Security

Obama's Confusing Syria Calculus

Rajan Menon — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

There’s something morally perplexing about President Obama’s stance on the war in Syria. It’s not any clearer in its strategic logic.

The president watched—that is essentially what he has done, all the verbiage aside—while Bashar al-Assad’s army and the paramilitary shabiha, most recently joined by Hezbollah fighters, have some slaughtered some 93,000 Syrians. Now he has changed his “calculus” and decided to arm the Syrian insurgents, albeit in a limited fashion, because he has become convinced that Assad has used chemical weapons in his fight to the finish, killing about 100-150 people.

Obama declared last summer that Assad’s use of such weapons would be a “red line.” What he didn’t explain (and hasn’t still) is why that is worse than leveling of entire urban neighborhoods and killing of tens of thousands of innocents. Both are evil acts to be sure. But is the second on a different moral plane altogether, especially given that using chemical munitions (sarin seems to be the Syrian regime’s compound of choice) has not been to integral Assad’s battlefield strategy? Maybe so. But the president, despite his silver tongue, has surely not explained why it is.

The shift in Obama’s policy is more than a moral curiosity. It has set the stage for America’s direct involvement in a horrific civil war—but without any explanation from the commander-in-chief of what his guiding goal is. It’s not to prevent Syria’s chemical weapons from getting into the hands of hostile third parties; the president has not said that has happened or that Assad can no longer maintain control of these weapons. What then accounts for the administration’s tortured decision to arm the rebels?

The Iranian People Challenge the West

Paul R. Pillar — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:40:30 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

Hassan Rouhani's stunning and sweeping victory in the Iranian presidential election is already generating much debate among expert Iran-watchers about how to interpret this outcome. There are different views, for example, on what inference should be drawn regarding the posture of Supreme Leader Khamenei toward the election. Was this outcome one that the leader might have anticipated and is part of a skillful management of contending factions, or does the election result instead indicate that the leader's control of Iranian politics is less than was often surmised? There also are different views on what role sanctions-induced economic strain may have had on the election. These are genuine questions on which objective and well-informed observers can disagree. Not genuine is the spin from some other fast-off-the-mark commentators who are endeavoring to deny any significance to Rouhani's victory and to portray the Iranian regime as nothing but the same old recalcitrant adversary—a spin motivated by opposition to reaching agreements with Iran and the favoring of confrontation and even war with it.

Useful implications for policy toward Iran can be drawn without resolving all these analytical questions, even the genuine ones. Sometimes a particular course of action is the best course under any of several different interpretations of exactly what is going on in another nation's capital. This is one of those instances. In particular, there are clear implications for approaching the next stage of negotiations on, and policy toward, Iran's nuclear program—which, for better or for worse, is the subject dominating discussion of relations with the Islamic Republic.

Syria Crosses the Red Line

Daniel R. DePetris — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Daniel R. DePetris

Back in August 2012, President Barack Obama stood behind the podium at a press conference and revealed to the world that the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government troops would change his “calculus.” His words were diplomatic, but clear: the United States would be far more aggressive in its Syria policy if Bashar al-Assad ordered the launch of chemical munitions on his own people in any way, shape, or form—and no matter how big or small. Now he has announced he will make good on that promise, and the move means the United States may be entering a new proxy war with Russia and Iran.

Suspicions that the Syrian regime had indeed deployed sarin gas in small levels against the rebels have been circulating throughout the year, with Britain, France and Israel publicly declaring that Assad had in fact crossed a line that nearly every nation regards as a crime against humanity. Months after those allegations surfaced, and months after evidence was compiled and analyzed by scientists, government investigators, and even journalists, the White House finally announced on Thursday, June 13, that President Obama’s redline had been violated.

NSA Scandal Will Follow Obama to Europe

Michael J. Geary, Kevin A. Lees — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Michael J. Geary

Kevin A. Lees

President Obama flies to Europe next week for the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland and a stopover in Germany, where is he is likely to face a barrage of questions over the latest scandal to beset his administration. Unlike the other scandals brewing in Washington, the leak of classified National Security Agency documents has provoked a strong international backlash. And it’s likely cast a dark cloud over the G-8 meeting table, where one of the most prominent agenda items is “promoting greater transparency,” including government provision of “open data.”

The Guardian and the Washington Post newspapers last week published sensational and shocking details of both phone sweeping and internet spying on a major international scale. The scale and scope of the NSA secret program code named “PRISM” is breathtaking. In Washington, Democrats and Republicans have questioned the secret nature of the data-surveillance program and the creeping scope of the NSA. But while domestic political reaction has been measured, European parliamentarians and the EU data protection ombudsman are furious.

Thucydides, Scahill and Dirty History

James Jay Carafano — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

James Jay Carafano

Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. New York: Nation Books, 2013. 642 pp. $29.99.

In his sweeping survey of America’s post-9/11 military campaigns, journalist Jeremy Scahill follows in the tradition of Herodotus and Thucydides. That’s not a good thing.

Yes, they are perhaps the two most storied names among those practicing the historian’s craft. Herodotus was dubbed the “father of history.” His legacy: a new definition of inquiry, looking for the explanation of cause and effect in human affairs through the actions of humans—their wisdom, emotion, and follies.

The Commitment Ploy

Paul R. Pillar — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 03:00:14 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

Sometimes a child is able to drag a parent into doing something the parent might not really want to do—say, taking the kid to an amusement park—through a two-step process. The first step is to nag, repeatedly and insistently, about going to the park. The parent, not wanting to be bothered about such a chore, tries to buy time and assuage the child by saying that they aren't going to the park now but they will when a suitable day arises. After some time goes by and the trip to the amusement park still has not been taken, the child's theme becomes, “But you promised.” The issue is framed no longer just in terms of the pros and cons of going to the amusement park but also in terms of the parent's credibility. The parent, worried about maintaining credibility of both promises and threats on other possible matters, gives in.

A similar process is occurring with some of those who, for whatever ill-conceived reason, would welcome a war with Iran. With some of the same people, it is occurring also with the nearer-term issue of intervening in the civil war in Syria. In each case step one is agitation in favor of threatening the use of military force. Step two is to argue that unless the threat is carried out, U.S. credibility will be damaged. Similar to the child who wants to go to the amusement park, the same persons whose urgings led us to get into an option-reducing box then yammer about the damage that results from being in that box, unless we get out of it in the particular way they want.

Security, Liberty and the Forever War

Robert Golan-Vilella — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Robert Golan-Vilella

In the aftermath of last week’s major revelations about the National Security Agency, Hayes Brown has a great piece in which he catalogues the many times in American history when the country has (rightly or wrongly) put national security before individual liberties. In response to the now-famous leaker Edward Snowden’s assertion that “we managed to survive greater threats in our history . . . than a few disorganized terrorist groups and rogue states without resorting to these sorts of programs,” Brown takes us on a comprehensive tour from the 1798 Sedition Act to the fight against Al Qaeda. He notes that “history is replete with instance after instance of the U.S. government suppressing or outright violating the rights of its people in the name of furthering national security.”

Brown concludes:

Disrupting AQAP's Inspire

Alexa L. McMahon — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:39:25 +0000

Alexa L. McMahon

courtesy of Wikimedia commons.The Washington Post reports today that American intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged prominent Al Qaeda magazine Inspire successfully in the wake of the Boston bombing. By using enhanced cyberhacking techniques to monitor the publication cycle, agents were able to mangle the May 14th edition of the English-language AQAP propaganda publication. When the issue appeared online, the text on page two was compromised and the following twenty pages completely blank. Within a half hour of the flawed issue's publication, it had been taken down in response to the hack.

Hezbollah Gambles in Syria

Ben Lynfield — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Ben Lynfield

Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement, buoyed by the success of its fighters spearheading the landmark victory of the Syrian army in the strategic town of Qusayr last week, is now poised to take an even more assertive role in the Syrian civil war. But even as it flexes its military muscles across the border, Hezbollah is opening a very risky chapter that will determine the extent to which it can maintain its support base at home.

Fighting Arab Sunni Muslim regime opponents in Syria is a far cry from the Shiite movement's traditional raison d'etre: resisting Israel on Lebanese soil. Hezbollah has derived its legitimacy from its credentials of ousting Israeli occupation troops in 2000, battling Israel to a stand-off in the 2006 Lebanon war and being at the forefront of deterring what it trumpets as a continued Israeli threat. Being in Syria is a stretch of this, to say the least.

Fighting with the Syrian regime until victory over the "takfiris" or extremist Sunni Muslims, as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah recently vowed to do, is no simple matter for the Shiite group. If anything Hezbollah now seems to be laying bare what is at heart an Iranian proxy fighting on behalf of a regime vital to Iran's interests, rather than a Lebanese movement concerned about the well-being of its Lebanese Shiite constituency.

Iran and the Syria Conference

Paul R. Pillar — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 02:07:22 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

A perpetual, and perpetually misguided, American notion about international negotiations is that sitting down to talk constitutes some sort of reward for the party on the other side of the table—a reward to be bestowed only in return for good behavior. This notion may be involved, even if only indirectly, in the curious U.S. resistance to participation by Iran in the prospective international conference about the conflict in Syria. Perhaps the resistance has more recently lessened; on Tuesday the deputy Iranian foreign minister commented in Moscow that Iran had received a “verbal invitation” to attend the conference, without specifying who had extended the invitation. We should hope that the verbal invitation will turn out to be a firm one.

The United States has been joined in its resistance by France. Maybe Paris's posture has been rooted somehow in old French hang-ups about the Levant. The reason for the similar posture by the Obama administration, notwithstanding its leadership role along with Russia in arranging the conference in the first place, is unclear. If the administration itself does not subscribe to the talking-as-reward school of thought, possibly the policy has been just one more manifestation of an environment in Washington in which anything that could be construed as a positive gesture toward Iran is considered bad politics and the opposite is always good politics.

Iran Declares Victory

John Allen Gay — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:00:00 +0000

John Allen Gay

In the days after the joint Syrian Army–Lebanese Hezbollah victory over the rebels in the strategic town of Qusayr, the Assad regime has been positively giddy, announcing plans for a major offensive to retake the northern city of Aleppo. Assad’s key backer, Iran, has also been gloating. A victory speech of sorts, reported by hardline outlet Fars News and translated by the American Enterprise Institute’s Iran Tracker, offers a broad insight into how one of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s closest advisers sees the Islamic Republic’s standing in the region, and how the Syrian conflict figures in Iranian strategy. It’s a vision that sharply conflicts with how we’d expect Tehran to see itself—and accordingly, one that should be closely examined as the United States attempts to compel Iran to make concessions on its nuclear program.

The speaker, general Yahya Rahim-Safavi, is Khamenei’s top military aide, a role that he took up after a decade heading the politically powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He’s an influential player—notably, he backed the infamous head of the IRGC’s covert Quds Force, general Qassim Suleimani, whom the New York Times branded “Iran’s Master of Chaos.” And if his position and background didn’t already give it away, Rahim-Safavi is known as a resolute hardliner.

In Rahim-Safavi’s eyes, Iran’s strategic position is strong and getting stronger, and two men are responsible—Ali Khamenei and George W. Bush.

Leaders and Leakers

James Joyner — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

James Joyner

Glenn Greenwald, the civil-liberties columnist who broke the story about the National Security Agency's massive collection of metadata on U.S. phone and Internet usage patterns, contends that, despite its being classified Top Secret, “There’s not a single revelation that we’ve provided to the world that even remotely jeopardizes national security.” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper begs to differ, saying they have done “huge, grave damage.”

The truth is that Greenwald does not have any way of knowing how much damage has been done. And Clapper, who denied the program even existed in testimony under oath to Congress, obviously believes he has higher duties than public candor. Indeed, while he vividly condemns "reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe," he also admits that "not all the inaccuracies can be corrected without further revealing classified information."

Erdogan's Troubles Endanger Kurdish Peace

Morton Abramowitz, Omer Zarpli — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Morton Abramowitz

Omer Zarpli

Resolving the Kurdish problem in Turkey is difficult by any measurement. It has gotten immensely harder with the outbreak of a major political upheaval.

Turkey is once again in politically uncharted wars, and the country is in deep trouble. Events can change quickly, but right now it looks like Prime Minister Erdogan is throwing down the gauntlet at the various heterogeneous opposition groups. So far he has done little listening,

Rather he continues to portray the protests as a plot, facilitated by various “internal and external enemies,” terrorists, and money bags—some read Jews. He now plans to hold competing vastly larger demonstrations in Istanbul and Ankara. Turkey seems set to divide, with profound political effects, unless he changes tactics. These developments could end the first serious and extremely difficult effort to resolve Turkey’s most glaring existential issue—the future of its Kurds.

Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have made important strides on the Kurdish issue, from opening Kurdish language state television to allowing Kurdish language programs at universities. Most importantly, Erdogan has put the issue front and center. Erdogan also started negotiations with the most reviled man in Turkey—the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan—to end the three-decade insurgency that has cost forty thousand lives. So far Turkey has been reaping the benefits of the peace process. The violence finally halted as the PKK announced a ceasefire and began withdrawing its forces from Turkey.

The Moral Minimum in Arming Rebels

Amitai Etzioni — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Amitai Etzioni

The debate about whether to arm the Syrian rebels is centered around the question which groups are “good” rebels (those who favor democratic regimes and the United States) or “bad” rebels (various kinds of jihadists). The Obama administration is widely reported to be reluctant to aid Syrian rebels due to the difficulty of identifying “leaders who are committed to a unified, democratic Syria that respects minority rights” as opposed to “militants who might turn them against Western interests.” In Dissent, Michael Walzer finds that his readers “would be happy to see the victory of Syrians who have been studying John Stuart Mill or who take their cue from Swedish social democracy,” which he warns is not going to happen.

By focusing on whether or not the rebels favor democracy, the United States risks falling into the same moral trap that ensnared it in Libya. There, Washington found itself supporting rebels who committed very similar atrocities to those committed by the forces it came to save them from, namely Qaddafi’s goons. A recently issued report from the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria accused Syrian rebels of "war crimes, including murder, extrajudicial killings and torture . . . perpetrated by anti-government armed groups." The American media paid little attention to reports that nearly half of those killed in Syria are not rebels or civilians on their side—but Alawite. Both sides almost never take prisoners, but kill those who surrender. And the rebels put snipers on roofs of schools in session.

Israel Conflicted on Assad

Ehud Eilam — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Ehud Eilam

Accelerated U.S.-Russian diplomacy has brought global powers back into the Syria crisis. Yet a major power on Syria’s doorstep has been less vocal. What’s Israel looking for in the land across the Golan?

In recent weeks there have been conflicting reports of Jerusalem’s approach towards the regime of Bashar al Assad. In one, a “senior Israeli official” said that if Assad retaliates against Israel for its attacks on targets inside Syria, then Israel might move to topple Assad. A few days later, in reporting by the Times of London, a high ranking Israeli intelligence officer from the northern command had claimed that Israel prefers that Assad survives, especially considering the alternative: having to deal with radical Muslims. But the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesman said this last argument is unfounded, based on his own knowledge of the opinions of Israel’s military intelligence.

Either way there should be more than one perspective in Israel’s military intelligence, which is responsible among others for delivering an alert if Syria were to confront Israel. The necessity of having more than one view is a bitter lesson from the 1973 war, when until almost the last minute the head of Israel’s military intelligence thought that there was a low probability that Syria and Egypt would attack his country. Others, including inside the military intelligence, were convinced that war was about to start, but their voices were not heard. The outcome is well known: Israel was caught unprepared.