Tag: Russia
The joke is on us
The temptation to do an April Fool’s post is great, but the barriers are greater: how can anyone joke about Bashar al Assad murdering Syria’s citizens and managing nevertheless to stay in power? Or about nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian theocracy? A war we are losing in Afghanistan? A peace we are losing in Iraq? A re-assertive Russia determined to marginalize dissent? An indebted America dependent on a creditor China that requires 7-8% annual economic growth just to avoid massive social unrest? I suppose the Onion will manage, but I’m not even one of its outer layers.
Not that the world is more threatening than in the past. To the contrary. America today faces less threatening risks than it has at many times in the past. But there are a lot of them, and they are frighteningly varied. Drugs from Latin America, North Korean sales of nuclear and missile technology, Al Qaeda wherever, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the wrong hands, bird or swine flu… Wonks are competing to offer a single “grand strategy” in a situation that does not permit one. Doctrine deprived Obama has got it right: no “strategic vision” can deal with all these contingencies. They require a case by case approach, albeit one rooted in strength and guided by clear principles.
American military strength is uncontested in today’s world and unequaled for a couple of decades more, even in the most draconian of budget situations. A stronger economy is on the way, though uncertainty in Europe and China could derail it. All America’s problems would look easier to solve with a year or two, maybe even three, of 3-4% economic growth. The principles are the usual ones, which I would articulate this way:
- The first priority is to protect American national security
- Do it with cheaper civilian means as much as possible, more expensive military means when necessary
- Leverage the contributions of others when we can, act unilaterally when we must
- Build an international system that is legitimate, fair and just
- Cultivate friends, deter and when necessary defeat enemies
My students will immediately try to classify these proposition as “realist” or “idealist.” I hope I’ve formulated them in ways that make that impossible.
There are a lot of difficult issues lying in the interstices of these propositions. Is an international system that gives the victors in a war now more than 65 years in the past vetoes over UN Security Council action fair and just? Does it lead to fair and just outcomes? Civilian means seem to have failed in Syria, and seem to be failing with Iran, but are military means any more likely to succeed? If the threats to American national security are indirect but nonetheless real–when for example North Korea threatens a missile launch intended to intimidate Japan and South Korea–do we withhold humanitarian assistance?
America’s political system likes clear and unequivocal answers. It has categories into which it would like to toss each of us. Our elections revolve around identity politics almost as much as those in the Balkans. We create apparently self-evident myths about our leaders that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
The fact is that the world is complicated, the choices difficult, the categories irrelevant and the myths fantasies. That’s the joke: it’s on us.
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Missive offense and defense
America’s patriots were hard at work this week, not attacking the nation’s enemies but each other. First the Romney brigade launched a missive, apparently the first salvo in a planned barrage. The Obama missive defense went ballistic. The question is this: how much difference is there, really, between the two presumed candidates?
On one issue, defense spending, there is a clear and present difference: Obama is in the midst of cutting close to half a billion dollars from projected increases in the Pentagon budget over the next ten years. Romney says he would not do that (without explaining how he would avoid it). He has committed himself to a naval buildup, apparently in anticipation of a Chinese challenge that will be decades in the making. Presumably to cover the interim, he has declared Russia America’s main foreign threat. Obama is already moving to shore up America’s presence in Asia and the Pacific, but he shows much less concern about Russia and more about Iran.
Romney has said Iran will not get a nuclear weapon if he is elected president. Obama says Iran will not get a nuclear weapon while he is president. Romney is clearly thinking more about military threat that enables diplomacy and Obama more about diplomacy enabled by military pressure. That’s a distinction with a difference in emphasis.
Both candidates are Israel‘s best friend. Obama has its back. Romney has its front. Neither is willing to pressure his best friend to reach a final status agreement with the Palestinians. Romney seems inclined to ignore their existence. Obama does not but has reached a dead-end on the issue.
Both candidates are also Castro’s worst enemy. Romney would pursue a tougher isolation policy with Cuba, one that has failed for more than 50 years to bring results. Obama would try to undermine the Castro regime with soft power, a more recent approach that has also failed to work.
On Iraq and Afghanistan, there are again some real differences. Romney says it was a mistake for Obama to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq. Obama asks how they could stay if Iraq did not want them and refused to allow immunity from prosecution. Romney says the drawdown in Afghanistan is too fast. Obama leans toward accelerating it. That difference too is real: Romney would stay in Afghanistan to win, Obama wants to get out before we lose.
Then there are the issues that have not yet been launched. Romney will likely say Obama hasn’t done enough to support the rebellion in Syria. Obama won’t say it, but he hesitates on Syria because he wants to keep his powder dry and needs Russian support on Iran. Obama will vaunt his accomplishments against Al Qaeda. Romney will criticize Obama for failing to bring around Pakistan.
There are also the intangibles. Romney says the United States needs to be number 1 and lead. Obama says the United States needs to collaborate with others and share burdens. Romney says he would never apologize for the United States. Obama apologizes when we are responsible for something going terribly wrong. Romney will say Obama is too soft. Obama will say Romney is too simplistic.
There are some who think this kind of missive exchange is clarifying or otherwise edifying. I’m not so sure, even if I think my team–that’s the Obamites–got the best of it on this occasion. I guess I am nostalgic, but it would be nice to return to the “water’s edge”: that’s a foreign policy that ignores partisan differences once we leave the east and west coasts to go abroad. We shouldn’t hide the real differences, but there is more similarity here than either side would like to admit. Nor will they do so any time before November.
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Here’s the rub
We are coming to a critical and delicate moment in the diplomacy about Syria. The Annan peace plan, which does not call explicitly for Bashar al Assad to leave power, has gained Arab League and UN Security Council backing. Bashar has said he accepts it. The Syrian opposition has not.
They are going to get their arms twisted, hard. The clear signal comes from David Ignatius, who argues in this morning’s Washington Post that they should go along with the deal. This is the opening salvo in what will no doubt be an intense U.S. government effort to convince the Syrian National Council and anyone else who will listen to go along. There is a strong likelihood that the pressure will split an already fractious opposition.
Ignatius simply assumes that the Annan plan will lead to the departure of Bashar. That is where the opposition, and the United States, have to be very careful. So far as I can tell, the Annan plan addresses this question only obliquely, by requiring that the Syrian government work with the UN envoy
in an inclusive Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people
I have been a supporter of Annan’s efforts, but I have to confess that this is a very weak reed on which to hang anyone’s hopes for a serious political transition. That Bashar al Assad needs to step aside in order “to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people” may be perfectly obvious to me. But it is not obvious to Bashar, who has repeatedly claimed that he understands and expresses the aspirations and concerns of the Syrians.
This of course is the issue that precipitated the Russian and Chinese vetoes of Security Council resolutions. Neither Moscow nor Beijing wants to be seen as carrying out regime change in Syria at the behest of the West or the Arab League.
The question is whether they are prepared to do it, even if they are not prepared to say it out loud. There is a big question mark here, one that the Syrian opposition needs a clear answer to, at least in private, before it signs on. Washington needs to help them get that answer and be prepared to guarantee it will happen.
The rest of the plan is a re-hash of things Syria has already agreed to do, and then not done: stop fighting, cessation of hostilities, pullback of the Syrian army and heavy weapons from population centers, deployment of UN monitors, humanitarian assistance, release of detainees, access for journalists and respect for free association and the right to demonstrate.
Opinion on whether Bashar can be made to comply with the plan this time is split. I don’t really think there is any possibility he will if he stays in power. His removal is a prerequisite for the Annan plan to have a chance to work. But he is feeling buoyed by recent military success, even as it becomes clearer with every passing day that his regime has lost legitimacy with the vast majority of the Syrian people.
There’s the rub: it is more than time for him to go, but he clearly intends to stay.
PS: Here is footage of a Syrian government helicopter allegedly rocketing ‘Azaz near Aleppo on March 25. If anyone in the Obama administration is looking for a reason to impose a no-fly zone, here it is:
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Shut out
Max Boot in the Washington Post today makes the case for U.S.-led military intervention in Syria. Zack Beauchamp at foreignpolicy.com makes the case for relying on diplomatic, political and economic tools. Zack wins. The score isn’t even close.
Boot
Boot dismisses most of the downsides of military intervention without serious discussion. He cites Syria’s lack of air defense effectiveness against Israel in 1982 (sic) and in 2007, when the Israelis achieved strategic and tactical surprise in a one-time raid on a single target. The inapplicability of these instances to a major, fully anticipated air campaign against multiple targets in urban areas in 2012 should be obvious. An American-led air war in Syria is going to be difficult and kill a lot of civilians.
Likewise, Boot writes off the large Syrian army as mostly conscripts and unmotivated. But it has also proven cohesive during a year of attacking Syrian cities. There have been few defections compared, for example, to Libya. The notion that only Alawites will fight for Bashar al Assad, as Boot implies, is just wrong.
Boot also writes off the argument that we don’t want to get into a proxy war with Iran, claiming that the Iranians are already fighting a war with the U.S., or with Russia, saying Moscow won’t fight for Bashar. But he doesn’t even consider the political and military risks to our ability to attack Iran, if that proves necessary to prevent it from building nuclear weapons, arising from a prior attack on Syria. The Obama Administration is not making a mistake to keep its powder dry if it wants to maintain a serious military threat against Tehran’s nuclear program.
Claiming that we have not even provided communications capabilities to the Syrian opposition, which is surely untrue, Boot says Syria is already in a civil war and doesn’t bother considering whether foreign military intervention could make things worse rather than better. After all, our other Middle Eastern military adventures have gone swimmingly over the past 10 years, without any blowback that undermines U.S. national security?
Our military intervention will also somehow prevent Syrian chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands. The evidence on this question in Libya is still not in, but I’ll bet we haven’t prevented it entirely there, where our assets were much stronger than what they are likely to be in Syria.
Beauchamp
Zack doubts that airstrikes can have the desired impact in urban areas. He also notes the strength of the Syrian army (relative to the Libyan one) and the divisions in the opposition (also relative to the Libyan one). “Safe zones” would be target-rich environments for the Syrian army and difficult to defend for those intervening. Ground troops would be required. As for chemical weapons, Bashar might well use them in the event of an international military intervention, making things much more deadly than they would otherwise have been.
Beauchamp also considers the negative implications of a U.S.-led military intervention without Security Council approval. It would, he says, stiffen Indian, Brazilian and other resistance to “responsibility to protect,” undermining its usefulness in the future. Certainly there is ample reason to believe this.
Instead, he suggests we rely on diplomatic, political and economic pressure: referral of Bashar al Assad to the International Criminal Court (ICC), assurances to the Russians that their interests will be served in a post-Assad Syria, and consideration of renunciation of any debt Bashar incurs now as “odious,” i.e. not to be repaid. These are, admittedly, not strong options: the Security Council referral to the ICC is unlikely, assurances already offered have not yet moved the Russians, and anyone who still thinks Bashar’s debts are going to be repaid in full if the opposition wins is smoking something.
Shut out. These are, nevertheless, the right approaches to a problem for whose solution there are no good options. A U.S.-led military intervention without a UN Security Council resolution or even an Arab League request is a non-starter. I’d call this one four or five to zero for Beauchamp. And he didn’t even know what game he was playing: his piece is mostly about R2P and how it is properly applied to Syria. He’s right on that too.
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This week’s peace picks
Quiet until Thursday, when there is a boom of interesting events:
1. Domestic Politics and Cross-Taiwan Strait Relations: A Perspective of Taiwan, Johns Hopkins/SAIS, 812 Rome, noon-2 pm March 12.
2. Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists, Rumi Forum, noon-1:30 March 13.
Considerable effort has been devoted to understanding the process of violent Islamist radicalization, but far less research has explored the equally important process of deradicalization, or how individuals or groups abandon extremist groups and ideologies. Proactive measures to prevent vulnerable individuals from radicalizing and to rehabilitate those who have already embraced extremism have been implemented, to varying degrees, in several Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, and European countries. A key question is whether the objective of these programs should be disengagement (a change in behavior) or deradicalization (a change in beliefs) of militants.
Dr. Rabasa will discuss the findings of the RAND monograph, Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists. The study analyzes deradicalization and counter-radicalization programs in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe assesses the strengths and weaknesses of these programs, and makes recommendations to governments on ways to promote and accelerate processes of deradicalization.
BIO:
Dr. Angel M. Rabasa is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He has written extensively about extremism, terrorism, and insurgency. He is the lead author of The Lessons of Mumbai (2009); Radical Islam in East Africa (2009); The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey (2008); Ungoverned Territories: Understanding and Reducing Terrorism Risks (2007); Building Moderate Muslim Networks (2007); Beyond al-Qaeda, Part 1: The Global Jihadist Movement and Part 2: The Outer Rings of the Terrorist Universe (2006); and The Muslim World After 9/11 (2004). He has completed the research on patterns of Islamist radicalization and terrorism in Europe, and is currently working on a project on deradicalization of Islamist extremists. Other works include the International Institute for Strategic Studies Adelphi Paper No. 358, Political Islam in Southeast Asia: Moderates, Radicals, and Terrorists(2003); The Military and Democracy in Indonesia: Challenges, Politics, and Power(2002), with John Haseman; and Indonesia’s Transformation and the Stability of Southeast Asia (2001), with Peter Chalk. Before joining RAND, Rabasa served in the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the International Studies Association, and the American Foreign Service Association.
Rabasa has a B.A. and Ph.D. in history from Harvard University and was a Knox Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.
3. Sudan and South Sudan: Independence and Insecurity, Dirksen 419, 10 am March 14.
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Full Committee
Presiding:
Senator Kerry
Panel One
Special Envoy for Sudan
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC
Co-founder
Satellite Sentinel Project
Washington, DC
Co-founder
Satellite Sentinel Project, Enough Project
Washington, DC
4. Two New Publications Examining Iran, Stimson Center, 10-11:30 am March 15
Iran in Perspective:
Holding Iran to Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Technology
By Barry Blechman
Engaging Iran on Afghanistan:
Keep Trying
By Ellen Laipson
Stimson scholars, co-founder and distinguished fellow Barry Blechman and president and CEO Ellen Laipson have completed new studies that consider how to engage Iran in constructive negotiations. Dr. Blechman will discuss how to achieve greater progress on the nuclear front, while Laipson will outline ways to engage Iran over the future of Afghanistan.
** This event is on the record **
Please RSVP to RSVP@stimson.org – or call April Umminger at (202) 478-3442.
5. Why Does Russia Support the Assad Regime? Middle East Institute, noon-1 pm March 15
Location:
Russia’s relations with Syria – even under the Assad regime – have been more troubled than current press accounts of Moscow-Damascus ties indicate. But despite the internal and external opposition to the Assad regime that has risen up over the past year, the Russian government has defended it staunchly via its Security Council veto and other means. In his talk, Mark Katz will discuss why Moscow supports the Assad regime so strongly as well as why it is willing to incur the costs of doing so.
Bio: Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University who writes and lectures extensively on Russia and its relations with the Middle East. He is the author of Leaving without Losing: The War on Terror after Iraq and Afghanistan (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Reflections on Revolutions (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, 1999), Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, 1997) and Russia and Arabia: Soviet Foreign Policy toward the Arabian Peninsula (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), among other publications.
Moderated by NPR’s Tom Gjelten
1:00-2:30 p.m., March 15, 2012
American Enterprise Institute, 1150 17th St. NW #1100 Washington, DC
CNN.com will livestream each event. On Twitter? Follow #natsecurity2012for updates throughout the series.7. South China Sea in High Resolution, CSIS 1:30-2:30 March 15
CSIS Southeast Asia Program is pleased to present the inauguration of its innovative new policy tool “South China Sea in High Resolution”.
Presented by
Ernest Z. Bower
Senior Adviser & Director, Southeast Asia Program, CSIS
Followed by an expert panel featuring:
Lieutenant General Wallace “Chip” Gregson
U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Admiral Timothy J. Keating
Former PACOM Commander, U.S. Department of the Navy (Retired)
The Hon. Stapleton J. Roy
Former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore, China, and Indonesia
Thursday, March 15, 2012
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm
CSIS B1 A/B Conference Facility
1800 K ST NW, Washington DC
We are honored to invite you to witness the inauguration of the innovative new CSIS policy tool called “The South China Sea in High Resolution” presented by Ernest Bower, the senior adviser and director of the CSIS Southeast Asia program. An outstanding panel of experts will discuss the presentation and key trends in the South China Sea and its importance to the United States.
The South China Sea in High Resolution presentation will address the myriad issues — ranging from geopolitical to economic to legal — arising from the disputes in the sea. The South China Sea is a topic of vital importance for the Asia-Pacific. American foreign policy rebalance towards Asia has further emphasized the significance of this region. The South China Sea connects the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China, but it contains sizeable natural resources and hosts the world’s busiest trade routes. Concerns about maintaining peace in the sea were raised by President Obama and other Southeast Asian leaders during the ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit in 2011.
Ernest Z. Bower is senior advisor and director of CSIS’s Southeast Asia Program.
Lieutenant General Wallace “Chip” Gregson (USMC, Ret.) most recently served as assistant secretary of defense, Asian and Pacific Security Affairs.
Admiral Timothy J. Keating (retired) is former commander of Pacific Command (PACOM) and the U.S. Navy’s U.S. Northern Command.
The Hon. Stapleton J. Roy is former U.S. ambassador to Singapore, China, and Indonesia. He is currently the director of the Kissinger Institute on China at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.
Please RSVP to the Southeast Asia Program by noon on March 14. If you have questions, please contact Mary Beth Jordan at (202) 775 3278.
Event Schedule
10:15-10:30am: Welcome
10:30am-12:00pm: Panel 1, How Repression Breeds Religious Extremism – and How Religious Freedom Does the Opposite
Panelists: Johanna Kristin Birnir, Brian Grim, Mohammed Hafez, and Monica Duffy Toft (moderator)
12:00-12:30pm: Lunch
12:30 – 2:00pm: Keynote Discussion, Religious Freedom, Religious Extremsim, and the Arab Spring: Bush and Obama Administration Perspectives
Participants: Dennis Ross, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and William Inboden (moderator)
2:15-3:30pm: Panel 2, Fostering Religious Freedom & Curbing Religious Extremism in the Arab Spring – Lessons for US Policy
Panelists: Jillian Schwedler, Samer Shehata, Samuel Tadros, and Thomas Farr (moderator)
Featuring
Stephen Hadley
Dennis Ross
Elliott Abrams
Participants
Johanna Birnir
Thomas Farr
Brian Grim
Mohammed Hafez
William Inboden
Jillian Schwedler
Samer Shehata
Samuel Tadros
Monica Duffy Toft
The Brookings Institution
August 04, 2011
Participants
Panelists
Khaled Elgindy
Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy
Shadi Hamid
Director of Research, Brookings Doha Center
Tamara Cofman Wittes
3:00 to 4:00 Panel 1: Domestic Issues
Scott Shemwell, Retired Business Professional, “ Challenges for the International Oil and Gas Markets: A Business Perspective ”
Xu Liu, Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies Visiting Scholar, GW; Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, “The Environmental Factor in Russian Energy Policy ”
4:00 to 4:15 Coffee Break
4:15 to 5:45 Panel 2: Foreign Policy
Keun-Wook Paik, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, ”East Asia Energy Cooperation”
Dicle Korkmaz, Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Visiting Scholar, GW; University of Tampere, “Russian-Turkish Energy Relations ”
Oleksandr Sukhodolia, Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Visiting Scholar, GW; Fulbright Scholar, “Russian-Ukrainian Energy Relations ”
Discussion Chair: Robert Orttung, Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Assistant Director, GW
RSVP at: http://tinyurl.com/PanelGWU
Sponsored by the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies
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What now?
Bashar al Assad and his opponents have now both rejected Kofi Annan’s mission impossible. On behalf of the UN and the Arab League, he sought a ceasefire, followed by humanitarian aid and dialogue on a political solution.
This failure was not surprising. His was always a low-probability proposition. But the rejection came faster than I anticipated. I’d have guessed that Bashar would see some benefit in stringing Annan along.
Instead he slapped Annan’s proposition down without hesitation, grabbing some World Health Organization support for a Syrian Red Crescent mission to assess health needs in conflict areas. Not bad: wage war against your own population, then get the internationals to pay for your own cronies to assess the damage.
Bashar is feeling his cheerios. Russian support is holding. Arab threats to arm his opponents seem not much more than hot air at this point. Lots of small arms are getting in to Syria, but they won’t do much against Bashar’s armor and artillery. Defections are growing, but the numbers are small and they still have not reached into the inner circle.
It is a bit harder to explain the attitude of the opposition, which is feeling abandoned by the West and not much supported in the East. They’d have gained more from supporting Annan’s initiative, and then having Bashar reject it, than by opposing it from the first. They want Bashar out before dialogue can take place, which I understand perfectly well. But they just don’t have the horsepower at the moment to make it happen.
Many, though not all, in the opposition want arms for the Free Syrian Army, the network of defectors who have refused to fire on demonstrators and taken up the cudgels against Bashar. The problem is that arming the opposition will prolong the civil war and make it ever more sectarian, which is precisely what the West does not want.
The opposition’s main hope is international military intervention against Bashar, which still seems to me a distant prospect. An American military attack on Syria without Security Council approval and in the midst of a high-stakes diplomatic duel with Iran over its nuclear program is unlikely. Washington will want to keep its powder dry for the main battle. Europe is absorbed in its defense of the Euro.
A combined Turkish/Arab attack on Syria is theoretically possible. But without Security Council approval and extensive U.S. support, it risks political and military failure. There are already far too many hints of a broad and prolonged Sunni/Shia war in the Middle East. Do we really want to throw fuel on that fire?
This leaves us with few alternatives other than continuing to support the opposition, to isolate the Syrian regime and to press the Russians and Chinese to stop shielding Bashar from even a mild UNSC resolution. The only big question is whether the support should include whatever the opposition needs to take up arms. This includes not only the arms themselves but also intelligence support and training. The opposition lacks real-time information on the disposition of the army and its checkpoints, a deficiency that is too often deadly to militants trying to move around Syria.
I’ve opposed arming the opposition, on grounds that doing so militarizes the fight and shifts it to means that favor the regime. The same argument does not work for intelligence support, which is vital to protecting the opposition whether it takes up arms or not. Our overhead capabilities are stunning. If the opposition can organize itself to make effective use of real-time intelligence data to protect its adherents, we should be providing it.
I am at a loss as to what to recommend beyond that. This is one of those situations where there are bad options and worse ones. I don’t see a route out of the current impasse, other than the one Annan failed to sell to both sides.
What is happening in Syria is extraordinarily cruel and ugly. Bashar is mowing down people who are asking for no more than the freedom to decide their own fates. His moment of accountability will arrive, but for the moment we don’t seem to have a way of making it arrive sooner rather than later.
PS: Annan declared himself optimistic after a second meeting with Bashar al Assad today (Sunday). Hard to know what to make of that. The Arab League seems to have softened its demand that Bashar step aside, leading the Russians to sound a bit more helpful. The opposition should be getting ready to have its arm twisted to talk with the regime before Bashar is removed. Meetings at the UN Security Council this afternoon and tomorrow are likely to lead in that “optimistic” direction.
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