Tag: Russia
The Libya analogy does not stop at Benghazi
For those tempted to consider Syrian pleas to establish a “safe area” to protect civilians, Safe Area for Syria: an Assessment of Legality, Logistics and Hazards, prepared for the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army by the London-based Strategic Research & Communication Center, is a must-read. It suggests:
At present, the most achievable option would be to establish a “safe area” in the country to provide refuge for embattled civilians from other cities and towns, a base of operations for the designated political leadership of the Syrian opposition as well as a military command centre — in other words, a Syrian Benghazi.
The pre-requisite is
…a pre-emptive aerial campaign would have to be waged to neutralize the regime’s air defence systems, particularly in Aleppo and Lattakia and in and around Damascus.
Safe areas come under attack because that is where the enemy is. The Syrian proposal is not intended to be a safe area like Sarajevo, which during the Bosnian war was declared but no military action taken to protect it until after it was attacked. Our Syrian colleagues are telling us the safe area they want would require in advance a significant air operation over much of Syria to prevent the shelling and air attacks that naturally result when a “safe area” is declared.
I won’t delve too deeply into the legal side of the paper, except to say that it dreams up some pretty far-fetched schemes because it is clear no UN Security Council resolution authorizing such a safe area can pass over Russian objections. It is hard to picture any of these schemes passing muster with Pentagon lawyers, and even less with the White House.
But if I am wrong and it turns out they are willing to bite the bullet and destroy Syrian air defenses, the military action won’t stop there. We’ll soon need to take out Syrian armor and artillery, which will be used to shell the safe area. And we’ll be doing this at the same time that the Free Syrian Army goes on the offensive. Sound familiar? The Libyan analogy does not stop at Benghazi.
What is the alternative? You see it on unfolding on the ground today in Syria. The Arab League observers are reportedly in Homs, where the Syrian security forces have wrecked a great deal of damage. I hope we are encouraging them to stay there, and to spread out to other areas that have been under siege. I also hope they can communicate directly with people outside Syria. The presence of the observers will encourage large demonstrations, and increase the risk to the regime of using violence. The Syrian security forces will play “cat and mouse,” but it is a game the mouse always loses if it goes on long enough. The Arab League just has to make sure it is a tireless and omnipresent cat.
PS: Reports today suggest that some Syrian security forces have left Homs as the observers arrived and that the protest there today is large. Here is what was going on before arrival of the observers:
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Accountability is not only for the bad guys
A Libyan e-penpal writes
As you know the Russians proposed two days ago a project at the U.N. to investigate on the Libyan victims committed by NATO according to Russia. We as Libyans are proud of the involvement of NATO and the United States who freed us with our Libyan fighters from the deposed dictator “Gaddafi”. Even if there were casualties, we as Libyans are confident that it is by pure mistake or by premeditation of the dictator’ forces, who put weapons and artilleries in civilian homes. Everyone in Libya and in the entire world knows the attitude of the Russians when the revolt against “Gaddafi” began February 17, 2011. What we can say is the total hypocrisy of the Russians. Once again, we thanks the U.S.A. and NATO.
I am grateful for the confidence this Libyan and many others place in NATO and the U.S. During my visit to Libya in September I was often stopped on the street to be told how much the intervention was appreciated. Certainly the Russians are less interested in getting to the facts of the matter and more interested in embarrassing NATO.
But I have to confess that I would like to see NATO do its own unclassified after action assessment of civilian damage, cooperatively with the new Libyan authorities. Whether or not we ever conduct an operation exactly like this one again, doing a serious assessment would provide vital information for protection of civilians in the future.
So far, NATO has apparently left the investigating to nongovernmental organizations and the press. They do an admirable job, but what they cannot do is figure out how to decrease harm to civilians in future operations. I have no doubt but that NATO intends to do that–there is just no mileage in killing civilians for the Alliance–but it also has to take the trouble to determine exactly how mistakes occur in order to correct them.
If NATO continues to resist a public inquiry, it will feed the Russian propaganda mill. Better to sit down with the Libyan authorities, the NGOs and the New York Times to figure out how a serious investigation can be conducted. Then go do it. Anyone who claims undertake military action as part of the “responsibility to protect” should be willing to do that much. And the present Libyan authorities, who no doubt fear that such an investigation will extend to the behavior of some of the anti-regime rebels, need to begin to assemble the facts that will eventually be needed to sort out who did what to whom.
Accountability cannot be limited to the bad guys.
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It’s bad either way
Judging from my Twitterfeed this morning, there are two versions of the bombings outside security service buildings in Damascus today:
- The regime says it was Al Qaeda, or maybe the army deserters, or maybe just all those terrorists who have been attacking the state for months. Whatever it was, clearly that is where the regime wants the Arab League monitors, an advance party for which has just arrived in Damascus, to focus their attention. No need to go to Idlib or Daraa, where they might see Syrian army forces obliterating civilians.
- The protesters say it was the regime, giving itself an excuse to crack down. Al Qaeda is just a convenient suspect. The Europeans and Americans can hardly object to a crackdown aimed at their sworn enemy. Nobody wants Al Qaeda winning in Syria. But what really happened is that the secret services committed the act, or allowed it to be committed.
We may never know the truth–the Syrians have a habit of quickly cleaning up crime scenes, before any serious forensic evidence can be gathered.
I share the natural inclination to disbelieve the regime, which has established for itself a clear and consistent record of lying about everything. But it may not matter: these bombings represent an enormous escalation of the level and kind of violence in Syria. It will encourage both regime and protesters to ratchet up their rhetoric and intensify the physical conflict. While I might hope that will cause massive defections from the Syrian army, I think it far more likely it will reduce the numbers of people willing to go to the streets and improve the regime’s chances of repressing the demonstrations. The regime will target Sunni Islamists. Some of the Sunnis will respond by targeting Allawites, Christians and other regime loyalists. From here it is easy to go in the direction of sectarian civil war, no matter who was responsible for this morning’s bombings.
That’s where the Arab League observers come in. I share the blogosphere’s disappointment yesterday upon discovering that its leader is a Sudanese general who has served in Darfur and has an impeccable pedigree of loyalty to his country’s president, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. But like it or not, the observers are the best bet for protecting the demonstrators in Syria, if they can get out of Damascus and communicate freely. It won’t take more than a couple of reports confirming the regime’s violence against unarmed civilians to enrage the international community.
What good will that do? We seem to be on the verge (or not) of a UN Security Council resolution on Syria, at long last. That would represent an end to Moscow’s protection of Bashar al Assad. I don’t believe that will necessarily cause him to fall right away, but he really cannot survive on his own forever. The Russians however will want what the Americans wanted in Egypt: a transition guided by people in the military who will maintain the country’s friendship with Moscow. The Syrian protesters seem smart enough to me not to follow the Egyptians down that dead end.
But first they have to find a way to avoid that civil war.
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North Korean winter: stability or discontent?
As regular readers will know, North Korea is not my thing, even if I have a good deal of experience on nuclear nonproliferation issues. The last time I posted a piece devoted to it was more than a year ago, though I’ve mentioned it more often as an American priority. In the wake of Kim Jong-il’s death, the best I can do is offer a summary of what I think obvious.
North Korea is a priority for the U.S. because of the risks its nuclear weapons program poses, both for proliferation and for targeting America and its allies in South Korea and Japan. Kim Jong-il’s regime managed to test something like nuclear weapons twice (in 2006 and 2009), was developing longer-range missiles and is thought to be on the verge of acquiring substantial quantities of enriched uranium. North Korea has already been involved in murky missile and nuclear technology trade with Pakistan and Iran.
The first American concern will be short-term stability. The Obama Administration is quite rightly indicating that it is watching the situation and consulting with Seoul and Tokyo, but it would be a mistake to say or do anything that could provoke military action by Pyongyang, which readily perceives threats and uses attacks on the South both to rally internal support and to extract assistance from the international community.
This will put Washington for the moment on the same wavelength with Beijing and Moscow, which fear instability. China in particular is concerned about millions of refugees crossing its border. It will also worry that the Americans intend to take advantage of Kim Jong-il’s death to liberate North Korea and reunify it with the South. That is something Seoul says it wants and the Americans would be hard put not to support, but the process by which it happens could be dramatically problematic as well as costly. China does not want a reunified, Western-oriented, strong Korea on its border.
A great deal now depends on what happens inside North Korea. The New York Times quotes an unnamed American military source:
Anyone who tells you they understand what is going to happen is either lying or deceiving himself.
I would be deceiving myself. So I won’t try to tell you I understand what is going to happen. Things to watch for? Whether calm prevails for the next week or so, whether the funeral comes off on December 28 without signs of tension in or with the army, whether the succession to Kim Jong-un is orderly, whether food prices remain more or less stable, whether there are military maneuvers against the South. So far, the announcements out of the North suggest things are under control.
Past the next few weeks, Washington will need to decide what to do. In a remarkable but little remarked shift of policy, the Americans–who had said they would not meet with North Korea bilaterally unless it gave up its nuclear weapons programs–began meeting bilaterally with the North Koreans in 2006 as soon as they tested a nuclear weapon. Now they say they won’t return to the six-party talks (involving China, Russia, Japan, and the Koreas) unless than the talks are substantial (which means progress can be made on nuclear issues).
My guess is that we’ll see talks, but with a few months delay. North Korea is not as desperate as once it was. It will not want to rush into international talks before settling its domestic situation. The regime will want to reconsolidate itself and bargain with the five other parties from a position of strength, which likely means continuation of the nuclear and missile programs in the interim.
The wild card could be the North Koreans themselves. If protests start, the regime will crack down hard. There are signs the security forces are deploying to prevent trouble. Markets are closed. North Korea is a brutal dictatorship far beyond the imagination of Tunisia or Egypt, where protests have felled long-ruling presidents. Could this be the winter of discontents?
PS: Written before Kim Jong-un became the designated successor, but still of interest: Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea – Council on Foreign Relations.
PPS: Just imagine what these people will do the day they are free to do as they like:
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What threatens the United States?
The Council on Foreign Relations published its Preventive Priorities Survey for 2012 last week. What does it tell us about the threats the United States faces in this second decade of the 21st century?
Looking at the ten Tier 1 contingencies “that directly threaten the U.S. homeland, are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement because of treaty commitments, or threaten the supplies of critical U.S. strategic resources,” only three are defined as military threats:
- a major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces
- an Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response)
- a U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counterterror operations
Two others might also involve a military threat, though the first is more likely from a terrorist source:
- a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally
- a severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weapons/ICBM capability)
The remaining five involve mainly non-military contingencies:
- a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, gas and oil, water supply, banking and finance, transportation, and emergency services)
- a significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States
- severe internal instability in Pakistan, triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks
- political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies
- intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-dip U.S. recession and further limiting budgetary resources
Five of the Tier 2 contingencies “that affect countries of strategic importance to the United States but that do not involve a mutual-defense treaty commitment” are also at least partly military in character, though they don’t necessarily involve U.S. forces:
- a severe Indo-Pak crisis that carries risk of military escalation, triggered by major terror attack
- rising tension/naval incident in the eastern Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Israel
- a major erosion of security and governance gains in Afghanistan with intensification of insurgency or terror attacks
- a South China Sea armed confrontation over competing territorial claims
- a mass casualty attack on Israel
But Tier 2 also involves predominantly non-military threats to U.S. interests, albeit with potential for military consequences:
- political instability in Egypt with wider regional implications
- an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Syria, with potential outside intervention
- an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Yemen
- rising sectarian tensions and renewed violence in Iraq
- growing instability in Bahrain that spurs further Saudi and/or Iranian military action
Likewise Tier 3 contingencies “that could have severe/widespread humanitarian consequences but in countries of limited strategic importance to the United States” include military threats to U.S. interests:
- military conflict between Sudan and South Sudan
- increased conflict in Somalia, with continued outside intervention
- renewed military conflict between Russia and Georgia
- an outbreak of military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, possibly over Nagorno Karabakh
And some non-military threats:
- heightened political instability and sectarian violence in Nigeria
- political instability in Venezuela surrounding the October 2012 elections or post-Chavez succession
- political instability in Kenya surrounding the August 2012 elections
- an intensification of political instability and violence in Libya
- violent election-related instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- political instability/resurgent ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan
I don’t mean to suggest in any way that the military is irrelevant to these “non-military” threats. But it is not the only tool needed to meet these contingencies, or even to meet the military ones. And if you begin thinking about preventive action, which is what the CFR unit that publishes this material does, there are clearly major non-military dimensions to what is needed to meet even the threats that take primarily military form.
And for those who read this blog because it publishes sometimes on the Balkans, please note: the region are nowhere to be seen on this list of 30 priorities for the United States.
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This is not easy
American Ambassador Robert Ford is returning to Damascus, where violence continues. Security forces and pro-regime militias killed dozens yesterday while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was meeting with opposition Syrian National Council members in Geneva. It is not clear how many the defector-manned Free Syrian Army has killed, but the SNC is claiming its armed partners will only defend Syrians and not undertake offensive operations.
There is no sign of the Arab League observers Bashar al Assad claims to have agreed could be deployed. Syria is now saying that sanctions have to end before observers can be deployed. I guess Damascus forgot to mention that earlier.
What is to be done? More of the same I am afraid. There is no quick solution. Even if Bashar were to exit suddenly, there would still be a regime in place fighting for its life with the resources Iran provides. The effort now has to focus on tightening sanctions, especially those imposed by the European Union and the Arab League as well as Turkey. It is important also to continue to work on the Russians, who have so far blocked any UN Security Council resolution.
Burhan Ghalioun, who leads the SNC, goes over all these issues and more in his Wall Street Journal interview last week. Unfortunately, it attracted attention mainly for what he had to say about Syria being able to recover the Golan Heights and breaking its military alliance with Iran. Much more interesting were his commitment to nonviolence, to a “civil” state, to countering sectarianism, to Arab solidarity and to building a serious democracy with rule of law. The outlines of an SNC program are starting to emerge, including a desire for an orderly transition, maintenance of state institutions and elections within a year. But I found it hard to credit his dismissal of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has long played an important underground role in Syria and is likely to persist as an important political force in the post-Assad period.
The Americans seem to me still focused on hastening Bashar’s removal. That is certainly a worthy goal, but it may not happen. We also need to be worrying about sustaining the nonviolent opposition, which is under enormous pressure every day. Ambassador Ford’s return may give them a boost, but he is unlikely to be able to do much to help them or to communicate effectively with the regime, whose listening skills are minimal.
Getting the observers in would be one important step, but it is unclear to me whether they really exist. If Bashar did agree to them, could the Arab League deploy them within a reasonable time frame? Who are they? How many? How have they been trained? What rules of behavior will they follow? How will they report?
Bluff is not going to win this game. Enforcing sanctions, persuading the Russians to go along with a Security Council resolution, deploying Arab League observers, sustaining the protesters, keeping an exit door open for Bashar: none of it is easy, but together these things may begin slowly to turn the tide.
Here is Bashar al Assad with Barbara Walters: he asks for evidence of brutality, denies that he has given orders for a crackdown and suggests the UN is not credible. He likely also thinks the sun revolves around the earth:
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