Month: July 2018
What more could Putin hope for?
Danielle Pletka writes this morning:
…allegations that Trump is a Russian agent, being blackmailed by Russia, or a traitor bent on destroying America. That’s just crackers….Frothing conspiracy theories about Trump only drag everyone into that world. Non-stop outrage is exhausting and counterproductive.
Let’s leave aside that Danielle has produced her share of froth. I’ve often thought her outrage at Democrats was exhausting and counterproductive.
What Danielle fails to do is account for Trump’s behavior towards Putin. Let’s suppose that he is not a Russian agent, blackmailed by Russia, or a traitor. Why is he doing what he is doing? It is true, as she says, that the policies of the Administration are different from the behavior of the President, but that makes the mystery even greater.
This morning, the New York Times reveals that President-elect Trump was shown the intelligence demonstrating Putin’s personal involvement in the Russian effort to interfere in his favor. He has nevertheless spent a year and a half shitting on the American intelligence community and denying its unanimous conclusions, now confirmed in a Justice Department indictment. How does one account for that?
One possibility is that he is concerned about the legitimacy of his own election. But that doesn’t actually require him to deny the Russian interference. He could instead simply deny that it affected the outcome.
Instead he has chosen to deny everything: interference, collusion, impact. The interference has been established to the satisfaction of the intelligence community and the Special Counsel. Collusion is well on its way, even if you don’t believe (as I do) that Trump’s public appeal for Russian cooperation in publicizing Hillary Clinton’s emails was a signal to Moscow to release whatever it had. The question of impact will never be resolved, as it involves a counterfactual on which reasonable people won’t agree.
He is president. The main issue is not the legitimacy of his election, but rather the means by which it was achieved and how to prevent Russian interference in the future. By now, most of us have accepted, even if with regret, that the Trump Administration will serve until January 2021, come what may. We would still like to know why Trump behaves the way he does vis-a-vis Putin. Wouldn’t you, Danielle?
Despite all the sturm und drang, Republicans are sticking with Trump. They even liked his performance with Putin and think the allegations of Russian interference are a distraction. The real issues today for most Republicans are immigration and trade.
That is what Danielle should be most concerned about. Trump has converted a party that once supported free trade, legal immigration, and a strong trans-Atlantic alliance into one that wants to protect non-competitive American producers, end the welcome to the tired and poor yearning to breath free, and treat Europe as an enemy. That will wreck the American economy and its leadership of the liberal democratic world. I won’t froth, but what more could Putin hope for?
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Not too late for shame
Why don’t we talk more about civil society in Syria?
A cursory search of “Syria” in Google News will produce a plethora of articles and papers about the intentions, interests, and actions of foreign powers, military groups, radical militias, and the Syrian government. In common discussion both among the policy community and the greater American public, the civil conflict in Syria is almost exclusively seen through the lens of great-power politics. There are many reasons for this:
- As Americans, we care about what our government does abroad, and consider crises with this in mind.
- It is natural when analyzing conflicts to focus on the main actors, i.e. states and military groups.
- Larger social organizations like governments and militias use press releases, a strong online presence, and propaganda to gain visibility abroad.
- Small, local organizations, or disorganized civil society are harder to place in the public eye.
The adage that “one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic” still holds. The media industry can only run so many horror stories of bombed civilians, destroyed hospitals, or sniped children before the general public shouts “enough,” and switches off. There is comfort in ignorance. Tragedy only sells in small quantities.
It has become easy to see the Syrian civil conflict as a giant game of chess between half a dozen actors and to forget the millions of lives that have been impacted by the war. Netanyahu’s latest outburst or Trump’s mood today can begin to matter more than the fifty civilians massacred in the latest Russian airstrike. It is easy, when presented with such a deluge of information and traumatic events, to filter out the bloody noise of individual annihilation and stick to the clean, sanitary puppet show of great-power politics.
For me, the bubble burst on July 13, when the Middle East Institute welcomed Syrian journalist and civil activist Raed Fares to speak at a roundtable about the state of civil society in northwestern Syria. Fares, who has survived multiple assassination attempts by ISIS and Jabat al-Nusra, founded the Union of Revolutionary Bureaus (URB) in the city of Kafranbel, located in the northern region of Idlib. Their main activity is running the FM radio station Radio Fresh, as well as overseeing women centers and other civil society endeavors around the city.
What struck home the hardest while listening to Fares is the realization of how dissociated I had become from the pain and horror of individual people living and fighting in Syria. Some might say that is for the best: emotion and objectivity don’t mix well. Good research doesn’t come from the heart.
Phasing out emotion, however, as well as concentrating on objective, feasible policy-making, can make us forget about the true victims of the Syrian civil war. National interests may take precedence over foreign lives in the minds of many, but that doesn’t mean that local casualties and damage should stop mattering. This civil war will end someday. Many would argue it is already over. The process of reconstruction is just around the corner. The state of civil society matters.
This is especially the case in Idlib. Fares is currently visiting the United States to try to rescue funding for his organization cut by the Trump administration, without which he will likely have to shut down the URB. He warned that the disappearance of secular, democracy-promoting organisms such as the URB directly profits jihadi groups such as HTS and al-Qaeda, who become the default service providers and political mouthpieces for a tired and frustrated population.
A journalist told me that Syria stories consistently are the least-read media pieces. Americans are tired of hearing about Syria. After seven years of the same-old, depressing stories coming out of the country, they apparently would rather hear about almost anything else.
The consequence, according to Fares, is a fairly similar conclusion in Syria, albeit for wildly different reasons. After seven years of blood, seven years of bombs, seven years of poverty and misery, the Syrian people are ready for the conflict to be over, regardless of who wins. They just want something resembling stability and normalcy. Currently, only Bashar al-Assad can provide this.
If anything, this is the most significant sign that Assad has won. In the territories currently or soon to be under his control, the appetite for systemic change and popular upheaval has been utterly annihilated, leaving a despot who massacres his own people as their only hope for proximate relief. Who can blame them? This is just a symbol of the moral failure reached by the international community when it comes to the Syrian people.
The policy community and the greater public need to acknowledge and focus on the plight of Syrians. Forgetting about the Syrian people is counter-productive. Stabilization is the current buzzword when it comes to Syria, and it cannot occur without the help and interest of the local population. Neither can peace-building and reconstruction, whether or not the American government is involved. Policy think-tanks and media outlets need to make a greater effort to broadcast the voices of the Syrian population, and to make sure that their hopes and needs are part of the conversation surrounding their future.
Not only is shutting out the Syrian people counter-productive, it is also wrong. Justice and morality might seem like privileges that can wait for stability and security to be restored. Local populations, however, don’t forget past injustices easily. The Syrian people, and the greater Arab world, will remember how we treated them at their hour of greatest need. It is probably already too late for redemption. It is not, however, too late for shame.
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Good grief!
President Trump tried, in Washington parlance, to “walk back” the doubt he expressed Monday in Helsinki about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 US election:
This is ridiculous, as he only repeated in Helsinki what he has said dozens of times on other occasions, but the ferocious reaction, even among Republicans, to his doing it in front of Russian President Putin got to him. Still he added in this feeble lie that it might be others.
He has also managed to question the mutual defense provisions on which NATO is based, by worrying about whether Albania or Montenegro might provoke a war. That is precisely what Putin would want him to do. None of the allies can now be even moderately confident that the US would come to their aid in the event of war. Russia, a middling power, no longer faces the strongest alliance in history and can pick off bits and pieces in its “near abroad” at will, as Putin has already done in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Who is next?
This weakening of an already declining America is purposeful, not incidental. Trump is far more concerned with his own image and strength than with the nation’s. He announced in Monday’s press conference that he had turned around America’s relations with Russia in a single meeting, just as he claimed he had ended Kim Jong-un’s threat to America a few weeks before in a single meeting. Kim has let him know that is nonsense by continuing his missile and nuclear programs as well as dissing Secretary of State Pompeo on his last visit to Pyongyang. Putin will do likewise. Trump’s is a needy ego, one that craves always being at the center of attention and credited with superhuman feats. If the nation’s interests are too difficult to pursue, that’s not a problem. He’ll pursue his own.
Who follows such an obviously inadequate and self-serving leader? Something like 40% of Americans do. What they see in him is a mirror of themselves: a needy person who commands the kind of attention and credit they think their due. They see strength where I see weakness. They see truthfulness where I see mendacity. They see capability where I see incompetence. Fox News has convinced them that the Emperor is wearing a magnificent suit of clothes.
Are we close to the moment when the little boy cries out “but he isn’t wearing anything at all!” I doubt it. The Republicans do not seem ready to do more than complain about Trump kissing Putin’s ass in Helsinki. Trump’s followers will remain loyal and the Republican party firmly in his hands, even if in private many members of Congress are complaining bitterly. In the meanwhile, the rest of the world, including more than half of Americans, sees all too clearly what Trump is wearing. And their reaction is “good grief!”
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Coup failure and civilian control
The SETA Foundation convened a panel yesterday discussing how the July 15, 2016 coup attempt has affected civil-military relations in Turkey. Panelists were:
- Sener Akturk, Associate Professor, Koç University Department of International Relations
- Edward Erickson, Scholar-in-Residence in the Clark Center for Global Engagement, State University of New York at Cortland
- Mark Perry, Author and Foreign Policy Analyst.
Kadir Ustun (Executive Director, The SETA Foundation at Washington DC) moderated the conversation.
Ustun underlined that the events of July 2016 were an attack on Turkey’s democracy. Erdogan’s leadership in the coup’s aftermath allowed the Turkish people to “reclaim their democratic institutions.” Akturk furthered this point, claiming that Turkey actually faced two assaults on its democracy, one from the “bolshevik” PKK in July 2015 and the other from Fethullah Gulen’s “Messianic cult” in July 2016.
Erdogan’s reforms, Akturk said, posed an existential threat to each group by eroding the credibility of their grievances with Turkish society. The creation of a government-sponsored Kurdish TV channel in 2009 significantly reduced the PKK claim that Erdogan marginalized the Kurds. The lifting of the headscarf ban for public employees in 2013 eroded the Gulen Movement’s argument that the government limited religious freedom of expression.
As a result, both groups resorted to violence to achieve their political objectives. Akturk emphasized that these groups, not Erdogan, represent the real threat to Turkey’s democracy. While Erdogan championed Morsi’s democratically-elected government in Egypt, Gulenists encouraged the coup that brought it down in 2013. Further, the PKK’s constitution reveals its Bolshevik-leaning tendencies, while the governing style of its Syrian affiliate, the PYD, betrays the PKK’s preference for totalitarianism.
Akturk also remarked that the attempted coup shifted the Turkish civilian-military balance firmly in favor of civilian oversight over the military. As a result of the coup attempt, the military became subordinate to civilian rule, forcing the Turkish armed forces to delink themselves from politics and occupy themselves only with fighting. Finally, Akturk revealed that any doubts surrounding Turkey’s military capability following Erdogan’s dismissal of 42% of its commanders after the coup were swiftly silenced with the success of Operation Euphrates Shield in the Fall of 2015.
Erickson argued that the coup failed because of a generational change in the military. The staunch Kemalists who held the office of Chief of the General Staff during Turkey’s coup-riddled 20th century had largely been replaced by younger officers by 2016. Many of these officers received their educations abroad or had served on NATO assignments, exposing them to the view that the military should not interfere with domestic politics. Further, many had witnessed the aftermath of the 1980 coup, which resulted in over 600,000 arrests. As a result, the coup failed. Instead of siding with the plotters, the Chief of the General Staff in 2016, Hulusi Akar, sided with Erdogan.
The significance of the coup for Turkey’s democracy, Erickson argued, is that it brought about Turkey’s second republic, which began with the adoption of the presidential system this year. Importantly, the presidential system brought about one of Samuel Huntington’s key elements of a functioning democracy: civilian control over the military. In Erickson’s view, while Turkey’s politics may swing towards authoritarianism in the short term under Erdogan, the establishment of the military as a force used purely for fighting represents a gain that will strengthen Turkey’s democracy in the long term.
In his remarks, Perry cautioned against using American standards to measure the legitimacy of Turkey’s military, and to instead appreciate that Turkey’s establishing civilian control over the military is a huge accomplishment. Perry claimed that Hulusi Akar’s decision to side with Erdogan during the coup reveals that “Turkey does not need coups anymore.” But the Turkish military still has a long way to go before it is viewed as a legitimate institution by all Turks. So long as not all elements of Turkish society feel represented by the Turkish armed forces, some Turks will continue to struggle to see it as a legitimate implementer of Turkish national interests abroad.
Caveat emptor: All of the panelists agreed that the failure of the attempted coup strengthened Turkey’s democracy by paving the way to firmer civilian control of the military. The panelists, however, chose to gloss over the reality that these gains will likely only become visible after Erdogan and his authoritarian agenda leave office.
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America last
The general reaction to yesterday’s Helsinki summit between Presidents Putin and Trump was even more dramatic than my own. Here’s a sampling:
- treasonous
- collusion in public
- nauseating
- most embarrassing performance by american president ever seen
- incredibly weak
- a personal and national embarrassment
- beyond disgraceful to dangerous
- most serious mistake of his presidency
- pathetic and weak display of American leadership
Many of those comments are from Republicans. Trump’s indication that he continues to believe Putin’s denials about interference in the 2016 campaign won the most disapproval, though that is something he has said repeatedly in the past. Saying it in front of Putin, and looking admiringly at the Russian president through several slams against the United States, got to people.
I can almost hear the tectonic plates of the world order shifting.
Putin is the big winner out of this summit, as he reasserted Russia’s claim to being a global power equal to the US. He came to the meeting well-prepared but late enough to show Trump who is boss. His people have declared that the summit exceeded all Russian expectations. Trump did nothing to take Putin down a peg or two: on Ukraine they agreed to disagree, on Syria Moscow is dominant, and on many other issues Putin asserted Russia’s claim to being America’s indispensable partner, even though the country has a GNP the size of Spain’s and the moral standing of those little figures you find at the bottom of a Hieronymous Bosch painting, roasting in hell.
The US in the past week has proven itself weak and unreliable as an ally. All Europeans should understand that when Trump says you are a foe, he means it and will try to do you serious harm, in particular on trade. Europe needs to stand up for itself, not only vis-a-vis Russia. The Americans are providing a fabulous opportunity to unify and strengthen the European Union, its military capabilities, and its soft power. Brexit will be a blow–the UK has been an important contributor to EU strength–but Europe will still be the largest economy in the world. Use the position wisely and the Americans will soon be begging for their alliance back.
The Chinese must be chortling. Putin is just an inconvenient and annoying neighbor to them, one that seems unable to produce all the natural gas it promises to export. But Putin has done Beijing a big favor by distracting Washington from the Asia Pacific, where the US should be doing far more to maintain its friends and allies. They are the first line of defense against a rising rival hegemon as well as against North Korea. But Washington is doing nothing to counter China’s South China Sea militarization, it has abandoned the Trans Pacific Partnership, and it has made a hash of the effort to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. China’s claim to restoring its position as the “Middle” Kingdom, that is the central one, is now closer to being realized.
On the home front, Trump has embarrassed Republicans, but they aren’t going to do anything about it. Few are parroting the White House’s talking points about the Summit, and some have even directly criticized the President. But mostly they are staying mum or issuing mild critiques. The Democrats are having a field day, but that won’t matter to Trump. Only a serious rebellion within his own party could cause him to rethink, or maybe better to say think. That isn’t happening yet.
Mueller still has a month or so to indict Americans for their roles in the Russian election hacking. That is the next shoe to drop. Then he needs to hold back for the two months preceding the election, in accordance with Justice Department rules. Then the only effective antidote to Trump’s surrender of American interests to Putin is at the polls in November. We can hope that it is finally dawning on most Americans that this is a president who puts the United States last, not first. The rest of the world already knows.
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Stabilizing Iraq and Syria post-ISIS
The National Press Club last Wednesday hosted the Foreign Policy Research Institute‘s launch of the latest issue of their journal, Orbis, entitled “Stabilizing the Fertile Crescent after the Fall of the Caliphate.” The papers aim to analyze the current state of ISIS as well as society in Iraq and Syria, and to assess and recommend possible guidelines and tactics for American action in the region. To accompany the issue’s launch, FPRI invited the following speakers to discuss the topic of stabilization in Syria and Iraq:
Moderator: Samuel Helfont – Assistant Professor, Naval War College, Monterey
Tally Helfont – Director of Program on the Middle East, Foreign Policy Research Institute
Barak Mendelsohn – Associate Professor, Haverford College
Assaf Moghadam – Adjunct Associate Professor, Columbia University
Mendelsohn asserted that to deal with global jihadi movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS we need to more accurately assess the scope of their threat and capacities. The challenge they pose to local and American security is often overblown. Focusing on jihadi terrorist attacks is counter-productive. A single successful terrorist attack can lead to the impression that the jidadis are “winning,” when the situation is often more complex. Terrorism is an instrument for political, not strategic or military objectives. Jihadi movements consistently fail to achieve their political objectives – for instance, setting up a sustainable ISIS caliphate – through terrorism.
Mendelsohn also emphasized the systemic challenges that constrain the threat posed by transnational jihadi movements. National and subnational identities, which are usually of national or ethnic nature, constrain the appeal of transnational movements based on religious identity. It is not sufficient to practice Islam to find religious political leadership appealing. Political as well as religious or social affiliation is needed. As transnational political movements, cross-border logistical coordination is also an issue for jihadi groups. Finally, they are plagued by infighting, further reducing their capacity to operate effectively.
Moghadam agreed with Mendelsohn on the constraining factors jihadi groups face. He hoped, however, that policy-makers would not confuse “jihadism constrained” with “jihadism declining.” While their threat might often be overblown, jihadi groups will not disappear any time soon. Their ideology continues to appeal to some people. Jihadi movements are by nature highly decentralized. Their lack of a “center of gravity” means they cannot be easily eradicated with a precise military attack.
Decentralization also means that jihadi groups’ constituent parts are adaptable and innovative. Key individuals play an oversized role, making jihadi groups capable of reacting to changing environments. In addition, the conditions that gave rise to jihadi groups such as ISIS are still in place. In Syria especially, regions devastated by ISIS will face governance and resource issues for decades to come, providing fertile ground for radical military groups to thrive.
Moghadam concluded by predicting that we will witness a shift in the global jihadi movement from a “bipolar” structure – centered around the poles of ISIS and al-Qaeda – to a “multipolar,” localized structure, with smaller groups gaining influence in a greater number of locations. This will make it harder to fully eradicate the threat of jihadism. When it comes to counter-terrorism, he advocated for a less reactionary stance. Jihadi groups use terrorism to provoke Western governments into over-reacting, thus alienating Muslim communities and reinforcing the appeal of the groups Western states are trying to combat. He called for better cooperation with Muslim communities in Europe and the US.
Tally Helfont focused on what Gulf states can do to counter the influence of jihadi groups in the Middle East. These states are worried about the appeal of transnational jihadism in the Gulf, but are also seeking to counter Iranian influence and fill the vacuum left by American political withdrawal. Gulf states’ counter-terrorism strategy has focused on stopping “men, money, and ideas.” This means increasingly trying to curb the radical messages and influence of local religious leaders as well as stopping financial flows to terrorists from private citizens in the Gulf.
Countering jihadi ideas is especially important, both in education and in mosques. Helfont asserts that Gulf states – particularly Saudi Arabia and UAE – have begun to see the appeal of critical thinking and want to create new generations of citizens who are capable of thinking for themselves and innovating with the best on the international stage.
Caveat emptor: It was hard to decipher useful lessons from the panelists’ statements. While the jihadi threat is often overblown, it is essential for the American government to portray ISIS as a genuine threat to national security to justify continued involvement in Syria and Iraq. A Muslim terrorism group is also a useful foil in electoral campaigns. Doubts should be raised about the capacity of stabilization to succeed without subsequent peace-building and reconstructing projects afterwards. There’s still a lot to consider before we can get a clear idea of how to durably stabilize the Fertile Crescent.
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