Tag: Jordan
Peace picks, Sept 30 – Oct 4
Fine, timely events this week in DC:
1. Reform Under Rouhani: Assessing Positive Change in Iran
Monday, September 30, 2013, 9 – 10.30 a.m.
The Stimson Center, 12th Floor
1111 19th Street, NW, Washington , DC
Speakers:
Ramin Asgard, former U.S. diplomat and former director of the State Department’s Iran office in Dubai
Arash Ghafouri, consultant to presidential candidates in 2013 election
Opening remarks
Klaus Linsenmeier, Executive Director, Heinrich Boell Foundation North America
Moderator:
Geneive Abdo, Fellow, Middle East Program, Stimson Center
To RSVP for this event, please click here.
The election of President Hassan Rouhani has led Iran’s political leadership to indicate that reconciliation between the Islamic Republic and the United States could be a distinct possibility.
In the immediate aftermath of talks at the U.N. General Assembly, please join the Heinrich Boell Foundation North America and the Stimson Center for a discussion on the positive social and political changes in Iran, the role of the Iranian youth in changing the political culture, and the implications of the Rouhani presidency on the future of US – Iran relations. Read more
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Heartbreak and loveless marriages
Wedenesday morning’s event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was yet another panel focused on Syria, focused on the interests and perspectives of the domestic and international parties currently involved in the crisis. Moderated by Marwan Muasher of the Carnegie Endowment, the discussion included Ambassador Nasser al-Kidwa, deputy to Arab League Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment, Paul Salem of the Carnegie Middle East Center, and Andrew Weiss also of the Carnegie Endowment.
Ambassador al-Kidwa focused his remarks on the future of negotiations in Syria. He believes the Geneva Communiqué drafted last June is still relevant today and provides practical solutions for Syria. The US decision not to strike on Syria but rather focus on placing Syria’s chemical weapons under international control shows its commitment to the Geneva Communiqué. The framework agreement on chemical weapons between the US and Russia is a positive development.
The UN is currently working on a resolution that will mostly likely incorporate much of the strong language used in the US-Russia agreement. Al-Kidwa believes that it will be adopted under Chapter 7 with some language regarding using necessary force if there is no compliance from the Assad regime. He sees a real possibility for negotiations between the opposition and the Assad government. He argues that regional players and the international community have an unusually important role. Read more
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Still on the roller coaster
The Russia-US agreement on a Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons is certainly a breakthrough with respect to chemical weapons, if it is implemented with anything like the thoroughness and timeliness specified. John Kerry has delivered on paper what President Obama has wanted: an end not just to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but destruction of Syria’s capability to make them and use them by the middle of 2014.
But the agreement, even fully implemented, does nothing to solve three other problems: Bashar al Asad’s continued hold on power and attacks on Syria’s civilian population, radicalization of his opposition and his supporters, and destabilization of the region. The number of people killed in chemical weapons attacks is no more than 2% of the total casualties in the past 2.5 years. While the August 21 attack is said to have killed more than 1400, which would almost surely make it the most horrific single incident of the war, that number are killed more or less every week by more conventional means.
There is no reason to believe that this agreement, even if fully implemented, will reduce the overall level of violence and casualties. The agreement makes Bashar al Asad indispensable. Neither Russia nor America will want to see him deposed until the job is done. That of course gives him a license to kill and good reason to delay implementation as much as possible. There has already been an uptick in regime violence. He will certainly try to dawdle. The Chapter VII threat of military intervention in the agreement is clear, but not automatic or unilateral: Read more
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What Congress should do
I have resisted comparisons between Syria and Bosnia, or Syria and Kosovo, as the global and regional circumstances are different. It does no good to draw conclusions that just don’t apply in a distinct situation. Bashar al Asad is not Slobodan Milosevic, the Middle East is not the Balkans, Yeltsin’s Russia is not Putin’s Russia, Obama’s United States is not Clinton’s. Distinct times and places make for dicey comparisons.
But as the Congress considers what to do about Syria, some of its members will no doubt want to think about the Balkans, where American bombing campaigns twice ended wars that seemed interminable. So better to help them get it right than to suggest they ignore the precedents.
My starting assumption is that Bashar al Asad did in fact use chemical weapons against Syria’s civilian population on August 21 and several other occasions. If like Vladimir Putin, you think this “utter nonsense,” stop reading here.
If Congress decides to authorize military action, it needs to understand what President Obama has known for a long time: we stand on a slippery slope. How Bashar al Asad will react is anyone’s guess, but we know that Milosevic reacted to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia by escalating his effort to ethnically cleanse Albanians from Kosovo. Likewise, the Bosnian Serbs reacted to the red line known as the “Gorazde rules” intended to protect UN designated safe areas by attacking Sarajevo. NATO responded by escalating in turn. If Bashar al Asad repeats chemical attacks, or sponsors terrorist attacks against American assets around the world, Washington needs to be prepared to escalate.
But bombing and escalation are not a policy. Nor is a well-targeted and time-limited bombing campaign an appropriate response to mass murder of civilians with chemical (or any other) weapons. Bashar al Asad is not a military problem. He is a political one. The military is a blunt instrument that should be wielded within the context of a broader political strategy to end his rule in Syria, block an extreme Islamist takeover, and put Syria on course towards a more open and democratic society.
The bombing in Bosnia was extensive, eventually reaching the communication nodes of the Bosnian Serb army. It was those tertiary targets that changed the course of the war, because the Serbs were unable to protect their long confrontation line with the Federation forces once they lost their classified communications capability. But even this extensive bombing might have been fruitless, or borne bitter fruit, had it not been accompanied by a diplomatic strategy, which today we associate with the Dayton agreements and Richard Holbrooke but at the time was associated with President Clinton and National Security Adviser Tony Lake.
Likewise in Kosovo, the NATO bombing followed on Yugoslav rejection of the Rambouillet agreement. The war ended with UN Security Council resolution 1244, which was the political counterpart of the military-technical agreement providing for withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo. Resolution 1244 imposed UN administration on Kosovo to develop democratic institutions and rule of law, with a view to an eventual political decision on Kosovo’s final status. NATO did not set removal of Milosevic as a war objective. But he was gone within one and a half years as the result of an election he called and a mass nonviolent movement that demanded he accept it.
I am not privy to the Administration’s military planning, but a serious political strategy would continue to aim for a power-sharing arrangement that shoves Bashar al Asad aside. The diplomacy would likely benefit from broader military action (against the Syrian air force, Scuds and artillery) than is currently contemplated, especially if it aimed at tilting the battlefield in the opposition direction. I don’t know if the Congress is willing to point in that direction, as it might require deeper American commitment than we can afford at present. But at the very least Congress should insist on stronger support for the Syrian opposition.
Is there an American interest in getting more deeply involved? Continuation of the war will likely cause state collapse in Syria as well as weaken Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and possibly Turkey. Al Qaeda affiliated extremists in both Iraq and Syria will be the beneficiaries. Kurdish irredentism is a likely consequence. The Syrian war has the potential to reshape the Levant in ways that are inimical to American interests. If Congress is going to worry about military action in response to chemical weapons use by Syria, it should also worry about a political and military strategy to counter longer-term threats to Middle East peace and stability with potentially gigantic costs to the United States.
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Solid kernels in a not so good idea
My SAIS colleague Ed Joseph and Aaron David Miller earlier this week put forward a proposal for a Union of Arab Democracies that merits examination despite its deep and fatal flaws. There are nuggets therein worth preserving.
The idea in their words is this:
Egypt and its fractious neighbors desperately need a unifying vision that can inculcate respect for democratic norms across glaring differences. Although Arab nations have no interest in joining the European Union or NATO, the Arab world can draw on the model of Eastern European transition, with fledgling Arab democracies devising their own supra-national organization dedicated to advancing democracy. Like the E.U. in its infancy, this Union of Arab Democracies (UAD) could start with limited objectives and evolve toward ambitious goals, including, ultimately, pan-Arab political union.
Waving their magic wand, Ed and Aaron then tell us all the good things that would happen if such an organization were to come into existence, despite the shambolic history of pan-Arab political union proposals.
If Egypt and the other Arab uprising countries were capable of creating such an organization, they wouldn’t need it. The weakness of the proposal is all too apparent when Ed and Aaron get to proposing that Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority (known to me as Palestine) would be the leading democracies, with transitioning countries (Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen) and supposedly “liberalizing” countries (Morocco, Jordan and possibly Oman) tagging along. What a democratic club! Several are more likely to find themselves joining an Islamic union than a democratic one.
Nevertheless, there is a core idea here that is important: transitions need a destination. When the Berlin wall fell, the former Soviet satellites of eastern Europe and the Baltic “captive nations” quickly set their aim on meeting European Union and NATO standards. This gave direction and impetus to countries that would otherwise have wandered as aimlessly as the North African revolutions are doing today.
The way to answer the question “transition to what?” is not to have nascent Arab democracies try to figure it out for themselves. They cannot reasonably aim for membership in NATO or the EU, but they should be able to aim at two easier targets: the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe or, as my Turkish colleague Aylin Unver Noi suggests, the Council of Europe.
OSCE comprises 57 states and plays an important role in the Balkans and the more Asian parts of Eurasia. Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia are already among its “cooperating partners.” Several OSCE members are no farther along in democratizing than their Middle Eastern partners. With 47 member states, the Council of Europe regards itself as the continent’s leading human rights organization. It has a human rights court with some real enforcement capacity that could provide minorities in the Middle East with real recourse if their mother countries were to join.
The idea of extending OSCE and the Council of Europe to the southern littoral of the Mediterranean may seem far fetched, but efforts to construct more ad hoc arrangements have not worked well. Neither the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership nor the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative gained much traction before 2011, Aylin says, and their relevance will be further reduced by the Arab uprisings.
Another of the world’s more restrictive clubs, the rich people’s Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) , has opened its doors to newly developed states like Korea and Mexico, much to their benefit and the benefit of the organization. Opening the OSCE and Council of Europe to new Middle Eastern members, who would need to meet clearly defined criteria in order to get in, would be a worthwhile experiment. It would give the Arab uprisings, if they want it, a destination as well as a tough-minded qualification process, which is really what Ed and Aaron were calling for.
So “no” to the Arab Democratic Union. “Yes” to Arab democracy that aims to meet the not too exacting standards of the OSCE and respects human rights as defined by the Council of Europe.
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Chemical reaction
It is difficult to believe that Bashar al Asad’s regime would use chemical weapons in a rural area on the outskirts of Damascus a day or so after the arrival of a UN chemical weapons inspection team. But that is apparently what he has done. Hundreds are reported dead. If this claim proves true, what are the options for the Obama administration?
- Do nothing. The administration has already ignored well-documented reports of chemical weapons use over the past year. Failing to react with anything but verbal condemnation will not stop the practice, but it would avoid a tussle with the Russians and limit US commitments.
- Try to get a UN Security Council resolution authorizing use of force or expanding sanctions. The Russians are unlikely to permit a resolution that goes that far, but it might be possible to get one that denounces the Asad regime and puts it on the diplomatic defensive, whatever good that will do.
- Press harder to convene peace talks. The Administration remains committed to following up the June 2012 Geneva communique by convening peace talks aimed at implementing a negotiated solution in which Bashar al Asad would have to surrender power to an interim government. Prospects for such talks are bleak (and the date has been postponed to the fall).
- Accelerate provision of weapons to the Syrian opposition. Washington, after indicating this spring it would arm the opposition in response to earlier reports of chemical weapons use, seems to have gotten cold feet, largely because of the prospect the arms would fall into extremist hands. Ignoring that prospect is risky.
- Attack Syrian missile and air force assets, even without UNSC authorization. Such an attack could be limited to the facilities thought to have originated chemical weapons attacks, or it could be much wider. Damaging the regime’s capability of reaching out to attack “liberated” areas could help the opposition gain strategic advantage, but doing it without UNSC authorization would trigger Russian responses Washington won’t like.
- Impose a “no fly, no missile” zone over all or part of Syria. This would require constant patrolling by US air assets that would be at risk of attack by Syria’s supposedly strong air defenses (which however have not responded to several Israeli attacks).
None of these propositions are very attractive, especially if you regard Iran’s nuclear program and American withdrawal from Afghanistan as far more important. Both require Russian cooperation that may not be available if the Americans decide to act unilaterally on Syria.
Weighing in favor of US action is the humanitarian situation and its impact on Syria’s neighbors. The US will spend upwards of $1 billion this year on humanitarian relief for the millions of Syrian refugees, internally displaced and needy whom Bashar al Asad has created with his effort to reassert governing authority in a country that has rejected his rule. A billion this year and a couple of billion next year. We are talking real money out of your taxpayer pocket.
More important for US strategic interests is the impact on neighboring countries. Iraq is suffering a sharp rise in Sunni terrorist attacks that stem from revival of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has extended itself also into Syria. Jordan is facing a colossal burden from hundreds of thousands of refugees, as is Lebanon, whose Hizbollah and Sunni militia forces are battling both inside Syria and sometimes at home. The Kurds of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey will be meeting August 24 in Erbil to discuss strategy, which for the moment aims at Kurdish federal units within existing states. But if those states start to collapse, can an effort at Kurdish union be far behind?
The notion that Syria is not a priority can only be sustained if the trouble it causes can be contained. It is looking as if that is no longer going to be possible. It is time for the Obama administration to react to the use of chemical weapons, if confirmed. My own preference is number 5 above.
PS: Please do not look at these pictures that purport to be the results of the chemical attack today if you are at all squeamish about seeing dead people.
PPS: To cheer you up, try this from May, via Mike Doran:
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