Month: January 2019
Smart only if it succeeds
I’ve hesitated to write about Venezuela, a country I don’t know, but perhaps a few words based on experience elsewhere are in order.
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó is claiming to be the constitutional interim president replacing Nicolás Maduro, who still controls the security forces. The US, EU and many other countries, including most of Latin America, are recognizing Guaidó’s claims. US sanctions are depriving Maduro of the country’s revenue from oil sales to the US, which is a big part of its hard currency earnings. Russia, China, and others are backing Maduro.
Is the effort to displace Maduro and replace him with Guaidó smart? Certainly Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, impoverished Venezuelans and denied them their rights, wrecking the economy and reducing much of the population to desperation. Guaidó’s claim that in the wake of a stolen election the National Assembly has the right and responsibility to name an interim president sounds reasonable.
But success is by no means guaranteed, even if the US sends the marines as National Security Adviser Bolton has hinted the President might. That is unfortunate, as the military threat is entirely a unilateral one. The Administration’s best bet for getting what it wants in Venezuela is multilateral: the 14 Western Hemisphere countries of the “Lima group” have rejected the results of the May election as invalid. Their political weight is a much better diplomatic instrument than the military threat.
But in the end Maduro’s fate will depend mainly on what Venezuelans do and how they do it. The best bet based on experience elsewhere is peaceful protest of one sort or another. Violence will only make it harder for the security forces to go over to Guaidó. And nonviolence generally has quicker and more democratic outcomes. It requires enormous discipline and unity to overthrow an autocrat, especially in a country that has suffered decades of deterioration. But violence and disorder will not appeal to those whose mass presence in the streets is vital to making a transfer of power happen.
There is a risk it won’t work. Venezuela could end up like Cuba: ostracized and impoverished, but with a dictatorship that most of the population is willing to tolerate for fear of worse. Or it could end up at war with itself, or occupied by the US. Maduro and Chávez before him mobilized lots of enthusiasm in the past among poorer Venezuelans. Guaidó’s move and American support for it will only be judged smart if he succeeds, not if the effort fails and leaves a basket case. Some smart people think it can work. Let’s hope they are right.
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Not the deep state
Yesterday’s testimony in Congress by America’s intelligence elite was dramatic: it contradicted President Trump’s ill-founded opinions on Iran, ISIS, North Korea, Russia, and China. Iran, the intel chiefs said, is still observing the nuclear deal. ISIS is not gone from Syria or Iraq. North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, which Kim Jong Un views as vital to regime survival. Russia not only interfered in the 2016 election but is expanding its efforts. China’s economic difficulties are not due to America’s tariffs. It is almost as if they decided, with Ben Franklin, that we all hang together or we all hang separately.
Trump remained unimpressed. He denounced them all for failing to agree with their master. The President thinks he knows better. He is unwilling to entertain even the possibility he might be wrong. This is ignorance compounded with lack of intelligence. Only a profoundly stupid and lazy person would fail to ask himself why so many well-informed and manifestly intelligent people disagree, even at peril of losing their jobs. The notion that they would do it to protect their country from its greatest security risk–the man in the Oval Office–is anathema to Trump. He recognizes only egotism as a motive, since that is the only one he knows.
Fortunately, the Congress is moving for good reason to hem Trump in. You don’t have to think the US should stay in Syria or Afghanistan forever to believe that Trump’s tweeting and leaking of precipitous withdrawals is unwise. American diplomats needed more time than the President gave them to get a decent price for shipping out and making sure that whoever fills the vacuum will not put the US at risk. Pretending that North Korea will exchange its nukes and missiles for Trump-like hotel developments is silly.
Trump’s meeting with President Putin in Buenos Aires last November with no US officials present was revealed today. This is not just a breach of protocol. It is profoundly dangerous, since Moscow knows more about the meeting than Washington. Only a neophyte maverick would allow himself to be trapped into such a meeting, unless of course the purpose was to get instructions from Putin. Which do you prefer, a President who is embarrassingly unsophisticated or a President who qualifies as a Russian dupe or maybe even agent?
There is another explanation: that Trump enjoys defying convention and is happy to see his name in the headlines, no matter the occasion. No publicity is bad publicity for him and Roger Stone, who is blabbering himself into a lifetime in prison. Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., looks set to follow him soon, as he was also enmeshed with Wikileaks during the campaign and lied to Congress about it. The missing link is evidence that the President was privy to or even ordered the contacts with the Russians that led to the publication of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. But there too doubts are hard to harbor: he appealed to Moscow in public to hack Hillary’s emails. Putin gave Trump the closest approximation within his control, in precisely the time frame Don Jr. favored.
President Trump really is America’s greatest security risk today. The intelligence people I know would find that proposition appalling but incontrovertible. Are they aiming to unseat him before he does much more damage? Their well-founded, professional testimony to lawmakers who have that power is one more step in the right direction: removing a president who is endangering the United States.
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Hard to know how to please the US
The Middle East Policy Council hosted a discussion January 25 assessing Trump Administration mid- term policy on the Middle East, with Philip Gordon, Fellow in US Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was joined by Michael Doran, Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute and Jon B. Alterman, Senior Vice President and Director of the Middle East Program.
Gordon described Trump Administration policy in the Middle East as based on a core contradiction. On one hand, it sets out to constrain Iran from meddling in the region, to defeat ISIS, to achieve a Palestinian/Israeli peace, and show US leadership. On the other hand, the President regards the Middle East as only sand and death where the US has spent around $6 trillion without getting anything in return. The US thus wants to leave and make others pay for the expenses incurred.
Two years of trying to inflict pain on the Iranian economy did not make Iran change its behavior in the region. However costly and risky the mission might be, Gordon thinks the US should have maintained troops in Syria to prevent a Turkish invasion, giving the Kurds the leverage they need in negotiations with Damascus, and finishing the job against ISIS. Trump wants Gulf states to invest invest in the US, buy US weapons, and fight ISIS in return for backing them on countering Iran. This policy has signaled a green light to do what they want to boycott Qatar, continue the bombing campaign in Yemen, and repress dissidents.
Doran offered a different assessment of Trump Administration policy in the Middle East based on what the President promised during his election campaign: doing more with less. Trump’s approach is totally different from Obama’s of no enemies or friends, only stakeholders and problems. The US works to reach an agreement accepted by all friendly parties. Trump looks after US interests and seeks to save blood and treasure by working with allies who accept the US security umbrella in the region, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. This policy favors a coalition of allies to contain Iran. Doran claims this policy is much better than Obama’s.
Ultimately, it’s all about how you read the Iranians for Doran. Obama downplayed Iran’s aspirations. Trump thinks Iran wants to destroy the US alliance system and kick it out of the Gulf region and the Middle East.
Confused about US policy in the Middle East, Alterman pointed out what he sees as Trump’s contradictory policies in the region. John Bolton, National Security Adviser, stated the US is staying in Syria, while the president contradicted him by declaring the withdrawal. Trump said it would take thirty days to pull out and now it’s six months. In Gulf states, Trump disengaged on Yemen, embraced Saudi Arabia, and ignored the GCC conflict. The president is divorced from his government and has a poorly functioning staff. That said, Trump’s three main objectives are reasonably clear: building close ties with Saudi Arabia, countering Iran (and reversing Obama strategy of engaging it), and holding the Middle East at arm’s length.
But this strategy, Alterman argued, is not working. It is bizarre for Trump to make Iran the core of the Middle East strategy, since Tehran is weak. Its GDP is between the state of Maryland and Michigan. Mississippi, which has the lowest income per capita in the US, has seven times the income per capita of Iran. Iran has no allies in the Middle East. It can be a spoiler in the region but cannot be a winner.
For Alterman, the biggest mistake the US is making is an idiosyncratic embrace of some Middle Eastern states and the abandonment of many, rendering it hard for countries to understand how to please the US.
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Blithering
This is a president of the United States in near total self-delusion. Ninety percent of what he says and implies in this rambling peroration is untrue. The simple facts are these: most undocumented immigrants and drugs in the US come through regular border crossings, few come through areas where this is no fencing, crime rates by undocumented immigrants are lower than by native-born Americans, and the overall numbers of undocumented immigrants have fallen dramatically for decades. There is no immigration crisis and no need for more than modest extensions and modernization of existing border barriers.
Trump belatedly realized that closing down of a large part of the US government in order to get border wall funding was a big political mistake. Republican Senators had started to defect on keeping the government closed, and Senate Majority Leader McConnell was warning Trump that he could no longer hold the line. Trump’s approval rating, already unusually low, had fallen further. The strong economy he inherited from Barack Obama is starting to tremble. Special Counsel Mueller has indicted one of Trump’s closest pals for crimes incident to long-denied cooperation with Wikileaks on release of Russian-hacked documents purloined from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Things are going to get a lot worse.
The re-opening of the government is only for a few weeks. But Trump won’t be able to shut it down again. Instead he is threatening to declare a national emergency that would give him authority to spend money on his border wall. That move would trigger lawsuits that will prevent any border wall construction for years to come.
The Special Counsel has now unveiled a web of cooperation between Trump’s campaign, his friends, Wikileaks, and Russia that suggests the worst: a candidate for President not only willing to accept illegal foreign assistance, but to do so in the form of stolen emails. For details, see law professor Jennifer Taub’s Tweetsummary:
Thread We Have Seen the Mueller Report –– And It’s Spectacular 1/
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The foreign policy process is broken
The Center for Strategic and International studies ( CSIS) held a discussion January 23 focused on effects of the US withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan there, in the region and on US national security. The panel included Jon B. Alterman, Senior Vice President and Director of the Middle East Program, Melissa Dalton, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the International Security Program and Director of the Cooperative Defense Project, Seth G. Jones, Harold Brown Chair and Director of Transnational Threats Project and the Senior Adviser to the International Security Program, and Nancy Youssef, National Security Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
Alterman claims that what is troublesome about the US moving out of Syria is reduced control over what it leaves behind, compromising its leverage in the negotiations about the future of Syria. Trump could have negotiated terms of US withdrawal to get concessions from Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Kurds. The immediate and unconditional exit makes the parties do their own deals, with US interests ignored. President Trump has wanted to withdraw but people surrounding him did not. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced last September that the US is staying in Syria as long as Iran troops are there. Alterman added that this shows the broken system: the president does not consider the various options presented to him, and the government does not follow his directions. The President is issuing tweets or making statements that generate reactions because policy is not agreed.
Syria remains crucial for the US, according to Dalton. She claimed that what happens in Syria has wide implications elsewhere. The terrorism threat is still looming, along with the refugee and humanitarian crisis. It is thus hard to forecast the negative effects of this conflict on the region and Europe. US competitors like Russia and Iran can easily fill the gap left behind, increasing their sphere of influence in the region. Worse, the long-standing principle prohibiting the use of chemical weapons against civilians and facilities is eroding. Dalton asserts that the recent public opinion polling by Pew shows that half of Americans do not believe the US has achieved its objectives in Afghanistan. The majority also suggests US should be pulling out of Syria.
Jones noted that in a recent C-Span appearance he found it striking that all people who called in– Democrats, Republicans and Independents–were supportive of the withdrawal. They were wondering why the money spent in Syria and Afghanistan is not being used at home. Americans seem in favor of withdrawal. Trump’s doctrine for foreign policy looks like restraint: minimizing the use of military force in some areas which he sees not as a strategic interest, such as the Middle East and Asia.
Yet the US is not talking about bringing the 2000 troops back home. Youssef said they are thinking of placing them in Iraq, Kuwait, and other neighboring countries. The risk in this is that when the US is not present, and instead relying on Kurds who feel abandoned, the ability to understand the situation and shape events shrinks. Russia and Iran have long-standing influence in Syria. Neither the US presence nor withdrawal will affect them much. The US is not the dominant force Syria, as the Israeli strikes against Iran and its proxies there suggest. Youssef too noted a major change in how the US makes decisions. In the past, the US deliberated all possible options and the costs associated with them, and then announce its policies. Now it’s the opposite. The policy is announced first, and deliberation comes later.
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Buffer zone in northern Syria
The Foundation of Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) hosted a discussion on January 18, about the US withdrawal from Syria, with Mark Kimmitt, retired General and defense consultant. He was joined by Hassan Hassan, Senior Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and Andrew Tabler, Martin J. Gross Fellow in the Geduld Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. They addressed the US withdrawal from Syria, and its implications for the region, mainly Turkey, Syria and the Kurds.
Pointing out the reasons for the US withdrawal from Syria, Kimmitt believes ISIS is no longer an existential threat to the US. It has not been completely defeated, but it has been degraded. The caliphate is gone. The mission has been accomplished. He claims that asking the US to stay in Syria to finish off ISIS would entail a US presence in the twenty-three other countries where ISIS operates.
YPG, Kimmitt asserts, are brave and allies of the US. But working alongside them to fight ISIS was, quoting US envoy James Jeffrey, “temporary, transactional and tactical.” Having given no expectations or promises to the YPG when the mission is over, the US is off the hook. Turkey’s concerns about the Kurds pose a serious challenge. Kimmitt suggests a safe zone in Syria, like the one set up as part of the Dayton Peace Accords between the Serb and Federation forces. The YPG can be protected while also honoring Turkish national security concerns.
Hassan is still concerned with ISIS. Besides sleeper cells and ISIS members who got tired of fighting, sympathizers with the group are everywhere in the region. They can return to violence at anytime. He considers the hasty US withdrawal from Syria at odds with the slow defeat of ISIS. But ISIS is not the only problem. Peace in Syria is still fragile and can crumble at any time. If the fight gets renewed, ISIS and Al-Nusra will benefit the most, as moderate groups have been completely decimated.
These facts get ignored because the U.S withdrawal from Syria has been hijacked by two arguments. One calls into question the role 2000 US troops can play against Iran. The other questions what they can possibly do to confront ISIS. Hassan considers these flawed arguments, as the mission was never to fight Iran and US troops were not the spearhead of the fight against ISIS. It is possible for the US to pull the troops from Syria while fighting ISIS, and decide with other countries the fate of the one-third of Syrian territory they have controlled.
Acknowledging the complex nature of the conflict in Syria, Andrew offered an overall perspective to understand its intricacies. Assad, with the help of Russia and Shiite militias was able to take over 60% of the territory. Syrian opposition backed by Turkey played a major role in freeing some areas, including Idlib. In the eastern part of Syria, the US partnered with YPG to defeat ISIS.
The outcome was unacceptable to two neighboring countries: Israel and Turkey. Israel is concerned with Shiite militia and Iran-backed units moving heavy weapons into the country. For Turkey, the PKK is an existential threat. US backing for Kurds allied with the PKK, which fights the Turkish government made Ankara feel a huge threat.
The moderator of the discussion, Kadir Ustun, Executive Director at SETA Foundation, spelled out the Turkish position . He claims that Turkey has put a lot of pressure on the US to stop cooperating and empowering what he labeled “terrorist YPG,” who are linked to PKK. Their primary objective is to enlarge themselves and get international legitimacy, not fighting ISIS. Turkey’s operations west of the Euphrates and Manbij were undertaken to limit the movement of the YPG.
Bottom line: US withdrawal is a subject of intense debate among the Americans, Turkey, the PYD and other stakeholders wactive inside Syria. A buffer zone between the warring parties is an option.
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