Tag: Jordan
Trump’s Middle East: no one really knows
Tuesday night’s election result was shocking for many. Though Clinton’s policy in the Middle East seemed predictable, President-elect Trump’s Middle East policy is a mystery.
To begin to unpack this mystery, the Washington Institute for New East policy convened a panel this morning of Middle East scholars and international journalists to discuss what they expect to see from a President Trump. The panel featured Dennis Ross, a fellow at the Washington Institute, Norman Ornstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and the editor-in-chief of the Al-Arab News Channel, David Horovitz, founding editor of the Times of Israel, and Jumana Ghunaimat, editor-in-chief of the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad.
Khashoggi said Saudis were caught off guard by the election, as they were expecting a Clinton presidency. Due to Hillary Clinton’s long track record, they felt they knew what to expect and were ready for what was to come. Saudis are worried about Trump’s support for Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), though they are encouraged by his hard stance on Iran. They are also worried that Trump’s closeness with Putin and softening towards Assad will result in a Syria that is unfriendly to Saudi Arabia.
On Jordan, Ghunaimat said relations between the US and Jordan will likely stay the same. Jordan is a relatively stable and important ally in the region, and nothing Trump has said or done so far indicates that relationship will be in jeopardy.
Horovitz said most Israelis believed that Trump would be best for Israel, but they nevertheless wanted Clinton to win the election. Though they perceived Trump as having more empathy for Israel than Clinton and likely to take Israel’s concerns seriously, Clinton has a long pro-Israel track record. They know they could depend on Clinton to look after Israeli interests whereas Trump is more of a wild card. Israelis are still hopeful that their relationship with President Trump will be better than their relationship with Obama.
Ornstein focused more on the effect that President Trump would have domestically and the factors that led to his election. He blamed the inaccuracy of the polls on the “Bradley effect”—that is, many people were embarrassed to report that they were voting for Trump. The complaints of the white working class are valid and were unaddressed by Washington. This in combination with Clinton’s unpopularity among Democrats led to his election. Ornstein forsees Trump depending on others to make vital decisions, so whom he appoints will be decisive.
Dennis Ross said we know that Trump wants to get rid of ISIS and to improve our relationship with Russia. But defeating ISIS requires the trust of Sunni militias. This trust cannot be cemented in the face of a Putin-Assad-Trump friendship it would guarantee Shiite strength. Trump needs to approach his relationship with Putin—and, by extension, Assad—very carefully and be sure to enforce consequences when necessary. Aside from this, Ross encouraged humility in the face of Trump’s presidency—we cannot presume to know what he will choose to do, since there is simply not enough information available.
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Jordan in the middle
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is often ignored when discussing the conflicts throughout the Middle East. However, given its central position (and its shared borders with Iraq, Syria and the Palestinian West Bank) it inevitably plays a pivotal geo-strategic role. Its close relationship with the United States only heightens its regional significance.
To address Jordan’s role in the region and beyond, a knowledgeable Jordanian spoke last week at a roundtable discussion in Washington DC, specifically about his country’s stake in the regional conflicts—namely, the civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS.
Chaos and displacement of populations throughout the Middle East affects Jordan directly, since many refugees often seek resettlement in Jordan. The Jordanian government faces tremendous pressure to take in more and more refugees from neighboring countries. However, the Jordanian government and public are concerned with the security risk that these refugees pose, especially those migrating from areas formerly held by ISIS. Refugees admitted into Jordan go through a rigorous vetting process and are closely monitored. Amman is wary of the spread of radicalism domestically, and is concerned that refugees will encourage native Jordanians to join Islamist groups.
The refugee population has become a serious economic burden. Prior to the Arab Spring, Jordan had its economy in order—it had surfaced from the crippling debt of the 1990s and had a steadily growing GDP. The influx of refugees has forced the government to scramble to create institutions to care for these people (such as schools, hospitals, etc.). In addition to this pressure from refugees, Jordan’s tourism, transportation, and private sector haven’t been able to weather these economic blows and have been suffering recently. While they were guaranteed financial assistance from the UK and the US at the London Conference earlier this year, this assistance has not yet arrived. The official did, however, note that the US has been providing Jordan with $1.3 billion annually, which has been incredibly helpful in keeping the Jordanian economy in balance.
On Jordan’s ability to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the response was that Jordan would probably not be able to fill this role. Jordan does have a friendly relationship with Saudi Arabia—the Saudis and the Emiratis give Jordan $5 billion a year for project support, and there is talk of letting Jordan into the GCC. However, Jordan’s relationship with Iran is not strong and therefore Amman cannot serve as mediator.
Jordan has been pivotal in establishing a Free Syrian Army (FSA) “safe haven” in Southern Syria. Amman sees the southern faction of the FSA as relatively benign and capable of securing the south as a buffer zone against regime or extremist aggression.
On the US presidential election, the perception in Jordan is that Hillary Clinton has a clear and practical plan for the Middle East whereas Donald Trump is just bluffing.
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Don’t forget Hezbollah
Here is the draft of the State Department dissent message on Syria, on which the New York Times based its coverage yesterday. So far as I can tell the final version is not publicly available, but this draft is polished. The argument is basically that the US has sufficient moral and strategic reason to attack Syrian government forces with stand-off weapons with the goal of getting President Asad to abide by the internationally mandated cessation of hostilities and initiate serious negotiations on a political transition, as required by the Geneva I communique and numerous subsequent international decisions. The dissent memo admits some downsides: a deterioration of relations with Russia and possible “second order” effects.
Those downsides require more consideration. There is no international mandate to attack Syrian government forces. Intervention in this case would in that sense have even less multilateral sanction than the NATO attack on Qaddafi’s forces in Libya, where there was a UN Security Council mandate, albeit one that authorized “all necessary means” to save civilians rather than to change the regime. Asad has not directly attacked the US, even if his reaction to Syria’s internal rebellion has created conditions that are inimical to US interests by attracting extremists and undermining stability in neighboring countries.
The Russia angle is also daunting. Moscow may well react by intensifying its attacks on the opposition forces the US supports, who are already targeted by Russian warplanes. Unilateral US intervention against Syrian government forces would also help Moscow to argue it is doing no worse in Ukraine, where it supports opposition forces behind a thin veil of denials that its forces are directly involved. The US is not ready to respond in kind to Russian escalation in Ukraine, if only because the European allies would not want it. Kiev might be the unintended victim of US escalation in Syria.
Second order effects could also include loss of European, Turkish and Jordanian support, because of an increased refugee flow out of Syria, as well as increased Iranian support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, destabilization of Bahrain and Shia militias in Iraq. Greater chaos in Syria could also help ISIS to revive its flagging fortunes and al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra to pursue its fight against the Syrian government.
These downsides are all too real, but so is the current situation: Russia, the Syrian government, Iran and Hezbollah are making mincemeat of the US-supported Syrian opposition while more extremist forces are gaining momentum. President Obama is reluctant to attack sovereign states that have not attacked the US directly without an international mandate of some sort. That is understandable. But doing nothing military to respond to a deteriorating situation is a decision too, one with real and unfortunately burgeoning negative consequences for US interests.
Hezbollah is the way out of this quandary. It is not a state. It is a designated terrorist group that has killed hundreds of Americans, and many others as well. The Americans say they are fighting terrorist groups in Syria. Why not Hezbollah? Its ground forces there have become increasingly important to the Syrian government’s cause. Getting Hezbollah out of the fight would arguably have as much impact on the military balance as strikes on the Syrian army, which is already a declining and demoralized force.
Washington need not start with military action. It could lead with diplomacy, telling Moscow and Tehran that we want Hezbollah to leave Syria tout de suite. If it fails to leave by a date certain, we could then strip it of its immunity and treat it like the other terrorist groups in Syria. Moscow might even welcome such a move, since Hezbollah efforts in Syria strengthen Iran’s hold, not Russia’s.
Tehran would be furious, claiming Hezbollah is in Syria at the request of its legitimate government. Hezbollah would likely try to strike US, Israeli or even Jewish targets in the region or beyond. It has managed in the past to murder Jews as far away as Argentina. Doing so would confirm the thesis that Hezbollah is a terrorist group and redouble the need to act decisively against it.
No suggestions for what to do or not do in Syria are simple. The situation has gotten so fraught that any proposition will have complicated and unpredictable consequences. But the State Department dissenters missed an opportunity to duck some of the President’s objections and strengthen their own argument by focusing on a terrorist group, rather than the regime’s own forces. Don’t forget Hezbollah.
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Pay the piper
The Syria Campaign’s Taking Sides, a report out today on how the United Nations operates its humanitarian relief efforts in Syria in favor of the government, is dramatic. It illustrates that the UN gives the Syrian government a veto over how and when aid is distributed, resulting in supplies going overwhelmingly to government-controlled areas. It concludes:
The United Nations (UN) in Syria is in serious breach of the humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality.
But the issue is not an academic one of principles. It has a real impact on the ground inside Syria, where aid is just not reaching many opposition-held areas.
For Americans, what this means is that some portion of the $4.5 billion in tax dollars we have spent on Syria-related relief during the past five years or so has gone exclusively to regime-controlled areas, thereby supporting the government of Bashar al Assad. For 2016, that means a substantial portion of the more than $250 million pledged to the UN. Russia and Iran, both of which are belligerents with troops on the ground supporting the Syrian government and therefore contributing to the humanitarian crisis, have pledged zero in 2016 (Russia’s total for the past five years is $36 million while Iran’s is zero).
Some US aid does go to opposition-controlled areas, through cross-border shipments by nongovernmental organizations operating from Jordan and Turkey. US government officials will likely want to point this out, but they may not do so to protect the semi-covert character of many of these shipments.
What the Syria Campaign advocates is that donors make their support conditional on the UN maintaining the most basic of humanitarian principles: that aid should go to people based on need and need alone. That may sound blindingly obvious, but it is exceedingly difficult in a conflict zone. The Syrian government uses the leverage it gets from the UN’s presence in Damascus to make sure it doesn’t happen.
So the issue comes down to this: is the UN prepared to continue operating in Damascus, or would it do better to threaten to leave and operate exclusively from other countries? The Syria Campaign thinks the government would yield, at least in part, to a UN threat to leave, because it needs the relief the UN supplies to continue to flow to parts of the country it still controls.
Certainly the odds of any relief supplies getting to opposition areas the government has besieged would decline even further if the UN were to leave Damascus. The political economy of shipments into besieged areas gives the regime good reason to maintain its stranglehold. But the UN could be far more aggressive in providing cross-border assistance to areas that are not besieged from neighboring countries if it were not under the government’s thumb in Damascus.
Ideally, the Syrian government would cave to a UN threat to leave the capital and allow more shipments to opposition-controlled areas. That however seems unlikely, especially during a period when government forces are on the offensive and making some progress.
One thing the US could do, if the UN stays in Damascus, is reduce its aid channeled through the UN and increase its cross-border efforts. It could also tell Moscow and Tehran they need to fill the resulting gap in UN funding. It is time that those who call the government’s tunes pay the piper.
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The trouble still brewing
Yesterday’s discussion at SAIS of Learning to Live with Cheaper Oil : Policy Adjustment in MENA and CCA Oil-Exporting Countries raised serious issues. Oil prices are now expected to remain “lower longer,” as IMF deputy managing director Min Zhu put it. While contributing to global growth, the price decline is posing serious economic and governance challenges to the rentier states of the region and their relatively poor dependent cousins.
The 2014 oil price decline resulted from three main factors: increased production of tight oil and gas, slackening demand (especially due to economic slowdown in China and Russia) and increased efficiency. While prices have risen sharply from their lows early this year, the IMF expects them to remain well below their previous peak, with only gradual increases over the next five years or so to around $75 per barrel.
Some efficiency gains have already been erased, as oil prices have risen from their lows at the sharpest rate ever, even if they are still far off their peak. The shale revolution is not going away, even if many less productive wells have been shut. But larger ones are still producing. Much of the shut-in capacity will return as prices rise again.
This puts the oil producers in a difficult and long-lasting bind. The immediate impact was on their foreign exchange rate reserves, which are down dramatically. Growth is slowing. Budgets are being cut. The oil producers cannot continue to subsidize food and energy prices as well as avoid taxing their populations.
Sharply cutting their budgets however will not be a sufficient policy response, especially as it will have growth-reducing effects like limiting bank credit. The oil producers will need to undertake structural reforms to generate private sector growth that has heretofore been lacking. This is basically a good thing. Low oil prices will force producers to do what they’ve known for a long time they should have been doing, including cutting government jobs, reorienting it towards revenue collection rather than distribution and privatizing bloated state-owned enterprises.
But it is still difficult to picture how the oil producers will generate sufficient jobs to meet the needs of their bulging youth populations. If they somehow manage it, the social contract that has enabled the often non-democratic regimes to claim legitimacy will need revision, with citizens receiving less and asked to provide much more. Governing institutions will be under enormous strain as they try t o learn to collect taxes even as they reduce public services. Legitimacy will be in question. This is a recipe for trouble.
The fiscal squeeze will affect not only the oil producers themselves but also the states of the region to which they provide support, either in the form of aid or remittances. The eventual political consequences could be dramatic not only for the Gulf but also for Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and others. We have not seen the end of consequences “longer lower” will generate.
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Better than surrender
Colleagues at RAND have updated their peace proposal for Syria. This should be taken seriously, both because Jim Dobbins, Phil Gordon and Jeffrey Martini are sharp guys and because their previous version turned out to be prescient, or maybe just reflective of Administration thinking before the recent, now mostly lamented, cessation of hostilities. They want to put aside the difficult political question of transition, including the fate of Bashar al Assad, to focus on reducing the violence and extending the cessation of hostilities.
What they’ve done this time is to suggest four different ways in which decentralization could be implemented with Bashar al Assad still in place: one based on existing legislation, a second based on that plus additional taxing and security authority, a third acknowledges existing Kurdish autonomy, and a fourth that extends that autonomy to opposition and government controlled areas, more or less along the lines of their previous proposal. Wisely dropped from their original proposal is the ethnic/sectarian definition of “safe” zones, with the exception of the de facto majority Kurdish area along Syria’s northern border with Turkey.
All of this is perfectly reasonable as an outline of what might happen if the war continues. It just isn’t going to be possible for Assad to re-establish control over all of Syria. Decentralization is unquestionably part of the solution, as it is in Yemen, Libya and Iraq. The opposition already has local governing structures in northern and southern Syria, the Kurds are governing their “cantons” and ISIS unfortunately administers the territory it controls.
But as a proposal that keeps Bashar al Assad in place it looks distinctly like surrender. Assad himself yesterday made clear that he intends to reconquer all of Syria:
There is no sign that he would accept a peace that includes decentralization along any of the lines RAND recommends, even the one based on existing legislation. Nor is there any sign that the Russians and Iranians would compel him to do so. To the contrary: they are doubling and tripling down on their support for Assad’s offensives, most notably right now against Aleppo and Raqqa.
Nor is there any sign that the peacekeeping forces RAND mumbles quietly are necessary in both the original and updated version of its peace plan are going to be available. Even the Iranians and Russians are unlikely to deploy the tens of thousands required on the ground in Syria. Much less so the Qataris, Saudis, Jordanians or even the Turks. Years ago, the UN had polled more traditional troop providing countries and had identified 18,000 that might be made available. Today that number has certainly shrunk. A country the size of Syria would require well over 100,000 by the usual peacekeeping formulas.
The value of this second version of the RAND proposal lies in its careful attention to the pros and cons of different forms of decentralization. Assad is staying, but he won’t be able to achieve his territorial goal. The Americans, whose one real asset in Syria is the local governing structures they have supported, should be thinking about decentralization not with Assad, because he just won’t buy it, but despite Assad. Providing the security resources required to protect local governing structures, and weaving them together into a viable alternative to the regime, is a better plan than the surrender RAND is advocating.
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