Tag: Iraq
Stevenson’s army, November 1
– WaPo says House GOP Israel bill will add $90 billion to the debt over 10 years.
– Yale prof warns against bombing Mexico
– Consistent with War Powers law and past precedent, Biden informed Congress of the recent US attacks in Iraq and Syria.
– I’ve often told the story that LBJ asked a prospective White House counsel if he was “a Yes lawyer or a No lawyer.” NYT says Trump would want only Yes lawyers in a new administration.
– SecState Blinken expects a “revitalized Palestinian Authority” will rule postwar Gaza.
Trade-offs [from D Brief]
Chinese-drone ban gains pace: Later today, bipartisan members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party plan to introduce the American Security Drone Act of 2023, the latest attempt to stop the U.S. government from buying drones built in China and other countries labeled as national security threats. It follows several failed attempts to extend the current ban on DOD purchases of Chinese drones to the rest of the government, including a companion to a Senate bill that was re-introduced in February after failing to pass in 2021.
Here’s a case for such a ban, from former INDOPACOM ops director Mark Montgomery, now with FDD. Essentially, he argues at D1, Chinese-made drones could spy on U.S. citizens and infrastructure.
Here’s a case against it, from drone expert Faine Greenwood, writing at Foreign Policy. The FP piece is paywalled, but she limns it here: “There’s one big, fat problem: there is no non-Chinese consumer drone company that does what DJI does. Much less does it at such a low price-point, which is a vital consideration for the vast swaths of modern drone users who don’t have unlimited cash to throw around. And building a DJI-killer is a lot harder than you might assume: although a number of Western competitors tried to knock DJI off the pedestal over the last decade, they all failed…Eventually, they largely stopped trying. This is also why both Ukrainians and Russians are continuing to chew through vast quantities of DJI drones on the battlefield, despite massive misgivings about their reliance on Chinese tech.”
DOD’s current bans: The Pentagon stopped buying drones from China’s DJI in 2017, and most off-the-shelf drones in 2018; that same year, Congress generally but not totally forbade the military to buy any Chinese-made drones.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Syria is in good company in the Arab League
The Arab League decided yesterday in Cairo to readmit Syria. The League had suspended Syria’s membership in response to its violent crackdown on demonstrators in March 2011. President Assad will presumably attend the May 19 Summit in Riyadh. This comes on top of several bilateral normalization moves, including by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Conditions aren’t likely to be fulfilled
The readmission is supposedly conditional. Though I’ve been unable to find the official statement, press reports suggest the conditions include allowing humanitarian assistance and return of refugees, clamping down on Syria’s burgeoning Captagon drug exports, and the beginnings of a political process called for in UN Security Council resolution 2254.
I’ll be surprised if much of that comes to pass. Assad could and should have done all those things long ago. Preventing humanitarian assistance, blocking return of refugees, financing his regime with drug smuggling, and blocking any transition are all part of his strategy. Readmission to the Arab League is unlikely to change his behavior, which aims at restoration of his personal authority on the entire territory of Syria.
Fighting abates but conflict continues
That is still far off. The mostly Islamist remains of Syria’s opposition control parts of northwestern Syria while Turkish troops control several border areas, where they have pushed hostile Kurdish forces farther east and south. Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces control a large part of the east, with support from the U.S. Damascus requires Iranian and Russian support to maintain sometimes minimal control over the west and south. Israel continues to bomb Syria pretty much at will, to move Iranians and their proxies away from its border and to block military supplies to Hizbollah in Lebanon.
None of these conflicts is settled, but fighting has abated from his heights. None of the forces involved has the will and the wherewithal to change the current situation. Assad no doubt hopes that normalization with the Arab world will solve his economic problems and enable him to mount the effort required to regain more territory. He may negotiate to regain territory from Turkey in exchange for promises to clamp down on the Kurds. He’ll wait out the Americans, who aren’t likely to want to remain in Syria much longer.
Autocracy restored
If Assad is successful in restoring his autocracy, he won’t be alone in the Middle East. It is a long time since the Arab Spring of 2011. Tunisia’s fledgling democracy is gone, as is Egypt’s. Bahrain’s democratic movement was snuffed out early. Yemen’s and Libya’s “springs” degenerated into civil war. Sudan is headed in the same direction. Iraq has suffered repeated upheavals, though its American-imposed anocracy has also shown some resilience. Saudi Arabia has undertaken economic and social reforms, but driven entirely by its autocratic Crown Prince. The UAE remains an absolute monarchy.
Only in Morocco and Qatar have a few modest reforms survived in more or less stable and relatively open political environments. They are both monarchies with a modicum of political participation. Though Qatar allows nothing that resembles political parties, there is limited room for freedom of expression. Morocco is a livelier political scene, but the monarchy remains dominant whenever it counts.
America has already adjusted
The Biden Administration has already adjusted. It is treating democratic values as tertiary issues with any Middle Eastern country with a claim to good relations with the US. There is no more talk of Saudi Arabia as a rogue state. Washington is silent on the restorations of autocracy in Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain. The Americans want to see negotiated solutions in Yemen, Libya, and Sudan. Those are more likely to restore autocracy, or something like Iraq’s power-sharing anocracy, than any sort of recognizable democratic rule.
The Americans are not joining the Syria normalization parade. They are not blocking it either. Washington no doubt figures the conditions are better than nothing. We’ll have to wait and see if that is true.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, May 6
FYI, I’ll be away for a while. But I’ll get to the saved papers when I return.
-In class, we read about the planning for the Iraq war and noted the inadequate planning for Phase IV. Author Garrett Graff has stunning revelations about the decisions on de-Baathification and disbanding the army that led to the insurgency.
– More on the Wagner fights with the Kremlin: WaPo found evidence in Discord leaks, now reports Prigozhin’s latest outburst.
-Politico sees challenges for CJCS successor Brown in some of his earlier statements.
– It’s a podcast, where Trump PDB briefer describes her work.
– Lawfare looks at the congressional debate over the debt language in the 14th amendment.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, March 31
– Both Russia and Ukraine make recruiting push.
– DOD pushes back at unfunded priority lists.
-Iraqi Kurdistan is crumbling, FP says.
– Two former officials assess Israel’s problems today.
– In FA, an interesting case for security guarantees to Ukraine.
– Also in FA, an argument taking seriously Xi’s preparations for war.
– WaPo has a list of nations still recognizing Taiwan.
– Foreign Service union opposes declassifying Afghan dissent memo.
– NYT says DeSantis foreign policy adviser was a hawk.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, March 29
– WSJ says Russian economy is weakening-
– Harvard prof lists options for enlarging the House.
-Tom Friedman says Netanyahu can’t be trusted
-Navy prof summarizes the role of intelligence in the Iraq war.
–McConnell opposes Iraq AUMF repeal.
– WaPo tells about the SAIS student accused as a Russian spy.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
A Biden Middle East doctrine full of holes
Brett McGurk, the senior White House Middle East official, last month set out a “Biden doctrine” for the region. It is based on partnerships, deterrence, diplomacy, integration, and values. Best you read it yourself. It is blessedly short and clear.
Jonathan Lord, formerly Iraq director at the Defense Department and now at the Center for New American Security, has taken Brett to task for ignoring both Syria and Iraq, where the US still has a few thousand troops doing counter-terrorism work. In fact, McGurk never mentions terrorism, the threat on which he worked for many years.
What else isn’t mentioned
Those are glaring omissions, but not the only ones. As Lord notes, McGurk says little about economic issues. He omits oil entirely, though he mentions freedom of navigation. It is hard to imagine the US would be concerned with the Middle East if there were no oil there. He fails to note the growing geopolitical competition in the region with Russia and China. Brett ignores the more than 18,000 deployed US troops in Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
He forgets the Palestinians entirely, as well as the Kurds, with whom the US is allied in Syria. There is not a word about the disastrous state of Lebanon and Hizbollah’s role there, though he boasts about Beirut’s maritime boundary agreement with Israel. He ignores the plight of women in much of the region.
McGurk also fails to note the contradictions among his five principles. He acknowledges the main tension between values and partnerships with autocrats. But he ignores the current and growing tensions on human rights issues with Israel, as well as the more traditional ones with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. What do the five principles tell us to do about the UAE and possibly Saudi Arabia reestablishing diplomatic relations with Syria? There are also problems reconciling diplomacy and deterrence. The US has essentially abandoned the former for the latter when it comes to Iran. And there are obstacles to integration arising from human rights, like the Saudi refusal to recognize Israel without real progress on creating a Palestinian state.
Iran, Iran, Iran
Brett is clever. I imagine he would reply to this critique that it is about time we had a Middle East policy focused on partnerships rather than oil, the Palestinians, or competition with Russia and China. He might also claim that it is obvious US troops are in the Middle East for deterrence purposes, against both terrorism and Iran. He would be correct to say that any discussion of economic and social issues requires more time and space than this short presentation allowed.
But there is no excuse for many of the other omissions. They reflect prioritization, not ignorance. Brett knows the the current Israeli government is a threat to its already ethnically-limited democracy. He knows Iraq is drifting away from the US, Syria is a drug-exporting nightmare, and Lebanon is in a downward spiral. The Biden Administration has simply decided to ignore these developments and focus on whatever will help the US confront Iran. That is the real purpose of four of the five principles: partnerships, deterrence, diplomacy, and integration. Values play a distinctly secondary role.
If that’s what it’s about, say so
Iran’s role in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and with Hizbollah more than justifies priority treatment. Moreover Tehran’s increasingly successful nuclear program could ignite an arms race in the region. Turkey’s President Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have explicitly stated they will not stand idly by if Iran gets nuclear weapons. That could put the US in an awkward situation, as it would increase the need for security guarantees and make criticism of human rights behavior impossible.
If it’s all about Iran, say so. Don’t hide it behind five nice principles. Then we can debate whether you’ve got the priorities right.
RSS - Posts
