Tag: Syria
Stevenson’s army, December 14
– NYT says Israel wants earlier delivery of refueling planes that could be used to attack Iran.
– WaPo says Israel attacked suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria.
– SecState Blinken announced an Indo_Pac strategy. Here’s the text.
– Insider reports on potential conflicts of interest — in this case defense lawmakers. And staff.
Good reads: ISW analysis of Russia’s Ukraine options. WOTR piece questioning “gifts” of weapons to allies.
Politico sums up the plan on debt and defense: DEBT AND DEFENSE, TOGETHER AGAIN — No, they aren’t on the same bill, but the Senate is taking action on both the debt limit and the compromise defense bill today. The chamber will vote this morning on a motion to proceed on the joint resolution to raise the debt ceiling and final passage is expected later in Tuesday’s session. After getting tangled in amendment drama, the National Defense Authorization Act will finally be on the move in the Senate with a cloture vote Tuesday and final passage on track for this week.
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. 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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Getting back to the nuclear deal is the best option, the sooner the better
Iran is arguably already a threshold nuclear state. American withdrawal from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka Iran nuclear deal) in 2018 has allowed Tehran to enrich uranium to 20%, develop more advanced centrifuges, and likely make other technological process. It is now well within one year of being able to fabricate a nuclear weapon. What difference does that make?
Not much, yet. Possession of nuclear weapons is not a major factor in today’s geopolitics, because they are unusable. As Richard Burt put it a decade ago:
The currency of power has changed from [nuclear] military power to economic, technological competitiveness.
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1230/the-new-geopolitics-why-nuclear-weapons-no-longer-serve-us-interests
Israel’s growing power in the Middle East is not due to its nuclear weapons, which represent a guarantee of its existence rather than a means of projecting power. Arab states are now cozying up to Israel because of its economic and technological prowess, built on top of its military strength. Nuclear weapons have given Pakistan a means of deterring a conventional Indian invasion but have not made Pakistan India’s equal even within South Asia. India is by far the greater economic and technological power. Russia’s resurgence as a great power is not based on its nuclear weapons, which Moscow possessed in the 1990s when it was an economic basket case, but rather on its economic recovery and willingness to project conventional military force into Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria as well as hybrid warfare in the Balkans, Belarus, and elsewhere.
Nuclear weapons are still important for deterrence, but they do little more than guarantee mutual destruction.
So what’s wrong with Iran getting nuclear weapons, or the technology to make and deliver them within a few months time? The answer lies in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, not in Israel. Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state will inspire, if it has not already, its regional rivals to do likewise. Both President Erdogan and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have both said as much. I’d guess Turkey is technologically capable on its own. Saudi Arabia may need to buy experts and technology abroad, but it is capable of doing so. Once four countries in the Middle East go nuclear, the risks of intentional or accidental nuclear warfare rise exponentially.
Bilateral deterrence works reasonably well, judging by experience not only with the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States but also with India and Pakistan, India and China, as well as China and the US. Multilateral deterrence poses much more complex issues, especially with countries that lack second strike capabilities and are geographically proximate. Preparation for launch of Iranian missiles that might (or might not) carry nuclear weapons could trigger responses not only from Israel, which in its submarines has second strike capability, but also from Turkey or Saudi Arabia, depending on the crisis du jour. Miscalculation is a key factor in war. The odds of a mistake are much higher the more countries are involved.
The question remains: can the world manage with Iran as a nuclear-threshold or even a nuclear country? The answer is yes, at least for a while, but that circumstance will not be in Iran’s favor. If it fails to negotiate a return to the JCPOA, the US will tighten its economic sanctions and apply them with more vigor. Israel will continue its “dirty war” of cyber attacks and assassinations of Iranian scientists. Europe and the UK will go along with the Americans, as their financial institutions and companies have too much to lose by displeasing Washington. Moscow won’t want Iran to go nuclear, but its companies may well be prepared to surreptiously help Tehran evade sanctions. Beijing may do likewise, as it has much to gain from acquiring Iranian oil at sanctions-induced relatively cheap prices.
The negotiations on return to the JCPOA adjourned Friday without progress and bitter words from both Washington and Tehran. Failure of the negotiations, whose aim is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state, will thus aggravate East/West tensions and vastly complicate US relations with both Russia and China, which won’t take kindly to the tightening of sanctions. Iran’s economy, already well on the way to ruin, will deteriorate further. Israel will find its dirty war progressively more difficult and less effective as the Iranians learn how to counter it. Washington will want try to restrain Ankara and Riyadh from acquiring all the technology needed for nuclear weapons but will find it increasingly difficult to do so.
Getting back to the nuclear deal is the best option. The sooner the better.
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– Former Senator Bob Dole has died at 98. He was a masterful legislator and a witty partisan. NYT has some of his quips.
– WSJ says US is trying to block Chinese efforts to build an Atlantic base in Equitorial Guinea.
– NYT says Syria is a narcostate with illicit amphetamines its biggest export.
– FT says US has been sharing intelligence on Russian threat to Ukraine, convincing allies.
– Dan Drezner parses the stories on Ukraine.
– Jim Fallows analyzes the threats to US democracy, sees protection of minority rights morphing into minority rule.
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. 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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Admire Russia’s provocative statecraft, even if its objectives are odious
Russian President Putin is feeling his oats. He is pushing against the West along a front that extends from the Baltics to Syria and possibly beyond. Here is an incomplete account of his maneuvers:
- The Baltics: Russia has concentrated troops along its border with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Moscow is also conducting menacing exercises and violating Allies’ airspace.
- Belarus: Again lots of military exercises, but more inventively Putin has encouraged President Lukashenko to import Kurds from Iraq and try to push them across the border into Poland and thus the EU. This constitutes intentional weaponization of third-country nationals.
- Ukraine: Moscow has (again) concentrated military forces on the border with the apparent intention of threatening an expansion of Russian-controlled territory inside Ukraine beyond Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. Moscow is also raising gas prices and shipping more gas to the West avoiding Ukraine and thus reducing its revenues.
- The Balkans: Russia is giving and selling arms to a vastly re-armed Serbia, is financing the Serb entity inside Bosnia and Herzegovina and encouraging secession talk there, and has gained vastly increased influence through proxies inside Montenegro.
- Turkey: Moscow has sold its advanced air defense system to Turkey, which as a result has lost its role in manufacturing components of the American F-35 fighter and will likely look to Russia for modernization of its fighter fleet.
- Syria: Russian air forces intervened in Syria in 2015, when rebels were seriously threatening the regime in Damascus. Russian forces have occasionally tested their mettle against the Americans and US-supported forces in the northeast.
Russian military forces have also taken on a “peacekeeping” role inside Azerbaijan after its 2020 clash with Armenian-supported secessionists in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow’s troops were already stationed inside Armenia. Prior Russian interventions in Georgia and Moldova were explicitly aimed at preventing NATO and EU membership, respectively, and have resulted in separate governance of Russian-controlled territories within those states.
For Putin, not only NATO but also the EU is an enemy. He is right: the EU and NATO are committed to open societies, democratic governance, and the rule of law, which are anathema to Putin. He wants none of their members on Russia’s borders or even nearby. The Eurasian Economic Union is intended as the economic dimension of his fight against the West. He is also seeking to weaken the EU and NATO from within. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is Russia’s handmaiden within the EU. Montenegro risks becoming one inside NATO.
It is difficult to know how the West should respond to all this. Neither the EU nor NATO is skilled at anticipating and preventing trouble. Nor can they coordinate and focus resources as quickly as an autocrat can. But it is important to recognize that for Russia all these pieces are part of the same puzzle. Obsessed with being surrounded, Russia responds by trying to expand and establish autocratic hegemony in what it regards as its near abroad, even if that designation is no longer so commonly used. You have to admire Russia’s provocative statecraft, even if the objectives are odious.
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Normalization won’t normalize, but UAE and Russia will gain
Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat, and Venus Mohammed write:
The visit of the UAE Foreign Minister can be analyzed in two complementary ways:
- Washington’s silence reflects its disinterest in the Syrian file in general and also preparation for an upcoming strategic dialogue with Moscow in Geneva next week, which will focus on keeping the cross-border routes for humanitarian aid open. Washington is offering an initial reward to Moscow by remaining silent on the Emirati openness to Damascus and thus indirectly encouraging it tacitly. In return, Washington expects Damascus to reciprocate, with support or pressure from Moscow. This could mean a new step-by-step road map in Syria, which the US hopes will emerge in the meeting with Moscow next week.
- The visit came within the framework of coordination between Tel Aviv and the UAE to support Moscow, which coordinates extensively with Tel Aviv to target Iranian sites in Syria. Israel and Russia want to weaken Iran in Syria. Israel has three times within a week attacked storage sites for Iranian weapons, drones, and missiles in Damascus, at T-4 airport, Shayrat and Homs countryside, and even the coastal regiment In Tartous, where American reconnaissance aircraft are operating over the Syrian coast.
The Americans want to stabilize the balance of power in Syria as it is. Having lost influence Trump’s departure from the White House, the UAE wants to show itself useful to the Biden Administration. Abu Dhabi is trying in to tell Washington that it can provide services even if immoral, such as normalization with Assad. The UAE Foreign Minister had informed his American counterpart about this visit and its goals last week, which helped neuter the American position.
As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has said, the situation in Syria is frozen. The UAE visit has some symbolic significance, but there will be no serious impact on the ground as long as Washington insists on the status quo until a ceasefire paves the way for a new political settlement. The UAE wants to be the main Arab country that has a relationship with the Assad regime so it can function as the link between Damascus and the West in general, hoping that it can influence the the Assad regime to change some of its behavior, in particular limiting the Iranian presence.
It is possible that Washington and the UAE can benefit in the short term by improving their own bilateral relations, but this does not spell the success for the Emirati efforts in achieving any results in Syria. The Iranian alliance with the Assad regime dates back four decades, when the Assad regime sided with the Iran against Iraq. Iran founded Hezbollah, which expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon. Iran also financed the construction of the Syrian nuclear reactor that was destroyed by Israel in 2007. Without the Iranian presence, the Assad regime would have collapsed years ago. The UAE has nothing to give Assad to pry him away from Iran. Normalization with the regime, including Assad’s return to the Arab League or the extension of a gas pipeline, will do nothing other than strengthen Iran in Syria, as has already happened in Lebanon and Iraq.
But if the UAE’s goal is to please the Americans by offering Syria as a gift to Iran in exchange for a return to the nuclear agreement, that is a different issue. Only time will tell if Washington’s reticence is Machiavellian.
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Syria in focus: security, justice, social cohesion
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