Tag: Iraq
What Congress should do
I have resisted comparisons between Syria and Bosnia, or Syria and Kosovo, as the global and regional circumstances are different. It does no good to draw conclusions that just don’t apply in a distinct situation. Bashar al Asad is not Slobodan Milosevic, the Middle East is not the Balkans, Yeltsin’s Russia is not Putin’s Russia, Obama’s United States is not Clinton’s. Distinct times and places make for dicey comparisons.
But as the Congress considers what to do about Syria, some of its members will no doubt want to think about the Balkans, where American bombing campaigns twice ended wars that seemed interminable. So better to help them get it right than to suggest they ignore the precedents.
My starting assumption is that Bashar al Asad did in fact use chemical weapons against Syria’s civilian population on August 21 and several other occasions. If like Vladimir Putin, you think this “utter nonsense,” stop reading here.
If Congress decides to authorize military action, it needs to understand what President Obama has known for a long time: we stand on a slippery slope. How Bashar al Asad will react is anyone’s guess, but we know that Milosevic reacted to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia by escalating his effort to ethnically cleanse Albanians from Kosovo. Likewise, the Bosnian Serbs reacted to the red line known as the “Gorazde rules” intended to protect UN designated safe areas by attacking Sarajevo. NATO responded by escalating in turn. If Bashar al Asad repeats chemical attacks, or sponsors terrorist attacks against American assets around the world, Washington needs to be prepared to escalate.
But bombing and escalation are not a policy. Nor is a well-targeted and time-limited bombing campaign an appropriate response to mass murder of civilians with chemical (or any other) weapons. Bashar al Asad is not a military problem. He is a political one. The military is a blunt instrument that should be wielded within the context of a broader political strategy to end his rule in Syria, block an extreme Islamist takeover, and put Syria on course towards a more open and democratic society.
The bombing in Bosnia was extensive, eventually reaching the communication nodes of the Bosnian Serb army. It was those tertiary targets that changed the course of the war, because the Serbs were unable to protect their long confrontation line with the Federation forces once they lost their classified communications capability. But even this extensive bombing might have been fruitless, or borne bitter fruit, had it not been accompanied by a diplomatic strategy, which today we associate with the Dayton agreements and Richard Holbrooke but at the time was associated with President Clinton and National Security Adviser Tony Lake.
Likewise in Kosovo, the NATO bombing followed on Yugoslav rejection of the Rambouillet agreement. The war ended with UN Security Council resolution 1244, which was the political counterpart of the military-technical agreement providing for withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo. Resolution 1244 imposed UN administration on Kosovo to develop democratic institutions and rule of law, with a view to an eventual political decision on Kosovo’s final status. NATO did not set removal of Milosevic as a war objective. But he was gone within one and a half years as the result of an election he called and a mass nonviolent movement that demanded he accept it.
I am not privy to the Administration’s military planning, but a serious political strategy would continue to aim for a power-sharing arrangement that shoves Bashar al Asad aside. The diplomacy would likely benefit from broader military action (against the Syrian air force, Scuds and artillery) than is currently contemplated, especially if it aimed at tilting the battlefield in the opposition direction. I don’t know if the Congress is willing to point in that direction, as it might require deeper American commitment than we can afford at present. But at the very least Congress should insist on stronger support for the Syrian opposition.
Is there an American interest in getting more deeply involved? Continuation of the war will likely cause state collapse in Syria as well as weaken Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and possibly Turkey. Al Qaeda affiliated extremists in both Iraq and Syria will be the beneficiaries. Kurdish irredentism is a likely consequence. The Syrian war has the potential to reshape the Levant in ways that are inimical to American interests. If Congress is going to worry about military action in response to chemical weapons use by Syria, it should also worry about a political and military strategy to counter longer-term threats to Middle East peace and stability with potentially gigantic costs to the United States.
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Bombing expectations
With the United States getting ready to bomb Syria in response to its government’s use of chemical weapons against its population, it is important to keep expectations in check. Bombing, especially if well-targeted and short duration, does not cause autocrats to give up power. Apart from a lucky shot that hits Bashar al Asad, the best that can be hoped for in Syria is that bombing may tilt the playing field back in the opposition direction, enabling the rebel forces to regain some lost ground or establish firmer control in areas where the regime has been using aircraft, missiles and artillery to disrupt opposition efforts to establish governing structures and begin to deliver services. In the best of all possible worlds, which of course is not the likeliest, this could create the kind of “mutually hurting stalemate” that would favor a negotiated outcome.
More likely a short and well-targeted bombing campaign will send no more than the message that future use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. But Bashar al Asad wouldn’t be the first autocrat to respond to a well-calibrated message by upping the ante. That’s what Milosevic did in response to NATO’s bombing: he intensified the ethnic cleansing of Albanians from Kosovo. The Obama administration needs to be ready to extend and expand its bombing if Bashar chooses to use even more chemical weapons with greater abandon. Otherwise the red line won’t hold.
The big question mark is whether a bombing campaign, even of only a few days, will loosen Russian attachment to Bashar, or cause Moscow to hug him even tighter. Certainly it would be prudent to expect Putin to use the occasion to defy the Americans and continue his effort to reassert Russian great power status. But if in fact the Russians are convinced that Bashar used chemical weapons, that may put some daylight between them and their protégé. The Americans would be wise to use all the diplomatic means at their disposal to this end, as Russian withdrawal of support for Bashar could well be decisive in the Syrian civil war.
Another important question is whether bombing will give the Syrian opposition forces more reason to unify, better to win the day, or create incentives for even more violent clashes among revolutionary brigades, which are already too common. I can’t pretend to know which course they will take, but judging from their behavior thus far it would be reasonable to expect clashes as they compete to establish themselves and expand their territorial control.
Edward Luttwak, in a typically ill-considered piece, suggests in reference to the impending bombing:
At this point, a prolonged stalemate is the only outcome that would not be damaging to American interests.
That is just dead wrong. None of America’s interests in Syria’s territorial integrity, regional stability, preventing Syria’s use for terrorism or enforcing the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons is served by a prolonged stalemate. America’s best interest will be served by a stalemate that leads quickly to a negotiated solution, allowing the international community a modicum of say-so in who inherits Syria from the Asad regime.
Can bombing lead in that direction? Yes, it can, but a great deal depends on whether the opposition can get its act together and find a unified voice to speak for it at the negotiating table. Bombing brought about negotiated solutions in Bosnia and Kosovo, with semi-satisfactory outcomes many years later. Bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan led to collapsed regimes and long American military deployments, with far less satisfactory outcomes. I’ll take the semi-satisfactory outcome any day, though it may well require some sort of international force to stabilize Syria once Bashar is gone.
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Solid kernels in a not so good idea
My SAIS colleague Ed Joseph and Aaron David Miller earlier this week put forward a proposal for a Union of Arab Democracies that merits examination despite its deep and fatal flaws. There are nuggets therein worth preserving.
The idea in their words is this:
Egypt and its fractious neighbors desperately need a unifying vision that can inculcate respect for democratic norms across glaring differences. Although Arab nations have no interest in joining the European Union or NATO, the Arab world can draw on the model of Eastern European transition, with fledgling Arab democracies devising their own supra-national organization dedicated to advancing democracy. Like the E.U. in its infancy, this Union of Arab Democracies (UAD) could start with limited objectives and evolve toward ambitious goals, including, ultimately, pan-Arab political union.
Waving their magic wand, Ed and Aaron then tell us all the good things that would happen if such an organization were to come into existence, despite the shambolic history of pan-Arab political union proposals.
If Egypt and the other Arab uprising countries were capable of creating such an organization, they wouldn’t need it. The weakness of the proposal is all too apparent when Ed and Aaron get to proposing that Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority (known to me as Palestine) would be the leading democracies, with transitioning countries (Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen) and supposedly “liberalizing” countries (Morocco, Jordan and possibly Oman) tagging along. What a democratic club! Several are more likely to find themselves joining an Islamic union than a democratic one.
Nevertheless, there is a core idea here that is important: transitions need a destination. When the Berlin wall fell, the former Soviet satellites of eastern Europe and the Baltic “captive nations” quickly set their aim on meeting European Union and NATO standards. This gave direction and impetus to countries that would otherwise have wandered as aimlessly as the North African revolutions are doing today.
The way to answer the question “transition to what?” is not to have nascent Arab democracies try to figure it out for themselves. They cannot reasonably aim for membership in NATO or the EU, but they should be able to aim at two easier targets: the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe or, as my Turkish colleague Aylin Unver Noi suggests, the Council of Europe.
OSCE comprises 57 states and plays an important role in the Balkans and the more Asian parts of Eurasia. Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia are already among its “cooperating partners.” Several OSCE members are no farther along in democratizing than their Middle Eastern partners. With 47 member states, the Council of Europe regards itself as the continent’s leading human rights organization. It has a human rights court with some real enforcement capacity that could provide minorities in the Middle East with real recourse if their mother countries were to join.
The idea of extending OSCE and the Council of Europe to the southern littoral of the Mediterranean may seem far fetched, but efforts to construct more ad hoc arrangements have not worked well. Neither the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership nor the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative gained much traction before 2011, Aylin says, and their relevance will be further reduced by the Arab uprisings.
Another of the world’s more restrictive clubs, the rich people’s Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) , has opened its doors to newly developed states like Korea and Mexico, much to their benefit and the benefit of the organization. Opening the OSCE and Council of Europe to new Middle Eastern members, who would need to meet clearly defined criteria in order to get in, would be a worthwhile experiment. It would give the Arab uprisings, if they want it, a destination as well as a tough-minded qualification process, which is really what Ed and Aaron were calling for.
So “no” to the Arab Democratic Union. “Yes” to Arab democracy that aims to meet the not too exacting standards of the OSCE and respects human rights as defined by the Council of Europe.
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It’s Trayvon Martin’s fault
Murhaf Jouejati, a leading light of the Syrian opposition, complained on Twitter:
I watched ABC “Worldnews” tonight. Despite today’s killing of tens of Syrian civilians by the Assad regime, ABC reported nothing about Syria.
He added:
NBC also had nothing on Syria. Still wondering why American public opinion is so uninformed?
At least in the United States, the horrors of Homs and Aleppo seem to have been driven not only off the front pages but out of the press entirely, presumably because the trial of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin used up all the ink (and electrons). The exception was this morning’s New York Times, which has a good overview of the Syrian regime’s recent military successes.
I confess to my own fascination with the trial, which is like a Rohrschach test: if you see race as a factor, then the inkblot points toward conviction for something; if you don’t, you might agree with the jurors who acquitted someone who profiled, followed, quarreled with and shot an unarmed seventeen-year-old. How the prosecutors failed to anticipate the racial factor is a mystery to me. And why the press calls a self-appointed vigilante ready to use his firearm a “neighborhood watch volunteer” I cannot fathom.
Though far from our shores, the plight of Homs really is more heinous than this unsuccessful prosecution, which allowed a single sociopath to go free. Those who are watching see mass murder of a civilian population, including even those trying to mediate. In Aleppo, people are starving. Sociopath Bashar al Asad is killing upwards of one hundred Travon Martins, or his parents, every day. Asad’s mostly Alawite and Shia (including Hizbollah) collaborators are busy chasing the Sunni population north and presumably plan to fill in with Alawites and other minorities whenever conditions allow.
The shape of things in Syria is becoming all too clear. The regime is seeking to establish a robust corridor linking Damascus to the relatively concentrated populations of Alawites in the west, which is conveniently adjacent to Lebanon’s Shia population (and Hizbollah fighters). Asad seems intent on pushing north as far as he can: first to Homs, then Aleppo if possible. But his supply lines will be getting longer and help from Lebanon less convenient. At some point the confrontation lines will likely stop moving north, at which point both opposition and regime will turn to their own rear areas and try to mop up any continuing resistance and ethnically cleansing as much as they think necessary.
The result will be de facto, partly sectarianized, partition, likely with opposition-controlled areas both south and north of the regime’s main axis from Damascus to Tartous and Latakia and extending in the east to Deir Azzour. The opposition will have supply lines to Turkey in the north, Iraqi Kurdistan in the east and Jordan in the south. The regime will continue to depend on Russian and Iranian supplies shipped mainly to Tartous.
This partition could persist for a long time. It is now forgotten, but during the Bosnian war the confrontation lines moved little for 3.5 years. Only with the American bombing did the Croat and Muslim forces tip the balance of war and begin to sweep through western Bosnia. A soft partition with fairly clear confrontation lines could likewise last for years in Syria, provided both sides are able to maintain their international supply lines.
This kind of persistent stalemate would push both sides in more radical, sectarian directions. The opposition, many of whose most aggressive fighters are militant Islamists, will likely move more in that direction. Moderates do not fare well in polarized situations. The regime will continue to claim the mantle of secularism and multiethnicity, but in fact its core is increasingly Alawite and Shia, with Christians, Druze and lots of Sunnis trying to duck, or sit on the fence, or whatever you want to call what people do when fear outweighs the desire for freedom.
The American jilting of the Syrian rebels may seem the easiest way out to an Administration that is taking retrenchment seriously. But it isn’t going to be cheap. US expenses for Syria, mostly humanitarian aid, are climbing close to $1 billion. Next year could easily double that figure, especially if the other states (Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq) in the Levant start to collapse. You know: a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we are talking about real money. I’d prefer we worry about the people, but if that doesn’t grab high-level attention maybe the expenditures will.
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Peace Picks July 8-12
A computer crash delayed this week’s abundant edition, but here it is:
1. The Failed States Index 2013 Launch Event, The Fund for Peace, Tuesday, July 9 / 9:00am – 11:30am
Venue: University Club of Washington DC
1135 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
Speakers: John Agoglia, David Bosco, Edward T. Cope, Kate Thompson
The Failed States Index (FSI) is a leading index that annually highlights current trends in social, economic and political pressures that affect all states, but can strain some beyond their capacity to cope. Apart from the impact on their people, fragile and failed states present the international community with a variety of challenges. In today’s world, with its globalized economy, information systems and security challenges, pressures on one fragile state can have serious repercussions not only for that state and its people, but also for its neighbors and other states halfway across the globe.
Linking robust social science with modern technology, the FSI is unique in its integration of quantitative data with data produced using content-analysis software to process information from millions of publicly available documents. The result is an empirically-based, comprehensive ranking of the pressures experienced by 178 nations. The FSI is used by policy makers, civil society, academics, journalists and businesses around the world.
Register for the event here:
http://fsi2013.eventbrite.com/
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Tabler and Lynch go ten rounds
The Obama administration’s decision to arm the Syrian rebels is controversial in Washington. While some support the decision, others consider it “probably [Obama’s] worst foreign policy decision since taking office.” Last week, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy hosted a debate on Arming the Syrian Rebels: Sliding Toward Iraq or Inching Toward Stability. Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute, argued for arming the rebels. On the other side stood Marc Lynch, associate professor at George Washington University and editor of Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel. Robert Satloff, executive director and Howard P. Berkowitz Chair in U.S. Middle East Policy at the Washington Institute, moderated the discussion. Read more
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