*This post has been updated
Yesterday we charted the way Secretary of State John Kerry’s seemingly off-handed answer to a question about how Syria could deter a US strike morphed into what’s now being referred to as the “Lavrov Proposal“. As far as I can [...]]]>
*This post has been updated
Yesterday we charted the way Secretary of State John Kerry’s seemingly off-handed answer to a question about how Syria could deter a US strike morphed into what’s now being referred to as the “Lavrov Proposal“. As far as I can tell, it was Kerry’s predecessor Hillary Clinton who first publicly described the proposal for Syria to turn in its chemical weapons to international monitors as a US-Russian initiative (before she talked about endangered wildlife), rather than Russia seizing upon a US slip of the tongue, which is what it really looked liked. Well, while the proposal was actually first brought up by then-Senator Richard G. Lugar a little over a year ago, more people are now pushing the notion that Kerry’s gaffe wasn’t one at all, including the Secretary of State himself. Kerry provided his description of what went down on Monday during his remarks at the House Armed Services Committee today (emphasis mine):
Yesterday, we challenged the regime to turn them over to the secure control of the international community so that they could be destroyed. And that, of course, would be the ultimate way to degrade and deter Assad’s arsenal, and it is the ideal weapon – ideal way to take this weapon away from him.
This is how Kerry “challenged” Bashar al-Assad to hand over his chemical weapons:
Kerry continued that Russia “responded” to his challenge by saying they would come up with a proposal and that President Barack Obama would take a “hard look” at it if it was produced within a limited time. (Interestingly, the President hasn’t ruled it out.) Kerry also argued something we’re hearing over and over again now: this potentially good outcome would not have been possible without a credible threat of US military force.
After Kerry announced this US “challenge” in London during the question/answer period of a press briefing and Russia announced it had a proposal within a few hours, former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley tweeted why this could be a life preserver for Obama:
#Putin just offered #Obama a lifeboat, a diplomatic solution that allows the postponement of a vote on military action he may well lose.
— Philip J. Crowley (@PJCrowley) September 9, 2013
#Obama gains from the #Russian offer. If #Assad gives up the weapons, problem solved. If not, it strengthens the case for military action.
— Philip J. Crowley (@PJCrowley) September 9, 2013
Today, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller repeated some of Crowley’s arguments while arguing that Kerry did not act as a “careless pawn”:
I’m told by a senior administration official that Kerry’s comment was not as offhanded as it seemed. According to this official, Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, first discussed the idea back in the spring. They returned to it more seriously last week, and Putin and Obama talked about it in at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. The official said the administration sees the danger that the Russians or the U.N. will make it a delaying tactic, but that “in Kerry’s mind and in the President’s mind, it can be a win-win:” either you disarm Syria of its chemical weapons quickly and verifiably, or by exhausting a credible diplomatic option you win support for tougher measures against the Assad regime.
Of course, that still doesn’t explain why this alleged US challenge was presented only after Kerry was prompted with a question from a CBS reporter and why the State Department initially categorically denied that Kerry had made a proposal. Here’s a reminder of yesterday’s Daily Press Briefing with Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf (emphasis mine):
QUESTION: — did not make this statement until after he found about what the Secretary had said.
MS. HARF: Mm-hmm. But the Secretary was not making a proposal. The Secretary was making a –
QUESTION: How is that? Go ahead.
MS. HARF: Thank you. The Secretary was making a rhetorical statement and you read the whole quote, which I actually appreciate you doing. Look, he’s not about to do this. That was – that’s what the –
*Update: Al-Monitor also reports that this proposal was in the making before Kerry’s comments on Monday. It still seems like Kerry at least jumped the gun, which is understandable, considering that he’s probably been going on less than 3 hours of sleep. In any case, here’s why all of this could unfortunately be going nowhere.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more disconcerting developments in foreign policy discussions in the 21st century is that political satirists seem to be offering keener and more prescient assessments of the dilemmas involved than pundits and policy makers. Put somewhat less charitably, the cliches and conventions of foreign policy have [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more disconcerting developments in foreign policy discussions in the 21st century is that political satirists seem to be offering keener and more prescient assessments of the dilemmas involved than pundits and policy makers. Put somewhat less charitably, the cliches and conventions of foreign policy have become such a topic of mockery that it takes a comedy writer to get them right.
One classic case in point is from The Onion, published on Jan. 17, 2001, just before the first inauguration of George W. Bush as president. In the faux transcript of the soon-to-be-delivered speech, the incoming president assured the American people that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.
“You better believe we’re going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,” said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. “Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?”
Written nine months before the events of 9/11/2001 and a year before Bush’s (in)famous “Axis of Evil” State of the Union address, it’s difficult to see where The Onion missed any of the real events that would transpire during Bush’s two terms in its hyperbolic prognostications, days before he took office.
“We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two,” Bush said. “Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, but there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”
About six weeks ago The Onion ran a piece on Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to bring Israeli and Palestinians together, headlined “Man Who Couldn’t Defeat George W. Bush Attempting to Resolve Israel Palestine Conflict”:
Arriving in the Middle East today for top-level negotiations with Palestinian and Israeli officials, a man who could not even devise a way to beat George W. Bush in a head-to-head vote will spend the next several days attempting to bring a peaceful resolution to the most intractable global conflict of the modern era, State Department sources confirmed. “We are confident that [this person who managed to win just 19 states against George W. Bush, even in the midst of two highly unpopular and costly foreign wars] will be able to establish a framework to bring about lasting peace in the Middle East…”
The Onion just posted a “commentary” in the form of an op-ed, purportedly by Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, titled So, What’s it Going to Be?
Well, here we are. It’s been two years of fighting, over 100,000 people are dead, there are no signs of this war ending, and a week ago I used chemical weapons on my own people. If you don’t do anything about it, thousands of Syrians are going to die. If you do something about it, thousands of Syrians are going to die. Morally speaking, you’re on the hook for those deaths no matter how you look at it.
So, it’s your move, America. What’s it going to be?
The amazingly astute commentaries on the paradoxes and perils of intervening in Syria presented on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart at the end of April were so far ahead of the mainstream media, that watching them now as military intervention is being debated by the punditocracy is both timely and terrifying. Segments such as Whose Line is It Anyway: Boots on the Ground? or “Assad but True” have retained their insight as well as their wit far better than the cliches and talking points on the nightly news. John McCain’s Syrian Photo Op, first broadcast on June 3, highlights the difficulties of figuring out and finding the Syrian rebels that the US ought to be arming in opposition to the Assad regime, a dilemma that still hasn’t been satisfactorily resolved.
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, whose first Doonesbury comic strip was published in 1970, mocked the Orwellian doublespeak that accompanies the initiation and escalation of all wars since. One of my personal favorites was a comic strip just before or after the US invasion of Iraq (I’m not sure whether it was the first or second) that showed a spokesman at a news conference being asked how the US could be so certain Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The speaker held up a piece of paper: “We’ve got receipts!” In recent days, news headlines are finally revealing that the US not only knew that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons and nerve gas against Iran in the 1980s, but actively assisted Iraq by providing detailed intelligence on Iranian troop movements.
“The Borowitz Report” in The New Yorker has just weighed in on Syria, with Andy Borowitz’s sardonic but all too convincing headline Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective:
Attempting to quell criticism of his proposal for a limited military mission in Syria, President Obama floated a more modest strategy today, saying that any U.S. action in Syria would have “no objective whatsoever.”
“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.”
“I want to reassure our allies and the people of Syria that what we are about to undertake, if we undertake it at all, will have no purpose or goal,” he said. “This is consistent with U.S. foreign policy of the past.”
The movement toward an attack on Syria — a precursor to, or stand-in for a war with Iran — seems to be increasingly regarded as inevitable — “not whether, but when” — gives a new and poignant meaning to “laughing till it hurts.”
- Comic Credit: The Oatmeal
]]>by Mark N. Katz
“Obama weighing limited strike on Syria,” reads the main headline of an August 27 Washington Post article. We still don’t know exactly what this will entail, but as this piece — and many other news reports — indicate, the operative word definitely appears to be: limited.
As authors [...]]]>
by Mark N. Katz
“Obama weighing limited strike on Syria,” reads the main headline of an August 27 Washington Post article. We still don’t know exactly what this will entail, but as this piece — and many other news reports — indicate, the operative word definitely appears to be: limited.
As authors Karen De Young and Anne Gearan explain, the action that the Obama administration is contemplating “is designed more to send a message than to cripple Assad’s military and change the balance of forces on the ground.” In other words, after warning last year that the use of chemical weapons is a “red line” that the Assad regime must not cross, President Barack Obama feels that he must respond if (as appears increasingly likely) the Assad regime has used them against its own citizens. But he wants to do as little as possible for fear of getting the US involved in another fractious Middle Eastern conflict.
If this is indeed the sort of attack on Syria that the president is contemplating, it is not likely to be very effective. Bashar al-Assad is not only willing to kill his opponents; he will sacrifice his supporters as well. If the US-led retaliation to his alleged recent use of chemical weapons is just one that targets some of his military facilities, that is a cost that Assad will be willing to pay. Indeed, it may encourage him to launch even more chemical weapons attacks due to the belief that while US retaliation may be annoying, it will not threaten the survival of his regime or its advantages vis-à-vis his opponents.
The White House should not forget that there is precedent for something like this. Between the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 and the US-led intervention against Iraq in 2003, the US launched numerous, small-scale attacks against Iraq in retaliation for Saddam Hussein’s many misdeeds. These did not succeed in improving his behavior much.
Nor will limited (there’s that word again) strikes against Syria improve Assad’s behavior. If the Obama administration seriously wishes to alter Assad’s ways, then it must attack or threaten to attack that which he values most: his and his regime’s survival. It is not clear, of course, that Assad will change course even if he is personally threatened. But it is only if he is eliminated, or appears likely to be, that elements within his security services concerned primarily about their own survival and prosperity will have the opportunity to reach an accommodation with some of the regime’s opponents, neighboring states and the West.
Threatening Assad’s survival is what is needed to attenuate the links between Assad and the forces that are protecting him. Undoubtedly riven with internal rivalries (something that dictators encourage for fear that their subordinates will otherwise collaborate with one another against them), the downfall of Assad — actual or believed to be imminent — is what will open the door for some in the security services to save themselves through cooperating with the regime’s opponents. Absent this condition, it is simply too risky for them to turn against their master and his other supporters — who are ever on the lookout for signs of disloyalty.
So far, though, the Obama administration has taken pains to signal that it is not going to threaten the Assad leadership. This seems very odd. It did, after all, kill Osama bin Laden when it could have captured (and possibly gained a treasure trove of intelligence from) him instead. The Obama administration has also launched an aggressive drone missile campaign against Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere. But however heinous the actions of these terrorists have been, they have killed far fewer people than Assad and his henchmen.
The Obama administration may be reluctant to target Assad because he is a head of state. But whether for this reason or any other, the result of Washington’s self-restraint will be that Assad remains free to kill more and more of his own citizens.
An American attack on Syria does indeed need to be limited — limited to Assad.
]]>via IPS News
While some kind of U.S. military action against Syria in the coming days appears increasingly inevitable, the debate over the why and how of such an attack has grown white hot here.
On one side, hawks, who span the political spectrum, argue that President Barack Obama’s credibility [...]]]>
via IPS News
While some kind of U.S. military action against Syria in the coming days appears increasingly inevitable, the debate over the why and how of such an attack has grown white hot here.
On one side, hawks, who span the political spectrum, argue that President Barack Obama’s credibility is at stake, especially now that Secretary of State John Kerry has publicly endorsed the case that the government of President Bashar Al-Assad must have been responsible for the alleged chemical attack on a Damascus suburb that was reported to have killed hundreds of people.
Just one year ago, Obama warned that the regime’s use of such weapons would cross a “red line” and constitute a “game-changer” that would force Washington to reassess its policy of not providing direct military aid to rebels and of avoiding military action of its own.
After U.S. intelligence confirmed earlier this year that government forces had on several occasions used limited quantities of chemical weapons against insurgents, the administration said it would begin providing arms to opposition forces, although rebels complain that nothing has yet materialised.
The hawks have further argued that U.S. military action is also necessary to demonstrate that the most deadly use of chemical weapons since the 1988 Halabja massacre by Iraqi forces against the Kurdish population there – a use of which the US. was fully aware but did not denounce at the time – will not go unpunished.
Military action should be “sufficiently large that it would underscore the message that chemical weapons as a weapon of mass destruction simply cannot be used with impunity,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told reporters in a teleconference Monday. “The audience here is not just the Syrian government.”
While the hawks, whose position is strongly backed by the governments of Britain, France, Gulf Arab kingdoms and Israel, clearly have the wind at their backs, the doves have not given up.
Remembering Iraq
Recalling the mistakes and distortions of U.S. intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, some argue that the administration is being too hasty in blaming the Syrian government.
If it waits until United Nations inspectors, who visited the site of the alleged attack Monday, complete their work, the United States could at least persuade other governments that Washington is not short-circuiting a multilateral process as it did in Iraq.
Many also note that military action could launch an escalation that Washington will not necessarily be able to control, as noted by a prominent neo-conservative hawk, Eliot Cohen, in Monday’s Washington Post.
“Chess players who think one move ahead usually lose; so do presidents who think they can launch a day or two of strikes and then walk away with a win,” wrote Cohen, who served as counsellor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “The other side, not we, gets to decide when it ends.”
“What if [Obama] hurls cruise missiles at a few key targets, and Assad does nothing and says, ‘I’m still winning.’ What do you then?” asked Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), who served for 16 years as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell. “Do you automatically escalate and go up to a no-fly zone and the challenges that entails, and what then if that doesn’t get [Assad's] attention?
“This is fraught with tar-babiness,” he told IPS in a reference to an African-American folk fable about how Br’er Rabbit becomes stuck to a doll made of tar. “You stick in your hand, and you can’t get it out, so you then you stick in your other hand, and pretty soon you’re all tangled up all this mess – and for what?”
“Certainly there are more vital interests in Iran than in Syria,” he added. “You can’t negotiate with Iran if you start bombing Syria,” he said, a point echoed by the head of the National Iranian American Council, Trita Parsi.
“There is a real opportunity for successful diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear issue, but that opportunity will either be completely spoiled or undermined if the U.S. intervention in Syria puts the U.S. and Iran in direct combat with each other,” he told IPS. Humanitarian concerns and U.S. credibility should also be taken into account when considering intervention, he said.
Remembering Kosovo
Still, the likelihood of military action – almost certainly through the use of airpower since even the most aggressive hawks, such as Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, have ruled out the commitment of ground troops – is being increasingly taken for granted here.
Lingering questions include whether Washington will first ask the United Nations Security Council to approve military action, despite the strong belief here that Russia, Assad’s most important international supporter and arms supplier, and China would veto such a resolution.
“Every time we bypass the council for fear of a Russian or Chinese veto, we drive a stake into the heart of collective security,” noted Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “Long-term, that’s not in our interest.”
But the hawks, both inside the administration and out, are urging Obama to follow the precedent of NATO’s air campaign in 1999 against Serbia during the Kosovo War. In that case, President Bill Clinton ignored the U.N. and persuaded his NATO allies to endorse military intervention on humanitarian grounds.
The 78-day air war ultimately persuaded Yugoslav President Milosovic to withdraw his troops from most of Kosovo province, but not before NATO forces threatened to deploy ground troops, a threat that the Obama administration would very much like to avoid in the case of Syria.
While the administration is considered most likely to carry out “stand-off” strikes by cruise missiles launched from outside Syria’s territory to avoid its more formidable air-defence system and thus minimise the risk to U.S. pilots, there remains considerable debate as to what should be included in the target list.
Some hawks, including McCain and Graham, have called not only for Washington to bomb Syrian airfields and destroy its fleet of warplanes and helicopter and ballistic capabilities, but also to establish no-fly zones and safe areas for civilians and rebel forces to tilt the balance of power decisively against the Assad government. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, have urged the same.
But others oppose such far-reaching measures, noting that the armed opposition appears increasingly dominated by radical Islamists, some of them affiliated with Al Qaeda, and that the aim of any military intervention should be not only to deter the future use of chemical weapons but also to prod Assad and the more moderate opposition forces into negotiations, as jointly proposed this spring by Moscow and Washington. In their view, any intervention should be more limited so as not to provoke Assad into escalating the conflict.
Photo: Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks on Syria at the Department of State in Washington, DC, on August 26, 2013. Credit: State Department
]]>by Dina Esfandiary
In a letter to Congress last week, the White House confirmed “with varying degrees of confidence” that chemical weapons had been used in Syria. This has led to a flurry of assertions that something must now be done – Bashar al-Assad’s crimes cannot [...]]]>
by Dina Esfandiary
In a letter to Congress last week, the White House confirmed “with varying degrees of confidence” that chemical weapons had been used in Syria. This has led to a flurry of assertions that something must now be done – Bashar al-Assad’s crimes cannot go unpunished. But is there enough information to justify action? More importantly, can the US and the rest of the international community actually do much?
The quick answer to both questions is no.
The UK and France have obtained samples from inside Syria that have tested positive for traces of a Sarin by-product. Videos and pictures show victims suffering symptoms similar to those caused by certain chemical weapons (although foaming of the mouth is not usually a symptom of Sarin exposure). The information has been corroborated with witness testimonies. This is credible but not definitive.
There is no information about the exact location or timing of the alleged attack. The physiological samples show individuals were exposed but they do not clarify where, when or how. This makes it difficult to ascertain whether it was an actual attack or just an accidental release of agents from a broken or lost canister.
The samples and interviews do not point the finger at Assad in any definitive manner. It would be reasonable to assume the agents came from the regime — after all, Assad has spent the last four decades developing his chemical weapons arsenal into the biggest in the Middle East. But the evidence is not unequivocal. If intentional, it is possible the agents were released by a rogue general or rebels that have somehow come across Sarin canisters. Unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible.
The limited scale of the alleged attack also raises a number of questions. Why risk large-scale international retribution for such a small result? Chemical weapons are effective weapons of terror, but Assad is not short of means of terrorizing his enemies. Why run the risk of intervention for so little gain? Especially at a time when US policy priority has shifted from deposing Assad to ensuring Islamists do not come to power in Syria.
The uncertainty surrounding these allegations and the small scale of the alleged attack make it difficult to say for certain that Assad has crossed the US’ red line. “Suspicions are one thing; evidence is another”, said Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel last week.
But the problems do not stop there. If the allegations are proven correct, the options for responding are not attractive.
Some Israeli officials have called for military action to “curb” Syria’s chemical weapons. But this is different (and much more difficult) than military action in response to the use of chemical weapons. A military response to the alleged crossing of the red line could include air strikes on Syrian military installations (rather than just chemical weapons facilities) for example. But using air strikes to secure Syria’s chemical weapons is risky, especially when the location and size of the facilities are unconfirmed. More importantly, what if as a result of the airstrikes, some of the agents were released into the atmosphere? The consequences would be devastating. Add to that Syria’s robust air defences and the possibility that some munitions will survive and be open to looting, and doing nothing suddenly looks like a good idea.
The other option is to send troops in. But the lack of accurate intelligence on the location and size of Syria’s stockpiles makes this difficult. In a sea of uncertainty, the one thing the international community is sure of is that Assad’s stockpiles are large (the largest in the Middle East) and dispersed. In fact, so much so that in November, the Pentagon told the White House that upward of 75,000 troops would be needed to secure Syria’s chemical weapons. Is the US ready for another invasion of a Middle Eastern country and a treasure hunt to find all facilities and stockpiles in the context of civil war, where foreign troops would be a prime target?
It is difficult to idly sit by while the crisis in Syria escalates. But the US and the international community cannot jump into another war in the region based on assumptions. And given the existing circumstances and options, securing Syria’s chemical weapon stockpiles will require more persuasion and negotiation than brute force.
– Dina Esfandiary is a Research Associate and foreign affairs and security analyst focusing on Iran, the Middle East and nuclear issues at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Photo: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel briefs the press in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on April 25, 2013. Hagel announced that the White House released a statement that it has evidence that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has used chemical weapons against the Syrian rebels. DoD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo.
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