Day: December 4, 2012
Listing
The signs that Bashar al Asad is in serious trouble are many:
- His security forces are having a hard time securing the area around Damascus airport;
- They have lost a number of aircraft, helicopters and air force bases in recent days;
- Russian President Putin’s visit to Turkey has generated rumors that Moscow’s support for Asad is fading;
- Iran has intensified diplomacy with Turkey and Lebanon;
- President Obama has issued a stern warning about the use of chemical weapons:
None of these signs is definitive, but taken together they suggest that Syria’s ship of state is listing and could sink.
I’m not sure what to make of President Obama’s statement about chemical weapons. My initial inclination is to believe that we really do have intelligence that suggests Damascus is getting ready to use them. But then I remember the Tonkin Gulf incident and (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. Could it be that Washington is preparing to use an alarm about chemical weapons to justify an intervention that it has decided it has to undertake, or at least to threaten, for other reasons?
The questions don’t stop with President Obama. Is Bashar al Asad really nuts enough to think he can poison his population into submission? Or does he diddle every once in a while with his chemical weapons stocks in order to jerk the Americans’ chain? Maybe even to test our intel capabilities? Or to try to restore the wall of fear that would enable him to rule once again?
Here is what the official Syrian news agency has to say about the use of chemical weapons:
FM: Syria Stresses It Won’t Use Any Chemical Weapons, If They Exist, against Its People No Matter the Circumstances
I’m finding it a bit difficult to picture the guy in Damascus who tweets this. Is it tongue in cheek? Or is he just reflecting what the Foreign Minister said as accurately as he can?
The last guy to make a statement of this sort on behalf of the Syrian government, in July, was Jihad Makdissi (it’s in the first few minutes of this newscast from July 23):
According to Rachel Maddow last night, he has now defected and left Syria. That’s another sign the Syrian ship of state is listing.
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Downward spiral
That’s where the Israel/Palestine negotiations are headed, at least for the moment. BATNA is your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.” The Palestinians resorted to their BATNA with their successful effort last month at the UN General Assembly to get recognized as a non-member state. Israel is now resorting to its BATNA: freezing of tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and plans to build apartments for Jews in politically sensitive areas of the West Bank. This may not look like negotiation, but it is negotiation of sorts. Just not at a negotiating table.
Israel seems to have a lot better BATNAs than Palestine, at least for the moment. Palestine won a symbolic victory at the UN. Israel can really block the formation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank by constructing settlements. It can wreck havoc on Palestinian finances, weakening the already feeble Palestinian Authority. Prime Minister Netanyahu is also intent on getting Egypt to take more responsibility for Gaza, thus further reducing the possibility that Fatah and Hamas will get together and confront him with a unified Palestinian polity.
There is a good deal of moaning and groaning among Middle East experts about the inactivity of the Americans. President Obama seems intent on not doing the kind of heavy lifting on the Middle East peace process he attempted at the beginning of his first term. This too is BATNA: if Israelis and Palestinians are going to resort to theirs, he figures he can resort to his, which is not to do much. His minions say we can’t want a solution more than they do.
The irony here is that Israelis are not comfortable going to their BATNA. A (declining) majority of Israeli Jews thinks the Israeli government should accept the Arab Peace Initiative, which is based on Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 in exchange for peace agreements with Arab governments. At the same time, it looks very much as if the Israelis will re-elect Netanyahu, with an even more nationalist coalition than in the past. So things are not headed in the direction most people would like, but they are voting as if they don’t care.
Palestinians are more evenly split on the two-state solution. Their enthusiasm for Hamas, however, is already beginning to fade. as I had predicted. They are exceedingly unhappy with Israel’s construction plans but have no way of responding without making things worse. The best they have been able to do is get the Europeans to make unhappy noises, which is not something likely to affect Israeli behavior.
Meanwhile the Americans are waiting for the parties to come to the table. As Hillary Clinton said last week:
if and when the parties are ready to enter into direct negotiations to solve the conflict, President Obama will be a full partner.
But he seems unwilling or unable to block either the Israeli or the Palestinian resort resort to BATNA. We are not yet in a tailspin in the Middle East, but this is certainly a down spiral.
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