Ivan Eland, the libertarian, has a very tendentious article over at the Huffington Post, reprinted at the Independent Institute website. The article addresses the the continuity between the Gulf War and the Iraq War. This is a reasonable position, however, the way he gets there and the conclusions are suspect in the extreme.

First he makes the claim that the reasons the U.S. went to war to roll back Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait were two: (1) the U.S. wanted to protect Saudi Arabia from further invasion and maintain low oil prices; and (2) George H. W. Bush was beholden of “Munich Syndrome,” the idea that if Saddam was allowed to annex Kuwait, other dissatisfied powers would be emboldened.

As to the first, he cites an economic analysis that indicates that the increase in the price of oil would have been cheaper than the cost of the war. As to the second, he (rightly) makes the claim that no super power can intervene everywhere.  But that doesn’t mean that a super power shouldn’t intervene somewhere.

The claim of Munich Syndrome is a smoke screen. The conflict was over the threat to the liberal international system and to preserve the principles of the United Nations. The United Nations Security Council was at its most effective, because U.S.-Soviet (Russian) rivalry was temporarily at low tide. The United Nations was able put into practice Articles 39-43 to address an interstate breach of the peace. It was a triumph of the IGO.

A series of coercive actions short of war had been taken through the U.N. to reverse the aggression and restore the legitimate government and borders of Kuwait: Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670 674 and 677. Iraq refused. And thus, the multinational coalition under United Nations authorization and U.S. command destroyed Iraq’s military and ejected them from Kuwait to restore the status quo. I’ll quote Resolution 678:

Noting that despite all efforts by the United Nations, Iraq refuses to comply with its obligation to implement resolution 660 (1990) and the subsequent relevant resolutions, in flagrant contempt of the Security Council,

Mindful of its duties and responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance and preservation of international peace and security,

Determined to secure full compliance with its decisions,

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter,

1. Demands that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, and decides, while maintaining all its decisions, to allow Iraq one final opportunity, as a pause of goodwill to do so;

2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the above-mentioned resolutions to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;

3. Requests all states to provide appropriate support for the actions undertaken in pursuance of paragraph 2 above;

4. Requests the States concerned to keep the Security Council regularly informed on the progress of actions undertaken pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3 above;

5. Decides to remain seized of the matter.

Thus, the U.N. outsourced the ejection of Saddam from Kuwait, making the post-Second World War liberal international order actually work for a change in the absence of a super power rivalry on the UNSC. The only other time the U.N. authorized an action of this type was in 1950 that launched the Korean War, which happened only because the Soviet Union was boycotting the U.N. at the time.

Libertarians may abhor the United Nations as a Wilsonian project that threatens the Jeffersonian roots of the United States, but maintenance of the liberal international regime does not amount to Munich Syndrome.

Contrast these two stories: firefighters will be going unpaid in December and Russia rearms.  In documents leaked to the media in the Sverdlovsk region, the ministry responsible for emergency services and civil defense told its employees that they needed to take out pay day loans because the ministry didn’t have money to pay them and that they would be paid in January.  At the same time the Kremlin has ambitious plans to rearm adding submarines, fixed and rotary wing aircraft, air defense missiles, and, more troubling, tanks and self-propelled artillery.  The artillery is troubling, because its main use would be against its neighbors.

The military expenditures are to bring Russia back into great power status, but for how long?  It is not sustainable at current oil prices, since Russia is essentially a petro state.  Iranian oil soon hits the market depressing prices further.  It can’t pay its firefighters.

Historically, the Russian people have demonstrated tremendous fortitude, enduring great privation, for political aims.  Will that trend continue or has consumerism taken hold of the population to create a populist backlash to the authoritarianism of the Putin regime?

Public Access to the text of the resolution to end the Syrian civil war that was approved on December 18 is currently embargoed. Based upon reporting in the Washington Post it is very similar to other types of agreements that are designed to end civil wars in Sub-Saharan Africa among other places:

• Waring parties will negotiate the composition of a transitional government
• The transitional government will draft a new constitution and hold elections within 18 months
• The United Nations will foster the talks on a transitional government and observe the implementation of the agreement
• (Interestingly there is no mention of a DDR program which is usually part of these types of agreements)

This is mostly the diplomatic equivalent of  paper shuffling to look busy. The international community, embodied in the United Nations, is invested in seeing Humpty-Dumpty, that is Syria, put back together again. In reality Syria has already been partitioned.

According to the article (we’ll have to wait for the text from the UN), there are profound disagreements on what the end-state looks like. Is it an acceptance of a partitioned Syria?

• Russia is invested in seeing Assad remain in power, for reasons detailed previously in this blog. Would they accept a rump state on Mediterranean coast?
• The Europeans just want to stop the flow of refugees.
• A Kurdish state is anathema to Turkey. An Iranian proxy on its borders–those darn Persians keep cramping Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman style–is also unacceptable. It is doubtful they would accept the Syrian Alawite rump state on the Med. solution.
• Israel does not want a third front opened against on the Golan, but they may trust in their capability to deter aggression. Hizbollah or ISIS in possession of the Golan is the worst case scenario.
• Don’t discount the importance of the sectarian war to the Sunni Arab powers in the region.
• The United States just wants to defeat ISIS and not have to deploy the Marines to do it.

Where does it leave us? If the UN Security Council can’t even agree on which warring parties in Syria have a seat at the talks on a transitional government, this is doomed to fail. Ultimately, the UN will be back at square one and will have to wait until one of two conditions prevail: (1) all sides are militarily exhausted, (2) they can back a strong horse who appears to be winning. Russia is doing its part to see that option 2 is Assad. The problem is that the U.S. and Europeans are doing their part to see that Kurdish militias are that option 2, since they are the best proxies to use against ISIS. ISIS chose the tactic of international terrorism, taking a page from the PLO’s playbook. This has backfired on them, as it did for al-Qaeda. Now the West is using proxies against them and inadvertently creating a second force who could bid for state.

Syria like Somalia is a failed state. The IGOs want to put it back together again on the abstract principle of inviolability of borders, but population transfers have already occurred and the state has been effectively partitioned. Acceptance of that is the best option, but it will only be reached when the conditions on the ground warrant it.

Most states understand this, since no state has signed up for monitoring or peacekeeping as part of the agreement.

The Obama Administration only last week doubled down on its policy of limited air strikes against ISIS and no ground troops other than advisers with the Kurds and Iraqi militias, hoping that what happens in the Middle East stays in the Middle East.  The refugee crisis is viewed as an opportunity to get Europe to take a more active role in policing its borders.  The attacks in Paris are someone else’s problem.  There is no existential threat to the U.S. emerging from the conflict in Syria-Iraq, especially since the administration secured and agreement with Iran to curtail its nuclear weapons program.

Now a Russian bomber supporting the Assad regime violated Turkish airspace and was shot down by two Turkish F-16s.  At least one aviator was killed by Turkmen militiamen on the ground just inside Syria and Russia claims that a rescue helicopter sent to rescue the aviators was attacked as well killing a marine.

Turkey is a member of NATO, and NATO has urged calm and to de-escalate the situation.  But Russia does not appear to be in the mood to de-escalate.  According to the regime’s English language mouthpiece, RT, Russia will suspend military ties with Turkey, put its guided missile cruiser in the Med. on alert to shoot down any threat, and will make sure all bombing missions have fighter escort.

NATO, you’ve got your answer.  The Turkish response was the correct one to the repeated violations of Turkish air space by Russian and Syrian aircraft.  In an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, Robert Axelrod showed that a tit-for-tat strategy produces the best outcomes because it punishes defection immediately but lets bygones be bygones.  One of the advantages of tit-for-tat is that rather than immediately escalating to massive force, off-ramps are provided to de-escalate.  Russia appears to be driven by a different logic.

Let’s recap some of the policy goals of the current Russian regime:

• Russia’s intervention is to build credibility with its allies, unlike a fickle Western democracy, Russia stands by its allies; we know this because so far the intervention has been limited to air power and materiel provided to the Assad regime to prosecute the civil war; Russia has replaced capability lost to attrition, not introduced new weapons (except for cruise missiles, see below).
• Russia sees itself as an aggrieved great power whose status has been diminished and is being held down (encircled) by Western democracies/NATO–for example, Georgia’s tilt towards the EU and Ukraine’s tilt towards the EU was the last straw and prompted intervention in both countries to create frozen conflicts that prevent their incorporation into the liberal international system and alliance with Western democracies.
• Conflict is needed to prop up the authoritarian personal rule of Putin; it manufactures patriotic sentiments and lends legitimacy to political repression.
• The conflict allows Russia to demonstrate a renewed military competency after losing the Cold War and its military atrophied; the cruise missile launches from the Caspian are such an example.  They also have the effect of intimidating states in the Caspian region.

Given the policy goals is obvious way Russia is not going to choose the off-ramp.  Russia is not going to let a crisis go to waste.  Russia will use the incident to break NATO by forcing pacific Western Europeans into choosing to support an increasingly odious Islamist regime in Ankara or hang Ankara out to dry.  We’ve already had evidence from last month that NATO intends to hang Turkey out to dry, when NATO Patriot missile batteries were removed from the theater.  Once Russia has proven NATO to be a paper tiger, Russia will peel the Baltics out of the Western orbit and back into the Russian one.

The Obama Administration’s current policy is leaving the next administration a huge mess to clean up, when what was needed in the region was a deterrent, none was proffered and when kinetic action was needed, the administration demurred.  Now, we are faced with a potential NATO-Russian conflict or a fracturing of the most successful collective security system in history.