿勢に転じたら、どういうことになるのか。
「米国は軍事介入するな」と唱える人々は、特に米国国民でない限りは、こういう可能性について真剣に考えた方がいいであろう。日米安保体制それ自体、日本有事に「米国が軍事介入する」ことを前提にした安全保障システムである。
・・・・
・・・日本はシリア攻撃を支持すれば、アメリカは将来の日中戦争で支持する。日本が軍隊を派遣すれば、アメリカは将来の日中戦争で軍隊を派遣する。国際社会とは物々交換と言えます。・・・
1. The American century is truly over.
. Yes, America is still the world's most powerful state, but its relative power is declining as other states flex their political and economic muscles.
The country has made a hash of things. It squandered much of its moral credibility after the 9/11 attacks (torture and secret prisons) and wasted trillions of dollars on wars as ruinously expensive as they were politically inconclusive. Current U.S. counterterrorism policies (drones, surveillance by the National Security Agency) are angering even America's closest allies. Domestically, America is also in trouble: Its infrastructure is an embarrassment, its public education system has been allowed to decay, it locks up a higher percentage of its population than any country on Earth -- Americans are even too fat to fight. Not to mention, the country's domestic political system is broken, and the bipartisan rancor on Capitol Hill makes it hard to imagine turning any of this around.
2. No one really cares what America thinks, and the country can't fix much of anything.
America's allies remain polite, but just barely, and its adversaries are increasingly willing to thumb their noses at the United States in public.
So you want Obama to "fix things" in Syria or Egypt or Afghanistan? How? America can't even fix the public schools in the nation's capital. Why would anyone imagine it can fix things anywhere else?
3. Breaking things has become America's main talent.
America has become a wounded giant. It's steadily weakening, but it's still strong enough to hurt a lot of people as it flails around.
Breaking things can feel satisfying, but as we've seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, it only gets you so far. U.S. missile strikes against Assad's forces won't turn Syria into a stable democracy. They won't discredit or destroy Syria's Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra. They probably won't stop the Syrian civil war either. As an ill-timed but candid letter from Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) noted on Aug. 19: "[T]he use of U.S. military force can change the military balance, but it cannot resolve the underlying and historic ethnic, religious, and tribal issues that are fueling this conflict.… [V]iolent struggles for power will continue after Assad's rule ends."
But he won't tell Americans the blunt truths they need to hear: We can't fix Syria. Or Egypt. Or most other places. We don't even know how to fix our own problems.
Activist Razan Zaitouneh, who runs the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, tells FP that her team sped to the Damascus suburb of Zamalka immediately after a chemical weapons attack was reported there on Aug. 21. The media staff of Zamalka's local coordination committee, which is responsible for filming videos in the area and uploading them to the world, also sped to the scene. According to Zaitouneh, all but one of them paid with their lives.
"The chemical attacks, on the first day of the massacre, claimed the lives of many media activists in Zamalka coordination because they inhaled the chemical toxic gases," Murad Abu Bilal, the sole survivor, told Zaitouneh in an interview uploaded to -- what else -- YouTube. "[T]hey went out to shoot and collect information about the chemical attack, but none of them came back."
Lest I be accused of shilling for American intervention here, let me set a few things straight. In addition to endangering my family’s lives, the proposed “punitive strikes” that are all but inevitable probably won’t make anything better on the ground, and may make things worse, which is why I’m against them. My opinion on American intervention in general and in this conflict in particular (about which more in a subsequent post) is that the US is not to be trusted to act in anything but what it sees as its interests, and often a woefully short-sighted understanding of those interests to boot. So no, Washington does not really care about those children killed last week in a chemical attack, just as it didn’t care about the Iranians or Kurds killed in previous ones. Consequently, my feeling is that a vicious, and viciously short-sighted, realpolitik in Washington would probably like nothing better than to let its enemies fight indefinitely in Syria, burning the country to the ground as they do so.
But please, don’t let the conflict in Syria be about opposing America. Let it be about Syria, and what might actually help Syrians – you know, the actually existing people who are dying by the tens of thousands in this brutal war. But if you can’t do that, then do me a favor, and please shut up.
Fifty percent of Americans say they oppose the United States taking military action against Syrian President Bashar Assad, and nearly eight-in-10 believe President Barack Obama should receive congressional approval before using any force, according to a new NBC News poll.
Yet the public is more supportive of military action against the Syrian regime when the scope is limited to using cruise missiles launched from U.S. naval ships – 50 percent favor that kind of intervention, while 44 percent oppose it.
Read the full poll here (.pdf
In this new NBC poll, 50 percent of respondents oppose the United States taking military action in response to Syria’s suspected use of chemical weapons, compared with 42 percent who support it.
And 58 percent agree with the statement that the use of chemical weapons by any country violates a “red line” that requires a significant U.S. response, including the possibility of military action.
Still, a whopping 79 percent of respondents – including nearly seven-in-10 Democrats and 90 percent of Republicans – say the president should be required to receive congressional approval before taking any action.
The poll also finds that only 21 percent think taking action against the Syrian government is in the national interest of the United States. By comparison, 33 percent disagree and 45 percent don’t know enough to have an opinion.
And just 27 percent say that U.S. military force will improve the situation for Syrian civilians, versus 41 percent who say it won’t.
［パリ ３０日 ロイター］ - オランド仏大統領はルモンド紙とのインタビューで、英議会は対シリア軍事介入案を否決したが、シリアのアサド政権の化学兵器使用に対するフランスの行動に影響はないと述べた。
大統領は、シリア市民に「取り返しのつかない」被害を与えた化学兵器の使用について、「断固たる」懲罰的行動に出ることを支持すると表明
アメリカのこれまでの対テロ作戦に積極的に関わってきたポーランドやイタリアそれにカナダなどが、国連安全保障理事会の決議がないまま行われる軍事行動には参加しない考えを示し、アメリカの同盟国が相次いで軍事行動に対して慎重な姿勢を示しています。
