Moral Problem Paper - Essay Example

It will be argued that the U.S. participation in the possible humanitarian mission in Syria will be rather precarious from the point of view of Utilitarian moral theory, yet it may be conceivably justified by the use of Kantian ethics. FACTUAL DETAILS The incumbent President of the United States of America, Barack Obama assumed his office on 20 January 2009, and until the present time he has weathered a lot of major political crises, both of internal and external nature, in the course of his Presidency.

In particular, Obama’s handling of the 2011 Middle East political upheaval is peculiarly contradictory, with the White House ignoring the crackdown on the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen, while enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya and supporting anti-government rebels in the latter nation. At the same time, it should be noted that Obama is widely perceived as a moderate, yet politically savvy character that combines his outwardly friendly appearance with the well-tested political experience.

Irrespective of the domestic policy controversies in the U.S., it should be noted that Obama has managed to create a favourable image abroad, including the Arabic nations. This may be a determining factor in the relatively positive perception of his foreign policy in the Third World. At the same time, one might mention that Obama has repeatedly come under heavy criticism both from the right and the left for his alleged elitism and political indecisiveness, and consequently his major foreign policy decisions are distinguished by cautious and even vacillating attitude.

However, as his handling of Afghanistan-Pakistan problem shows, he is perfectly able to resort to rather hard-line foreign policy measures, and he is clearly interested in pursuing a balanced world policy, without making drastic steps similar to those of his predecessor. Finally, the U.S. President is clearly interested in restoring/retaining his previous favourable image worldwide that was marred by the U.S. indecisive behaviour in the course of the global economic crisis, and he might be interested in more active U.S. position concerning the attempts of Middle East dictatorial regimes to suppress the currently rising dissent there.

The situation in Syria is made complicated by the precarious balance of power between the supporters and opponents of the current regime. As a rule of thumb, it may be assumed that about 220,000 active personnel of Syrian Armed Forces and the unspecified number of pro-Assad higher bureaucracy, as well as about 1,5 million members of dominant Alawite minority that provides the backbone of support for Assad’s regime, are not interested in any major shifts away from the present situation, while the relatively underprivileged Sunni Arab majority and Kurdish minority (altogether about 81% of Syrian population) might gain much from the collapse of Ba’athist dictatorship and the institution of representative democracy system.

With respect to current Syria’s population dynamics, these figures will amount to about 2,000,000 and 16,000,000 persons, respectively. Finally, it should be noted that the pleasures that might be received by the parties to the situation from the pro-intervention course of Obama’s action include both lower pleasures such as guarantees of secure sustenance, and higher pleasures (i.e. the participation in the liberal democratic politics after the dictatorship’