Tag: Iraq
Washington is still trying to warm up from the holidays and the chill:
1. US National Security Strategy
Tuesday, January 7, 2014 – 12:00pm – 1:30pm
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On January 7, Thomas E. Donilon, distinguished fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, will be in conversation with Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of The Aspen Institute. This event is presented in partnership with the Aspen Institute Middle East Programs.
The Washington Ideas Roundtable Series is made possible with the generous support of Michelle Smith and the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.
2. Mona Yacoubian & Ambassador Frederic C. Hof
As part of the Global Leaders conversation series, Ambassador Frederic C. Hof, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Mona Yacoubian of the Stimson Center, will participate in a conversation at NYU Washington, DC on January 8, 2014. The series features Alon Ben-Meir, professor of international relations, journalist, and author, who hosts leaders from around the world in conversations that probe critical global issues and explore the policies designed to address them. The Global Leaders series is coordinated by NYU-SCPS Center for Global Affairs.
While at NYU Washington, DC, Ambassador Hof and Ms. Yacoubian will participate in a discussion with Professor Ben-Meir and take audience questions.
January 8, 2014
Program begins at 6:30PM
Reception to Follow
NYU Washington, DC
Abramson Family Auditorium
1307 L Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
3. Securing peace, promoting prosperity: The US, Japan, and India
Thursday, January 09, 2014 | 9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
AEI, Twelfth Floor, Main
1150 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s more forward-leaning foreign and national security policies have led to renewed interest in the potential for a US-India-Japan trilateral relationship. At this public event, experts will explore the rationales behind and roadblocks to greater cooperation.Are there opportunities for enhanced trade and investment relationships? Will shared security concerns lead to greater defense collaboration? And how will stronger US-India-Japan ties influence China’s posture in the region?If you are unable to attend, we welcome you to watch the event live. Full video will be posted within 24 hours.
Agenda
8:45 AM
Registration and Breakfast
9:00 AM
Opening Remarks
Dan Blumenthal, AEI
9:15 AM
Panel I: Economics
Panelists:
Anil K. Gupta, Robert H. Smith School of Business
Richard Katz, The Oriental Economist
Derek Scissors, AEI
Ron Somers, US-India Business Council
Moderator:
Sadanand Dhume, AEI
10:45 AM
Panel II: Security
Panelists:
Patrick Cronin, Center for New American Security
Paul Giarra, Global Strategies & Transformation
Dhruva Jaishankar, German Marshall Fund of the United States
Moderator:
Michael Auslin, AEI
12:30 PM
Adjournment
Event Contact Information
For more information, please contact Shannon Mann at shannon.mann@aei.org, 202.862.5911.
Media Contact Information
For media inquiries, please contact MediaServices@aei.org, 202.862.5829.
4. Inside Iran, US Institute of Peace, 9:30-11 am January 9
With Robin Wright and David Ignatius
Two long-time Middle East experts have recently returned from Iran. Their discussions with cabinet members, ayatollahs, hardliners, Members of Parliament, economists, opposition figures and ordinary Iranians offer rare insights into Iran’s increasingly vibrant political scene since President Rouhani took office and the implications of the new nuclear agreement. Robin Wright and David Ignatius offer fresh perspectives on what’s next.
Please join us for a moderated discussion on these and other issues important to Iran, its internal politics, and its relations with the world.
This event will feature the following speakers:
- Robin Wright
Journalist and Author, U.S. Institute of Peace and Woodrow Wilson International Center
- David Ignatius
Columnist and Author, The Washington Post
- Ambassador William Taylor, Moderator
Vice President, Center for Middle East & Africa, U.S. Institute of Peace
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As Liz Sly highlights in this morning’s Washington Post, the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has managed to ignite war in both countries. But for the moment the war is not the one Al Qaeda would like to be fighting against the Alawite dictatorship in Syria and the Shiite-dominated proto-democracy in Iraq. Instead it is a war between Sunni militants who want to re-establish the caliphate and nationalists–some Islamist, some secularist–who aim to change the governments but preserve the state structure in the region.
The United States has a dog in this fight. It cannot afford to see Al Qaeda gain a base of operations in eastern Syria or western Iraq. Washington will therefore back the revolt of the anti-Al Qaeda forces in Syria as well as the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq, which is getting at least some help from the Sunni tribesmen who were vital to the American victory over Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2006/7. Ryan Crocker and Bing West were on PBS Newshour Friday saying that Al Qaeda has overreached and will no doubt be defeated in the Iraq front of this Sunni civil war. They may well be right ultimately, but on Saturday Al Qaeda seems to have consolidated control over Fallujah, while losing control of Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital. It will be a while before we know the outcome of this latest iteration of Sunni on Sunni fighting.
Do the Sunni civil wars threaten state structures in the Levant? Reidar Visser, who knows as much about this part of the world as any Westerner I know, writes:
Today, there is once more a thug [sic] of war between pan-Islamism and Iraqi nationalism, but by no means has the local population universally sided with the Islamist rebels. Despite continuing squabbles among Iraqi leaders, a considerable segment of local Anbar politicians have rushed to support the Iraqi army in its efforts against pan-Islamist elements, showing that the people of western Iraq are once more sceptical about getting too intimately connected with political movements aiming at union with Syria.
His bottom line: “Dammit, It Is NOT Unravelling: An Historian’s Rebuke to Misrepresentations of Sykes-Picot.”
I’m not so sure. As Reidar himself points out, Sykes-Picot was mainly concerned with control over coastal areas. The barren interiors of Anbar and the Syrian provinces of Homs and Deir al Azour were not really an issue a century ago. The Sykes-Picot borders had little impact there.
More importantly: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Lebanon is the weakest link. It is increasingly suffering tit-for-tat attacks that its parlous internal security apparatus cannot respond to effectively. The second weakest link is the separation between Kurds in Syria and in Iraq. While Syria’s Kurds are nowhere near as concentrated as Iraq’s were, most want at least a federal unit like the Iraqi one. But if the Syrian state collapses, the Kurds will be free to pursue union with their Iraqi brethren, who might themselves be liberated if Iraq continues to descend into chaos.
There is no real possibility of an orderly redrawing of borders in the Levant. If it happens, it will be violent, messy, and even chaotic. Good guys are not likely to come out on top. Like it or not, the Americans and their Gulf friends need to do what is necessary to make sure that Al Qaeda loses the Sunni civil wars in Iraq and Syria.
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The situation in the predominantly Sunni Anbar province of Iraq deteriorated sharply yesterday, with Al Qaeda-affiliated militants taking over at least parts of Ramadi and Fallujah:
According to @Hayder_alKhoei of Chatham House, that is one of their convoys in Anbar.
This is a serious challenge to Baghdad’s authority. No doubt Prime Minister Maliki will see it that way and use the military force he had withdrawn from Anbar population centers as a peace gesture to reassert the state’s monopoly on the legitimate means of violence.
But that is not the only problem Baghdad has in Sunni-majority areas of the country. Demonstrations ongoing for months have been protesting discrimination, neglect and mismanagement. Forty-four Sunni members of parliament have offered their resignations. Moqtada al Sadr, the Shia firebrand, has openly expressed sympathy with the demonstrators and called for early elections.
Maliki has two problems, not one:
- the resurgence of Al Qaeda, due in part to the civil war in Syria, whose border with Iraq is porous;
- an alienated and disappointed population.
Military force may be appropriate in dealing with the first, but it will do nothing to resolve the second.
Maliki is a clever and resourceful politician. He has governed Iraq with an increasingly strong hand since 2006, accumulating power by appointing loyal commanders in the security forces, infringing on the independence of the judiciary, and exploiting oil revenue to distribute patronage. His authoritarian inclinations are clear, but he has also managed to maintain a working majority in parliament with agile shifts: when he is in a tussle with Sunnis, he manages to gain Kurdish support; when he faces Kurdish challenges, he finds Sunni support. He has fragmented his mostly Sunni Iraqiyya opposition and managed to maintain or even enlarge his own “state of law” coalition, even as his Shia competitors appear to have gained ground in last year’s provincial elections.
The current crisis will be an important test of Maliki’s ability to wield the Iraqi state’s military instrument to meet the Al Qaeda challenge even as he uses political means to meet the grievances of the population. If he conflates the two problems and puts too much emphasis on military means, he is likely to face a spiraling security threat. There is little risk that he will put too much emphasis on political means. That is just not his natural inclination. But he needs to meet the political challenge with serious responses to the demonstrators’ complaints, or at least something that looks as if it points in that direction. Prisoner releases and economic investment seem the best bets to generate quick, begrudgingly positive responses.
The key to the military contest lies, as it did for the Americans in 2006-8, with Sunni tribesmen in Anbar. If Maliki is able to keep them on the government’s side in cracking down on Al Qaeda affiliates, he has a good chance of winning the fight. But many of them are demoralized and alienated, having been neglected and ill-treated for years. If their younger militants see Al Qaeda as the better bet, Maliki and the Iraqi state are in trouble.
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It would be easy to be pessimistic about 2014. But as Adam Gopnik cleverly illustrates it is really impossible to know whether we are on the Titanic, destined for disaster, or its twin the Olympic, which plied the seas for two more decades without faltering.
The question is what will keep America out of trouble? How do we avoid the icebergs of contemporary international relations? Gopnik suggests avoiding challenges to honor and face and worrying little about credibility or position. This seems to me wise. The question of reputation in international affairs is fraught, but anyone of the Vietnam generation will want to be skeptical about claims the United States needs to intervene in the world to prevent its reputation from being sullied or to prove its primacy.
Hubris is the bigger danger. I, along with many others, don’t like the Obama Administration’s aloof stance towards Syria. But the least good reason for intervention there is to meet the Russian challenge, reassert primacy in the Arab world or prevent others from thinking America weak. We are not weak. We are strong, arguably far stronger than we would have been had we intervened in Syria a year ago and gotten stuck with enhanced responsibilities there. The reasons for intervention in Syria are more substantial: the threat of a terror-exporting Sunni extremist regime either in Damascus or in some portion of a partitioned Syria as well as the risk to neighboring states (Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Israel) from Syrian collapse. Read more
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Tags :
Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, China, Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, North Korea, Nuclear weapons, Syria, Turkey, United States
2013 has been a so-so vintage in the peace vineyard.
The Balkans saw improved relations between Serbia and Kosovo, progress by both towards the European Union and Croatian membership. Albania managed a peaceful alternation in power. But Bosnia and Macedonia remain enmired in long-running constitutional and nominal difficulties, respectively. Slovenia, already a NATO and EU member, ran into financial problems, as did Cyprus. Turkey‘s long-serving and still politically dominant prime minister managed to get himself into trouble over a shopping center and corruption.
The former Soviet space has likewise seen contradictory developments: Moldova‘s courageous push towards the EU, Ukraine‘s ongoing, nonviolent rebellion against tighter ties to Russia, and terrorist challenges to the Sochi Winter Olympics. Read more
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Tags :
Afghanistan, Africa, Al Qaeda, Asia, Balkans, Burma, Central African Republic, China, Cybersecurity, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, European Union, Gulf states, Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Japan, Kurds, Libya, Mali, NATO, Nigeria, North Korea, Nuclear weapons, Pakistan, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Nations, United States, Yemen, Zimbabwe
Meir Javedanfar, one of Israel’s keenest Iran-watchers, advises wisely that we need to watch Iran’s domestic politics closely if we want to know what is going to happen in the nuclear talks:
Iran’s foreign policy in 2014 is likely to be more chaotic than it was this year.
The reason is that Iran’s domestic politics is likely to be more chaotic in 2014, and in Iran, like in many other countries, foreign policy is an extension of what happens at home.
Iranian President Rouhani walks a tightrope stretched between Supreme Leader Khamanei and various conservative factions, especially those associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. A good shake from either end could leave Rouhani off balance and unable to conclude either implementation of the existing six-month agreement or negotiation of a more permanent arrangement governing Iran’s nuclear program. Read more
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