Tag: United States
Who should the US back in Syria?
The rapid advance in the past week of Syrian opposition forces raises difficult questions for the United States. The leadership of those forces lies with Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist group. The US already cooperates with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which include Syrian Kurds aligned with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It is also a designated terrorist group that operates inside Turkey. Turkey backs opposition forces in Syria generally termed the Syrian National Army (SNA), which control Afrin under the command of the Turkish Army.
Too many friends
The US cooperates with the SDF because it helps fight against the Islamic State (IS), still another designated terrorist group. HTS has also been effective against IS as well as Al Qaeda in the territory it has controlled for several years in northwestern Syria.
HTS’ leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, has been trying for years to soften his group’s jihadist rhetoric. He has sent messages in recent days to Syrian Christians, Kurds, and Alawites suggesting that they will not be mistreated in HTS-controlled territory. He has also indicated HTS will step back from governance, which it will delegate to an interim authority with broad representation. Its Syrian Salvation Government in Idlib province has administered the territory HTS controls there for several years.
Turkiye, a NATO ally, is unhappy that the Americans cooperate with the Kurdish-led SDF. Washington has tried to soften Ankara’s attitude toward the Syrian Kurds for years, to no avail. Turkiye wants the SDF pushed east of the Euphrates River and at least 30 kilometers from the Turkish border. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds are said to be on the move.
Israel, another de facto US ally, won’t be happy to see jihadists conquering Syria. The damage Israel has wreaked on President Assad’s Syrian Arab Army, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iranian forces is one of the reasons HTS has been able to advance, but Netanyahu is not going to be greeting al-Julani with open arms. He, and perhaps Biden, had hopes that Assad would cut, or at least diminish, his ties to Iran.
So how should the US lean in this complicated situation? With the Turks against the SDF? That isn’t possible without abandoning the fight against IS. With HTS against Assad? That would risk helping a group the Israelis fear may have less benign intentions than its current behavior suggests. With Assad against HTS? That could wreck prospects for a transition in Syria that the US has backed for more than a decade. It would also preserve an ally of Russia and Iran who has brutalized his own population.
Creating new options
If the current options don’t look good, perhaps the right approach is to create new ones. America doesn’t have enough troops in Syria (maybe 1500, depending on how you count) to command the situation. But Washington could lean one way or another to open up better options. This could be better than the current policy paralysis, which has failed to take advantage of a situation that could spell defeat for Russia and Iran.
The Turkish-backed forces in Syria want to chase the Kurds from Manbij, on the western side of the Euphrates. That is a fight that could split the opposition to Assad and give him a new lease on power. The US should encourage the Kurds to withdraw east of the Euphrates and duck a fight they are not likely to win.
The Syrian Arab Army (Assad’s army) will want to withdraw its forces from central Syria to meet these threats. There are still IS remnants in central Syria. The US should press SDF, after withdrawal form Manbij, to fill this vacuum and continue its fight against IS.
HTS and its allies today took Hama, south of Aleppo. Both Homs and the Mediterranean provinces of Tartous and Latakia, where many Alawites live, are now at risk. Risings against Assad could facilitate HTS takeovers. Damascus could be next.
The US could communicate to HTS that Washington would be willing to see creation of an interim government not only in Aleppo but also at the national level. Washington could then work with that government, provided it behaves in a civilized way, rather than HTS directly, in planning for the future of Syria.
What does the US gain?
Success of the rebellion against Assad would be a serious defeat for Russia and Iran, which have backed Assad through more than 13 years of civil war. It would be foolish to imagine the result will be Western-style democracy. But even an outcome (without all the interim steps please!) like Iraq’s current non-autocratic mishmash would be better than the homicidal regime that has governed Syria since the rebellion started in 2011.
PS: And Assad comes down:
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Assad is imploding, but it’s not over yet
With Russia preoccupied in Ukraine and Iran weakened, Syria’s President Bashar al Assad is now under siege. The forces opposing him include both Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) and Turkish-supported rebel groups. Opposition forces in several Syrian provinces are joining the fray, as are the Syrian Democratic
Forces. HTS and the Turks have been governing in Syria’s northwest Idlib and Afrin provinces. The Syrian Democratic Forces are affiliated with Kurdish institutions that govern in much of the east.
How far, how fast?
The HTS offensive has moved fast and far. It controls most of Aleppo, Syria’s largest or second largest city depending on how you count. HTS has also evacuated Kurdish forces from Aleppo and advanced south to the outskirts of Hama. In the meanwhile, the Turkish-supported groups have chased Kurds from their strongholds in Aleppo province. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Kurdish led but partly Arab manned, have evicted Iranian and Shia militias from the east.
The question is whether rebel forces can sustain their momentum and move further south to Hama and Homs. So far, there has been little fighting. The Syrian Army is evaporating. It is poorly staffed, trained, and equipped after more than 13 years of fighting rebels. After hesitating at first, Russian air attacks are now battering rebel-held territory, including civilian targets. Lebanese Hezbollah, a major Iranian-supported factor in Syria, has let it be known it will not send more forces. Israel has battered Hezbollah badly in both Lebanon and Syria.
The quandaries
For the US and EU, these sudden developments pose a difficult issue. They don’t like Assad and have maintained vigorous sanctions against him. But they also don’t like HTS, which is a spinoff from Al Qaeda. And Washington won’t want the Turkish-supported forces beating up on the SDF. They have been helpful in fighting remnants of the Islamic State in eastern Syria.
Israel has its own issues. It did not mind the Assad devil it knew and won’t want a jihadist state in Syria. But if he falls, the Israelis will be happy to see Iran and its proxies disappear from their border. And they will want some cred with whoever takes over. In the past they have been supportive to at least some of the opposition to Assad.
The endgame
HTS is trying hard to project a more tolerant image than many jihadists. It has reached out to the Kurds:
HTS has sought to justify its more tolerant approach (translation from a Tweet by Aaron Zelin):
The jihad in Syria has the duty to repel the attacks of the Assad regime. It is part of sharia politics that the mujahidin in Syria should only fight those who fight them, and refrain from attacking those who refrain from attacking them, and strive to disperse the enemies and reduce them.
Assad will have well-equipped, loyal forces defending Damascus. But if HTS takes Hama and Homs, he won’t have much country left. Opposition forces are rising in the south even as the SDF clears regime forces and its allies from the east. The western, Mediterranean coast would still be his, but vulnerable.
The greatest threat to the opposition forces will arise if Turkiye unleashes its proxies against the Kurds. That would divide the opposition and provide an opportunity for Assad to complicate the fight. He might try to strike a deal with the Kurds. Assad is imploding, but it isn’t over yet.
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Trump has gone way too far
I haven’t commented yet on Donald Trump’s nominations most egregious nominations. He wants Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense and Kash Patel to be FBI Director. These are outrageous choices. I’ll be horrified if the Senate confirms them.
A drunk, abusing, corrupt Christian Zionist
Hegseth abuses women, including those who worked for him. He is a Christian nationalist and white supremacist. He drinks to excess and uses funds for illicit purposes. “Kill all Muslims” is something he shouted when inebriated.
This particular combination of disqualifications is remarkable even in Trump’s Cabinet nominees. Only Matt Gaetz comes close. He wisely withdrew from Trump’s nomination to be Attorney General.
My guess is Hegseth will not make it through the “advice and consent” of the Senate. The Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes there. The position requires sobriety and decorum. Hegseth is so blatantly unqualified that I hope more than a handful will oppose him.
A vindictive sycophant
Patel is a different problem. The President appoints the FBI Director for 10 years. Christopher Wray, the incumbent, has another 2 years on his appointment. He has tried to restore the FBI’s professional non-partisan cred. That is precisely why Trump wants him out.
Instead, the President-elect wants someone who will do his bidding. That will include both restraint in pursuing Trump’s friends and supporters as well as ferocious aggression in pursuing his enemies. Patel would do just that. He plans to purge the Bureau’s upper levels, close its headquarters, and send agents out to pursue Trump’s antagonists.
Lots of Republican Senators will welcome such an effort. It will protect them and counter what they see as Democratic bias at the Bureau. The only hope is that a few will see the risk in such a partisan extremist. I am not an FBI enthusiast, but Patel will make the Bureau an instrument of retribution, not law enforcement. For at least half the country that will be unacceptable.
Better worse?
Some would argue that worse is better. Hegseth and Patel will no doubt, if confirmed, do things that will embarrass and even ruin Trump. I don’t buy that, even if true. The damage to America’s image in the world and to its its institutions of defense and justice is too great. The Senate needs to reject Hegseth and Patel. Better even before they have hearings, like Gaetz.
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Thanksgiving anxieties are justified
Today is the autumn pause the United States calls Thanksgiving. It is pretty much the most popular holiday across the entire population, marked by people of all religions and ethnicities. Unlike so many other American holidays, it is mainly noncommercial. We gather with family and friends for a giant afternoon meal to say thanks for whatever blessings have graced us.
I’m fine
We are in Savannah this year with two sons, two granddaughters, and two grandsons. We’ll go soon to a cousins’ beautiful house on the marshes outside of town for the traditional family feast. We’ll eat and drink as much as we all like. The generations will meet, the youngest for the first time, or refamiliarize themselves. We are, so far as I know, a prosperous and happy family. The family quarrels that plague some Thanksgiving dinners will be, thankfully, absent.
That said, I can’t help but note that I will not be content. The election result is a good part of the reason. While my personal welfare is not at stake, I fear for my country and its less fortunate citizens and non-citizens.
The economic risks
It is hard not to notice that the risks ahead are great. The current economic recovery began in 2009 under President Obama. President Trump’s botched reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic interrupted it, but it got back on track with President Biden. The growth trajectory has passed its 15th year. We are overdue for a recession, even disregarding the announced policy choices of the new Administration.
President Trump’s re-election makes one all but certain. His insistence on raising tariffs and expelling immigrants will re-ignite inflation. The Fed will have to slow or even reverse the decline it has begun in interest rates. Trump’s announced effort to shrink the Federal government will fail to reach its goal of cutting $2 trillion. But whatever layoffs the new Administration achieves will contribute to unemployment. The budget cuts will also slow the economy.
The social risks
While the economy slows, the new Administration will be cutting holes in the social safety net. Abolishing the Obamacare subsidies for health insurance isn’t going to happen. But the Republican Congress will seek to reduce them. It will also try to limit access to Medicaid, which provides health services to the poor. Trump won’t cut Social Security benefits, but he will try to raise the age of eligibility. Trump will aim to extend the tax cuts he introduced in 2017, which favor upper incomes. That will also be fine with me, but it still isn’t right.
He will also further limit abortion and LGBTQ rights and make education more Christian, less liberal, and less public. These are the essential demands of his evangelical base.
The political risks
Trump wants to prosecute his detractors. His two nominees for Attorney General are people who would gladly do that. Even unfounded investigations will cost Democrats and journalists both time and money. Such investigations will help him keep political opposition from growing. The Supreme Court’s decision to give official presidential acts with immunity will help to unshackle his worst impulses. With the two Houses of Congress under Republican control, he has little to fear from that corner.
Trump will want to appoint more Supreme Court justices, to guarantee continuation of the Republican majority. Justices Alito and Thomas can be expected to retire so that he can name younger clones. Press speculation suggests Trump wants a new FBI director. This despite the fact that the one he appointed in 2017 would normally serve ten years.
Trump’s re-election will embolden his base. It will continue to gerrymander House districts, limit voting rights, and destroy diversity programs. The goal will be to make those who hold power in America as white and male as possible. That is already clear in the Cabinet he has been naming.
Foreign policy
Trump’s future course in foreign affairs is more difficult to predict. The President has a great deal of latitude in foreign policy. Trump’s appointments so far are a mixed bag. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Michael Waltz as National Security Adviser are well within the normal political spectrum. So too is Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg. He is an advocate of giving Ukraine what it needs to reach a satisfactory negotiated settlement with Russia.
None of those are friends of Russian President Putin. But Tulsi Gabbard is. If confirmed, she will be Director of National Intelligence. Teamed with a very partisan John Ratcliffe at CIA, Trump can be assured of no resistance from the intel community.
Trump’s choice of Mike Huckabee, an evangelical stalwart, as ambassador to Israel guarantees a pro-Netanyahu policy. On Palestinian issues, including Gaza and the West Bank, we should expect Trump to be even more pro-Israel than Biden.
On lots of other foreign policy issues, there are few indications. Waltz is a China hawk but it is not clear what that will mean for the American commitment to Taiwan. In the past, Trump has been a “maximum pressure” guy on Iran. But what that might mean now that Iran is a nuclear threshold state isn’t clear.
The State Department will no doubt suffer a serious purge as well as a massive voluntary exodus of talent. But will that liberate Trump to do as he pleases? Or will it limit capabilities and lead to focus on future issues? Hard to tell.
Bottom line
Trump menaces many of the values I am grateful for. Thanksgiving anxieties are justified.
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Trump likes incompetence and chaos
Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the projected Secretary of State and National Security Advisor respectively, are fig leaves. Trump proposed them first to hide the ugly reality that followed.
Lowering the bar
His aim is to name people who will make him seem normal. This is difficult. He is a rapist and convicted felon who improperly stored classified material and imperiled US security. As President, Trump cozied up to Putin and incited a riot against the 2020 election result. He ran his businesses in ways that infringed on legal requirements and drove them into bankruptcy.
In this context, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Matt Gaetz fit well.
Gabbard, the nominee for Director of National Intelligence, is also a Putin sycophant and flak for Syrian President Assad.
Hegseth, the Fox News nominee for Defense Secretary, is a Christian nationalist and womanizer. He has no visible qualifications for the job except service in the Army as a major. The US Army has more than 16,000 of those.
Kennedy, nominated to lead Health and Human Services, is a flake. His “Make America Healthy Again” website doesn’t bother with discussion of the issues he is interested in. It goes straight to selling swag. In his bio, it highlights his environmental activism, entirely out of tune with Trump. But he is an anti-vaccine activist as well, claiming that all he wants is good scientific data. But he ignores the excellent scientific data already available on vaccines.
Matt Gaetz has sex with underage women, some of whom he pays for the privilege. His nomination for Attorney General was worthy of Trump. Sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein claimed Trump made a sport of sleeping with his friends’ wives. Gaetz has now withdrawn his name. Maybe Trump will give him a position that doesn’t need confirmation.
Normally when a nomination doesn’t succeed a president will pick someone less prone to controversy. I suppose the choice of Pam Bondi, former Florida Attorney General, might be seen that way. But she is ethically challenged and may not stand up well under intense scrutiny.
Exaggerating what he can do
While lowering the bar for personnel, Trump is also boasting about the incredible things he will achieve. He aims to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. His billionaire friends will cut trillions in government expenditure. He will end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Much of this is not going to happen. Here too Trump is setting a bar. While on personnel he sets it low, on policy he sets it high. The moves he favors on immigrants and government expenditure will generate thousands of lawsuits. The stimulus to the legal profession will be unprecedented.
The result will be chaos, something Trump enjoys. He will use it to claim extraordinary powers for the presidency. He disdains democracy and seeks unfettered power. The current Supreme Court majority, which has already given him immunity from prosecution for official acts, will back him wholeheartedly.
Encouraging international chaos
On the foreign policy front, it is harder to predict the outcome. But let’s try.
If Trump ends military aid, Kyiv will have to negotiate an unsatisfactory outcome with Moscow. The result will be partition. Russia will keep most of the territory it occupies now. The Europeans will have to patrol a demilitarized zone. And rump Ukraine will face a prolonged period of instability as the Russians wage hybrid warfare against Kyiv.
Irredentist ambitions will explode worldwide. Serbia will aim to gain territory in the Balkans. China will continue its expansion in the East and South China Seas, and set its sights on Taiwan. Russia will try for Moldova and Georgia. India and Pakistan may go at it over Kashmir. Israel will annex whatever it wants of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are about 150 outstanding border disputes worldwide. Even if only a handful get worse, the international community will have a hard time managing them.
The President can impose tariffs without Congressional approval. They will re-ignite inflation in the US and have a devastating effect on the US and world economies. That will cause the Fed to slow the decline of interest rates, or maybe raise them again. Other countries will retaliate against US goods, slowing the US economy further. Even without the tariffs, the US expansion that started with Obama
A difficult four years
Trump will relish this chaos as well. But it is not good for the United States, which can barely manage one serious crisis at a time.
The current US expansion started during Obama’s presidency, in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Except for the COVID-19 recession Trump aggravated with an inept response to the epidemic, it has continued unabated since. Even without Trump’s chaos, the expansion would be unlikely to last much longer.
We are in for a difficult four years. Tighten you seat belt.
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Trump’s cabinet of horrors
What wasn’t clear yesterday is today. Donald Trump’s national security and foreign policy appointments will be more like his extremist immigration nominees than like yesterday’s headliners. Marco Rubio at State and Michael Waltz as National Security Advisor are the only arguably sane appointments. They are the adults in the room, which means they won’t last. The others are right-wing crackpots. They’ll be around for four years.
The intel community
Intelligence gets the worst of it. The highly partisan John Ratcliffe as CIA director was a preview, not an anomaly. Tulsi Gabbard will become Director of National Intelligence, overseeing the (is it still 17?) intelligence agencies. Once a Democratic member of Congress, she is now a born again Trump Republican and Putin apologist. She is flaky and capricious.
It is difficult to picture either of these people telling Trump something he doesn’t want to hear. Which is what intel chiefs often need to do.
Diplomacy
In addition to Rubio, diplomacy gets Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador. A member of Congress from New York State, she is an avowed opponent of the UN. She will strongly oppose continued assistance to Palestinians.
Evangelical pro-Israel enthusiast Mike Huckabee will serve as ambassador in Jerusalem. A former Governor of Arkansas, he will provide strong support to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. He will also encourage those in Netanyahu’s coalition who want to annex the West Bank and Gaza.
Homeland Security
Kristi Noem, Governor of North Dakota who proudly shot a dog and a goat she “hated,” will run this mega-department. You can read about some of her other “batshit” moments here. She is a Trump enthusiast of course.
Defense
Pete Hegseth, a National Guard major, gets the Defense Department. The blatantly unqualified Fox News talking head opposes women and LGBTQ people in the military. He sports Christian tattoos, including “Deus vult” (God wills it). That is pretty much the equivalent of “insha’allah,” an expression Arabs use many times per day. But unlike the Arabic phrase, which everyone uses, the Latin one is used mainly by right-wing extremists, including neo-Nazis. Trump has charged Hegseth with getting rid of any generals who have promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.
SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson says Trump has declared war on the Pentagon.
Attorney General
Republican Congress Member Matt Gaetz will head the Department of Justice. The list of ethics charges against him is long. He will not just kill any cases the Justice Department is pursuing against Trump. He will also protect other Trumpkins while pursuing charges against Democrats.
What is this?
This is a cabinet of horrors. Its distinguishing characteristics are unquestioning loyalty to Donald Trump, right-wing devotion, and profound lack of experience and competence. What could go wrong?
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