Tag: Iraq
Power, Power and Rice
While some are predicting (or hoping for) big changes in American foreign policy in the liberal interventionist/human rights first direction with the appointments of Susan Rice as national security adviser and Samantha Power as UN ambassador, I doubt it.
Both have already left marks on US foreign policy, Samantha through the Atrocities Prevention Board and Susan in the Libya intervention and many other efforts at the UN, including the successful use of its Human Rights Commission to report on atrocities in Syria. I wouldn’t suggest these are enormous departures from the past, but they certainly reflect the view that saving foreigners from mass atrocity has its place in US p0licy and needs to be given due consideration along with more traditional national interests of the military, political and economic varieties.
The main “to intervene or not” issue today is Syria. Susan and Samantha have both already been involved in internal debates on Syria, where President Obama ignored the advice of Hillary Clinton, David Petraeus and Leon Panetta. They all advised a more interventionist stance. It is the president, not the advisers, who is choosing not to try to stop the Syrian civil war, largely because of issues unrelated to Syria: Russian support on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and in the nuclear negotiations with Iran, not to mention the American public’s war weariness and the parlous budget situation. No doubt someone at the Pentagon is also telling him that allowing extremist Sunnis and Shia to continue killing each other in Syria is in the US interest. Read more
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Not promising
With the strategically placed town of Qusayr about to fall to Syrian army and Lebanese Hizbollah forces, the Syrian opposition coalition (SOC) is saying it won’t attend “Geneva II” peace talks without an end to the siege of Qusayr and a guarantee that any political settlement will ensure Bashar al Asad steps down. Even if those things were to happen magically, it is unclear who would represent the opposition at peace talks, as the SOC has been meeting in Istanbul and struggling painfully to broaden its base even as revolutionaries inside Syria complain loudly about its ineffectiveness.
The regime, emboldened by success on the battlefield and Russia’s decision to provide advanced air defenses, will not agree to either SOC condition.
Where does this leave the US?
We are left holding the diplomatic bag, trying to deliver a political solution in conditions that are not ripe for a settlement. Moscow and Tehran, while claiming to want a political solution and criticizing the West and its Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia and Qatar) for support to the revolutionaries, have been busily bolstering the Asad regime on the battlefield. President Obama is said to have ordered up plans for a no-fly zone, but there is no sign he is serious about implementing them in the face of continued Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN Security Council.
There is also no sign as yet that the regime can reassert its authority over all of Syria. Large parts of both the north and the south are in revolutionary hands. But the regime has a good chance of securing the route from Damascus to the Alawite heartland in the west and the port at Tartus. Homs is likely the next big battlefield. Government forces there have been making slow progress against rebels in the city center. It may well fall with a whimper rather than a bang.
Meanwhile sectarian conflict is spreading to Lebanon and Iraq, even as both those countries export fighters into Syria. The involvement of Lebanese Hizbollah has important military implications not only within Syria but also in Lebanon and vis-a-vis Israel. Turkey has long harbored the Syrian opposition forces and has suffered a number of military and terrorist attacks from Syria. The sad fact is that only a quick (and unlikely) end to the civil war in Syria will save its neighbors from refugee flows, terrorist bombs, sectarian conflict,and the risk that they too may end up embroiled in a regional Levantine war.
So what is to be done?
If, like me, you are of the school that says diplomacy is getting other people to do what you want them to do, you’ve got to have doubts whether convening peace talks at this point is going to produce a settlement, however much you might like that to happen. They could be useful in clarifying positions, unifying the opposition, establishing some principles, making some contacts and defining better what is at issue, but it is highly unlikely that you are going to get a settlement when both sides think, however unrealistically, they may gain from more fighting and worry that an agreement to lay down arms could lead to slaughter when the other side fails to abide.
There is no trust at this point between the Asad regime and the revolutionaries. Neither side believes the other is serious about negotiating or about implementing a negotiated agreement. Unless one side or the other manages a military breakout that today seems unlikely, we are a long way from the end in Syria, which means the region will be under serious strain for a long time to come.
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Memorial Day for all, again and again
I have little to add to what I said the past two years on Memorial Day, so I am republishing what I wrote originally in 2011 with slight updates and a short additional paragraph:
I spent my high school years marching in the Memorial Day parade in New Rochelle, New York and have never lost respect for those who serve and make sacrifices in uniform. Even as an anti-war protester in the Vietnam era, I thought denigration of those in uniform heinous, not to mention counterproductive.
It is impossible to feel anything but pride and gratitude to those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Kosovo, Bosnia, Panama and Somalia during the previous decade. Nor will I forget my Memorial Day visit to the American cemetery in Nettuno accompanying Defense Secretary Les Aspin in the early 1990s, or my visit to the Florence cemetery the next year. These extraordinarily manicured places are the ultimate in peaceful. It is unimaginable what their inhabitants endured. No matter what we say during the speechifying on Memorial Day, there is little glory in what the troops do and a whole lot of hard work, dedication, professionalism and horror.
That said, it is a mistake to forget those who serve out of uniform, as we habitually do. Numbers are hard to come by, but a quick internet search suggests that at at least 2000 U.S. civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus quite a few “third country” nationals. They come in many different varieties: journalists, policemen, judges, private security guards, agriculturalists, local government experts, computer geeks, engineers, relief and development workers, trainers, spies, diplomats and who knows what else. I think of these people as our “pinstripe soldiers,” even if most of them don’t in fact wear pinstripes. But they are a key component of building the states that we hope will some day redeem the sacrifices they and their uniformed comrades have endured.
Iraqi and Afghan civilians killed number at least 100 times the number of American civilians killed. Numbers this large become unfathomable. Of course some–and maybe more–would have died under Saddam Hussein or the Taliban, but that is not what happened. They died fighting American or Coalition forces, or by accident, or caught in a crossfire, or trying to defend themselves, or in internecine violence, or because a soldier got nervous or went beserk, or….Memorial Day in this age of “war among the people” should be about the people, civilian as well as military, non-American as well as American, not only about the uniform, the flag or the cause.
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No questions are a bad sign
Myanmar’s President Thein Sein put on a good show at SAIS yesterday. In his prepared remarks, he talked about:
- His country’s transition from autocracy to an open society and democracy;
- Ending Myanmar’s isolation and its internal, communal wars;
- Bringing perpetrators to justice;
- Pursuing national dialogue;
- Establishing the state on the basis of the people’s sovereignty;
- Opening the economy in a way that is fair to all;
- Taking advantage of Myanmar’s geopolitical situation in a resurgent Asia;
- Protecting the natural environment;
- Reforming the military;
- Opening the political system to multiple parties, civil society and free elections;
- The coming of age of a new generation unburdened by past conflicts;
- Meeting the challenges of natural disasters, sea-level rise and epidemics;
- Broadening the concept of national identity and finding ways to work together to build the state and nation.
All this he noted will require compromise, tolerance and patience. It will also require going beyond the 10 ceasefires already in place to another imminent one with the Kachin. The ceasefires will have to be made sustainable by devolution, resource-sharing and broad popular support.
What more can a proper 21st century American professor ask of a former dictator?
Then two things happened that cast a shadow on the event: he did not take questions, and when I got back to the office news of a two-child limit on Muslims in an area where they are already subject to ethnic cleansing reached me. I already knew that the President had not fulfilled his commitments on a number of reform issues.
So what are we to make of this virtually impeccable speech and a less than perfect record? I wouldn’t doubt Thein Sein’s sincerity. I thought his speech written in Washington (a couple of well-informed colleagues disagreed), but he read it with conviction and the things it said were vigorous. He’ll have to wear them when he gets home. But his performance in an interview at the Washington Post was at times been opaque and at times defensive of the military role in Myanmar.
Thein Sein is a transition figure who can’t avoid the contradictions of his transitional position, even if he was unequivocal in describing the regime he spent his career in as an autocracy. He said a lot of the right things. What was missing in the presentation was however something fundamental: he never mentioned human rights. The transition he was describing was an elite-decided and elite-led transition, not one respectful of the rights of individuals.
Had there been a Q and A session, I and likely others would have explored this lacuna. That is only proper, in particular at a university event. It’s only the second time in many years of attending such events that I remember no Q and A. The last time was more than 10 years ago, when Michael Armitage appeared as deputy secretary of state at USIP to justify the Iraq war. No questions then either. It was a bad sign.
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Ten things the president should be doing
Herewith my short list of ten international issues more worthy of presidential attention than the issues that are getting it this week:
- Drones: Apparently the President is preparing to address how and why he uses them soon.
- Syria: Secretary of State Kerry and the Russians are ginning up a peace conference next month, while Moscow strengthens Syrian defenses against Western intervention.
- Iraq: The Syrian war is spilling over and posing serious challenges to the country’s political cohesion.
- Egypt: President Morsi is taking the Arab world’s most populous country in economically and politically ruinous directions.
- Israel/Palestine: With the peace process moribund, the window is closing on the opportunity to reach a two-state outcome.
- Libya: The failure to establish the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force leaves open the possibility of further attacks on Americans (and on the Libyan state).
- Afghanistan: The American withdrawal is on schedule, but big questions remain about what will be left behind.
- Pakistan: Nawaz Sharif’s hat trick provides an opportunity for improved relations, if managed well.
- Iran: once its presidential election is over (first round is June 14, runoff if needed June 21), a last diplomatic effort on its nuclear ambitions will begin.
- All that Asia stuff: North Korean nukes, maritime jostling with China, Trans-Pacific Partnership, transition in Myanmar (how about trying for one in Vietnam?), Japan’s economic and military revival…
In the good old days, presidents in domestic trouble headed out on international trips. Obama doesn’t seem inclined in that direction. He really does want to limit America’s commitments abroad and restore its economy at home. Bless him. But if things get much worse, I’ll bet on a road trip.
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No narrow way out
This rare interview with Salim Idriss, who (sort of) commands the forces in Syria that call themselves the Free Army, is telling. It demonstrates three things:
- The rebels are still in need of weapons.
- Their fragmented structure makes supplying them a dicey proposition.
- Disunity is a serious impediment to their military progress.
This is not an unfamiliar situation. It is comparable to the Bosnian army during the first year of that country’s miserable war, which started more than twenty years ago and went on for three and a half years before the Federation forces started winning and the Dayton accords ended it.
By then, the Bosnian (ABiH) was unified under General Rasim Delic and fighting in tandem with the Croat Defense Force (HVO) and the Croatian Army (HV) against the Republika Srpska army (VRS). But things hadn’t started that way. The HVO and the ABiH had even fought with each other in 1992 and 1993, just as some rebel forces inside Syria have in recent months.
Likewise in Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation Army was not completely unified at first and fought occasionally with the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo (FARK), a less well-known group that also fought against the Yugoslav security forces.
The Syrian rebel forces will need greater unity if they are to make further progress against the Syrian army, which has been gaining ground in the past few weeks. That is at least in part due to Iranian and Lebanese Hizbollah forces fighting inside Syria. The regime’s objective is to relieve Damascus and secure the route to the Alawite-populated areas of the northeast, where ethnic cleansing of Sunnis has been proceeding apace.
The rebel forces are also going to need more international help, at the very least arms supplies, but some want a much narrower focus. Aram Nerguizian wants American intervention to focus exclusively on chemical weapons and extremists among the rebels:
How U.S. military power could be used is to selectively target risks tied to proliferation of chemical weapons and other strategic capabilities in Syria. It could be used to contain and curtail the expansion of al Qaeda in the Levant and to prevent the preeminence of radical forces in the region.
The chemical weapons seem to me strategically irrelevant. If used, they have killed a tiny fraction of the more than 80,000 dead. It can still be argued that the President’s “red line” has to be enforced, lest failing to do so sends the wrong message to Iran. Certainly a credible threat of military force to block Tehran from getting nuclear weapons is vital to the diplomatic strategy the President is pursuing. But the notion that chemical weapons, like nuclear bombs, are “weapons of mass destruction” is hyperbole. Syria’s use of chemical weapons has nothing like the implications of Iran gaining nuclear ones. Finding and destroying Asad’s stocks of sarin and other poisons would be a major military enterprise, not the limited intervention some may imagine.
Extremists are likewise a difficult target to engage. Muslim extremists also emerged in Bosnia and Kosovo but were quickly undone once the fighting was over. That will be a far more difficult process in Syria, as it will not be getting the tens of thousands of NATO peacekeeping forces that made it happen quickly, and in retrospect easily, in the Balkans. But how, precisely, does one target Jabhat al Nusra in Syria? Do we really want to be hunting them down with drones while they are fighting the Asad regime? Or encouraging the Free Syria Army, which is less than fully effective against the regime forces, to engage against them while the extremists are fighting Asad? We have made it clear that Jabhat al Nusra is not acceptable to the international community, something the UN reinforced last week with financial sanctions. But do we really need to do more than that right now?
The higher priority is to focus on protecting civilians in Syria. The regime is targeting civilians in rebel-held areas daily, trying to make life there unbearable and governance impossible. The purpose is to get the civilians to expel the insurgents, in the hope doing so will provide some measure of relief from artillery and air bombardment. Protecting Syria’s civilian population from these ravages should be our priority concern.
The costs of failing to do so are high. US humanitarian relief in Syria could total $1 billion by the end of this year. Unless we focus on civilian protection we are not likely to recover some measure of confidence in Syria’s Sunni Muslim population and prevent its youth from further radicalization. A post-Asad Syria dominated by extremists will be a problem for the Middle East and the US for decades into the future. We should want a Syria that respects the rights of its citizens (regardless of sect or ethnicity) as well as its borders with Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. That will take time and effort. There is no shortcut. A narrow focus on chemical weapons and extremists will not serve these broader strategic purposes. There is no narrow way out.
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