2014 Predictions for International Relations

Having previously enjoyed myself immensely on New Year's Eve when on ABC's Nightline various pundits had their political predictions played back to them before blithely charging once more into the breach of ignorance, I will now entertain anyone willing to read this blog with my own predictions for 2014.

1) Narendra Modi will defeat Rahul Gandhi in national elections in India later this year. This will be the third electoral defeat for a member of the Gandhi dynasty--Rahul's grandmother Indira was defeated in 1977 after having declared a state of emergency in 1975 and ruled for 18 months in a highly-autocratic fashion. She came back to win again and served as prime minister from 1980-84. Her son Rajiv, Rahul's father, followed her as prime minister following her assassination in October 1984. He was defeated in 1989 and campaigning for a come back when he was himself assassinated in 1991 only a week before the election. If the Congress Party in 1989 was like the Israeli Labor Party in 1977, today it is like the Labor Party in 2001. Merely having another Gandhi on the ticket will not be enough to save Congress from defeat this year. Here is why.

The Syrian Deal?

Neo-Conservative, Conservative, and liberal interventionist commentators have been greeting the negotiations with Russia with Cold War attitudes. They act as if Obama traded in a sure chance to topple the Assad regime or to effectively deter any use of chemical weapons for a questionable joint effort with a former-KGB officer. Yes, Putin is a very shady character. But Putin does have some incentive to actually deliver. If he managed to disarm Assad of most of his chemical weapons he would gain status for himself internationally. He would gain Obama's gratitude as well as that of Assad and Iran. This is not the first time the United States has cooperated in the Mideast with the Russians. In the Soviet era the two superpowers co-hosted two peace conferences on the Arab-Israeli conflict, one in December 1973 and one in October 1991. The first was used by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to set up his shuttle diplomacy in the region the following year that moved Egypt from the Soviet camp to the American camp. But the Soviets were so eager for recognition of their status as a superpower from Washington that they did not notice what was happening. The second was taking place as the Soviet Union was unraveling and the Soviet diplomats looked like they had other things on their mind.

Which weapons are illegal?

As I have noted in previous posts, I think that intervening in the Syrian civil war is a bad idea. This is for several reasons but chiefly because no American interest is at stake. No vital economic resource is at stake; no ally is being threatened; there is not even genocide being committed in Syria. As a result of this the Obama administration is reduced to arguing for retaliation to defend the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1925, which Syria is not even a party to. This would be like attacking India or Pakistan or, God forbid!, Israel for violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 that they are not signatories to.

Let's look at chemical weapons and why they were banned. They were first used in World War I by the Germans in April 1915 on a large scale, although the French might have used chemical grenades before then in the war. The Allies quickly developed their own chemical weapons--blister agents designed to burn the skin and tissues upon contact. Both sides experimented with various blister agents (mustard gas, chlorine, phosgene) and improved the effectiveness of the weapons. But simple gases masks rendered the blister agents much less deadly than conventional artillery. By 1918 chemical shells were almost half of the shells fired at the start of both the German spring offensive in March-April and the Allied offensive in July-August. But despite this chemical weapons accounted for only two percent of total casualties in the war and one percent of total deaths. Conventional artillery accounted for over three-quarters of all battlefield deaths with machine-guns accounted for the majority of the remainder. Britain suffered less than 6,000 combat deaths due to chemical weapons.  This was compared to over 180,000 total British casualties due to chemical weapons. Chemical weapons were mainly a psychological weapon meant to induce fear and a means of denying space to the enemy because of their persistence. It was like sowing a minefield by artillery and particularly useful in taking out the enemy's artillery at the start of an offensive. But because of shifting winds the use of chemical weapons could easily backfire on the army employing them.

Why Obama Went to Congress

Republicans and other critics of the president have alleged that Obama went to Congress with the decision on whether or not to punish Syria for the use of chemical weapons because his hand was weak and he sensed eminent defeat. I contend that it is not as simple as that. When it comes to foreign policy Obama is a multilateralist--he does not hold with unilateralism, particularly in the use of military force, and he is not a believer in American exceptionalism. As both Russia and China were likely to veto an authorization for the use of force in the UN Security Council, Obama was left with two possible venues for multilateral action: NATO and the Arab League. NATO provided the authorization and the force for the campaign against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. But Kosovo is in Europe not the Middle East. NATO's Atlantic Treaty covers Europe and the North Atlantic region between North America and Europe--it does not cover the Middle East. 

This left the Arab League, the organization that provided the authorization for Western force against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. Then it was individual NATO countries, primarily France, Britain and the United States, that provided the outside force in the form of air cover for the opposition rebels. But the Arabs are divided about Syria and wary of providing a precedent for Western intervention in Arab internal affairs. Libya was an exception, because Gaddafi had made so many enemies in the Arab world over the decades. And even if the Arab League were to vote to authorize force against the Assad regime, the vote in the British parliament not to authorize such force would have left the United States alone with France to provide it. While physically the United States Navy is capable of firing enough cruise missiles on its own that it does not need assistance from France or even the U.S. Air Force, more political backing from Western allies would be useful.

So Obama has decided to hold a debate on the issue in Congress. This will give him a chance to make his case not just to the Congress but also to his allies. He can wait until the UN inspectors have issued their report and present his evidence to Congress. If, and this is a big if at present, he wins authorization from Congress, he will be in a better position to request it from his European allies and possibly David Cameron could even request a second vote in the House of Commons. If not, Obama can then deflect the blame to Congress.

What Moscow Wants in Syria

There is a general consensus among Russian watchers that in many ways the Putin regime is a watered-down version of the Soviet regime. Here is Nikita Khrushchev's gread-granddaughter making just such a comparison about the show trials in Putin's Russia and those in the Soviet era of her ancestor. It allows for elections, but the electronic media that ordinary people use to evaluate the candidates and parties remain firmly in the hands of the ruling party. The regime is basically staffed by the siluviki --those from an intelligence services or Soviet Communist Party background during the Soviet era. But what about Russian foreign policy?

During the Soviet period the Soviet Union was one large ideological empire with three different levels. First, was the core--the old Russian Empire minus Finland and Poland and the Baltic States rechristened the Soviet Union in 1922. In 1939-40 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939 the Soviet Union reabsorbed the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and part of eastern Finland and eastern Poland. Second, in 1944-45 as a result of the victory over Nazi Germany the Soviet Union reabsorbed the Baltic States (lost in 1941) and took over what eventually became the Warsaw Pact: Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. The third level consisted of all of those overseas ideological allies that were deemed to be Communist or merely socialist or even just anti-Western.

No Water Brought the Spring to Syria

New York Times columnist and former Middle East reporter Tom Friedman had a fascinating article in this Sunday's paper. He basically argued that it was the incompetence of the crony/Mafia Ba'athist regime in Syria that led to the Arab Spring uprising there in the spring of 2011. But it had some help from Mother Nature. By letting rich supporters of the ruling party overuse the water table to irrigate their farms, the water level was lowered enough to make farming impossible for the class of ordinary peasant fellahin (farmers). These had in any case greatly increased in number due to improved health care that reduced infant mortality. So this caused a major migration from the countryside to the cities and the regime did not supply any basic services to deal with the migration. Suddenly these farmers were turned into day laborers being paid a pittance just to keep from starving and with no education and no real housing. This made Syria a tinderbox ripe for revolution. And rather than trying to dampen the kindling, Bashar Assad fanned the sparks by firing on the protesters in the city of Dera'a in southern Syria. With climate change expect many more of these types of connections in the upcoming decades.

Beginning of the End in Syria?

There are signs that the Assad regime is caring out ethnic cleansing in the coastal area between Tartus and Latakia, Syria.  According to Syria specialist Joshua Landis this is strategic ethnic cleansing similar in purpose to that carried out by Israelis against Palestinians in 1948. But I contend that Israeli ethnic cleansing was carrying over a European norm from World War II, where only two years before massive ethnic cleansing was carried out by Central Europeans against Germans as revenge and protection against future depredations by German aggressors. The Jews thought that they were protecting themselves against future Palestinian attempts to snuff out the newborn state. Thus, ethnic cleansing in 1948 was not only defensive in nature but conformed with contemporary European, if not quite Western, norms. 

But others suggest that the Assad regime is now winning the war. There has been a shift in power in recent weeks away from the rebels in favor of the regime. Since the start of the war, massacres of rebel-leaning populations or suspected rebel-supporting populations have been the norm. Bashar al-Assad, like Saddam Hussein, is like a Mafia don who uses violence to intimidate. Even as the tide of war seems to turn in his favor, he is making contingency plans for the event that power shifts again. He is preparing alternative scenarios: remain in power in Damascus or create a statelet on the Alawite coast of the Mediterranean.

Intervention in Syria?

The op-ed columns of the quality newspapers have been full of columns arguing for and against American intervention in Syria over the last several months. I have yet to see an argument that explains credibly how it would be in the American national interest to intervene in Syria. This lack of logic is pointed out in a piece from The Nation, which I normally do not find myself in agreement with. Most that attempt this sort of argument explain that we need to intervene in order to buy influence at the bargaining table. They claim that the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs who are now backing the opposition in Syria are not interested in democracy and human rights. This is true. But anyone who knows Islamists or even ordinary Muslims knows that they are like those pious Christians who ignore all the direct causes of anything that happens and attribute it all to God. If Washington gave arms to the Free Syrian Army or another outfit, the group would be happy to claim credit for Allah. Washington would be only a conduit. Is it really necessary to be grateful to a mere conduit?

What Next for Obama with Israel?

As I write this, I imagine that due to the time difference the official activities of the second day of Obama's first official visit to Israel are over. The first day certainly seemed to go well. Obama got across the idea that he accepts that Israel has long roots in the area and that Israeli Jews are returned natives and not simply European settlers and their co-religionists from the region as most Arabs, Muslims, and those on the European and International Left seem to believe. For the record I believe that they are both--natives who through the circumstance of history were forced to return as settlers. Netanyahu has made nice and Israelis seem to be impressed.

So what happens now? The speeches and visit could be used for two different purposes. First, to smooth over relations with Jerusalem so as to better coordinate a response to Iranian nuclear activities and to the spillover from the Syrian civil war and other contingencies that may arise. Second, it could be used to down the road support a push for a renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace process as J Street, most non-Orthodox American Jews, and the Israeli Left (Meretz, Hadash, part of Labor) wants. But then Obama will face the same obstacles that he faced in his first term--even worse. The Palestinians are still divided between Fatah and Hamas. The Likud still has a veto over the other parties in the coalition, but this time a powerful Jewish Home party is in the coalition along with a Yesh Atid that is largely agnostic on the peace issue and the Likud is farther to the Right than it was in Netanyahu's second government.

What Will Bibi and Barack Talk About?

When President Barack Obama flies to Israel next week for his first visit as president to the Jewish state, what will be on the agenda for discussions between him and Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu? The answer to that may well stem from the purpose of the trip. I contend that the trip is largely for domestic political reasons. After Obama made his famous Cairo speech in May 2009 many in Israel who supported a two-state solution urged him to come to Israel and speak directly to the Israelis. Many American Jews also urged the same. But during Obama's first term the timing never seemed right. First, he got into a spat with Netanyahu over the housing freeze and Bibi's refusal to renew it. Then the Arab Spring broke out in the winter of 2010. And by this time Obama had probably decided that he wasn't seriously going to press for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his first term and so he simply promised that he would do it if reelected. This was in the way of throwing a bone to liberal Jews in the Democratic Party who supported J Street and wanted Obama to press for a two-state solution. Meanwhile Obama tackled his real priorities of passing health care reform and financial regulation reform, ending the war in Iraq, and dealing with the escalating war in Afghanistan.

Syria's Future

Two articles that were on Real Clear World yesterday suggest that Syria's war will be long. The first in Time by Rania Abouzeid is the story of a group of rebels. In it one speaks of an upcoming civil war among the rebel factions once the Assad regime is disposed of. This suggests a future like that of Afghanistan following the jihad against the Soviet occupation, or Somalia after the fall of the Siad Barre regime in the late 1980s. Both countries essentially became failed states leading to the situation where the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, inviting in Al Qaeda leading to the present war between the United States and its allies and the Taliban.

The second is an article by former Time Middle East correspondent Tony Karon in the UAE The National. In it Karon makes the argument that Washington should intervene in the unfolding civil war, but not necessarily militarily as so many are urging in Washington and the Arab world. Instead Karon argues that Washington should help mediate a solution to the present civil war as he sees neither side having the power to prevail. This creates a situation of inertia, which in turn leads to an ever higher death toll, more physical destruction, and the destruction of the country politically as different sectarian groups are pitted against one another either in support of or in opposition to the ruling regime.

Syria's Possible Futures: An Israeli View

Former head of Israeli military intelligence, Aman, Amos Yadlin, laid out five possible outcomes to the ongoing and escalating civil war in Syria in a briefing to the public at the Institute of National Security Studies in Israel yesterday. He is presently the director of the institute. Here are the five scenarios:  First, the regime could survive by working out its problems with Turkey and winning more support from Russia. Second, the civil war continues forever as a low-level conflict of the type that is common in the Third World. Third, Syria disintegrates into three sectarian states: Alawite, Sunni, and Kurdish. Fourth, a Sunni-dominated state emerges. And lastly, a failed state emerges reminiscent of Somalia after the fall of Siad Barre or of Congo after the collapse of the Mobutu regime. Yadlin did not indicate which of these scenarios was most likely to occur or even rank order them. He simply pointed out that all of them was less threatening than the status quo ante in which a powerful centralized Alawite regime legitimized its rule through maintaining a verbal conflict and tension with Israel. A senior Israeli security official, possibly Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking anonymously took the exact opposite viewpoint arguing that the border had become more dangerous since the start of the civil war in Syria.

Second Term Foreign Policy Challenges for Obama

Last week IR theorist and foreign policy commentator Stephen Walt published his "to do list" for Obama's second term.  He essentially deals with five topics: the rivalry with China, the Arab Spring, the demise of the two-state solution for the Middle East, dealing with Iran's nuclear bid, and demilitarizing American foreign policy.  As this blog deals with the Middle East and not East Asia, I won't deal with the first topic.  But I'll consider the next three and stipulate that I'm in agreement on his final item.

No peace for Syria; no peace process for Obama

This article by Tony Karon indicates that the war in Syria is at a stalemate, with the Sunni rebels lacking the heavy weapons to contest the planes and tanks of the regime in the cities. Those who can remember the civil war in Libya will remember the important role played by NATO air forces. NATO has no plans to get involved in Syria, which has a serious air defense system. Bashar al-Assad also did not support terrorism in Europe the way Muammar Kaddafi did. For Britain, France, and the U.S. intervention was a means of settling scores with an old foe and possibly deterring future terrorism by demonstrating that Western democracies have long memories. The only outside country showing any interest in getting involved militarily in Syria is Turkey, but the Turkish population is not up for the cost of a major war. Thus, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have to limit himself to running refugee camps for Syrian refugees and supplying a few small arms and other aid. If he did intervene it would enhance the political role of the Turkish military, Erdogan's main domestic political foe. 

Among the Alawites

Here is a link to a post by Iraqi journalist Nir Rosen  that appeared in the London Review of Books on the future of the Alawites in Syria. During the Iraqi civil war he reported for Western agencies on the war. (From his name it is likely that he is a Jew, but he has never raised the issue in his reporting.) He tends to discount the idea of an Alawite enclave on the coast, an idea I've discussed here in the past. He does this for two reasons. First, the Alawites have in recent decades seen a pan-Arab/Syrian nationalist identity as their project and ticket to advancement. Second, the Mediterranean coast of western Syria populated by Alawite villages offers few employment opportunities and little infrastructure to maintain a modern state. So for Rosen the big question is what happens to the Alawites once the Assad regime is toppled and they lose a privileged place in Syrian society.  Do they go back to being the despised minority or are they allowed to integrate into the society and live like other Syrians? The answer to that depends upon the identity of the leaders that will emerge from the fighting.

Splits in Assad Regime in Syria

Israel Hayom, the free Israeli newspaper financed by Sheldon Adelson, is reporting today that Bashar al-Assad's sister Bushra has fled Syria with her children out of fear of an internal coup. According to the story she left because she feared that her family would be the target of retribution if the coup were successful. Her husband, Deputy Chief of Staff Assef Shawkat, was killed several weeks ago by the Free Syrian Army.

If true, this would indicate that this might be the beginning of the end for the Assad regime. Recent weeks have seen a successful bombing within military headquarters in Damascus, the defection of Brigadier General al-Tlas, a prominent Sunni supporter of the regime and the son of Hafiz al-Assad's defense minister, Mustafa al-Tlas, and intensified fighting within the city of Aleppo.

Eric Margolis--Wrong from the first sentence

Eric S. Margolis had an opinion piece recently that was wrong from the first sentence. It starts out speaking of the "Polish Zionist ideologue Vladimir Jabotinsky." Jabotinsky was born in Odessa in what is today the Ukraine and was Russian and Jewish by culture, not Polish. He seems to be confusing Jabotinsky with Begin, who claims to have been Jabotinsky's disciple but in many ways deviated from the teachings of the founder of Revisionist Zionism.

Later on he writes of Syria being as close to Russia "as northern Mexico is to the United States." Northern Mexico borders the United States from California to Texas. Syria borders on Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey but not on Russia. Maybe he was thinking of Guatemala instead. Or maybe he thinks that Russia has a problem with illegal Syrian immigrants.  He writes, "As a veteran correspondent...who has covered Syria since 1975..." Apparently that coverage didn't include what countries it borders on or maybe he needs a refresher in the geography of the Western Hemisphere.

Second major Sunni figure defects from Assad's regime

Two days ago the Syrian prime minister,   Riad al-Hijab, a Sunni, defected to Jordan with a number of aides and a pilot. He had only been in office for two months and was not a key figure in the regime but was one of the few remaining figures from the Sunni majority as opposed to one of the religious minorities such as Alawites, from which the ruling Assad family comes, or Christians. Here is a link to an article on the defection from the Washington Post.  This of course led to speculation about whom would be next to leap. But how will the defection affect the Assad regime's hold on power?

Not the "Beginning of the End, but the end of the beginning" in Syria

Israeli Arabist/Mizrakhan Barry Rubin only a few short months ago pooh-poohed any talk of Assad being overthrown. Rubin was not a great friend of the Assad regime. In his book The Truth About Syria he claimed that Hafiz al-Assad in addition to being a brutal dictator never wanted peace with Israel. He has now conceded that his overthrow is a distinct possibility.  If it occurs, it will have ramifications for its neighbors and internally as well. Rubin deals with the internal ramifications. Dov Zackheim a former senior defense official in the Bush 43 administration, discusses the effects on Iraq. Mainly he links it to the fortunes of senior Shia politician Nouri al-Maliki, who became one of the most successful Iraqi politicians after the fall of Saddam. Here is an opinion piece by Thomas Friedman comparing Syria to Iraq. I think it is safe to say that it is meant as a warning.

Romney is now behaving like a typical politician and being wise after the fact. He and his acolytes are criticizing Obama for not being more involved in calling for Assad's fall. Expect this to be about as sophisticated as the foreign policy discussion will get over the next few months. Romney has decided to stay on message and his message is the economy and jobs. Everything else for him is a distraction.

I'm not a fan of intervening in internal Arab power struggles for several reasons. First, we usually lack the detailed knowledge of the players to be able to make meaningful predictions about both their chances of success and their policies once they get in power. Second, we have a tendency to see Arab culture, which is a very different culture from Western culture--at best like Western medieval culture overlaid with the non-democratic regimes of Central and Eastern Europe from the mid-20th century, and expect outcomes based on Western values and rules of the game rather than on indigenous ones. Third, we have few real interests tying us to these countries. Our main interest is the flow of oil, which is also in the interest of the rulers in the region. In 2002-03 I supported the war in Iraq because I believed that Saddam Hussein, based on his actions, possessed chemical and possibly biological weapons. I also expected the Bush administration to devote proper resources to the war and not try to win it on the cheap. They learned nothing from Hitler's mistakes nor from Vietnam.

Death of Syria, Death of Pan-Arabism?

With last week's bombing at the National Security Headquarters in Damascus that killed four leading figures in the Ba'athist regime, many commentators and other observers are now writing the obituary for the House of Assad that began 42 years ago this November. While I would be very worried if I were sitting in the presidential palace in Damascus, the regime is not necessarily over yet. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria's patron, suffered various grievous attacks from the Mujahideen al-Khalk (People's Holy Warriors and the Fedayeen al-Khalk (People's Sacrificers) during its first two years in power before it turned the corner.