Tag: US, Syria, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey
Good grief: problems with friends and adversaries
Anyone who thinks there is no risk of US military action in the Middle East before January 20 hasn’t been paying attention to
- President Trump’s efforts to block reversal of his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement and to reassert his declining political relevance at home;
- The refusal of the Defense Department to brief fully the incoming Biden transition team and the reversal of its decision to withdraw an aircraft carrier from the Gulf;
- The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s interest in continuing Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, Tehran’s decision to enrich uranium to 20%, and Iran’s desire to avenge the assassinations of Generals Qassem Soleimani and (nuclear physicist) Mohsen Fakhrizadeh;
- The Tonkin Gulf and Iraq war precedents, the former an intentionally manufactured excuse for escalation and the latter a fabulous miscalculation, at best.
Flying B52s around the Gulf is not in itself particularly dangerous. Nor is the passage of an Israeli submarine through the Suez Canal or patrolling by the USS Nimitz. But their maneuvers were deliberately publicized, supposedly as deterrence against Iranian attacks. That may be their intention–hard to tell. But even minor or incidental responses by Iran or its surrogates could drive an erratic president to take retaliatory action aimed at shoring up his own image and political relevance as well as hampering re-entry into the nuclear deal.
Fortunately, Tehran seems determined not to give Trump an excuse for military action. They seem anxious to deal with Biden. His National Security Adviser is signaling willingness to return to the status quo ante, but he wants Iran to be willing to engage on missile issues in a regional context. That means America and its allies in the region would also need to be willing to discuss missiles. That isn’t going to be an easy sell.
After January 20, Biden is going to face a cool reception in the Middle East from America’s friends. Trump’s strongest supporters–Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia–will not welcome Biden, as he will be critical of their human rights abuses. Turkey is also on the outs with the US, mainly right now over its purchase of the S400 air defenses from Russia. Iranian proxy forces imperil US troops in otherwise friendly Iraq. The war in Yemen has tilted heavily in the direction of Iran’s favorites, the Houthis, while the US Congress wants the US to stop supporting the Saudi and Emirati intervention there. The war in Libya has tilted towards the Turkish-supported government in Tripoli, leaving the Emiratis on the losing side and the Egyptians scurrying to reach a modus vivendi with the UN-supported government in Tripoli.
Just about the only unalloyed welcome for Biden will be from Jordan and the Palestinians, two of the weakest reeds in the Middle East, as well as Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman. There will be early decisions required on the Palestinians, in particular whether to re-initiate aid to them through the UN Refugees Works Agency. Biden will happily inherit the “Abrahamic accords,” which exchanged American goodies for Emirati and Bahraini normalization of relations with Israel. But the supposed normalization with Morocco entails American acceptance of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Biden may well want to reconsider and possibly reverse.
Biden will have as many problems with America’s friends as with its adversaries. He will want to be critical of Saudi imprisonment of women activists as well as the Kingdom-ordered murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Israeli settlements and annexation of the Golan Heights, Iraq’s failure to rein in paramilitary forces that threaten US troops, Turkish attacks on US-allied Kurdish forces in Syria, and Emirati as well as Turkish violations of the UN arms embargo on Libya. But each of those moves will risk undermining US influence in a region where it is already waning. As the US seeks to withdraw from Middle East commitments, Russia, China, autocrats, extremists, and other undesirables will move to fill the vacuum.
These challenges above all require skilled diplomacy. But the State Department is a shambles and the Defense Department is close behind. The Biden appointments so far in both places are superb people with deep experience. They’ll need it. They won’t want to spend time and energy on the Middle East, which is a region of declining US interest. But it is a region where a lot can be lost, even if little can be gained.
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Idlib in crisis
The United Nations reported over 900,000 newly displaced Syrians in northwestern Syria since December 2019. This number is currently increasing due to the violence in Idlib. This tragic reality served as the foundation of the Middle East Institute’s event on February 21, 2020, titled The Crisis In Syria’s Idlib. The discussion was moderated by Alexander Marquardt, Senior National Correspondent at CNN, with participation from Charles Lister, Senior Fellow and Director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremist Program at the Middle East Institute, Elizabeth Tsurkov, Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Doctoral student at Princeton University, and Zaher Sahloul, President and Founder at MedGlobal.
“Unprecedented” Situation: Idlib
The panelists accentuated the “unprecedented” nature of the current situation in Idlib. Unlike Syrians in other “de-escalation” zones, the residents of Idlib have nowhere to go. The Turkish border is closed. The 2.8 million people in Idlib are trapped, fearing for their lives. Tsurkov underlined that there is a genuine fear among the population in Idlib that they are all going to die. Lister believes there are close to 2 million people on the border, IDP camps have been entirely full for months, and people are forced to sleep outside in freezing fields.
Sahloul provided a more historical overview of the conflict in Syria, reemphasizing that the humanitarian crisis has been ongoing for over nine years. Assad’s tactics focus on attacking civilian infrastructure; this is an attack against humanity, as schools, markets, and hospitals are constantly being bombed and destroyed. The majority of people are not being killed by bombs, but by chronic disease and lack of available doctors and treatment facilities.
Tsurkov added that the people in Idlib do not want to stay and wait for the regime to capture them as they fear being placed in regime prisons, which essentially serve as “extermination sites.” She notes that even people who are employed by the Syrian government are afraid of remaining under regime control because they have seen what happens too often: execution.
The International community’s failure to respond
Lister in dismay noted that the UN is unable to act. A French proposed statement to declare Idlib a crisis could not pass in the Security Council due to a Russian veto. Assad has recaptured around 35-40% of northwestern Syria in under a year. The key regime objective has been achieved: to control the north/south M5 highway. The next objective, control of the east/west M4 highway has not yet been accomplished.
The panelists emphasized that Erdogan is feeling huge political pressure not to allow any refugees over the border. Turkey has lost 18 observation posts in Idlib, but Turkish-controlled forces did fire at Russian jets. Turkey has established an end of February deadline for the regime to withdraw from Idlib. The panelists doubted this aspiration will be achieved.
Sahloul emphasized that the UNHCR office warned nongovernmental organizations in Syria last year of an additional million displaced people predicted in the next year. Therefore, Sahloul argues, the UN should not be surprised. He cited the lack of UN observers in Idlib and the failure of the UN Secretary General to visit Idlib as evidence of UN disinterest.
What could/should happen?
Tsurkov believes that if the Russian and regime warplanes that conduct horrific bombing and displacement of civilians were threatened and risked being shot down, the bombing would stop. Therefore the US and international community should raise the stakes for Russia and Assad by not only intervening when chemical weapons are used, but also when civilians are bombed.
All the panelists suggested that Turkey should not stand alone in this crisis. While Turkey has made many deplorable policy decisions in Syria, Ankara is also currently the only force trying to stop the regime. Lister said that Turkey has no choice but to gradually escalate its force presence and strength in the region. Turkey has to find a way to force a stalemate or ceasefire.
The only alternative to regime or Turkish control of Idlib is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose ancestry includes Al Qaeda. In response to this alternative, Tsurkov professes that local support for HTS is limited and dwindling, due to its recent military losses, but Gaza-fication of Idlib (control by an extremist group) would be better than millions fleeing and mass slaughter.
She believes the only plausible alternative is Turkish-controlled Idlib. Sahloul emphasized that HTS would not be able to govern; it was tolerated only because of the stability it brought. Lister noted that HTS has been officially reaching out to conduct interviews with the international community so that its image can be more aligned with stability and governance than with terrorism. Or at least can be viewed as better than the alternative.
The panelists conclude that the the international community should be providing funds and urging the parties to achieve a ceasefire as a way of stabilizing the situation. Lister urges the US, at a minimum, to utilize diplomacy and put pressure on Russia.
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L’état, c’est moi
The intel community whistleblower complaint made public today focuses mainly on President Trump’s aggressive effort to enlist Ukrainian President Zelensky’s help in the 2020 election. But the campaign law violation is the least of the issues, as Robert Litt, former General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, made clear on NPR this morning. The main point is that the President used the call to pressure a foreign leader to help his political campaign, using a hold on aid to Ukraine as leverage.
This is classic use of public position for private gain, the very definition of corruption. It is an abuse of power that may also rank as extortion and bribery, with the aid used as a bribe. Trump has no compunction about this, because he recognizes no distinction between his private interests and those of the nation. L’état, c’est moi is his guiding principle.
Impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors” is the proper response under the constitution, which provided this remedy explicitly for this problem: abuse of public office. The House of Representatives will now come up with a bill of particulars, likely to include not only this phone call but also obstruction of justice in the Russia probe, acceptance of “emoluments” from foreign governments, and use of government funds to enrich Trump’s several failing real estate ventures. The Democratic-controlled House should be able to vote impeachment well before the November 2020 election.
The Republican-controlled Senate shows some minor signs of departing from 100% loyalty to Donald Trump, but still there is no reason to believe the two-thirds vote required to remove him from office is possible, no matter the validity of the charges. Timing of impeachment is therefore an important issue: should the Democrats do it quickly, taking advantage of their current momentum, but giving the Senate ample time in which to acquit the President? Or should impeachment come shortly before the election, perhaps even making completion of a trial in the Senate impossible before the election?
Either way, the 2020 election is shaping up as a referendum on Trump. There will be lots of weighty issues: above all the domestic economy, taxes, health care, tensions with Iran, China, and Russia. But in the end the main issue will be whether the country is in good hands or not. Right now, more than half the country disapproves of the President’s performance, lots of potential Democratic candidates are polling well against Trump, and even a generic Democrat beats him on the national level. But 2016 demonstrated how little any of that matters: the presidency is decided in the electoral college, not in the popular vote, and polling more than a year out has little relevance.
Reelecting Trump would do exponentially more damage than electing him in the first place. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the tide already is turning against Trump’s ilk in other countries: Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Abdul Fatah al Sisi, Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Netanyahu are all in trouble, even if they manage to cling to power. Trump’s victory would stem the tide. Trump’s defeat would demonstrate unequivocally that the age of would-be autocrats ruling by personal fiat is finished.
If Americans want to be governed as the constitution provides, by law rather than personality, they’ve got to ensure that the state is far more than a person and his interests. The opportunity will come on November 3, 2020.
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