Tag: Syria
More diplomacy, less force
A friend asked today what I thought of the current situation in Syria. I responded:
Predictable and predicted. The Syria commitment was not sustainable. The US needs to reduce its commitments to the Middle East to a level that serves vital interests and is sustainable. It should do that carefully, using diplomacy to ensure no vacuums are left. That can’t happen with this President.
I guess that puts me at least partly in Elizabeth Warren’s camp and opposed to Josh Rogin, who is a fine journalist but far more of an enthusiast for US engagement in the Middle East than I am.
Let me recount the reasons:
- The US is far less dependent on oil, including oil from the Middle East, than once it was.
- The spread of US unconventional production technology has made it difficult for oil prices to top $60/barrel for long. That is a price the US and world economy can and does tolerate easily.
- Other countries should, as Presidents Trump and Obama have suggested, bear more of the burden of protecting Middle East oil supplies, in particular the Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans since they take most of the oil coming through the strait of Hormuz.
- Middle East producers should be doing more to build pipelines that circumvent Hormuz, and consumers (especially India and China) should be building strategic oil stocks for use in a supply disruption.
- American allies in the Middle East should, after many billions in US arms sales, mainly protect themselves. Israel does already. The Saudis and Emiratis as well as the Qataris should too. Needless to say, the Turks will have to after this latest brush with the US.
- Many American bases in the Middle East are too close to Iran to serve well in wartime. They will need to be evacuated if the balloon ever goes up. Better to get them out sooner rather than later.
- If you are still worried about Middle East terrorism, there is no reason to believe that the drone wars have done anything to reduce it. To the contrary, US presence in the region makes us a prime target.
- The right answer to terrorism is better governance, not drones. Find the people who are serious about improved governance and support them, not the thieves and oppressors who rule in much of the Middle East.
- If you want to counter Russian influence in the Middle East, clearly an unsustainable military presence is not the solution. Syria is going to be a big burden on Moscow. Let them deal with it.
- If you are worried about Iran, get back into the nuclear deal (aka JCPOA) as quickly as possible and try to negotiate an extension. The only serious complaint I am hearing from anyone about the JCPOA is that it expires.
The American drawdown from the Middle East should not be precipitous. It should be cautious and leave no power vacuums. That is what diplomacy is for: we need to be working on regional security arrangements that can guarantee that no one’s interests will be ignored and reasonable compromises will prevail. That effort will require serious attention to threat perceptions, regional trade and infrastructure, people-to-people relations, and traditional conflict management mechanisms in the region. Yes, more diplomacy, less force, and a lot of hard work and commonsense.
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Stevenson’s army October 17
The president had two angry meetings yesterday, one with the press while the Italian president looked on, and one with congressional leadership, supposedly about Syria. You can’t make this up. Here’s the transcript of the first meeting, and here the blow-by-blow of the second.
Obviously the president was unhappy that 129 House Republicans voted for this measure criticizing his actions in Syria.
NYT also has a good outline of what’s in, and not in, the latest trade agreement with China.
In WaPo, the new National Security Adviser explains why he’s slashing the staff. [No mention of leaks]
In the budget weeds, Lawfare explains the laws and regs on OMB releasing Ukraine aid.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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A plea from Deir Ezzor
A plea that arrived today from residents of Deir Ezzor in northeastern Syria:
Recent and sudden political developments on the ground in North East Syria, led to political negotiations that created a dangerous and volatile military environment in Eastern Syria. As a result, the Assad regime and its allied proxy militias recently entered many regions in Northern
Syria. The area has become unstable. Residents fear for their safety and that of their families.
We, the people of Deir Ezzor living inside and outside of Deir Ezzor, express our position in response to these political and military developments by declaring the following:
· We will deny the Assad regime and its Iranian terrorist militias entry into Deir Ezzor under any circumstances.
· We refuse any attempt to negotiate an agreement with the Assad regime and its allied terrorist militias that will facilitate the regime’s entry into our areas or allow it to manipulate and endanger the safety and security of the population.
· We consider any party, group or individual(s) working for or with the Assad regime our enemies and the enemies of the people of Deir Ezzor.
· We demand that the Autonomous Administration and the Syrian Democratic Forces to respect the security concerns of local citizens and that they abide by the political decisions of the civil and military forces representing the people of Deir Ezzor.
· We call upon the people of Deir Ezzor to stand united against any threat to the security of its perimeter. We alert the revolutionary community to be fully prepared to fend off any assault or attack perpetrated against the population by the Assad regime and its terrorist allies.
· We demand, yet again, that the international community fulfill its legal, human and moral obligations to protect areas in Eastern Syria generally and Deir Ezzor in particular. The international community must prevent the Assad regime and its Iranian terrorist allies from entering the area. If the international community allows the Assad regime and its Iranian backed terrorist militias to enter the area, the coalition will lose all political, social and military gains achieved by it and local population. Further, allowing the Assad regime to enter will result in a humanitarian disaster, resulting in collateral damage that will be hard to mitigate. Civilians opposed to the Assad regime and those wanted by the regime’s security apparatus will be in danger. They will be subject to arbitrary detention, physical abuse, and death.
· Finally, we demand that the international community, represented by the United Nations, the international coalition against terrorism, and those countries sponsoring the political transition in Syria in accordance with the relevant international resolutions, immediately address the political demands and security concerns of the people living in the north and east of Syria generally, and Deir Ezzor in particular. The Assad regime and its Iranian backed terrorist militias threaten any effort to ensure a democratic political transition in Syria. These changes also indicate a serious humanitarian disaster and upcoming violations. This region is entering a dangerous phase, the catastrophic results of which will reverberate into the future and not be confined to Syria or the region.
· We hope the international community will finally come together to prevent the impending catastrophe that is about to befall the east.
Victory to the Syrian people’s motivation and cause of freedom, dignity, and democracy.
DeirEzzor
16th October 2019
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Stevenson’s army, October 15
The Trump administration says it wants a cease-fire in northern Syria. Treasury announced sanctions against 3 ministries and higher tariffs on Turkish steel. VP Pence is supposed to go to Ankara sometime soon to talk about a cease-fire. Sen. Graham and Speaker Pelosi have talked about a joint measure to punish Turkey. We don’t know what the US and Turkish leaders said in their Monday phone call, but there is at least one report that Erdogan promised not to attack the Kurdish stronghold of Kobani.
Cease-fires don’t solve problems; at best they just turn them to a simmer. We can’t go back to the status quo ante. Do we want to keep Turkey as an ally? What about our nuclear weapons there? Will Trump pull remaining US forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan? Whatever the president decides, will there be a coordinated interagency effort to carry it out?
How did we get here? David Sanger says Trump rejected the advice of his national security officials and acted on gut instinct.
Meanwhile, the Russians have moved in, patrolling between Turkish and Kurdish forces. [And Putin was lavishly treated in a visit to Saudi Arabia]
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Whose side would you choose?
These have been consequential days to be out of commission due to lack of a computer power supply, but Amazon delivered yesterday in Bologna, where I am meeting with students and faculty at the SAIS campus. So I’ll try to catch up.
President Trump has pulled the plug on the US presence in Syria with the expected results: a Turkish invasion from the north and a push from Syrian government forces from the south. The Syrian Kurdish YPG, formerly the core of the US-sponsored forces fighting the Islamic State, has understandably opted for allying itself with Damascus, while Islamic State personnel are busy escaping from YPG captivity. International politics abhors a vacuum and fills it with armed people.
What could have been differently? The Americans needed to negotiate their withdrawal, as they have been trying to do in Afghanistan. Rather than leaving a vacuum, they might have arranged for Ankara, Damascus, Moscow, and the Kurds to come to an understanding about areas of control, at least on a temporary basis. Without such an understanding, the parties concerned will need to fight it out, to the detriment of the effort against ISIS and other extremists. The US is moving towards imposing sanctions on NATO ally Turkey in order to get it to stop fighting the Kurds. The absurdity of that sentence tells you all you need to know about how bad the decision to pull the plug was.
The second major development in recent days is the US/China mini trade agreement. Beijing will supposedly renew massive imports of US agricultural products in exchange for a truce on tariff increases. That accords with the first law of holes: when in one, stop digging. The tariffs are having a negative effect on the world economy, and the dip in Chinese agricultural purchases is blowing a multi-billion dollar hole in the US government budget as the Trump Administration tries to compensate farmers for their losses and hold on to their political loyalty.
But the agreement does little or nothing to solve the bigger problems in the US/China trading relationship, especially theft of intellectual property and forced technology transfer while leaving in place the several waves of tariffs already levied. My guess is that Trump is happy with that: he shows no sign of wanting to get rid of the tariffs, which he views as encouraging US manufacturing despite massive evidence to the contrary. The tariffs are hitting a lot of intermediate goods needed by US manufacturers, making them less competitive in US and world markets. But Trump is a mercantilist. He’ll want to keep the tariffs, no matter what Beijing agrees to do.
The mini deal is at least a step in the right direction: an end to a trade war the US cannot win. That is not true of the President’s decision on Syria. It is prelude to a wider and even more ferocious war in northeastern Syria, where erstwhile US allies will find themselves crushed between the Turkish onslaught and the Syrian counterattack. Levying tariffs on Turkey compounds the misjudgment, as it suggests the Americans did not understand what everyone else knew would happen. Trump is proving the US an unreliable ally to both Turkey and the Kurds, to the advantage of Syrian President Assad. He now has an opportunity to retake the substantial agricultural lands and oil and gas resources of northeastern Syria.
Making America great again is proving not just an empty slogan but a menace to American friends, who will need little encouragement in the future to rely on others for protection. Russia and Iran are the big winners from US policy in Syria. China is proving that trade wars are not easy to win. Whose side would you choose to be on?
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Stevenson’s army, October 13
Who knows what US policy in Syria/Turkey is this morning? NYT has some “live updates.” The president played golf yesterday while aides scrambled to explain what was happening. Lindsey Graham said Trump was willing to sanction Turkey now. [He has the power already; where’s the sanction?] Axios said officials said Trump had called Erdogan’s bluff two times. Looks the opposite to me. Maybe later this week somebody will write the tick-tock.
In other news, it looks as if China got the most out of the mini trade deal.
AP has more background on the Trump=Zelensky phone call.
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