Tag: Russia
Civilians >> chemical weapons
The “Salon” I did with Stanford’s Lina Khatib yesterday on “Should the U.S. intervene in Syria?” focused mainly on chemical weapons, as all conversations about Syria yesterday did.
Lina, who had published a piece with Larry Diamond on Thursday making the case for military intervention (arms to the rebels plus a no-fly zone but no boots on the ground) in Syria, is concerned not only about chemical weapons use, the evidence for which she regards as “credible,” but about the fertile ground for Islamist extremists and the impact on the region. The longer the fighting lasts, the worse it gets.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But it doesn’t matter whether she and I think the evidence of chemical weapons use is credible. What matters is what the Russians, Chinese, Turks and others think. If there is going to be serious military intervention in Syria by the United States, it is going to need multilateral cover, preferably a UN Security Council resolution as well as an Arab League request. The standards the evidence is going to need to meet are high. The world is in no mood for another Middle East war based on flimsy claims related to weapons of mass destruction.
It is going to take time to assemble the evidence and convince skeptics. Once we are ready, Peter Juul proposes a reasonable course of action to mobilize the UN Security Council and NATO (for both military action and humanitarian relief). If that fails, the US will have to consider unilateral action without multilateral cover, but that is a course of action with many drawbacks.
There is also a credibility issue in the other direction: if the US doesn’t act against Syrian use of chemical weapons, why would the Iranians believe that we would take action against their nuclear program? This is a serious problem, but it should not drive the timetable. Being 100% certain, and trying to convince others, is more important than the timing.
That is a cruel thing to say. Syrians are dying every day. The average is climbing towards 200 per day, 6000 per month. The total by now is well over 70,000. Those are staggering numbers. Few of them are killed by chemical weapons. Bombing, Scuds, artillery and small arms fire are much more common:
The targeting of civilians is a war crime, no matter what the weapons used. Civilians are more important than the weapons that kill them. The standards of proof are easily met. The Syrian security forces and their paramilitaries are attacking and killing civilians daily with conventional weapons.
I would like to see the international community act on those grounds, rather than focusing on a limited (and difficult to prove) use of sarin gas. But this is not the unipolar moment of 1999, when the United States led a NATO intervention in Kosovo without UN Security Council approval. That is unlikely to happen. So we are heading down a long road of difficult proof.
Some, like Leila Hilal on Chris Hayes’ show last night, would prefer a negotiated solution. So would I. But it is not looking as if Bashar al Assad is hurting badly enough to yield to the transition plans that Russia and the United States agreed in Geneva last June. The mutually hurting stalemate that would provide the conditions for that will require that the revolutionaries do a bit better than they have managed so far. More international assistance is going to be needed.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Syria is not just about Syria
Lina Khatib and Larry Diamond have a good piece outlining the case for intervening in Syria over at theatlantic.com. They want the US to supply the opposition with weapons and to intervene from the air to redress the imbalance in favor of the regime, which is using its air force and Scuds to good advantage in preventing the revolution from consolidating (holding and building in COIN-speak) its control of liberated areas. Intervention would shorten the conflict and limit the damage to neighboring countries, which are suffering from overflow of both the conflict and refugees.
I buy their argument, but it is incomplete because it does not look at the bigger picture.
President Obama, as he pointed out some weeks ago in an interview, does not regard Syria as isolated from other issues, because it is not. The most important factors weighing against intervention have little to do with Syria and a lot to do with Russia.
Obama does not want to lose Russian support for the Northern Distribution Network (NDN). It is vital to US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Moscow could shut it down, thereby prolonging the American presence in Afghanistan. That is something the Russians would like because they fear the post-2014 consequences of withdrawal. Without the NDN, we would again be at the mercy of the Pakistanis for maintaining the pace of the withdrawal. That is not a good place to be.
The President also does not want to lose support for the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran. The Russians have not only participated, they have also gone along with the sanctions that give the talks at least some slim hope of success. Of course they too don’t want Tehran to get nuclear weapons, but they might risk that if we act in Syria without their concurrence. Risking American prestige in an air war with Syria could also seriously diminish the credibility of any military threat to Iran, which is bleeding money and men in Syria without any risk to Americans.
Obama regards both the withdrawal from Afghanistan and preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons as higher priorities than ensuring Assad’s downfall.
The President also knows the American people will not be happy with another military intervention in the Middle East. This is not just because of war weariness, though that is real enough. Going to war while the sequester constrains the budget would cause serious strain on the Defense Department and likely end up crimping other priorities as well. If you are an advocate of a strong America, you should want to husband resources after more than a decade of war, not spend them in a place that is suffering mightily but is not a top American national security priority. An air war in Syria would also necessarily tip off the Syrians (and therefore also the Iranians and maybe also the Russians) to our latest and best technology, giving them a leg up in any future confrontation.
I can think of responses to all these issues, but if you don’t deal with them you haven’t made the case. Syria is not just about Syria.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
It isn’t branding
Milan Misic of Belgrade’s Politika asked a couple of questions. Here is how I replied, in an interview published today:
Q: Do you think that [Serbia’s] image is actually worsening instead of improving? And what…should Serbia start doing to re-brand herself?
A. I don’t think the problem is branding.
Serbia has benefited in recent years from an America that was willing to let bygones be bygones and a Europe that wanted Serbia in rather than out. This has meant openness to Nikolic and Dacic, both of whom had enough baggage from the 1990s to merit hesitation.
Rejection of the deal with Pristina will put Serbia in the deep freeze with both Washington and Brussels for some years. Both will try to continue to make nice (at least to Dacic and maybe even Vucic, who are not seen as the sources of the problem), but without much conviction. Serbia will find itself turning more and more to Moscow, which doesn’t seem much interested at this point as it has gotten most of what it wanted in the energy sector. I doubt the Americans and Europeans will begin to block IMF loans, but there will be many here who see that as our last remaining leverage.
Nikolic’s remarks at the UN last week were particularly egregious. Crimes against Serbs do not justify Serb crimes against others. Acquittals of others do not require acquittals of Serbs. His inability to see the Milosevic enterprise for what it was—a criminally violent effort to remove minorities from Serb-controlled territory—is truly odious. His claim that Serbia has always cooperated fully with the Hague Tribunal is laughable.
The best thing Serbia can do now to fix the problem it has created is to change its mind about the Pristina deal, which has never been published. They can announce proudly that they have gotten some adjustments (in fact I understand it contains provisions on police and justice that should relieve some anxieties in the north). There really is still time. But not much.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Hobson’s nuclear choices
No one seems overwrought that the latest nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (that’s US, UK, France, Russia, China + Germany) ended inconclusively yesterday in Almaty, Kazakhstan. An agreement on the eve of Iran’s presidential election campaign (voting is scheduled for June 14) was not likely. Iran is looking for acknowledgement of its “right” to enrich uranium, even if it limits the extent of enrichment and the amount of enriched material. The P5+1, led by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, are looking for strict limits on enrichment (to 5% or below, with most more highly enriched materials shipped out of the country) and tight international inspections without acknowledging Iran’s right to enrich. They are also looking for suspension of enrichment at Iran’s underground facility at Fordo and a strict accounting for past activities, which appear to have included some nuclear weapons development.
There are related non-nuclear issues on which the gaps may be greater. Iran wants sanctions relief up front as well as cooperation on Syria and Bahrain. The Western members of the P5+1 want to maintain sanctions until they have satisfactory commitments and implementation that prevent Iran from ever having a nuclear weapons program. They are not willing to soften their support for the revolution in Syria against Iran’s ally Bashar al Asad or for the Sunni minority monarchy in Bahrain, which faces a Shia protest movement that Iran supports.
The Israelis are the only ones who seem seriously perturbed:
“This failure was predictable,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, said in a statement. “Israel has already warned that the Iranians are exploiting the talks in order to play for time while making additional progress in enriching uranium for an atomic bomb.” He added, “The time has come for the world to take a more assertive stand and make it unequivocally clear to the Iranians that the negotiations games have run their course.”
But there is precious little they can do about the situation. An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will do relatively little damage but will end the prospect of a negotiated solution and make Tehran redouble its efforts to get nuclear weapons. President Obama is in no hurry to do the more thorough job the Americans are capable of. He seems satisfied that there is still time. The Iranians have in fact been slowing their accumulation of 20% enriched uranium by converting some of it to fuel plates for their isotope production reactor, which makes the material difficult to enrich further. The Israelis may not like it, but it looks as if everyone will hold their breath until after the Iranian election, when the question of further meetings and a possible agreement will arise again.
In the meanwhile, the Iranians will be watching North Korea closely. It has tested several nuclear weapons and presumably made more. Pyongyang is sounding committed not just to keeping them but to acquiring the missile capability to deliver them. While the press makes a great deal of Kim Jong-un’s threats against the United States, he represents a much more immediate threat to South Korea and Japan. If he manages to hold on to his nuclear weapons and thereby stabilizes his totalitarian regime, the Iranian theocrats will read it as encouragement to continue their own nuclear quest.
With the “sequester” budget cuts forcing retrenchment on many fronts, Washington is trying for negotiated solutions and hesitating to enforce its will that neither Iran nor North Korea acquire serious nuclear capabilities. It is hoping the Chinese will help with Pyongyang, which nevertheless seems increasingly committed to maintaining and expanding its nuclear capabilities. Tehran has slowed its accumulation of nuclear material but is expanding its technological capability to move rapidly if a decision is made to move ahead. President Obama could soon face a Hobson’s choice in both cases: either act militarily, despite the costs and consequences, or accept two new nuclear powers, despite the costs and consequences.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Irregular triangle: Turkey-Iran-Russia
Turkey, Russia and Iran are key players in the Middle East. Understanding their relations is important background to the current Middle Eastern turmoil, in particular the war in Syria. Differences over Syria threaten to disrupt Turkey’s relations with both Russia and Iran, while the Iran-Russia relationship is bound to suffer from mutual historical suspicions and conflicting long-term interests.
These were among the conclusions from a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event this week focused on the “the Turkey-Iran-Russia nexus.” The panel featured CSIS’s:
- Bulent Aliriza, Director of the Turkey Project;
- Stephen Flanagan, Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Diplomacy and National Security;
- Andrew Kuchins, Director of the Russia and Eurasia Project; and
- Jon Alterman, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy and Director, Middle East Program.
The event drew on an abbreviated version of the panelists’ joint publication The Turkey, Russia, Iran Nexus: Driving Forces and Strategies. The information in this post draws both from the panelists’ comments, the publication distributed at the event, and Flanagan’s The Turkey-Russia- Iran Nexus: Eurasian Power Dynamics.
Aliriza explained that Turkey’s policy of “zero problems” with its neighbors, and ambitions to become an energy hub between the East and West, shape its relations with the other two countries. Seeking greater regional influence, Turkey wants to expand trade and economic cooperation with both Iran and Russia, taking advantage of its geostrategic location at the heart of Eurasia. The panelists agreed that the Iran-Turkey and Russia-Turkey relations were the most developed. The Russia-Iran relation is largely political and lacks a strong economic and energy dimension. Overall the CSIS discussion concluded that differences over Syria threatened to rupture the Turkey-Iran/Turkey-Russia relationship, while the Iran-Russia relationship was bound to suffer from the historical mutual suspicions and conflicting interests in the long term.
Turkey-Russia: a more tactical than strategic partnership
The current Turkish government has prioritized strengthening ties with the Kremlin. Understandably cool during the cold war, Russo-Turkish relations warmed up in the USSR’s last decade, when economic and energy ties combined with agreements to cease support of their respective separatist movements, leading to greater cooperation between Moscow and Ankara.
In 2010 the two countries launched a “strategic partnership” consisting of a high-level cooperation council, annual summits, and a joint strategic planning group. Trade, investment, and tourism also greatly increased in the past decade. After the EU bloc, Russia ranks as Turkey’s leading trade partner. In 2012 total bilateral trade amounted to $33 billion, with Turkish energy imports accounting for 80% of trade volume.
Bilateral energy trade relations represent both an area of mutual interest and an area of competition. Turkey aspires to balance becoming a vital energy transit point for Eastern oil to the West, with securing energy supplies from Russia. At the same time Turkey is aiming to reduce its heavy dependence on Russian energy through diversification. Russia’s efforts to control the flow of energy from the Black Sea and Caspian conflict with Turkey’s ambition to becoming a key player for the East-West energy corridor. These conflicting interests have stalled plans for projects such the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline.
Despite the increased economic and energy ties, tourism, and high-level political meetings between the two countries, Flanagan argues that insulating the energy and economic relationship between Turkey and Russia from the sharp differences over Bashar al Asad will become increasingly difficult. Unless Moscow decides to cooperate with the international community on Syria, act more constructively in the Eastern Mediterranean, and establish clear rules in the Caucasus, the Russo-Turkish relationship will suffer. Despite the “strategic” veneer of the relationship, the partnership remains largely tactical because the two countries lack a common political agenda and too many conflicting interests.
Iran-Turkey: on the rocks
According to the panelists, historical rivalry, mutual suspicion and sectarian differences limit this relationship, which has experienced ups and downs. The Turks engage in trade (especially energy) and investment with Iran, hoping to keep their competition peaceful. Iran leverages Turkey’s energy needs to prevent further political isolation. But Turkey is disappointed and frustrated, prompting Ankara to seek alternative partners.
Still Iran ranks as Turkey’s fifth-largest trading partner. Total bilateral trade increased from $1.05 billion in 2000 to $16 billion in 2011, with Iranian exports (mainly energy) constituting $12 billion. Travel also represents a significant area of growth in economic relations. Thanks to visa-free travel Iranians constitute the fourth largest group of foreign travelers to Turkey. Investment is also growing. Iranian firms increasingly operate in Turkey to gain access to international markets. In 2010 1,470 Iranian firms operated in Turkey, up from 319 in 2002. Turkish banks also serve as international intermediaries for financial transactions between Iran and states that fear antagonizing the US by engaging directly with Iran.
The Turkish and Iranian governments have attempted to expand energy trade since 1996. Despite failures to meet its commitments, Iran now ranks as Turkey’s second-highest supplier of natural gas. Turkish energy planners, however, increasingly prefer Azeri, Turkmen and Iraqi gas to Iran’s high-priced and unreliable supply. Turkish and Iranian interests contrast in regards to gas transit and the development of the Caspian basin. While Turkey hopes to serve as a transit corridor for Caspian, Central Asian and Iranian gas and oil, Iran opposes building the trans-Caspian pipeline because it favors Middle Eastern routes to Europe.
Iran and Turkey also diverge sharply on issues regarding the Arab Spring and in particular Syria. Iran’s insistence on manipulating Sunni-Shia’ tensions to expand its influence in the Middle East perturbs Turkish officials. Turkey continues to engage Iran diplomatically, hoping to convince Iran to take a more pragmatic stance on both Syria and the nuclear program, but Syria risks rupturing upsetting the pragmatic economic and energy relations put into place in recent year. Tehran hopes Turkey’s need for energy will sustain the relationship. But Aliriza believes Iran needs Turkey more than Turkey needs Iran.
Iran-Russia: a political relationship
The Iran-Russia relationship remains more political than economic. Russia sees in Iran a potential counterweight to US and Turkish influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Moscow does not view Tehran as an immediate security threat. Iran has supported Russia in its larger strategic goal of promoting a multi-polar world. Iran and Russia find commonalities in opposing the US. There is not much personal affinity between Putin and Ahmadinejad. But as differences with the US grow over arms control, missile defense, Syria, and the larger Middle East, Iran and Russia have found more reason to cultivate their relations.
Although bilateral trade between the two countries tripled in the past ten years, Kuchins argues the volume remains insignificant. Russia represents 1.8% of Iran’s foreign trade, while Iran only accounts for 0.5% of Russia’s. There is little quantifiable energy trade and no joint commercial production in the Caspian, despite a 2008 treaty on cooperation in development of Iran’s gas and oil. Moscow and Tehran disagree on demarcation of the Caspian, but both oppose the trans-Caspian pipeline. The two view themselves as competitors for the European market in the longer-term. Alterman went so far as to suggest that containment of Iran plays to Moscow’s advantage, as otherwise it would have to compete with Iran for the European market.
The panel argued that in the short term the Middle Eastern turmoil serves both Moscow and Tehran. But continued support of Asad, and late diplomatic engagement with new Arab governments, may put them at a disadvantage later. Although Russia and Iran are bonding over shared energy and political goals, age-old suspicions and competing commercial interests will limit the alignment’s durability.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Can Syria be saved?
I spoke yesterday on “Can Syria Be Saved” at the Italian Institute of International Affairs (IAI). I was honored at the last minute by Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Staffan de Mistura, who joined the event and provided some comments. Here are the notes I used, amplified with Stefano’s comments and a bit of the Q and A:
1. The situation inside Syria
Military: The regime can clear, but less and less; the revolution can clear more and more. Neither can hold securely or build without the other being able to strike. This is the significance of air power and Scuds, which prevent consolidation of rebel control.
Civilian: The government is doing all right in areas that are loyal, but not gaining and under severe economic pressure. The revolution is unable to supply many areas outside government control and therefore unable to consolidate control and support.
2. Who is doing what outside Syria
There is no sign of the Russians or Iranians abandoning Assad, despite some change in Russian rhetoric. Russian arms supplies continue. Iranian forces are active within Syria, as is Hizbollah. Arms are flowing to the opposition, but unevenly and not always what they need.
The June 2012 Geneva communique, which provides for a fully empowered transition government approved by both the regime and the opposition, is still the only agreed diplomatic route. Brahimi is quiet, which is the best way to be until he has something definite. The Americans are exasperated but unwilling as yet to send arms. The naming of a prime minister this week should bring more civilian assistance, which is already topping $400 million from the US.
3. Why Obama hesitates to intervene more decisively, why Putin backs Assad
President Obama’s hesitation has little to do with Syria. He recognizes full well that a successful revolution there will be a blow to Iran and Hizbollah, but even an unsuccessful one is bleeding them profusely. The main issues for Obama are the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital for American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran. He does not want to risk alienating the Russians on either front.
For the Russians, the main issues are no longer the port and arms sales, if ever they were. Now the question is one of prestige and power. Putin is defining his Russia in explicitly anti-Western terms, all the more so since what he portrays as Western trickery during the Libya intervention.
For Iran, the issue is an existential one. Loss of Syria would disable the connection to Hizbollah and isolate Iran from the Arab world, with the important exception of Iraq. This would be a big loss to a country that thinks of itself increasingly as a regional hegemon. The Islamic Republic would regard the loss of Syria as a big blow.
4. Options for the US and Europe
Britain and France are considering supplying weapons. That is unlikely to buy much allegiance. The best that can be hoped for is to strengthen relatively secularist and pro-Western forces, but that is going to be diffficult given the good military and relief performance of the Islamists, including those the US regards as extremist and even linked to Al Qaeda.
The US hesitates about arms transfers because of “fast and furious,” a US government scheme to track weapons transferred to the Mexican cartels. One of the weapons was used to kill an American border patrol agent. If an American-supplied shoulder-fired missile were to bring down a commercial aircraft, the incident would have major domestic political repurcussions.
Washington is instead focusing on enabling the civilian side, in particularly the newly named Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto and whatever interim government he cobbles together. This should certainly include ample humanitarian assistance and operating expenses.
It might also include military intervention, since the Hitto government won’t be safe inside Syria if Assad continues to use his air force and Scuds. The idea gaining ground outside the US administration is to destroy as much of that capability as possible while it sits on the ground. No one in Washington wants a no-fly zone that requires daily patroling. This is also a possible response to chemical weapons, whose possible use was mentioned during the IAI event but the facts were still very unclear (as they still are today so far as I can tell).
5. Possible outcomes and their implications
The fall of Bashar will be a beginning, not an end. It is not clear that the state structure in this Levant will hold. Lebanon is clearly at risk. You’ve got Kurds in Syria and Iraq who want to unite, in addition to an ongoing if somewhat sporadic Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. You’ve got Sunnis in Iraq fighting in Syria who might eventually turn around and fight again in Iraq. You’ve got Alawites, Druze, Christians and others who will want to protect their own communities, isolated from others in enclaves.
Even if the state structure holds, there are big questions about the future direction of Syria. Will Islamists triumph? Of which variety? Will secularists do as badly in a post-war transition as they have in Egypt? The opposition in Syria agrees that the state should remain intact, but will it be able to under pressure from a “stay-behind” insurgency like the one that Saddam Hussein mounted in Iraq?
I also ran quickly through the options for post-war Syria that I’ve already published.
Staffan reacted underlining the importance of continuing to talk with the Russians, who are convinced that the intervention in Libya has opened the door to Al Qaeda extremism in Mali and Syria. He also underlined the importance of the opposition forming an inclusive and cohesive government that enunciates a clear plan for how to deal with the previous regime, including an exit for Bashar al Assad, and how to provide guarantees to the Alawites. He underlined that we should be putting together an international peacekeeping force now. We should not be tricked into international intervention by allegations of chemical weapons use.
I’ll stop my account there, as I’ve already gone on too long. It was a stimulating discussion. Many thanks to my hosts at IAI!
RSS - Posts
