Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence called Tuesday night for the US to be willing to use the military to hit the Syrian regime and to establish safe zones to protect civilians.
The answer seemingly put him at odds with running mate Donald Trump, who has largely advocated a pullback from foreign conflicts and requiring US allies to take on more of their own defense. It also lines him up more closely with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and his debate opponent, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, both of whom have advocated a Syrian no-fly zone.
“The United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo,” Pence said in reference to the besieged Syrian city.
“I truly do believe that what America ought to do right now is to immediately establish safe zones,” Pence said at the first and only vice presidential debate, at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, “so that families and vulnerable families with children can move out of those areas (and) work with our Arab partners in real time to make that happen.”
A safe zone would be an area inside Syria that would be defended from Syrian or Russian attack by US and allied planes. It raises thorny legal problems, because doing so without the host country’s permission means violating international law. And the possibilities for military escalation are very high if a US, Russian or Syrian plane was shot down. And many military experts say it’s not possible now, if it ever was.
Trump has said that he would be willing to support a safe zone, but only financially. When asked whether the US should be involved in establishing safe zones, Trump told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in October 2015 that he would “help them economically, even though we owe $19 trillion.”
In that same interview, Trump said he would “love a safe zone for people.”
“What they should do is, the countries should all get together, including the Gulf states, who have nothing but money, they should all get together and they should take a big swath of land in Syria and they do a safe zone for people, where they could to live, and then ultimately go back to their country, go back to where they came from,” Trump said.
