Category: Uncategorized
Moscow owns Syria
Bassam Barabandi writes:
Russian President Putin’s visit to Syria this week was planned along the lines of one last year, which also came in the Russian holiday season. Putin then gave a speech directly to the Russian soldiers at the Russian Hmeimim base, to which Syrian President Assad was asked to come without knowing Putin would be present. Assad’s role during both visits shows how marginalized he is. The main message sent to other countries is the vast extent of Russia’s influence in the areas the Assad regime controls, the government, and institutions.
Putin aimed in his more recent visit to respond to current events and to reduce Iran’s influence in Syria, as part of a tacit agreement among Western countries, Israel, and Russia to neutralize Syria as an arena for Iranian revenge for the killing of Iranian military commander Soleimani. Putin went to Damascus this time, but his main meetings were outside the media spotlight with Russian field commanders and Assad-regime Syrians close to Russia. Assad did not attend those two-hour long meetings. He only appeared after the fact accompanying Putin to the airport.
We can expect major changes within the Assad regime that will increase Russia’s influence and may lead to a violent confrontation with pro-Iranian loyalists. Putin’s failure to visit Assad at his palace was a signal that Russia is not wedded to the Syrian President. Such a visit would have constituted explicit recognition by Russia of the sovereignty of Syria and the legitimacy of Assad as its president. More importantly, it would have been a clear and strong message to all parties that Russia does not see a substitute for Assad as president in the next stage.
What happened was the opposite. Assad’s remarks were devoted to thanks to Russia and glorification of Putin and his forces. Russia now owns Syria, whose president has limited executive authority. Syrian decisions today come from Moscow. Even if Assad were to leave, this situation would persist. Syria’s dependency could extend for long decades to come, with or without Assad.
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Strategic nonsense
Dimitri Trenin has it partly right in a tweet this morning:
If Iran retaliates against #SoleimaniKilled strategically, rather than emotionally, its targets will not be individual US diplomats and various assets in the Middle East, but the very US presence in Iraq & Syria. US vs Iran is a highly asymmetric conflict.
The American government has already urged all Americans to leave Iraq, because of the security risk. That will end most private sector and other civilian US efforts there.
The military presence is also at risk, more for political rather than security reasons. The politics will be overwhelmingly against the US, not only because Soleimani was killed but also because his agent in Iraq, Popular Mobilization Forces leader and Kataib Hizbollah commander al-Muhandis, was also killed, apparently without the permission of or warning to the Iraqi government. An Iraqi government already in turmoil–the prime minister is waiting to be replaced–will now face parliamentary demands to kick the American troops out. That would be a big win for Iran.
The Americans are already mostly out of Syria, which is under Iranian and Russian tutelage. Rather than limiting Iran’s regional power projection, the assassination of Soleimani has opened an opportunity to consolidate its Iraqi link.
But Trenin misses another strategic point: Iran now has an opportunity to ditch the nuclear deal completely and restart its effort to gain all the technology needed for nuclear weapons. The logic is compelling: the Americans feel free to assassinate Iranians because they do not fear Iran’s paltry conventional military capabilities. Hardliners in Tehran don’t even have to be very hardline to argue that getting nuclear weapons would make Washington treat Iran with the respect and deference President Trump accords Kim Jong-un. The Europeans, Russians, and Chinese will be much less likely to come to America’s side on the nuclear issue in the wake of this assassination.
The Trump Administration is arguing that it killed Soleimani because he was plotting to kill more Americans, which is likely correct since he has spent much of the past several decades doing just that. But will this assassination protect Americans? Soleimani will be replaced. Muhandis will be too. Their replacements will be people who can be relied upon to target the United States, one way or another.
It is also being argued (General Keane did it on NPR this morning) that the Americans, having failed to respond to several Iranian provocations in the Gulf, needed to do something to restore deterrence. That makes President Trump’s relatively small mistakes an excuse for a great big one. It was indeed astounding that the Americans did nothing in the aftermath of attacks on Gulf shipping and Saudi oil production facilities. Proportional responses would have been appropriate.
A disproportionate one suggests the Americans think they can break the Iranians. That is doubtful. Iran is in big economic trouble and its people have been protesting against Tehran’s regional adventures. Iraqis have also been protesting the Islamic Republic’s overweening influence in their country. Now those dissenting voices are likely to be muted if not silenced. Iran and Iraq, which in the 1980s fought a ferocious war with each other, are now going to be largely united against the Americans.
These assassinations look to me like precisely what you would expect of a President under siege domestically and looking for a quick win internationally. Tactical success. Strategic nonsense.
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Xi/Bismarck
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson, of Stevenson’s Army fame, distributed this comment today. While I disagree in general on industrial policy, which is a trap we should allow the Chinese to fall into, R&D and protection of intellectual property are certainly important.
Stimulated by a student paper which I hope will eventually be published, I see that there are valuable ways of thinking about US-Chinese relations that go beyond our current focus on things like “the Thucydides Trap” or “a new Cold War.” One of the flaws in these popular analogies is that they quickly lead inexorably to self-fulfilling prophecies, the ill-fitting anti-Soviet playbook, or even nuclear war.
Other ways of looking at the US-Chinese competition include rivalries in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. The most optimistic and least applicable analogy is the peaceful British-American transition detailed in Kori Schake’s Safe Passage. Another example is the British-French rivalry following the Seven Years’ War in 1763. French officials consciously adopted a policy to “enfeeble” the British, first by strengthening their continental alliances and then by trying to dismember the British empire, starting with support for the American rebels. That worked – until the costs of that global war and other domestic problems triggered a revolution in Paris.
I’m especially intrigued by a third example: the British-German rivalry in the several decades before the First World War. I was aware of the military arms race between the two countries but needed reminding of the much greater breadth of the competition. Three Princeton economists show how Germany sought to leap ahead of Britain by promoting national technologies, using financial tools, blunt tariffs, and even massive infrastructure projects like the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway, which would have ended Berlin’s reliance on the Suez Canal. [A German geographer coined the “silk road” term.]
Consciously or not, China already seems to be copying Bismarckian Germany’s multi-pronged approach, competing with America in trade, technology, finance, and infrastructure, as well as alliances and weaponry. I worry that the United States has been narrowly focused on military capabilities and espionage, while giving insufficient attention to other technology matters and broader diplomatic and economic relations. My takeaway is that we need a deliberate industrial policy including large government R&D expenditures and targeted technology trade measures.
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Stevenson’s army, December 3
– Despite the best efforts of foreign leaders to cozy up to
President Trump, he seems eventually to sour on them. Yesterday it was Brazil & Argentina.
– Revealing interview with SFRC Chaiman Risch, now sour on Turkey.
– WSJ says US intelligence says Iran is in serious economic trouble.
– Politico says GOP has given up trying to limit presidential trade powers.
– Australia is setting up a special unit to monitor Chinese interference.
– China is requiring facial recognition for new phones.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army November 1
President interferes in British election.
SecState says China seeks world domination.
Senate approved one batch of appropriations bills, but not Defense/HHS.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, September 27
This looks to me like an excellent case study of the interagency process, where the “deep state” of career professionals shares concerns about unsettling behaviors and someone develops a formal “medical log” like the one for Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny.
The whistleblower, identified as a CIA person assigned to the White House by NYT, was probably part of an interagency working group on Ukraine. They probably met regularly in NSC offices and discussed various matters. “What is Giuliani doing in this?” “What do we tell Kyiv about their request for a meeting?” “How do we follow up on the president’s phone call?” “I was really troubled by that.” “Did you see what they did with the MemCon?” “Where do we stand on the aid?” “Why did they recall the ambassador?”
NYT’s Peter Baker got more details and confirmation of the whistleblower’s narrative.
Giuliani made his case to the WSJ.
NYT has more on the US ambassador.
Amy Zegart defends the process.
Although
the congressional focus has been on Trump’s seeking political
ammunition against Biden, some lawyers note that his “favor” request
came just after Zelensky mentioned buying Javelin antitank missiles,
perhaps raising other legal questions.
BTW, Chairman Schiff has indicated his members may need to return to DC before the end of the recess.
Despite the looming impeachment fight, the committee trying to find ways to “modernize” the Congress and make it more collegial offered some suggestions yesterday.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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