UNSC and Syria

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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.

Public Service Announcement

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On Fox 2 St. Louis (h/t Drudge), there was report about suspicious activity around the Bagnell Dam.  A tipster notified the Sheriff who notified the FBI.  Readers should be aware that they can reach the United State Coast Guard National Response Center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-877-24-WATCH to report any suspicious activity or pollution events (like an oil spill) on our nation’s waterways.

Emergencies should always be reported by calling 9-1-1, or if on the water using your VHF-FM radio on Channel 16 (or 9 in some areas) to the USCG station watch stander.  On the radio, risks to life or loss of a vessel are reported with the pro-word “mayday” and urgent safety notices are reported with the pro-word “pan-pan.”

Suspicious activity such as a boat tied up under a bridge, someone photographing a military installation, snooping around a dam, testing security fences, etc. should be reported to the NRC.  Whatever you do, do not notify the USCG by radio, because it is an open channel.  Also, do not intervene.  Let law enforcement do that.  Be safe but vigilant.  Remember that Coast Guardsmen rotate duty stations and are not as familiar with the local operating area as residents.  You may be more likely to become aware of suspicious activity than the USCG.  We all have our part to play in securing the homeland.

ISIS is not the USSR

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The Independent features an op-ed recommending that the world offer diplomatic recognition to ISIS.

The rationales for the recommendation are:

  1. the bombing campaign has failed to arrest ISIS’s consolidation of territorial gains
  2. ISIS has a 24-page plan for forming a state (huh?)
  3. ISIS is providing governmental services in the territory it controls
  4. ISIS has a monopoly on force in the territory it controls
  5. diplomatic recognition and inclusion in the Intergovernmental Organizations that constitute the institutional expression of the current liberal order would moderate ISIS as it did for the USSR

First, diplomatic recognition had no causal relationship with moderation of the USSR.  What moderated the international relations of the Soviet Union was the re-emergence of Germany as a continental power, the Second World War, western occupation of Germany, and the creation of NATO.  It had nothing to do with diplomatic recognition.  Internal repression was moderated solely by the demise of Stalin and the fact that by the outbreak of the Second World War, the totalitarian one-party state had been consolidated.

Second, while it is true that ISIS is a proto-state, and the bombing campaign has failed to achieve any meaningful military objective (air power never does by itself), that is no argument for diplomatic recognition that would constrain options for confronting ISIS should it be in the interest of the West or any other actor.

If the international community wanted to defeat ISIS, a Marine Expeditionary Force could do it.  The question becomes, “Now what?” There is no credible replacement to provide government for that territory currently.  For all its neo-Ottoman pretentions, Turkey would not want to incorporate the region, nor would the international community support a resumption of the mandate system in the Middle East even if a suitable great power were willing to take on that responsibility.  Colonialism has ceased to be a viable tool to bring order to ungoverned regions.

 

Events Conspire Against the Admin’s Plans

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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.

Do something! The folly of another Middle East war

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Larry Kudlow over at National Review Online is excoriating the president for not working to destroy ISIS and the Congress for not passing a declaration of war/authorization for the use of force.  We’ve had a similar piece in the last week appear in the Washington Post.

Kudlow focuses on the threat to the U.S. homeland.  The Washington Post focuses on the humanitarian crisis and threat to world order.  Neither piece engages the issue of what comes after ISIS.

It is true that two combat brigades supported by air and non-combat units could effectively route ISIS as a force and eliminate ISIS as a government (and it is a government).  The crucial question is what do you do then?  There is no appetite for another decade-long venture in military occupation and state building.  Neither Turkey nor Jordan, the only stable and responsible local powers are in the mood to annex Eastern Syria and Western Iraq.  Iraq is in total disarray.  Syria is in no position to reassert control over the region.  So at best you’ve ventured into what amounts to a punitive expedition like the ones that the British during Empire used to make in Afghanistan (cf. Winston Churchill’s account of one in My Early Life: A Roving Commission).  You replace a brutal Islamist totalitarian porto-state with anarchy characterized by a Hobbesian war of all against all, further humanitarian crisis, and achieved no policy goals.

The desired outcome is: the dismemberment of Iraq and Syria into four states: a Kurdish homeland in a belt from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean north of Ras Shamra, a belt of Sunni control from central Syria to western Iraq, and a southern Shia core, perhaps in some sort of federal union (optional), along with a Alawite rump state of Syria on the Syrian coast.  None of this will ever come to fruition.  The Turks will never tolerate the creation of a Kurdish homeland on its border, because its one restive Kurdish minority would want to amalgamate with that state.  The current Shiite Iraqi government would never surrender the oil-producing regions.  The international community is too invested in the current states’ borders and the Westphalian states system to support this outcome.

So what do we do?  Precisely what we have been doing, a posture of off-shore balancing to keep all sides fighting without a decisive victory in order to (a) discomfit Iran by frustrating its bid for regional hegemony, (b) keep Russia’s focus on its Syrian intervention so that it is unable to sow further trouble in the Baltic, and (c) use the refugee crisis to drive Europe into a more responsible global posture (increased defense spending, policing its external borders, relaxation of Stability Pact limits due to the emergency).  That last will take tremendous diplomatic skill and re-engagement with Europe, which I doubt the current administration’s foreign policy team is capable of, given its pertinacious focus on China’s rise to the exclusion of all else.

It is true that the bungling and incompetent foreign policy staff of the current administration missed its change to shape events at the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, but now, the current strategy is the best of possible options.

Bottom up analysis of Russia’s intentions in Syria

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The US Naval Institute on the news site featured a commentary by Daniel Trombly that takes a bottom up approach to gleaning Russia’s intentions in Syria and they are not nearly as mysterious nor as dire as others have claimed.  Other than the showcase of Russia’s new capabilities for sea launched cruise missiles, the Russians have not introduced any capabilities that the Syrians didn’t already possess, and from that we can determine that Russia’s aims are limited, merely restoring capabilities that the Assad regime had that was lost due to attrition during the years of civil war.

From this you can surmise that Russia is doing what Russia normally does as a matter of foreign policy, supporting its allies.  Russia (Soviet Union too) has historically prided itself on its steadfast support of allies as opposed to the fickle support allies in the Third World often receive from Western democracies.  It is in the nature of autocracies, that they make more reliable friends when interests are aligned.

The new age of shipbuilding

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The US Naval Institute news site featured an article about the updated design for the next Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers procured.  What is fascinating about the article is that it highlights the change in ship design.

A hundred years ago, ships were designed and built around their guns.  Today they are designed and built around their radars and computers.  The AC and power needed to be upgraded from the current Flight II design to accommodate the demands of the new radar set.  The new set is heavier and the hull had to be redesigned to improve sea keeping.  Previous models of the Arleigh Burke had their computers placed deep within the ship for maximum protection, but it made upgrades difficult.  The new design calls for modularization and the ability to swap out components, since IT improves at such a rapid rate.  Read the whole thing.

Air defenses and favors

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The deal for a state of the art air defense system for Iran has been completed.  Russia is delivering according to the report an S300 system, although the report says the variant is not known.  There is a very broad range of capabilities of the S300 system, but obviously this is yet another indication of Russia’s new effort to rebuilt its status on the world stage.  Russia is an aggrieved (not just dissatisfied) revisionist power and is aligning itself with other revisionist powers in order to undo the current status quo.

Putin is pushing a different Reset Button.  One that is meant to undo the post Cold War world order.  Russia has raised the costs of any attempt to prevent Iranian nuclear breakout.  Russia is able to play Arab off against Persian, Sunni off against Shia, by selling arms to both sides and peel the Arab states from the U. S. sphere of influence.  Russia can’t lose in the scenario.  Russia will have leverage with the Saudi regime, who has held the price of oil down in its conflict with Iran.  Lifting the price of oil fixes all the petrostates’ finances.  Russia would even be in a position to become the nuclear purveyor to Saudi Arabia in the event of an Iranian nuclear breakout.

The status quo, works to the benefit of West against East, North against South, a rising China and an aggrieved Russia pose great challenges.  The Reset Button has been pushed and now its going to take a tremendous amount of coordinated work in the West to prevent the unraveling of the (mostly) benign liberal world order.  Authoritarian states are feeling their oats and doing something about it.

Germany Not Headed to Civil War

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Drudgereport ran a headline Germany Sliding Toward Civil War with a link to an RT.com article with some local politicians claiming that the migrant crisis will lead to civil war in Germany.  Nothing could be more absurd!

First, although Germany is a classic nation-state, a state whose borders are coterminal with the boundaries of a population sharing a common language, culture or ethnicity.  There has been a strong undercurrent of nationalism in Germany since at least Bismarck in the 1860s, who used nationalism as a tool to peel the members of the German confederation out of the orbit of Austria and unite the various German principates with Prussia.  Germany does have a very strict citizenship law.  Naturalization of migrants is possible but arduous.  Der Volkgeist (national spirit) is alive and well in Germany.

This does not mean that there will be civil war.  We have obviously seen a rise in violence against migrants and politicians supporting the open border policy in Germany, but that does not mean a civil war or revolution is coming.

Germany has a federal system and individual states have a lot of autonomy.  The current policy may be creating friction between the federal government and the states, but nobody is raising a militia to take up arms against the federal government.

Drudgereport should know better than to pick up a story from a propaganda arm of the Russian State.  RT is government owned and is the English language mouth piece of the Putin regime.  Russia’s current policy is to undermine NATO and the EU wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself.  The linked article was typical of the propaganda war to break the Western powers’ multilateral institutions.

In Defense of PB Shop UK

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I came across a rather negative blog regarding two booksellers who sell on Amazon as third parties: PB Shop UK and Book Depository.  Let me just say that I have never had any problems with these two sellers, and between the two of them I have sourced probably 40-50 titles in Classics, Bible, or Ancient Near Eastern Languages.  They are slow, but pay attention to the shipping estimates listed, since they are usually shipping from the UK. I have generally gotten a better deal on T&T Clark, Oxford, and Harvard University Press than through any other seller.  I would give them both high marks,  For many years, I have been building a library on the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-2 Kings) and those two sellers have contributed tremendously.