via The National Interest
Expressions of angst over Syria have entailed several themes, one of which concerns possible “spread” of the Syrian civil war into nearby states. Lebanon, for reasons of physical and ethnic geography, is most often mentioned as a locale of such spreading. But at [...]]]>
via The National Interest
Expressions of angst over Syria have entailed several themes, one of which concerns possible “spread” of the Syrian civil war into nearby states. Lebanon, for reasons of physical and ethnic geography, is most often mentioned as a locale of such spreading. But at least as useful as speculation about what the Syrian civil war may do to Lebanon is to reflect on how current events in Syria are echoing an earlier civil war in Lebanon. We have been through much of this before—thirty years ago, when Ronald Reagan was president.
By the early 1980s Lebanon had been suffering several years of combat among sectarian militias, reflecting disagreement over the fairness of old power-sharing agreements among the confessional communities. The biggest stirring of this already turbulent pot came in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. The principal Israeli targets—declared targets, at least—were fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who had been in Lebanon ever since being kicked out of Jordan a decade earlier, after losing the Black September confrontation with King Hussein. A small multinational force of U.S., French, and Italian troops entered Lebanon in August 1982 and supervised the extraction of the PLO to Tunisia before itself withdrawing to ships in the Mediterranean.
Israeli objectives were not limited just to booting the PLO out of Lebanon, however, and Israeli forces remained enmeshed in the sectarian fighting, besieging Beirut. Menachem Begin had ideas about trying to maintain a client to the north in the form of the pro-Israeli Christian government of Bachir Gemayel, who became president about when the PLO was leaving. Three weeks later Gemayel was assassinated, triggering the most horrid blood-letting of the Lebanese war. At least several hundred—and by some outside estimates perhaps something closer to 2,000—Palestinian civilians were slaughtered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The massacre was carried out by the Christian Phalangist militia, which was allied to and supplied by the Israelis. Israeli forces, whether wittingly or not, facilitated the massacre by maintaining a cordon around the area of the camps, and fired illuminating flares that enabled the Phalangists to continue their work by night.
The massacre stimulated the Reagan administration to organize a new multinational force that eventually included 1,800 U.S. marines as well as French and Italian troops. The force initially had some success in acting as a buffer between contending elements. But the intervention later became a textbook example of the near-inevitability of getting drawn into ever costlier commitments and endeavors in any situation as messy as Lebanon at that time. U.S. military engagement included not only the marines on the ground but also combat between carrier-based U.S. aircraft and Syrian forces (which had originally entered Lebanon as part of an Arab League peacekeeping force). At one point even the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey were brought into action.
Those striking back at the increasingly resented foreign forces used methods against which jet fighters and battleships are of little use. In April 1983 a truck bomb was detonated at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 persons. Six months later, another truck bomb was used against barracks housing U.S. troops (along with an identical and simultaneous attack against French troops). 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in that bombing—the deadliest terrorist attack against U.S. citizens until 9/11. Congressional pressure on the administration to withdraw from Lebanon increased. The last U.S. forces left in February 1984. The Lebanese civil war continued for several more years until sheer exhaustion, and a new political accord brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria, brought it to an unsatisfying end.
Some parallels between that experience and the current situation regarding Syria are obvious. There is the overall complexity of the conflict and the presence of bad guys all around. There also is Israel taking advantage of a neighboring state’s civil war to pursue its own objectives, whether those are to smash a Palestinian force or to intercept long-established Hezbollah supply lines, regardless of how much its actions stoke and escalate the war. And if much of the discourse in Washington about Syria since the (presumed) Israeli attacks there over the past few days are any indication, there again is the pattern of Israeli actions increasing the chance of the United States getting sucked into the mess.Let us hope that those eager to get into the mess will reflect more than the statesmen of 1982 did about how this all will end. Moreover, those who talk about damage to U.S. prestige or credibility also ought to think about that aspect of the experience in Lebanon.
Let us hope that those eager to get into the mess will reflect more than the statesmen of 1982 did about how this all will end. Moreover, those who talk about damage to U.S. prestige or credibility also ought to think about that aspect of the experience in Lebanon. Withdrawing the U.S. troops in 1984—although it was the least bad thing the Reagan administration could have done at the time—was a U.S. defeat by Hezbollah. There is no way to sugar-coat that conclusion. It was just the sort of caving in to bad guys that we so often hear that we need to avoid. And it could have been avoided in Lebanon if the United States had not gotten involved in the mess in the first place, or at least if Israel had not—in its futile pursuit of absolute security for itself regardless of the insecurity it causes for everyone else—made the mess worse.
Photo: A view of the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after a terrorist bombing that killed 63 people on April 18, 1983 (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/US Army)
]]>via IPS News
Ten years after right-wing and liberal hawks came together to push the U.S. into invading Iraq, key members of the two groups appear to be reuniting behind stronger U.S. military intervention in Syria.
While the liberals appear motivated by a desire to stop the [...]]]>
via IPS News
Ten years after right-wing and liberal hawks came together to push the U.S. into invading Iraq, key members of the two groups appear to be reuniting behind stronger U.S. military intervention in Syria.
While the liberals appear motivated by a desire to stop the violence and prevent its spread across borders, their right-wing colleagues, particularly neo-conservatives, see U.S. intervention as key to dealing Iran a strategic defeat in the region.
“…[T]he most important strategic goal continues to be to defeat Iran, our main adversary in the region,” according to Tuesday’s lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
“The risks of a jihadist victory in Damascus are real, at least in the short-term, but they are containable by Turkey and Israel,” the editorial asserted. “The far greater risk to Middle East stability and U.S. interests is a victorious arc of Iranian terror from the Gulf to the Mediterranean backed by nuclear weapons.”
The immediate impetus for the reunion between the country’s two interventionist forces seems related primarily to charges that Syrian security forces have used chemical weapons in several attacks on insurgents and growing fears that the two-year-old civil war is spilling over into and destabilising neighbouring countries.
Those fears gained greater urgency this week when Israeli warplanes twice attacked targets close to Damascus and reports surfaced that Lebanon’s Hezbollah has sharply escalated its role in actively defending the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Both developments appear to have emboldened hawks here, particularly neo-conservatives who have sought for more than two decades to make the overthrow of the Assad dynasty in Damascus a major priority for U.S. Mideast policy and now see the conflict in Syria as a proxy war between Iran and Israel.
War-weariness and public disillusionment with U.S. interventions they championed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as President Barack Obama’s oft-expressed reservations about the wisdom of engaging in yet another war in a predominantly Muslim country, had kept the neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks at bay.
But a combination of an ever-climbing death toll, Hezbollah’s increased involvement, the rise of radical Islamist groups within the insurgency, and the initial –albeit yet to be confirmed — estimates by U.S., Israeli, and Western European intelligence agencies that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons, as well as Obama’s apparently offhand public warnings during last year’s election campaign that such use would cross a “red line”, have propelled some prominent liberals – most recently, New York Times columnist Bill Keller and former senior Obama policy official Anne Marie Slaughter — into their camp.
Led by the Wall Street Journal and William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives remain the most aggressive among the hawks in their advice, just as they were in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Thus, providing weapons to selected rebel groups – an option which the administration is considered most likely to exercise if the evidence of chemical weapons use by government forces is confirmed – is no longer considered sufficient.
“At this stage, (a better outcome of the conflict), this would require more than arming some rebels,” according to the Journal editorial. “It probably means imposing a no-fly zone and air strikes against Assad’s forces.
“We would not rule out the use of American and other ground troops to secure the chemical weapons,” the editorial writer added in a notable deviation from assurances offered by the hawks’ two most prominent Congressional champions – Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham – who, in deference to public opinion, have said repeatedly that putting U.S. “boots on the ground” should be off the table.
This echoed Kristol’s own editorial in the Standard published on the weekend. Arming the rebels, he wrote, “could well be too little, too late. …It’s hard to see what a serious response would be short of direct American engagement – perhaps a combination of enforcement of a no-fly zone and aerial attacks. And no serious president would rule out a few boots on the ground…”
The Journal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign-policy columnist, Bret Stephens, weighed in with even more specific advice Tuesday.
He called for Obama to “disable the runways of Syrian air bases, including the international airport in Damascus; …[u]se naval assets to impose a no-fly zone over western Syria; …[s]upply the Free Syrian Army with heavy military equipment, including armored personnel carriers and light tanks; [and b]e prepared to seize and remove Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, even if it means putting boots (temporarily) on the ground.”
Liberal hawks have been less precise about what needs to be done, but their sense of urgency in favour of escalating U.S. military intervention – beginning with supplying the rebels with weapons – appears no less intense.
Slaughter, who served for two years as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policy planning chief and, as an influential Princeton University international-relations professor, urged U.S. intervention in both Iraq and Libya, publishedan op-ed in the Washington Post that warned that Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria brought forth the spectre of the Rwandan genocide.
“For all the temptation to hide behind the decision to invade Iraq based on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, Obama must realize the tremendous damage he will do to the United States and to his legacy if he fails to act,” she wrote, without prescribing precisely what he should do.
Keller, who described himself as a “reluctant hawk” in an influential 1,500-word op-ed on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion, provided somewhat more detailed advice in 1,300-word, very prominently placed op-ed entitled “Syria is Not Iraq” Wednesday in which he quoted Slaughter, among other liberal hawks.
“The United States moves to assert control of the arming and training of rebels – funnelling weapons through the rebel Supreme Military Council, cultivating insurgents who commit to negotiation an orderly transition to a non-sectarian Syria,” he wrote.
“We make clear to President Assad that if he does not cease his campaign of terror and enter negotiations on a new order, he will pay a heavy price. When he refuses, we send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.”
Keller, who several years after the Iraq invasion offered a somewhat muted apology for supporting that war, stressed that he did not “mean to make this sound easy,” but stressed that a disastrous outcome “is virtually inevitable if we stay out [of the conflict]. …Why wait for the next atrocity?” he asked.
“Iraq should not keep us from doing the right thing in Syria…,’’ according to the op-ed’s subhead.
]]>by Jim Lobe
I’ll make this short.
Twenty-four hours ago, we posted Amb. Robert Hunter’s analysis of the Syria question and his appeal to Obama to “keep his nerve (backed by the US military leadership) and continue resisting attempts to drag the US even more deeply into Syria.” He [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
I’ll make this short.
Twenty-four hours ago, we posted Amb. Robert Hunter’s analysis of the Syria question and his appeal to Obama to “keep his nerve (backed by the US military leadership) and continue resisting attempts to drag the US even more deeply into Syria.” He prefaced his essay with a quotation from the British political TV series, “Yes, Prime Minister;” to wit: “It’s safer to be heartless than mindless. History is the triumph of the heartless over the mindless.”
Twelve hours later, I read Bill Keller’s column, “Syria is Not Iraq,” in Monday’s edition of the New York Times, which, to be frank, I found to a virtually perfect example of the kind of mindlessness over heartlessness that Amb. Hunter may have had in mind. I know Keller is being completely sincere in his beliefs, but I was frankly appalled at what seemed to me precisely the thoughtlessness of the column, which, given its length (over 1300 words — just 200 words less than his infamous Feb 8, 2003 column, “The I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club,” that endorsed the Iraq invasion) and placement on the page, seemed calculated to convey the impression that it was The Final Word.
For mindlessness, take this passage, which follows his ruling out of putting U.S. boots on the ground, an outcome, he notes, “nobody favors:”
The United States moves to assert control of the arming and training of rebels — funneling weapons through the rebel Supreme Military Council, cultivating insurgents who commit to negotiating an orderly transition to a nonsectarian Syria. We make clear to President Assad that if he does not cease his campaign of terror and enter negotiations on a new order, he will pay a heavy price. When he refuses, we send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.
All of this must be carefully choreographed and accompanied by a symphony of diplomacy to keep our allies with us and our adversaries at bay. The aim would be to eventually have a transition government, stabilized for a while by an international peacekeeping force drawn mostly from neighboring states like Turkey.
Now, without boots on the ground, how is it that the U.S. will “assert control of the arming and training of rebels?” And how will the Supreme Military Council ensure that only the “good” insurgents will get the weapons that will be funneled through the SMC? And are we sure that “sending missiles against his military installations” will persuade Assad and those around him to sue for peace? And if he or they don’t, what will be the next step to change his calculations? “Boots on the ground?” And how would he constitute “an international peacekeeping force drawn mostly from neighboring states like Turkey” when all of the neighbors are increasingly on one side or the other of the widening sectarian conflict? Sounds great, but who is he talking about? Iraq? Lebanon? Jordan, Saudi Arabia? And has he consulted the latest surveys on Turkish public opinion and what it might think about sending troops into Syria? Are these informed recommendations? Of course, Keller adds that he doesn’t “mean to make this sound easy,” but, in fact, that’s precisely what he’s doing, just as he did when he was a self-described “reluctant hawk” on Iraq.
Keller also notes that he was wrong on Iraq, calling his position a “humbling error of judgment.” But it’s clear that the statute of limitations on humility — and perhaps on the Iraq War itself — has expired. (Hence, “…getting Syria right starts with getting over Iraq.”) His column is anything but humble. It is filled with the conviction that he knows what’s best for all concerned, with confidence that his risk analysis is on the mark, that good guys and bad guys can be easily distinguished, that doing something is better than doing nothing (an idea he credits to an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, an American Enterprise Institute satellite). In short, his column is filled with the same kind of arrogance that he brought to Iraq as a “reluctant hawk” ten years ago. Indeed, Syria and Iraq may not be the same, but Keller hasn’t changed.
]]>by Wayne White
A sampling of the May 5 American Sunday talk shows demonstrated graphically the intense pressure mounting on the White House to move forward with potentially risky military options aimed at hastening the end of the crisis in Syria.
Embedded in much of the criticism of (or impatience with) [...]]]>
by Wayne White
A sampling of the May 5 American Sunday talk shows demonstrated graphically the intense pressure mounting on the White House to move forward with potentially risky military options aimed at hastening the end of the crisis in Syria.
Embedded in much of the criticism of (or impatience with) current US policy since last month’s accusations of Syrian chemical weapons (CW) use has been a misreading of the “red line” established by President Obama last August, flawed connectivity between the objective of Israel’s most recent air strikes vs. US concerns, and minimizing the unpredictability of the future course of the complex maelstrom in Syria.
One figure stands out among those pushing for robust US military action: Senator John McCain. On a talk show yesterday, Sen. McCain declared that the President’s CW red line on Syria “was apparently written in disappearing ink” (one of the harshest comments related to the red line to date). McCain and many others of varied political views essentially have been pushing the president to take strong action in response to two or, at most, three (as yet not fully confirmed) instances of CW use by the regime.
In fact, the President’s red line of August 2012 was defined as follows: “when we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized, that would change my calculus.” [emphasis mine]
By that definition, it would appear the administration’s critics, not the White House, have been attempting to reshape the original red line from a rather high bar to a considerably lower one.
Other canards circulating since Israel’s weekend airstrikes in the Damascus area have been assertions that they should increase pressure on Washington to act and to discredit comments by US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey and other experts that Syria’s robust air defenses pose a far more serious challenge than did Libya’s.
Sen. McCain appeared dismissive of Gen. Dempsey’s remarks, commenting: “The Israelis seem to be able to penetrate” them “fairly easily.” Yet, there is quite a difference between a few isolated air strikes not very far into Syria and the establishment of a comprehensive no-fly zone or a far more ambitious prolonged campaign of rolling air strikes deep inside Syrian airspace.
Those interested in this debate also should bear in mind that Israel’s narrow military objective to date of blocking Lebanon’s Hezbollah from receiving long-range Fateh-110 missiles being shipped through Syria by Iran is quite different than US and NATO concerns relating to Syria’s sprawling CW arsenal and the issue of how best to assist the Syrian rebels to hasten the fall of the Assad regime.
While even a few isolated, small-scale instances of regime CW use would be ample reason for international concern, it could be that President Bashar al-Assad and other Syrian leaders currently are not under the same amount of pressure to resort to such extreme measures as they might have been a short while ago.
For reasons not quite understood, government forces have shown some renewed vigor in taking on the rebels with the regime’s formidable array of conventional weapons. It is this disturbing development on the broader Syrian battlefield that should be the principal driver behind any consideration of better arming the rebels. Doing so, however (something I also tended to favor over a year ago), has been complicated greatly since early last year by the increased role of al-Qaeda-affiliated Muslim extremists in the fight against the Assad regime.
To make matters worse, last month the direct affiliation between many of them and al-Qaeda was made public. A May 3 Reuters article states: “Israelis believe one in ten of the rebels is a jihadi.”
Nonetheless, one thing is certain: even if their numbers are that small, extremist rebels are providing a disproportionately large number of the opposition’s most effective combat units. It also could be true that their numbers are quite a bit higher than a mere tenth of rebel combatants.
Moreover, selectively arming only “vetted” rebel groups (those less extreme) is unlikely to be as easy or as useful as those pressing for such a course seem to be claiming. First off, there is the likelihood that some groups would succeed in persuading outside powers they are more moderate than they really are. Then there is what I have termed the Catch-22 aspect that would result even if such a selective arms distribution could be achieved: many groups moderate enough to qualify for arms are not nearly as important in altering the balance of power inside Syria more in favor of the rebels than are the extremists.
Finally, there are the unintended consequences of military intervention in Syria. If the result of Muammar al-Qadhafi’s fall in Libya has been continuing instability and violence driven home to Americans by the tragic events in Benghazi last September, post-Assad Syria could prove an even nastier place. Muslim extremists (al-Qaeda itself no less) would be among the key players.
Making matters worse, seething sectarian divides — with the very real danger of Sunni vengeance resulting in further bloodletting and possibly the flight from Syria of several million Alawite and Christian refugees — threatens to stain the aftermath quite darkly.
Still, that has not stopped Sen. McCain (who so fervently backed US intervention in Libya, but now rails on about the deadly events in Benghazi despite the uncertain challenge posed by post-Qadhafi chaos), from advocating US military involvement in the even messier situation in Syria.
It is no wonder, all other reasons aside, that the Obama administration might want to think long and hard about military intervention: many pushing so hard now for the US to wade boldly into such troubled waters probably would turn on the White House in a heartbeat should ill come of any aspect of American engagement in Syria (as it likely would in one form or another). Thus are the inevitable consequences of such a risky business — the unexpected.
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
“Then we’ll have done all we can.”
“Very heartless.”
“It’s safer to be heartless than mindless. History is the triumph of the heartless over the mindless.”
Yes, [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
“Then we’ll have done all we can.”
“Very heartless.”
“It’s safer to be heartless than mindless. History is the triumph of the heartless over the mindless.”
Yes, Prime Minister.
President Barack Obama, it is said, has painted himself into a corner with his repeated statements that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government will be a “game changer” or cross a “red line.” The difficulty of definitions has produced what must have been one of the most ambiguous letters ever to be put on White House stationery. It came as a response to a demand from two US Senators about presidential policy in the event of such weapons use.
More accurately, however, the president can be said to have painted himself into a corner with Syria on two occasions, initially as early as August 2011, and repeated since, by declaring that “Assad must go.”
Of course, Assad has not gone, thus demonstrating once again the first rule of being US President: never call for something, especially in a simple declaratory sentence, if you are not prepared to follow through and make it happen.
This recitation is not meant to be an attack on the US president. It is an introduction to what has to be a genuine dilemma, indeed, a series of dilemmas, which come in several forms.
Syria’s Future
The first dilemma regards the potentiality of a positive outcome in Syria. Assad and company are engaged in the massive slaughter of their own people, which, along with those killed by the rebels, numbers more than 70,000 by a recent (likely conservative) count, plus the creation of more than a million refugees. There is meanwhile no resolution in sight of what has become a full-scale civil war.
Let us assume that Assad is killed (or decides to seek a safe haven) tomorrow. What then? It is a vast stretch of the imagination to believe that the killing would then stop.
What is happening in Syria is radically different from what happened in the so-called “Arab spring” in Tunisia, Egypt, or even Libya. This is not primarily a matter of whether a leader who stayed too long and was too repressive will go; but whether a particular minority will continue to be able to dominate the rest of the population, or, with “regime change,” whether there will be a bloody free-for-all competition for power. None of the other three regime changes were about that.
More relevant is what happened in Iraq, when the US and partners, by invading in 2003, overturned centuries of admittedly unjust domination of a majority (Shi’ite) by a minority (Sunni). Or what is happening, or rather not happening, in Bahrain, where the situation is just the reverse but has been kept in check by military power, much of which has been applied by neighboring Saudi Arabia, with the US, concerned about its base in Bahrain for the Fifth Fleet, at best “turning a blind eye.”
It’s therefore hard to see what the United States, or any combination of outsiders, could usefully do — not to help overthrow Assad and his Alawite-dominated military (that can be done) — but to help “shape” a future in Syria that won’t lead to even more bloody chaos before something approaching “stability” could ensue. Even if that were possible, it would likely take the form of a new suppression, but by the majority (Sunni) over various minorities.
Public Opinion
The second dilemma — perhaps it should be first — is related to whether the American people are ready and willing to see the US engaged in yet another Middle East war. The answer (“No”) is clear, but so far policy is not — hence the dilemma.
There should be no indulgence in the nonsense that all could be accomplished by providing more lethal arms to the rebels, imposing a no-fly zone, or using air power directly. That would be relatively sterile in today’s military taxology, but even if/when successful, it leads back to the first dilemma. And if unsuccessful, the US would then be called upon to do what, in current jargon, is called “boots on the ground” — that is, invasion. There should be no nonsense, however, about the US being able, as in Libya, to “lead from behind.” Even though the British and the French (the latter was the former mandatory power in Syria after World War I) would like to see something done, they are this time ready to hold the US coat, but not lead themselves.
To his credit, the president so far has been wary of getting more deeply engaged, presumably due to a combination of his awareness of the two dilemmas above, the second of which (US public opinion), if ignored, would surely take attention away from what he clearly sees as his legacy: repairs to the heavily-damaged US economy (and the global financial system) and his historical goal, which can be summarized in a few simple words: the promotion of equality in American society.
Regional Context
The third dilemma derives from the manner in which the conflict in Syria began. It did have domestic roots (as in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya), but it also had external causes and active agents, notably a desire by leading Sunni states (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and to a lesser degree, Turkey) to right the informal and rough regional “balance of power” between them and Shi’a states that was so heavily upset by the US invasion of Iraq. This came after the spread of the “disease” from revolutionary Shi’a Iran had both been almost entirely contained in the region and had most of its fires banked at home. Some Sunni states still fear contagion, however, notably Saudi Arabia, where oil lands are heavily concentrated in Shi’a territories (hence Riyadh’s desire to get rid of the Alawite rule in Syria).
So here it is: an already slow-rolling civil war across the region, pitting Sunnis versus Shi’as, but only in part about religion, is also about competitions for power. In this case, it’s an essentially four-cornered competition among Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey, the first three of which have as much to do in fueling the current confrontation with Iran as does its nuclear program.
Would the overthrow of the Assad regime cause this regional civil war to intensify? Or would it lead to a new, informal balance among religious groupings that would be reasonably “stable,” whatever that means in today’s roiling Middle East? It would take a Dr. Pangloss to argue the case for stability over more competition and even less stability and predictability about the future of inter-state relations and internal developments.
Non-governmental Actors
Dilemma number four flows from the above. As the civil war has continued and intensified, Sunni Islamist militants, including elements of al-Qaeda, Wahhabis and Salafists, have increasingly become engaged. That should be no surprise. These groups batten on conflict, especially a conflict with intense emotion and deep-seated religious inspiration. Thus even with Assad gone — perhaps by magic wand tomorrow — would the outcome of the civil war be ruled by a Sunni strongman, pacifying the country by force? Or solidification of another base for continuing terrorist operations by some of our and our allies’ worst enemies?
Israel’s Circumstances
One argument for getting rid of Assad and his Alawite-dominated regime is that this would help deprive the Lebanese Hezbollah of its rear base, which provides political support and a supply route for Iran as it seeks to counter pressure from the US and Israel. But at what (potential) price would Iran be thus incommoded?
Since 1974, Israel existed uneasily but still reasonably comfortably with Assad père et fils, as both countries learned to live with one another. Their mutual frontier along the Golan Heights was so stable that Israel could even invade Lebanon (twice) and attack a Syrian nuclear reactor without a military response. Now that modus vivendi is very much in jeopardy.
Indeed, for many months after the Syrian civil war started, Israel was clearly at least ambivalent about whether Assad’s departure was in Israel’s best interest. It now seems to have passed that point, but even that is not entirely clear.
What should be clear, however, is that if Assad goes and there is an intensifying civil war, with “free play” for Islamist radicals of the worst stripe — the kind that have inspired and in many cases conducted the killing of Americans in Afghanistan — the US will be called upon to be even more robust in support of Israel’s security.
Would that mean US forces on the Golan Heights? Israel has never wanted this direct military engagement from the US, but the need for extra commitments to Israel’s security would be very likely. Furthermore, the argument that Iran would be the big loser from Assad’s departure might even be turned on its head. The balance in Tehran could be tipped toward those who argue that Iran should get nuclear weapons in order to deter a burgeoning list of enemies.
Strategy
Then a final dilemma: the US desire to “pivot” to Asia. But at least some refocusing of policy and military assets will not be as easily done as has been hoped with the end of the Iraq War, the winding down of the Afghanistan War and the efforts to keep Iran from crossing either US or Israeli red lines on its nuclear program.
With Syria and its interlocking dilemmas, plus other continuing challenges in the region, the US will not be able to rid itself of a major security role in the Middle East anytime soon, even if it (rightly) promotes an international approach to even some of these dilemmas, no matter how much oil and gas is eventually produced in the continental US.
It is probably — but not certainly — too late to find some means whereby Assad could stay in power but with genuine power-sharing that would radically reduce the prominence of the Alawites without leaving them to be victimized as they have victimized other Syrians for so long. Of course, power-sharing efforts almost always fail in mechanical approaches to foreign policy, so perhaps that was never a real option, a triumph of Western “hope over experience.”
So what is to be done at this juncture of “no good options?” The best to be hoped for now is for President Obama to keep his nerve (backed by the US military leadership) and continue resisting attempts to drag the US even more deeply into Syria. At the same time, the US must avoid the temptation to perceive another looming chance to experiment with “nation building”; Iraq and Afghanistan should have inoculated us against that.
As a cardinal principle, the US should internationalize whatever is done — by the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and Arab League — and not regard Syria as a test of US “leadership,” as asserted in the aforementioned White House letter (“strengthen our leadership of the international community.”) It should put out the word in very clear terms to other states in the region to stop meddling in Syria, and in particular, to rein-in their nationals who are engaged in spreading Islamist militancy in Syria (and elsewhere), with both ideas and arms.
Finally, the US needs to begin seeing the region as a whole, not as a series of bits and pieces, loosely connected to one another, with Washington attempting only “to put out fires” here and there, while pretending that the whole region is not potentially ablaze. The president has to recruit for his administration the very best people to think strategically and this time plan ahead. They must understand that the US has to create consistent and coherent policies for the entire region that have some chance of success for the long haul.
]]>A White House letter Thursday to Congressional leaders suggesting chemical weapons use by the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has reignited debate about direct U.S. military involvement in the war-torn country.
“Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the [...]]]>
A White House letter Thursday to Congressional leaders suggesting chemical weapons use by the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has reignited debate about direct U.S. military involvement in the war-torn country.
“Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin,” the letter said, a day after a letter by eight senators was sent to the president asking if chemical weapons had been used by the Assad regime since the conflict there began in 2011.
Republican Senator John McCain, one of the co-signers of the letter to the White House, said Thursday that president Obama’s “red line” on Syria has been “crossed”.
“Not only have our intelligence people concluded that, but as importantly the Israeli, the British and the French have as well,” McCain said on Fox News.
“The president clearly stated that it was a red line and that it couldn’t be crossed without the United States taking vigorous action,” he said.
But it’s not clear whether the president’s red line has been crossed.
The White House is also seeking confirmation of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment before taking action.
“…Precisely because the president takes this issue so seriously, we have an obligation to fully investigate any and all evidence of chemical weapons use within Syria,” the White House letter said before calling for a U.N. investigation to “credibly evaluate the evidence and establish what took place”.
“There was wiggle room [in the letter] about who might have been actually doing it,” Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Jimmy Carter administration, told IPS.
“That letter is a wonderful weasel-worded letter to try to make the president look good and preserve all options. And I don’t mean the option to go to war, I mean the option to not go to war,” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993-98.
“It’s not clear to me that the administration has figured out what’s in the best American interest after period X…because we’ve been ambivalent about that or because in the president’s statement it says Assad ought to go, then if that’s where you are, what are you prepared to do to see it come about, and if it does come about, then what are you prepared to do?” said Hunter.
“You can arm the rebels, you can have a no-fly zone, you can use air power…we now have a capacity to use air power at relatively low risk. But that still begs the question: then what happens? How do you protect the minority if Assad goes? How do you keep this from becoming a spill-over into what I call a slow-rolling civil war throughout this part of the Middle East,” he said.
“It does not appear that the proverbial Obama administration ‘red line’ has been crossed – yet – because there clearly are some differences about the level of certainty within the U.S. intelligence community over whether regime lethal chemical weapons (CW) use has taken place,” Wayne White, a former deputy director of the State Department’s Middle East/South Asia Intelligence Office (INR/NESA), told IPS.
“Also at issue is whether, if this has occurred, the incident was significant or relatively isolated and minor, as well as whether the level of danger that any such use would be repeated,” said White, now a scholar at the Middle East Institute.
There is meanwhile differing opinion among U.S. Mideast policy experts about whether Washngton should militarily intervene in Syria, something which the Obama administration has so far resisted.
“It doesn’t really matter which intelligence assessment – Israeli or American – is accurate, this is no longer an academic question. The U.S. and its allies, in or outside the U.N., must act swiftly to bring down the regime and prevent any further use of chemical weapons by the regime,” Emile Nakhleh, a an expert on Middle Eastern society and politics who served in the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993-2006, told IPS.
“It is time the Obama administration acts on its own to speed up Assad’s fall. If the president had followed his earlier statement that Assad should go, the Syrian people would have been spared the horrible destruction that the regime has inflicted on the country, the deaths of almost 100,000 people, and the flight of almost three million Syrians as refugees to neighbouring countries.
“More importantly, such action would have removed the possibility of the regime using weapons of mass destruction against the Syrian people,” Nakhleh, who formerly headed the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme, told IPS.
The White House’s letter release Thursday coincided with a library dedication ceremony for President George W. Bush, which was attended by all living U.S. presidents including Obama.
Bush spoke highly of his two-term presidency, which included U.S.-waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“…We liberated nations from dictatorship and freed people from AIDS. And when our freedom came under attack, we made the tough decisions required to keep the American people safe,” said Bush at the library dedication ceremony on the campus of SMU in Dallas, Texas.
But successive polls show little support now by U.S. citizens for involvement in another Mideast war.
In December 2013, a Pew Research poll showed that 65 percent of respondents opposed the U.S. and its allies even sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria.
“The Obama administration, already heavily committed in Afghanistan, addressing significant military-related budget cuts, and well aware of the need to avoid an Iraq-like scenario, will move with much greater caution in dealing with Syria than did the Bush administration (which eagerly sought an all-out war with Iraq) back in 2003,” White told IPS.
“Particularly with Islamic extremists (in fact, many directly affiliated with Al-Qaeda) important players in the complex situation on the ground in Syria, this administration will likely remain well aware of the Colin Powell dictum: ‘You break it; you own it’,” said White.
“Syria already is, in effect, broken, but the U.S. so far has played only a marginal role in determining the flow of events there. Indeed, so far, this remains very much a Syrian conflict, despite the involvement of various outside governments (including Iran),” he said.
Photo: U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel briefs the press in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, April 25, 2013. Credit: DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo
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