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Russia is an option, but not a good one

While I’ve had lots of agreement about my assertion last week that there are no good American options for Syria, some of my friends are still hoping for the US and Russia to make progress on the political front. This idea certainly makes sense in principle. The Russians are a strong military force inside Syria and have lots of political clout, not only with President Assad but also with what is left of the Syrian opposition, the Kurds, the Turks, and the Iranians. Their main interest in Syria would appear to be maintaining their bases there, which the Americans have never really opposed. Having spent a good deal, they also want to benefit from Syria’s reconstruction. Unlike the Iranians, Russia does not threaten Israel, though there is rumint that they are shifting towards blocking its bombing inside Syria.

But that is too narrow an assessment of Moscow’s interests. The Russians would like a stronger role throughout the Middle East and want to make trouble for the West while protecting autocrats. They like the higher oil prices their cooperation in OPEC+ with Middle Eastern oil producers has brought. They see economic and political opportunities in American withdrawal from the region. And they want to re-assert the sovereign rights of leaders who, like Vladimir Putin, don’t have genuine support from their people. Preventing “regime change” has become the Russian equivalent of Biden’s “promoting democracy.”

Moscow is not going to defenestrate Assad, or even open the window so that the Syrian people can do it. While they talk smack about him to any Westerner who will listen, they in fact have supported him even when he undertook military offensives they had advised against. Moscow doesn’t see anything better (for its interests) than Assad on the horizon. If the Russians had any intention at all of seeking alternatives, they had an excellent opportunity to signal that during the UN Security Council debate this month on cross-border aid, which the West favors because it provides assistance to Assad’s opponents without requiring his approval. The Russians by contrast took a hard line and allowed only one cross-border point to remain open for six months, or maybe a year.

Is there anything the West could do to change Moscow’s behavior? We can try. The Biden Administration has shut down work by a US company that was planning to help the Kurds in eastern Syria produce and refine oil production from one of Syria’s main fields. The Kurds as a result will have to continue to sell a good part of it, one way or another, to the regime, which controls the only remaining refinery in the country. Not surprisingly, a Russian-controlled company has now indicated it is willing to return to Syria to produce some of that oil. It is hard to believe the Americans didn’t understand the consequences of their move in shutting down the US company.

The question is this: what did Biden’s people get in exchange for giving a Russian company control of a major source of Syria’s oil? So far, the answer seems to be “very little,” perhaps only the UNSC resolution holding that one cross-border assistance point open. Could they have gotten more? It is hard to tell, but my guess is not much more. The Americans just don’t have enough bang in Syria, where their troops are hunkered down providing intelligence, logistical, and other assistance to Kurdish-led forces who are trying to deal with Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, local issues, and sometimes the Turks.

American and European policy on Syria has focused on sanctions and holding back reconstruction assistance until there is an “irreversible” way forward on a political solution. That position is holding for now, but not producing any significant diplomatic results. In the meanwhile, Syrians suffer the consequences. Assad is careful to feed his supporters before the opposition and to throw any reconstruction contracts the Iranians and Russians are willing to fund to their companies and to his own cronies. He hasn’t survived more than 10 years of civil war without figuring out what it takes to stay in power. Moscow occasionally plays a mediator role in negotiating a ceasefire here and there but shows no sign of pressuring him to prepare a political transition.

I’ll be glad to be surprised. But at least for now, Russia is not a good option.

Time for EU and NATO to get real with Serbia

To his credit, Serbia’s President Vucic is acknowledging the “Serbian world” concept as his own. Serbia’s borders are inviolable he says, and “we don’t care about other people’s borders.”

Vucic wants Serbs to be united in a single political space and state, without violence. Fat chance. Serbia has eight immediate neighbors. All have Serb minorities, though Bulgaria’s is small. Six are NATO members (Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Romania). Two others host EU and NATO troops committed to their territorial integrity (Bosnia and Kosovo). What happened when Serbia tried in the 1990s to extend its political space and unite some of those minorities in one state? War with Slovenia, war with Croatia, war with Bosnia, war with Kosovo, and war with NATO. The result: Serbs fled to Serbia from neighboring countries, but not a square inch of the neighboring countries was ceded to Serbia.

The German analogy, of which Vucic is fond, is nonsense. Germany was not re-united by absorbing the territory of a neighboring state. East Germany was not part of another state. It was part of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union, which was unable to maintain its autocratic control. Reunification did nothing to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Germany’s neighbors. Everyone in Belgrade forgets to mention Austria, which lives happily as a separate, German-speaking state, despite Hitler’s ambitions. Not to mention German minorities in several other European states.

Vucic’s avowal that not a single shot will be fired in his effort to unite Serbs in a single state is as hollow as the German analogy. If he believed it, he wouldn’t be re-arming Serbia with Russian and Chinese weapons. Serbia faces no military threat from its eight neighbors. He is figuring that if Serbia gets strong enough and creates enough brouhaha, its neighbors will cede territory rather than risk a fight. There is no reason to think that will happen, or that Serbia will not resort to arms if it thinks, like Milosevic, that it can win.

One of the requirements of EU membership is good neighborly relations. Not caring about other states’ borders is the epitome of bad relations with neighbors. Vucic is ready to give up on retaking all of Kosovo and all of Bosnia. All he wants are the Serb slices, 15% or so and 49% respectively. He would be happy for a slice of Croatia as well. Eastern Slavonia? He wants all of Montenegro. It is high time Brussels told him the EU will no longer pretend that membership is a possibility for a country harboring territorial ambitions and disrespect for its neighbors’ borders. And it is time for Washington to signal clearly that NATO will defend all of Serbia’s neighbors from Belgrade’s unneighborly intentions.

It is time for the EU and NATO to get real with Serbia.

Good riddance, Afghanistan, you deserve better but aren’t likely to get it

President Biden has it half right. There is no longer any point in US troops remaining in Afghanistan. There hasn’t been much point for the past decade. The Americans killed Bin Laden, our primary reason for invading Afghanistan, in 2011. By then we had already spent the better part of a decade trying to rebuild Afghanistan into something resembling a modern state. It wasn’t easy. Desperately poor and isolated, Afghans were also largely illiterate and already brutalized by decades of civil war. The warlords who ran much of the poppy-based economy had no interest in a modern state. Nor did their most important neighbors–Iran and Pakistan–want us to succeed. They provided safe haven and support to multiple Afghan forces resisting the state. Willing local elites and cooperative neighbors are two vital ingredients for successful state- and peace-building. Afghanistan had neither.

But Biden is also half wrong. There is a real possibility the Taliban will retake not only the provincial centers they are already seizing but also Kabul, though little likelihood they can do so without facing serious resistance both before and after. Neither ordinary Afghans nor the warlords are going to like the return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan any better than they liked the nominally Westernized state that Presidents Karzai and Ghani have produced. Much better armed and organized than in the past, warlord armies will likely clash among themselves as well as with the Emirate. The outcome of civil war will be more civil war, without the Americans and other NATO forces tilting the balance toward Kabul.

This terrifying outcome will be particularly bad for those Afghans who tried to help the American project. That includes not only the thousands of interpreters the US Army required, but also many more thousands of civil society and activists, many of them women who fear the return of Taliban discrimination and abuse. Many are now desperately trying to leave, along with their extended families. The US State Department has nowhere near the resources needed to process them all before the end of August when the troops will all be gone, so evacuation to third countries where they can await visa decisions seems likely. That evacuation will cause panic among a wider circle of Afghans, people who were not necessarily directly associated with the American project but who sympathized with it. The Taliban won’t treat them well either.

We may not see–I hope we will not see–anything like the helicopters evacuating the US Embassy in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. It is precisely to avoid such a scene that Washington continued the fruitless war until President Trump decided on a conditions-free withdrawal. Now Washington is planning a force of 600 or so troops to protect the Kabul Embassy. But the diplomats in that Embassy, who haven’t gotten out much in the past 20 years, will get out a lot less. If the Emirate takes over, President Biden will need to reconsider. Does he want to keep an Embassy in a capital taken by a force that has failed to abide by the agreement it reached with the US, or does he want to close that shop and wait for more propitious circumstances?

The Taliban agreement with the US required negotiations with the Ghani’s government for a political solution as well as a clean break with terrorists prepared to operate internationally. Gaining on the battlefield, the Taliban have been unwilling to negotiate seriously with the Kabul government. Even Biden, the man with the rose-colored aviators, would find it surprising if there were anything like a serious negotiated solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. In Moscow yesterday the Taliban declared they would not allow terrorist operations against other countries from bases in Afghanistan. They are rivals of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State and no doubt hope for international assistance, so they have some incentive to at least appear to rein them in. But will the Taliban risk the wrath of Al Qaeda and ISIS once the Americans are gone?

Afghanistan deserves better. There are lots of well-intentioned Afghans who merit the peaceful, prosperous, democracy they worked to construct for two decades. I met more of that variety in Kabul than in many other conflict capitals, where ethnic, linguistic, and religious fervor is far more prevalent. Afghanistan doesn’t lack good intentions. It lacks the capacity to translate good intentions into reality. It’s the old story: if you want to go someplace good, you shouldn’t start from here. Hope is not a policy, but I do hope Afghanistan someday recovers. In the meanwhile, the Americans have little reason to stay and most will be prepared to say “good riddance.”

Peace Picks | May July 05-09, 2021

1. The Gaza Ceasefire: What’s Next? | July 06, 2021 |  10:00 AM ET | Wilson Center | Register Here

The Wilson Center’s Middle East Program invites you to this seminar on the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip and the tenuous ceasefire that continues to hold by a thread. The panel will discuss the perspectives from Egypt, the Biden administration, as well as those of Israel, Palestine, and the broader Middle East region.

Speakers:

Amb. Motaz Zahran
Ambassador of Egypt to the United States

Joey Hood
Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, US Department of State

David Makovsky
Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute; Director, Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations

James F. Jeffrey
Chair of the Middle East Program, Wilson Center; Former Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS

Amb. Mark Green (introduction)
President, Director & CEO, Wilson Center

Merissa Khurma (moderator)
Program Director, Middle East Program, Wilson Center

2. The Future of U.S.-China Proxy War | July 06, 2021 |  3:00 PM ET | Foreign Policy Research Institute | Register Here

How will great power military competition between the U.S. and China evolve in the coming years? FPRI’s Aaron Stein and Dominic Tierney will address the possibility of Washington and Beijing aiding rival actors in an intrastate conflict and the future of Sino-U.S. competition.

Speakers:

Dominic Tierney
Senior Fellow, Program on National Security, Foreign Policy Research Institute; Associate Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College

Aaron Stein
Director of Research, Director of the Middle East Program & Acting Director of the National Security Program, Foreign Policy Research Institute

3. Report launch: Reimagining the US-India trade relationship | July 07, 2021 |  9:00 AM ET | Atlantic Council | Register Here

Despite the well-documented growth in commerce between the United States and India in the past decade, efforts to reach a bilateral trade agreement in the last three years have grown increasingly strained. Longstanding and new disagreements over market access, intellectual property protection, and India’s new data governance frameworks, among other issues, mar attempts to reach even a mini trade deal and highlight the need to find common ground amid an evolving strategic relationship and COVID-19 woes.

How has the US-India trade relationship evolved under the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations? What mechanisms can be implemented to move forward, whether a mini trade deal or FTA negotiations? What challenges still remain?

The Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center hosts a conversation on US-India trade and a path forward to mark the launch of the Center’s latest report, Reimagining the US-India trade relationship.

Speakers:

Amb. Robert Holleyman
Partner, President & CEO, Crowell & Moring LLP

Amb. Jeffrey Gerrish
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates

Susan Ritchie
Vice President, Trade & Technology Policy, US-India Strategic Partnership Forum

Sahra English
Vice President, Global Public Policy, MasterCard]

Mark Linscott (moderator)
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center

Irfan Nooruddin (introduction)
Director, Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center

4. The Future of Humanitarian Operations: Aid and Politics in Syria | July 07, 2021 |  9:30 AM ET | CSIS | Register Here

While humanitarian access and sovereignty have clashed in other crises, the savviness of aid manipulation has been unprecedented in scale and scope in Syria. What are the larger implications of debates at the Security Council on humanitarian access? How can the aid community adhere to humanitarian principles and not do harm? Should there be red lines?

As we approach the expiration date of the UN mandate to provide cross-border assistance to Syria, our panel of experts will delve into these questions and assess the consequences of business as usual for the aid sector and for long-term stability.

Speakers:

Jake Kurtzer (introduction)
Humanitarian Agenda Director and Senior Fellow, CSIS

Dr. Jon B. Alterman (moderator)
Senior Vice President, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and Middle East Program Director, CSIS

Dr. Zaher Sahloul
President and Co-Founder, MedGlobal; Associate Professor in Clinical Medicine, University of Illinois

Charles Petrie OBE
Former Assistant Secretary-General, UN

Natasha Hall
Senior Fellow with the Middle East Program, CSIS

5. The Next Chapter in U.S.-Pakistan Relations | July 07, 2021 |  12:30 PM ET | United States Institute of Peace | Register Here

As U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the regional landscape that has dominated the last two decades of U.S.-Pakistan relations is shifting significantly. The Biden administration’s focus on competition with China and increasing climate concerns — coupled with the Pakistani government’s desire to shift focus to geo-economic ties with the United States — offer potential new parameters for the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Meanwhile, both countries remain vested in the outcome of the Afghan peace process and regional peace and security in South Asia. Can the United States and Pakistan move beyond the persistent challenges in the bilateral relationship to cooperate on the priorities they share?

Speakers:

H.E. Dr. Asad Majeed Khan
Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States

Amb. Richard Olson (moderator)
Senior Advisor, U.S. Institute of Peace

6. The U.S. Legacy in Afghanistan: Past, Present, and Future | July 07, 2021 |  13:00 PM ET | CSIS | Register Here

Two decades after the 9/11 attacks and the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the United States is withdrawing its military forces from Afghanistan. But the war is far from over. Please join the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Transnational Threats Project on Wednesday, July 7 for a conversation on the U.S. legacy in Afghanistan, the current U.S. withdrawal, and the future trajectory of the war. 

Speakers:

Carter Malkasian
Former Special Assistant, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Author of The American Way of War in Afghanistan

Gina Bennett
Senior Counterterrorism Advisor, National Counterterrorism Center

Seth G. Jones (moderator)
Senior Vice President, Harold Brown Chair, and Director of the International Security Program, CSIS

7. Rising Tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean | July 08, 2021 |  4:00 AM ET | International Crisis Group | Watch the seminar here

The Eastern Mediterranean has always been an important political and cultural region. The most recent additions include the findings of natural gas and the internationalization of the Libyan civil war. In combination with political shifts, these developments sparked a new escalation between Turkey and its neighbors, namely Greece and Cyprus. After reaching a peak in 2020, the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean have most recently decreased and international actors hope to return to a more constructive partnership.

The panel will discuss the tensions between Turkey and Greece, the roles of the EU and the US in the region, and the regional dimensions of energy competition and disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Speakers:

Tareq Baconi
Senior Analyst for Economics of Conflict, International Crisis Group

Alissa De Carbonnel
Deputy Program Director for Europe and Central Asia, International Crisis Group

Charles Ellinas
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

Ioannis Grigoriadis
Senior Research Fellow, Head of Turkey Programme, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy

Berkay Mandıracı
Analyst for Turkey, International Crisis Group

8. Reconstruction in Gaza: Between Israel’s Siege and the Politics of International Funding | July 08, 2021 |  9:30 AM ET | Arab Center Washington DC | Register Here

This webinar will focus on the current situation in Gaza and reconstruction efforts following the recent Israeli attacks. Speakers will discuss the continuous cycle of destruction and reconstruction in Gaza, the challenges to rebuilding and development programs, the effects of the 14-year Israeli blockade, and the politics of international funding.

Speakers:

Yara M. Asi
Non-Resident Fellow, Arab Center Washington DC; Post-Doctoral Scholar, University of Central Florida

Sean Carroll
President and CEO, American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera)

Joseph P. Saba
Senior Adviser, Fragile and Conflict States, The World Bank; Adjunct Professor, Rule of Law for Development Program, Loyola University Chicago

Khalil E. Jahshan (moderator)
Executive Director, Arab Center Washington DC

9. Paper launch: How Hezbollah holds sway over the Lebanese state | July 08, 2021 |  10:30 AM ET | Chatham House | Register Here

Hezbollah is a hybrid actor, enjoying state legitimacy in Lebanon and operating both within and outside the state without being accountable to the state.

A new Chatham House paper on How Hezbollah Holds Sway over the Lebanese State provides insight into Hezbollah’s journey to power and argues that it has achieved this by consolidating control through elite pacts and by taking advantage of weaknesses in the Lebanese state system and infrastructure.

At this webinar, panellists explore the paper’s findings and consider what the future may hold for Hezbollah, particularly in the context of rapid deterioration in Lebanon and the renewed drive by Western policymakers to achieve reform in the country.

Speakers:

Joseph Daher
Visiting Professor, University of Lausanne

Lina Khatib
Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House

Mona Yacoubian
Senior Adviser, U.S. Institute for Peace

Emile Hokayem (moderator)
Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies, IISS

10. Rural/urban divide: A call for action | July 09, 2021 |  9:00 AM ET | Atlantic Council | Register Here

Panel discussion on the economic divide between rural and urban populations. If the post COVID-19 recovery is to be truly inclusive, then it is critical to understand the geographical distribution of growth, an issue which still receives less attention than other dimensions of inequality. Economists, international financial institutions, governments, and think tanks all need to devote more resources to identifying policies that lift the fortunes of “forgotten” places. These panelists will discuss policy options to address this critical global issue. 

Speakers:

Timothy J. Bartik
Senior Economist, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Era Dabla-Norris
Division Chief, Asia and Pacific Department, International Monetary Fund

Martin Mühleisen
Special Advisor to the Managing Director, International Monetary Fund

Andrés Rodriguez-Pose
Princesa de Asturias Chair and Professor of Economic Geography, London School of Economics

Dr. Nicole Goldin (moderator)
Managing Principal, NRG Advisory; Nonresident Senior Fellow at the GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council

Between Father’s Day and 76: lifetime lessons learned

I’m at a fine moment: on the verge of celebrating my 76th birthday, both elder son Jared and younger son Adam are enjoying professional and personal success. I thought I might take the moment to reflect, not so much on them as on what I learned from them over the past 45 years. I hope they’ll excuse the indulgence.

Both sons chose markedly different but competitive professions. Architects either win contracts or they don’t. Journalists either get recognized or they don’t. Jared works now in Atlanta for Perkins and Will, a big international architectural firm, mainly designing academic buildings. Here is the Camp Southern Ground dining hall he designed outside Atlanta:

Here is Adam, who works at The Atlantic, yesterday afternoon on NPR’s All Things Considered, two days before his first book, The Cruelty Is the Point: the Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, is published:

Jackie and I are enormously proud of them both. I suppose we contributed, if only by setting an example of working hard for long hours.

But they both achieved their successes despite me. I was a middle child who thought he always had to strive for equal treatment with an older brother and a younger one. So when I became a father I thought I could do better than my parents and cure the world by treating my two sons the same way.

That was a big mistake. Different children have different needs, not only because of their placement in the family order but also because of their dramatically different talents and preferences. This has been a big challenge in my teaching life as well: I need to treat all the students fairly, but what that means can differ because of their diverse backgrounds and preparation, not to mention intellect, career amibitions, ideology, maturity, and the rest.

Jared has a terrific visual and spatial imagination. He can picture how things will look before drawing them, the way a composer can hear how things will sound even before writing down the notes. Adam has a literary and theatrical imagination. He started beating us all at Scrabble around the age of 14. He knows how to use written and spoken words eloquently and dramatically to make a point. I had no idea when they were growing up that two people who shared the same genetic origins could be so different.

Adam got the shorter stick, as my habits were formed first with his brother. I expected that Adam would behave and think like Jared. I saw any deviance from the established pattern as potentially problematic. He naturally rebelled, causing no end of friction as a teenager that I had not experienced with his elder brother, who was much more careful to hide his divergence from expectations. I didn’t learn until recently about Jared’s teenage excursions with friends in Rome on their motor scooters, despite a (well-founded) parental prohibition. Adam made sure I knew he was smoking as a teen, despite an even stronger (and equally well-founded) parental prohibition.

There are silver linings: Adam’s willingness to defy and critique authority has been an important aspect of his journalistic career. Jared’s ability to maintain his unique perspective while working within an established system has allowed his creative impulses to find expression in glorious buildings.

Now both Jared and Adam have strikingly accomplished wives and delicious children. Jared’s two boys are rambunctious. I’ve learned not to try to squeeze either of them into a pre-determined shape. Adam’s less than two-year-old daughter is less rowdy, at least for now, but definitely knows her own mind. I hope she will remain that way. It is difficult to know where to draw lines: should she be free, as her parents prefer, to choose whatever snacks she pleases from the pantry, or should there be some limits? The former might develop some self-discipline, while I imagine the latter encourages challenging restrictions. Which is better?

I don’t know is the short answer. All I know is that how we deal with others has a lot to do with our own treatment growing up. It’s best to be aware of the internal impulses, but to react mainly to the external stimuli. Right now that means enjoying my small but precious family and trying not to impose my preferences on their thriving lives. They are all looking good to me right now, as I approach old age. That is a great satisfaction. I hope it stays that way, even though I know there are challenges ahead. No one escapes those.