New Atlanticist

The Damning Merits of Invasion

Daniel Trombly — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:28:58 -0600

As noted in yesterday’s installment, the prospects of solving the humanitarian crisis in Syria through air power alone are nil. Today, we assess the options from the ground.

Ahmad Al Attar and William J. Moloney recently outlined the most provocative plan for foreign intervention so far – and one that probably has the most realistic assessment of Syrian and Free Syrian Army (FSA) military capabilities. Their remedy is a massive joint operation, involving a Turkish offensive to cut off minority populations from Damascus, concurrently with a Jordanian and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) offensive to seize Damascus. This would occur under the aegis of NATO air and intelligence support.

While their assessment of the inadequacy of Syrian rebel forces is accurate, their remedy may not be politically sustainable. Any hopes of a quick repeat of Operation Iraqi Freedom would likely be bogged down by the significantly lower disparity between regional ground forces and Syria’s own. There would be significant casualties for invading forces, and the invasion would likely take significantly longer than the one which ultimately felled Saddam Hussein. Would Turkey, Jordan, and GCC countries be willing to bear the military costs of a sustained assault? Would the Gulf monarchies be willing to devote military resources away from their own countries when the more immediate threats of local uprisings and conflict with Iran?

Additionally, from a humanitarian perspective, one must consider the extended period of military mobilization and logistical pre-positioning for such an operation to take place. During that phase, it is quite likely that Syrian forces would accelerate their killing of groups which could aid the impending invasion. As Daniel Larison pointed out, the two interventionist objectives of hastening Assad’s downfall and limiting the slaughter he inflicts on Syria are not always compatible.

So, if creating a safe zone is militarily ill-advised, and an Iraq style invasion seems neither forthcoming nor a particularly good use of resources, the most likely result of the intensifying internal fighting in Syria is a drawn out civil war – probably one increasingly fueled by outsiders. Already, many are calling for the United States to begin supporting the arming of FSA forces, in addition to providing them with air support. But these measures – even if combined with an aerially-enforced “no fly” or “no drive” zone, are likely to result in protracted civil war so long as the inexperienced and disorganized FSA tries to gain strength, resist Syrian assaults, and eventually launch offensives against the Syrian security.

Contingency Planning

While enforcing an arms embargo is not going to do the United States any favors, the arguments against U.S. weapons sales or gifts to Libyan rebels hold even more true for Syria. And, as in the case of Libya, there will likely be other powers willing to supply the Syrian rebels anyway – and of course training and organizational competency, not arms, are going to be the real prerequisites for triumphing against the elite and upper-tier Syrian security forces.

What the United States does have a strong interest in doing is conducting an assessment of the changing political terrain in Syria. It was likely quite ill-advised that the United States held off a serious expansion of its efforts to vet the Libyan rebels until it actually began the air campaign to support them. Whatever comes out of the Syrian civil war, the United States ought to avoid being blindsided. The purported release of Abu Musab al-Suri, if true, would be a portent of a potential influx of jihadists from Syrian prisons into the open, and the Sunni-led struggle against Assad may yet attract other jihadist groups. Whether the release of jihadists is a deliberate Syrian ploy to dissuade American intervention, or results from the capture and liberation of prisons by opposition forces, the Arab Spring has led to some unwelcome homecomings for jihadists and Syria is not likely to be an exception.

Gaining an accurate picture of the motivations of FSA and opposition members, the composition of the sundry armed militias and unarmed political groups under the broader banners of the FSA and opposition, are all of serious concern to the United States. Identifying rebel leaders, potential threats, and making initial contact with Syrian opposition and rebel forces would fall primarily under the aegis of the intelligence community, especially the CIA, and would entail a minimal operational footprint.

Of course, any collection of human intelligence is going to involve some give and take. One relatively low-risk way of providing support would be selectively providing intelligence to gain the confidence of rebel leaders. In any case, stepping up signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence gathering in Syria is an important mission anyway, particularly as the civil war drags on. As in the case of Operation Cedar Sweep over Lebanon, the United States could fly signals intelligence missions skirting (but not penetrating) the Syrian border either from British airbases in Cyprus (if Britain is willing to permit it) or those in Incirlik.

Actual missions to penetrate Syrian airspace would likely require the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, based out of the existing drone station at Incirlik. These are expendable and avoid the need for significantly suppressing Syrian air defenses.

Another important question in the event of a drawn civil war in Syria, and indeed, one still vital should Assad fall, would be counter-proliferation operations to secure or destroy Syrian chemical and biological assets. Known or potential Syrian chemical or biological weapons sites are located at Aleppo, Al Safir (near Homs), Homs itself, Hama, Palmyra, Latakia, and Cerin (possibly the site of a biological weapons program) – in other words, mostly cities in Western Syria, in some cases quite near the coast or Turkey. These sites are not nearly as isolated as Gaddafi’s secret stockpiles in the desert were, and even if vigorous air support were approved, it would be difficult to prevent Assad’s forces from accessing them by denying roadways. Accordingly, the deployment of SAD and – potentially – JSOC’s “render safe” capable units would be necessary. At the very least, “render safe” capable special mission units would likely need to be mobilized at Incirlik or afloat. Because counter-proliferation and associated operations fall under Title 50, these operations would be covertly conducted.

Support for such an operation would likely involve the use of U.S. forces assisted from Turkey and from Souda Bay, in Crete. Maritime support could entail the diversion of assets from the 6th Fleet to the creation of a Joint Task Force-Lebanon styled maritime force. Tracking the activities of personnel and matériel associated with the Syrian WMD program, and, if necessary, interception, would be likely missions. For air support to even be a viable policy option, JSOC units, supported by SAD, would probably be necessary on the ground, as they were for the Israeli strike on Syria’s nuclear program. While such strikes are by no means automatically necessary, they would be far more militarily feasible and strategically sensible than an open-ended aerial commitment to liberating Syria – but without adequate intelligence, the proximity of these depots to Syrian forces would make time sensitivity a severe issue.

Next: The Illogic of Intervention

Daniel Trombly is writer on international affairs and strategy. This essay is based on a longer piece at his blog Slouching Towards Columbia.

Reading Between the Headlines on Iran

Sarwar Kashmeri — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:13:57 -0600

In this edition of the New Atlanticist Podcast, Atlantic Council senior fellow Sarwar Kashmeri speaks to Professor Rajan Menon, chairman of the International Relations Department at Lehigh University about the next steps for the US and the West in dealing with Iran.

Is the situation with Iran as tense as the headlines make it? Why should Iran not have an atomic bomb when everyone around them does?

AUDIO (.mp3)

New Atlanticist Podcasts:

Atlantic Council's Iran Task Force

Syria Intervention: Ugly Choices

Daniel Trombly — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:28:54 -0600

With Russia and China standing firmly behind Assad’s regime in Syria, it appears increasingly likely that continued violence, and potentially a prolonged civil war, will be the future condition of a country where the opposition is not strong enough to overcome the core elements of the regime’s security forces, and foreign parties lack the willpower or capacity to overthrow the rulers in Damascus.

As Tony Karon explains, civil war is an accurate way to describe the ongoing descent into violence in Syria. The country’s ethnic composition and the regime’s divide-and-rule political strategy makes the specter of civil war an effective engine of consolidation for the regime’s supporters:

… the Assad regime presents itself as the guarantor of the interests not only of Allawites [12% of the population], but also Syria’s Christians (10%), Kurds (10%) and smaller communities of Druze, Yazidis, Ismailis and Circassians — against the specter of a vengeful sectarian Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. No surprise, then, that the regime has, through its own violent strategy, encouraged the rebellion against Assad’s rule onto the path of sectarian civil war.

…

Two thirds of the Iraqi refugees in Syria are Sunni Arabs, and a further 10% are Christian. The lesson for Syria’s minorities is stark: One in seven Christians who lived in Iraq in 2003 is now a refugee in Syria; those left behind are an increasingly embattled community, while even in newly democratic Egypt, the Christian minority is feeling increasingly put-upon by the now dominant Sunni Islamists.

As Karon further notes, the defection of Sunni conscripts to the Free Syrian Army further reinforces the perception that Syria is careening towards large-scale ethnic bloodletting. The Assad regime, like Hussein’s and many others before it, deliberately ensured its top-tier units and the ones closest to political power were less dependent on conscripts from the hostile ethnic majority. It is far less likely that there will be sympathetic defections from such units, which means that they will, in all likelihood, need to be actually defeated on the ground.

Alas, there are no easy solutions.

Safe zone: Benghazi, Misrata or Ibril?

Propositions for “safe zones” have so far remarkably elided the question of how they will be made safe.

Despite the frequent invocations of Operation Provide Comfort as a model for intervention, very few of the plans for intervention in Syria actually describe the most essential prerequisite to Provide Comfort: the defeat and destruction of huge amounts of Iraqi military capability in the first Persian Gulf War.

Furthermore, as Micah Zenko recently explained in Foreign Affairs, the use of ground forces was important to the preservation of safe zones established in southern Iraq during the long containment of the country in the 1990s. Saddam’s ground forces largely ignored the no-fly zones imposed in Iraq, and the U.S. often had to conduct significant military mobilization just to reduce the intensity of his counterinsurgency campaigns. In Operation Vigilant Warrior, the U.S. was only able to dissuade Saddam from moving additional Republican Guard units to southern Iraq by mobilizing the logistical support element of I Marine Expeditionary Force (a clear sign of impending mobilizations to come) and the deployment of two brigades from the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division to Saudi Arabia (Britain, for its part, deployed two warships and brought its ground strength in Kuwait to 1,000 troops). Clinton understood that the only way to deter Saddam from accelerating his offensive against his own people was to threaten ground intervention – and even then, the Iraqi units in the south which predated the two Republican Guard divisions’ mobilization remained and continued to suppress their local population.

Essentially, even a vastly weakened Iraqi military still required a credible ground threat of thousands of soldiers and Marines just to dissuade Saddam from reinforcing his ongoing crackdown of the Iraqi Shia population. What reason do we have to think that Syria’s military, without a thorough shellacking such as the one Saddam’s military (already weakened by nearly a decade of war with Iran!) received in 1991, would fear a foreign-imposed safe zone enough not to challenge it?

While Srebrenica was supposed to be a mutual (albeit poorly or deliberately unenforced, in the case of the Bosniak forces) demilitarization, Serbian forces completely ignored Resolution 819 and surrounded the area with heavy weaponry, and later went on to overwhelm and massacre its inhabitants. While some of the proposed safe areas are in relatively mountainous terrain, it is quite probable that Syria would attempt to kettle or even assault the safe area. Who, exactly, would defend it? The Free Syrian Army? If they were actually capable of holding and defending such a safe zone on their own, there would be no need for a safe zone. The addition of foreign special forces would help, but not by much if the Syrian government chose to mount a sustained assault.

Concentrating FSA and Syrian opposition forces and infrastructure in a safe area would actually give the regime an enormous incentive to strike. Consolidating the FSA, which so far is an extremely loose network of commanders with no real chain of command, and SNC governing officials in a single area would tell Damascus exactly where to strike, and knowing such a location would be the heart of foreign support and nascent “Syrian Benghazi” would provide a huge incentive to destroy it or reduce it through sustained siege. Additionally, guerrilla units could be deployed to harass or destroy supply corridors even after the successful establishment of a safe zone and the suppression nearby of Syrian forces. Even with the addition of Turkish conventional troops, would they be willing to defend an area with their lives against a Syrian military assault or a sustained guerrilla campaign? Even with close air support and airstrikes, it is unlikely that without a sustained offensive that such a safe area could actually provide a viable base of support for an opposition movement. Defending a Syrian safe area would likely devolve into a massive aerial campaign and a significant ground campaign (consider that Turkey’s cross-border incursions just to rout out PKK fighters during the 1990s involved 15,000-35,000 troops), not a mere suppression of air defenses and local forces with a small training contingent of special forces. It is hard to see how a limited action to create a safe area could succeed without ground forces and air forces capable of resisting and repulsing a military with armored formations, artillery, and air support would fare – and it is hard to see how relieving this pressure would occur without an offensive, as in Operation Storm, to permanently secure a safe area.

A dangerous – and perhaps more likely – proposition would be a Syrian Misrata. It took nearly two months after NATO air strikes began for Misratans to finish recapturing their own city, and even then Gaddafi’s forces were able to temporarily deny use of the port through artillery fire. Jisr al-Shughur, the report’s suggested safe zone area, is even more isolated than Misrata. It is, of course, not a coastal city. There are not even significant roads to Turkey without winding through mountain passes that guerrilla groups would be able to harass and temporarily close. It took Misratan forces, with NATO air support and resupply opportunities from the sea and air, months to capture Zliten, just 40 miles away. There is no major airport in Jisr al-Shughur. Aerial reinforcement would have to come either through airborne drops or helicopters. Anyone who has ever read military history – let alone anyone who has had to deploy to a combat zone in such a manner – is probably feeling somewhat nervous right now. Leave aside man portable air defense missiles, even machine guns of sufficiently heavy caliber could make aerial reinforcement or resupply of such a safe zone a very risky prospect. In all likelihood, thousands of Turkish regular troops would probably be necessary just to secure Jisr al-Shughur. Even then, the possibility of Syrian counter-attacks from Latakia would probably require additional major military actions. Why mobilize thousands of troops and risk dozens or hundreds of casualties just to carve out a minor safe area which, if we look at its counterparts in Kurdistan during the 1990s, is probably not going to become a war-winning base of support?

NEXT: The Damning Merits of Invasion.

Daniel Trombly is writer on international affairs and strategy. This essay is based on a longer piece at his blog Slouching Towards Columbia. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

Israel, Iran and the United States: All Options Are Bad!

Don Snow — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:29:19 -0600

The growing confrontation between Israel and Iran over the Iranian nuclear weapons program is spinning perilously out of hand, and it has within it the seeds of the most potentially dangerous threat to international peace since the Cold War ended over 20 years ago. What we are witnessing is a verbal run-up to a military conflict between the Middle East’s only nuclear power (Israel) and its most militant, populous state (Iran). It is a conflict that would serve no one’s interests, would only result in a worse situation–possibly catastrophically so–for all parties, and in which the extremely emotional basis of the conflict is driving all sides, including the United States, to consider essentially irresponsible acts that endanger the country’s national security interests. All of this is occurring in a presidential election year (probably no coincidence) in which cool analysis and action is undermined by hot electoral rhetoric aimed at grabbing votes at the possible endangerment of this country’s interests and safety. It needs to be stopped now, before it gets any worse.

Consider the situation in terms of three steps and their possible consequences. The steps are the pre-war confrontation, the Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities (an event which, if it happens at all, will almost surely occur before the November election in the United States), and the Iranian response. All put the United States in an untenable, negative sum situation where, regardless of what we do, we will come out on the short end of the stick.

Start with the pre-war present. There are two salient features to consider. The first are Israeli threats that demand, in essence, that Iran stop and reverse its alleged weapons program (which, of course, the Iranians deny exists) before it proceeds any closer to a weapons outcome. The Israelis argue that if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, they will use it against Israel, making the threat a truly existential one against them. Their assessment may be right or wrong, but there can be no doubt that the Netanyahu government believes this scenario to be the case and from that perspective, a preemptive strike against Iran can make sense. That its consequences could be dire to Israel matters less from this perspective because Israel will suffer in either case. An attack is essentially taking an eye for an expected eye, and national existence is the stake. No Masada this time; the Israelis will go down swinging, if they go down.

This puts the United States, as the protector and guarantor of Israel, in a terrible position that the campaign rhetoric is only making worse. The Obama administration says it is “working” with Israel to defuse the crisis, which effectively means they are trying everything they can think of to try to keep the attack from occurring, at least partly because they recognize that if the Israelis launch a raid, all regional bets are off and that the worst case is a general Middle Eastern war that serves no one’s interests, and especially not the interests of the United States. GOP presidential contenders, on the other hand, are falling all over themselves and one another courting the Jewish vote in the United States by favoring unrestricted support for whatever Israel decides to do. The most extreme view is held by Newt Gingrich, who summons the Holocaust to argue that anything less would be immoral.

The U.S. has essentially three options if an Israeli attack decision is unavoidable. None of them is especially good. They are:

1. Full support for any attack the Israelis carry out, which can include actions of differing severity. The U.S. can participate in the raid in varying ways, such as providing air cover for the Israeli bombers heading for Iranian nuclear sites; we can provide satellite reconnaissance (which we undoubtedly already do) for the Israelis, including warnings of Iranian countermeasures; we can supply special ordnance (deep penetrating bombs) to the Israelis to penetrate underground facilities (the Israelis do not themselves have such a capability); or, at the greatest extreme, we can participate with U.S. bombers dropping bombs. The more involved we are, of course, the more we will be caught up in the wake of international reactions to the attack.

2. We can acknowledge Israeli plans, say we understand but don’t fully support their actions on any of a variety of grounds, BUT warn sternly that we will not allow a response by Iran that would endanger Israeli existence. We would still be blamed for not preventing the attacks, but the criticism would be more muted, and we would uphold our pledge to guarantee Israeli existence. Critics, however, would argue that is not enough.

3. We can tell the Israelis, very publicly, that they are on their own if they attack, although we will protect them from an existential response. This option, regardless of its merits, would be political suicide in an election year (part of why the Israelis, who realize this, will probably act before the November election).

Options 1 and 2 are the only really domestically viable options, but both of them tie the U.S. to the Israeli attack, and that has consequences. Rationalizations notwithstanding, an Israeli strike would be an act of military aggression–an act of aggressive war–that is illegal under international law and the UN Charter, which Israel signed, making the action illegal under Israeli law as well. Calling it “preemptive” does not aid legality, because acts of preemption are only justifiable under international law when a hostile act that they prevent is imminent (e.g.an enemy’s army massing on your border); the Israeli attack does not rise to that level. Thus, the United States indirectly supports violating international law by supporting the Israelis. The U.S, has, of course, done so in the past–the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for instance–but the world will at least rhetorically line up against an aggression. Moreover, the Russians and Chinese will undoubtedly co-sponsor a Security Council condemnation of the aggression, and the U.S. will be left with the unpleasant choices of supporting Israel in the face of overwhelming global disapproval or, as it did in 1956 at the time of the Suez War, of condemning the action of a close ally. Once again, electoral politics may require thumbing our noses at the world. Moreover, if the Israelis do attack, they will not be able to take out the Iranian program entirely, instead only setting it back, while Israeli attacks will take its toll in civilian casualties (collateral damage) that will only add to condemnation of the attacks. Anyone who can see some good in this for United States interests beyond some votes in the presidential election, is seeing something this observer does not.

As if that was not enough, an Israeli attack will trigger some very violent form of Iranian counterattack with equally or even more dangerous potential consequences for the U.S. and the region. Those possibilities, none of which are desirable from a U.S. viewpoint, will be the subject of the next column. All the options are bad!

Donald M. Snow, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama, is the author of over 40 books on foreign policy, international relations, and national security topics. This essay first appeared at his blog What After Iraq?.

Turkey-US Relations: Dark Clouds on the Horizon

Ross Wilson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:54:18 -0600

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu comes to Washington this week with more positives in US-Turkish relations than at any time in years. However, upcoming and potentially grave challenges – Syria, Iran, Egypt, and others – mean Turkey and US-Turkish ties will face many risky problems in the months ahead. Davutoğlu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton need to think through likely dissonances and divergences and plan accordingly.

American and Turkish leaders deserve credit for turning regional negatives of mid-2010 and before into good, or at least better, pictures today.

Ankara and Washington have gotten back in sync on the Iran nuclear problem after the May 2010 uranium swap debacle and June 2010 falling out at the United Nations over sanctions.

Tough talk and teamwork on Syria has replaced the years of discord over Turkey’s cultivation of ties with the Assad regime.

Diplomats in Washington and Ankara effusively describe their regular and apparently very full consultations on other Arab Awakening countries and issues. Prime Minister Erdoğan’s September 2011 evocation in Cairo on the virtues of secularism lined him up, in this place and time, squarely on the side of transatlantic values.

The 2012 picture is not one of zero regional problems in US-Turkish relations, to be sure. The Turkish-Israeli relationship and related polemics still turn heads in Washington. The Armenian genocide issue may be seem off the agenda, but never really can be.

Against a rosier recent past, the coming months seem packed with risks that could affect both countries’ key interests. Tough choices among competing priorities lie ahead for Davutoğlu and Clinton.

Syria is Exhibit A. Ankara changed its Assad policy last summer from embrace to rejection. Turkey paid a price for this in terms of lost investments and sharply reduced trade with Syria and through it to Arab countries beyond. But the cost to Turkey so far of abandoning the Damascus regime cannot have been high.

The future looks far riskier. The Assad regime’s growing loss of control, its rising brutality, and the opposition’s increasing readiness to use arms suggest the country cannot be far from all-out civil war that will affect vital Turkish and very important American interests. Media reports of US-Turkish talks about some kind of joint intervention and heated Turkish denials, regardless of where the truth lies, reflect the increasingly difficult choices facing the United States and Turkey. Others include financial and/or material aid to the Syrian National Council and Free Syrian Army, humanitarian corridors, the problem of international legitimacy for such corridors or other forms of intervention, and countering al-Qaeda and PKK opportunists who would exploit Assad’s demise for even worse ends. Pressures that push the United States and Turkey apart on Syria will be bad for that country, Turkey, and US-Turkish relations.

More problematic if less immediate is Iran, where circumstances and recent, careful diplomacy on Davutoğlu’s part have helped to avoid choices on issues where Washington and Turkey disagree. Turkey hosted one round of negotiations in January 2011 between Iran and the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany (the P5+1 negotiating group) and promoted itself this past January as a venue for further talks. Quiet Turkish diplomacy in Tehran has urged negotiations and Iranian compliance with its International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitments. To back up its words, Ankara agreed to host a NATO missile defense radar site. This progress seemed difficult at the time to those involved, but was relatively painless.

The turning screws on the Iran nuclear issue suggest that 2012 and 2013 will be much harder. Iran affects vital interests of both the United States and Turkey. Leaders in Ankara are no more convinced than they were in 2010, 2008, or 2006 that sanctions will succeed, that Iran actually is on the verge of a nuclear weapons breakthrough, or that it can be stopped at any acceptable price if it is. While some in both capitals are sensitive to the other’s concerns and/or recognize that Ankara and Washington have no choice but to stay in sync on the Iran nuclear issue, the dynamics will run in different directions as tensions build.

Turkey is not part of the P5+1 group, and it will get left out.

The United States and Turkey may not share in real enough time sensitive information about Iran’s nuclear efforts or other aspects of the Iran issue.

US and especially Israeli chatter about military action against Iran is and will be heard in Turkey like the scratching of fingernails on a blackboard – not so much because people doubt whose side they should be on if push comes to shove, but because of a recognition of the cataclysmic effect such action could have on an already deeply unstable region. Perhaps naturally, it will engender a Turkish impulse to do something.

Although Turkey’s decision to break with Qadaffi put at risk billions of dollars of Turkish investment and trade, as well as tens of thousands of expatriates working there, it ended up being reasonably cost free. Turkey’s other choices in the Arab Awakening world have been even easier. Risks to Turkish interests and to US-Turkish concord have been few.

But here, too, the choices may be harder in 2012, especially in Egypt. Cairo’s developing estrangement with Washington will affect US calculations, just as Turkish-Ottoman/Egyptian enmities burden Ankara’s today. Neither country will be as influential was it was – or thinks it may still be. Egypt’s increasing politically-Islamist character may put the Turkish public and its leaders against the United States on some issues – and perhaps Egypt’s against Turkey, as well. What happens to the Camp David Accords obviously matters, too, and the effects for Turkey’s relations with Israel, the United States, and others could be dramatic.

Other regional problems loom. The developing agreement on a united Palestinian government seems more likely to divide Washington and Ankara than not. Iraq may be sliding into chaos that the United States can disregard, but Turkey cannot, and that is already producing real friction between Ankara and Baghdad of concern to the United States. Renewed Azeri-Armenian fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, which cannot be excluded, would also expose many problematic fault lines in US-Turkish relations.

Clinton and Davutoğlu have done much to restore a healthy tonic to the bilateral relationship and made it an additive to regional stability. Upcoming problems will test that progress. While both countries can and must pursue their own interests and priorities, one of those should remain ensuring that the break that so devastated US-Turkish ties in 2003 does not recur.

Ambassador Ross Wilson is the Director of the Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. As a U.S. diplomat, he served as American ambassador to Turkey in 2005-08 and to Azerbaijan in 2000-03. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

Italian PM Warns of European Disintegration From Mutual Resentments

James Joyner — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:48:09 -0600

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti fears "backlash" stemming from "mutual resentments" between Northern and Southern Europeans spurred by the financial crisis.

Appearing on the PBS NewsHour, Monti declared, "I try to avoid that backlash by always presenting the necessary sacrifices that Italians have to go through not as an imposition from Brussels or Germany or the European Central Bank, but rather as a necessary step that Italians have to undertaking -- to undertake also at the suggestion of Europe, but basically for their own interests, for the interests of ourselves and of future generations of Italians."

While allowing that "This is precisely meant to avoid backlashes," he worries that "the euro zone crisis has indeed brought about quite a bit of misunderstandings and the re-emergence of old phantoms about prejudices between the North, the South of Europe, and a lot of mutual resentment."

Taking this to its logical conclusion, he observed, "And it is very, very important that we all take this with great attention in order to avoid that something that was meant to be the culminating point of the European construction -- namely, the single currency -- turns out to be, through psychological negative effects, a factor of disintegration of Europe."

While the populist sentiments along these lines--particularly in Germany, Greece, and Italy--have been obvious from even a casual reading of the newspapers over the last two or three years, it's a subject that national leaders have until now avoided talking about publicly. Whether his candor is a function of his long career as an academic or the fact that he was appointed to his position and doesn't have to be overly concerned about electoral consequences, it's a discussion worth having.

Further, he's right: allowing these resentments to fester puts not just the common currency but the European project as a whole in jeopardy.

That said, there are rather fundamental cultural and structural differences between North and South that have to be dealt with honestly as well.

NewsHour's Margaret Warner asked him, "Do you think that by calling for more competition in the economy, as well as budget cuts, you are asking the Italian people to really change their central character or culture?"

Again, speaking more like a doctor of philosophy than a prime minister, he answered honestly and insightfully. But he's been in politics long enough to toss in some pandering, too: "To some extent, yes. I am fully aware of this, and basically our mission and my wish is to have the Italian people value more and more some strong qualities they have in their genes and traditions -- that is, a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of -- and a sense of solidarity in society." He added, "But I definitely think that Italy can become a more competitive place only if we introduce in our system much more meritocracy, which means much more competition and accountability in all decision points of corporate, as well as the public administration."

The juxtaposition of these issues presents an enormous political challenge. On the one hand, "Europe" will remain a fantasy so long as differences in cultures which have existed independently for centuries can not be accommodated. On the other, the common currency and deeper political integration can not work if Europeans don't all play by the same basic sets of rules.

James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

Afghanistan: End Game or No Game?

Harlan Ullman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:52:44 -0600

Last week was another roller coaster ride for international politics. Violence in Egypt; looming civil war in Syria; and threats and counter-threats over Iran's nuclear intentions reverberated around the international security community intensifying the gathering sense of impending disaster.

In Brussels at the NATO Defense Ministers' meeting followed by the Munich Security Conference the next day, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta fueled this uncertainty by calling for a transfer of U.S. combat responsibility to Afghan national security forces in 2013, a year earlier than the promised 2014 withdrawal date.

Reaction was predictable from all sides of the spectrum. Supporters applauded the announcement as further signs of accelerating the withdrawal and pressuring the Karzai government in Kabul to assume its full share of the burden. Critics predictably denounced the statement as giving the enemy our timetable and quitting the field of battle before the Afghans were ready and able to defend themselves.

The tragedy remains self-evident. Despite the furor about turnover and withdrawal dates, that debate won't determine Afghanistan's future.

The U.S. and NATO Afghan strategy has rested on three foundations and the help of Pakistan. Security, governance and economic development form the three legs. Because the bulk of effort has been on the security leg -- to seize, hold and protect territory to create a safer environment for Afghans and to train Afghan forces to assume those duties -- the other legs have been neglected and won't be ready to assure Afghanistan's future for a long time to come probably well beyond 2014.

It is unknowable how long it will take, if ever, for these other two legs to take hold. Meanwhile, the overland supply route from Pakistan is still shut and relations with the United States are stalled at rock bottom.

Some observers say that should the Obama administration win a second term, withdrawal will be even faster. The good news is that a withdrawal will relieve pressure on Pakistan and as a result the insurgencies as well as widespread anti-American animosity will lessen.

Still, critics have a point -- suppose Afghanistan is unready to govern itself and provide for its people a modicum of security and prosperity including the ability to pay for its security forces. What then?

Beyond these possibly fatal weaknesses, cultural understanding has never been an American strength. We failed in Vietnam in large part because of cultural incompetence. The efforts in Central America to bring down dictatorships suffered the same short sightedness and ignorance. We launched into Afghanistan and then Iraq without learning those lessons. And we are paying the price.

Two Afghan truisms have been dismissed at our own peril. First, (virtually) all Taliban are Pashtun. But not all Pashtun are Taliban. Second, as the Soviet Union learned, its army had all the wristwatches. The mujahedin had all the time.

The lesson is that the Taliban "problem" is largely a Pashtun matter. Unless we address that as well as accommodate Pashtunwali -- the Pashtun code of conduct millennia old that rests all on honor, hospitality and revenge -- the outcome is predictable and time isn't on our side.

The only potential solution -- and one that may not work -- is a negotiated settlement. That means bringing in all parties not just from inside Afghanistan but its near and far neighbors to include China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in a major peace conference to settle Afghanistan's future because piecemeal activities and set dates to transfer responsibilities to the Afghans won't work.

Fortunately, an opportunity to accomplish such a conference can be created.

Toward the end of May, NATO will have a heads of government summit in Chicago. Planning for that summit is in process. Afghanistan will be a critical agenda item especially given the French decision for an early pullout and Panetta's statements. It is unlikely that the presidential election in France will alter that decision regardless of who wins.

Why then not tee up the idea of a major international conference on Afghanistan with the intent of finding a means to keep Afghanistan a stable and more peaceful as well as more prosperous state? That will mean including insurgents including Taliban. It also will mean engaging the Pashtun as well as other minorities. And while Pakistan remains a crucial part of any settlement, that can be done in conjunction with Afghan's neighbors.

NATO is entering its 11th year in Afghanistan. World War II, from a European perspective, lasted six years. The Cold War went on for nearly 45. If Afghanistan isn't handled properly, that war could simmer for far longer.

Harlan Ullman is senior advisor at the Atlantic Council, and chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business. This article was syndicated by UPI. Photo credit: France24.

Will US-Egypt Relations Rupture Over NGO Probe?

Mara Revkin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:29:24 -0600

A week before Valentine’s Day, the Egyptian government’s brazen antagonism of American-funded NGOs has proven the old adage: “You can’t buy love,” not even with the 1.3 billion in annual military aid that the United States has lavished on its military.

As Steven Cooke aptly described what he predicts will be an unfriendly “breakup” between the United States and Egypt, “It seems that with the trial of 19 Americans and 16 Egyptians and 8 others affiliated with the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Egyptians are serving divorce papers.” And on February 7, the Egyptian government made clear that it plans to bring this quarrel to court: Egyptian judges overseeing the investigation announced that the 19 Americans indicted over the weekend will be ordered to stand trial on criminal charges of violating licensing and foreign funding regulations, which could carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.

With the sharp escalation of hostilities in recent days – Egypt has vowed “to expose foreign schemes that threaten the stability of the homeland” while the U.S. warns that the investigation could jeopardize future military aid – what started as a war of words is quickly morphing into a vindictive legal battle that may do irreparable damage to the bilateral relationship. As Washington and Cairo ramp up their respective threats, the two sides are headed for mutually assured disenchantment: Egypt’s leaders – apparently deluded by their own entitlement complex and inflated sense of strategic importance – will face a rude awakening when they discover that threatened military aid cuts were not an empty bluff, and the United States is learning the hard way that a more democratic and independent Egypt won’t hesitate to bite the hand that feeds it.

In the new spending bill approved in December, Congress imposed new restrictions on future aid to the Egyptian military, now contingent on the government's compliance with three criteria: 1) progress toward a transfer of power to civilian leaders; 2) protecting human rights and basic freedoms; and 3) upholding the peace treaty with Israel. Egypt's military aid budget will be in jeopardy unless the State Department can certify its adherence to all three conditions. But Egypt's leaders seem to be banking on the flimsy assumption that the strategic value of their security cooperation with the U.S. and Israel gives them a carte blanche for bad behavior without consequences. Despite warning from Congress and the White House to the contrary, Egyptian officials are convinced that the military aid package is a sacrosanct entitlement that can't be taken back, and they insist that the US-Egypt relationship is still on solid ground "despite some differences."

Meanwhile, the fact that the current investigation is being driven by Egypt’s judiciary has allowed the interim government to claim that it neither condones the probe nor has the authority to stop it. Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr said on February 5, "We are doing our best to contain this but ... we cannot actually exercise any influence on the investigating judges right now when it comes to the investigation." But despite their best efforts to deflect blame for the crackdown onto Egypt’s stubbornly independent judiciary, Egyptian officials are clearly reveling in the misfortune of American-funded NGOs. Minister Fayza Aboul Naga, a remnant of Hosni Mubarak’s former government and veteran antagonist of civil society groups, is widely recognized as the “mastermind” behind the probe and warned the United States not to underestimate the “government’s seriousness about discovering some of these groups’ plans to destabilize Egypt.” If Naga continues to survive successive cabinet reshuffles – as she has been doing for the post ten years – her ironically named Ministry of International Cooperation will continue to serve as a bastion of belligerence and bane of U.S. policy in Egypt.

In her efforts to justify the harassment of foreign-funded NGOs, Naga will likely claim that the current probe is consistent with Egyptian public opinion and opposition to American intervention in domestic affairs. New polling data released by Gallup this week could provide fodder for this argument: According to the survey, “74 percent of Egyptians oppose the US sending direct aid to Egyptian civil society groups and 71 percent oppose the idea of American aid to Egypt altogether.”

In a climate that is becoming increasingly toxic to international assistance of any kind, opposition to American funding for civil society groups could jeopardize other streams of international assistance including the loans and budgetary support that Egypt’s ailing economy desperately needs.

Mara Revkin is the assistant director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and editor of EgyptSource. She can be reached at mrevkin@acus.org.

Photo Credit: al-Ahram

Fixing All the World's Problems

Bernard Finel — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:12:16 -0600

Okay, I’m king for a day, and I am going to fix all the world’s problems. Here goes:

Syria: Arm the rebels, impose a no-fly zone, strike any government forces that try to suppress the uprising. Why? Because at this point we’re witnessing a long, drawn-out mass killing scenario, and it is only likely to get worse given the minority character of the regime. Syria is also a rogue regime. It supports transnational terrorism, has played footsie with the North Koreans on nuclear issues, and continues to destabilize Lebanon. There are good humanitarian and regional security justifications for intervention. I’m not enthusiastic about this, but as a practical matter, I don’t think inaction is better. The costs of this sort of intervention should be relatively low. Lack of UNSC authorization is no bar. We can use the Kosovo precedent to act under auspices of regional organization — but this would require Arab League approval.

Iran: Since we’re unlikely to engage in sustained military action, we should take the option off the table. Offer Iran a straight-forward quid pro quo — we commit to not use force to change their regime in return for them normalizing their international status through a new IAEA-based inspection regime of their nuclear facilities. Assuming they don’t accept — as they won’t — continue to use sabotage and assassinations to slow their progress toward nukes. And most importantly dramatically step up efforts to promote change in Iran through aggressive efforts to defeat Iranian government censorship of radio, TV, and internet. Assuming that does not work either, we need to work on promoting regional resilience so that the rest of the region doesn’t freak out about developments in Iran. Mitigation of the Iranian problem is key rather than solving it for now.

China: Look, China is our biggest economic partner. Yes, they are a rising power, and yes they will want a larger role in global rule-setting. Give it to them. As a matter of geopolitics, we have fundamental shared interests — secure sea lanes, vigorous trade, economic stability. They want what we want. The debates we’re having are over how to get it, not about a completely different international architecture. Sure, we’ll need to play hardball on trade issues. But this is NOT like the Cold War. The one issue we do need to resolve is:

Taiwan: Our ability to defend Taiwan is going to inevitably diminish. Our need to plan for its defense is already one of the largest drivers of our defense budget since it requires us to stay a generation ahead technologically of a rapidly rising power. And not only is this a costly commitment, in the final analysis it is just a bridge too far. Within a generation — at most — our ability to project power onto the Chinese coast will decline to the point where protecting Taiwan is a pure bluff. Instead, we need establish a time-line with the Taiwanese so that they understand that at some point in the very near future our commitment to them will come to an end. I am not sure what happens next. But sometimes you just need to acknowledge reality and move on. Hong Kong and long-term internal Chinese trends make me relatively sanguine, however.

Israel: I like Israel. Indeed, like many Jews, I have something of an emotional attachment to Israel. But their approach to the Palestinians is both criminal and criminally stupid, and we can no longer be on the hook for their intransigence. We need to state simply that either a two-state solution is implemented quickly, or that we’re going to have to begin treating Israel as just another country rather than a close ally and beneficiary of American aid. I hate saying this, but the reality is that at this point, we’re acting as enablers for the bizarre obsession among some Israeli with the idea of recreating Biblical Israel. I don’t see how supporting this weird goal is consistent with American interests.

Afghanistan: Transition rapidly to a Plan Colombia-style relationship: intelligence sharing, financial aid, technical assistance, and limited SOF training and direct action. Communicate directly with the existing insurgent groups about our red lines — no support for transnational terrorism, some adherence to international humanitarian norms (think Saudi standards). Encourage negotiations leading to power-sharing and/or regional autonomy agreements that will take at least some of the insurgents off the field. Or not. Who really cares? Afghanistan is an absolute strategic backwater — poor, isolated, irrelevant.

Pakistan: If we can reduce our commitment to Afghanistan and essentially give Pakistan primary responsibility for enforcing our red lines there, I think we can open the door on a more productive relationship with Islamabad. The problem right now is that our entire relationship is currently focused on those things that they either can’t or won’t do. That isn’t healthy. We’d be better off trying to build on those areas of shared interests. One of those is normalizing the status of their nuclear program. Another is in trying to ease tensions with India in a way that is consistent with Pakistani security requirements. That said, this is a dysfunctional state with many broken institutions. It is also too big to influence directly. We’ll be dealing with this one for a long time.

Mexico: I think the first step to understanding the challenge of Mexico is to realize we’re the cause of many of the problems there. We can mitigate those problems through two substantively simple, but politically impossible steps: (1) End the war on drugs. Legalize marijuana outright. Reduce criminal penalties and enforcement of harder drugs like cocaine and heroin. Get military/paramilitary organization out of domestic law enforcement. (2) Fix our immigration policies: amnesty for those in the U.S., a fence to control the border, and a dramatic increase in legal immigration. Look, we currently have fewer legal immigrants coming to the United States than we did in 1906 when our population was about one quarter of what it is today. If instead of 1 million legal immigrants a year, we were allowing 4 million, we’d have virtually no problems with illegal immigration. And legal immigrants would pay more in taxes and would be less of a drain on public services as a consequence. Would that many immigrants change the character of the United States but turning the U.S. in Mexico? No, no more than German immigration turned Pennsylvania into Prussia or Jewish immigration turned the Lower East Side into Israel. Also, by the way, more legal immigration is the answer to our entitlements “crisis” since it increases the ratio of workers to retirees. Anyway, end the drug war and end the war on immigrants, and you’ll find that many of Mexico’s problems become more manageable.

Europe: Tell the Germans to get their heads out of their collective asses. Signal a willingness to accept a sustained period of higher inflation to aid in debt deleveraging and in internal adjustments.

See. Was that so hard?

Dr. Bernard I. Finel, an Atlantic Council contributing editor, is Associate Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College. His arguments are his own and do not represent the views or opinions of the National War College, National Defense University, or the Department of Defense. This was originally posted on his personal blog BernardFinel.com.

Transatlantic Relationship Words at Odds with Deeds

James Joyner — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:40:48 -0600

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said all the right things about the transatlantic relationship at the Munich Security Conference. Alas, Panetta made a mockery of them on his way there.

Panetta declared that "peace and prosperity of Europe is critically important to the United States, but because Europe remains our security partner, our security partner of choice for military operations and diplomacy around the world." Clinton joined in, saying, "Europe is and remains America's partner of first resort." She added, "Today's transatlantic community is not just a defining achievement of the century behind us. It is indispensable to the world we hope to build together in the century ahead. Here in Munich, it is not enough to reaffirm old commitments. The world around us is fast transforming, and America and Europe need a forward-leaning agenda to deal with the challenges we face." She noted that she'd traveled to Europe 27 times in her present office and President Obama himself had made ten trips.

Yet, all the talk about the importance of the Obama administration's profound respect for our transatlantic allies was belied by the fact that, on his way to the conference, Panetta casually undercut the words by summarily announcing a major change in American strategy in the Afghanistan fight without so much as a warning--much less consultation--with said allies.

Panetta claimed in his Munich remarks that "Our bottom line [in Afghanistan] is 'in together, out together.' As an alliance, we are fully committed to the Lisbon framework and transitioning to Afghan control by 2014." But that's just talk. The bottom line is that a commitment to transition responsibility for the fight to Afghan forces a year early is a complete departure from the outcomes-based approach agreed to at Lisbon.

Now, as I've argued before, the revised policy is the right one. But our NATO allies, most if not all of whom are still in Afghanistan against a tide of popular opinion at home solely because America has asked them to be there, deserved to be consulted and given time to plan their own roll-out of the announcement to their publics.

As Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin reports, "several NATO and European officials were shocked and some were even a little miffed that Panetta had made a major change in the messaging over the Afghanistan war without giving them a heads up."

Rogin quotes a "high ranking European official" saying that his government was expecting a new timeline to come at the NATO Summit. on the notion that "we can't say the same thing in Chicago as we said in Lisbon." But Panetta jumped the gun. "It was all carefully planned and now that plan is completely ruined."

The same official explains, "We said, 'Okay, if Obama needs this politically, that's fine. But please consider the bad side effects for us. This is hard to explain to our constituencies. Before today we could still say the drawdown was conditions based. Now we can't make the argument that it's anything but politically motivated."

Given that the Afghanistan mission has long since become Americanized, with European militaries providing a very small part of the fighting forces on the ground, the United States reasonably expects to have the dominant voice in major decisions governing the fight. But if we expect our allies to believe that we value their contributions and take them seriously as partners, we can't treat them as afterthoughts.

James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. Photo credit: Getty Images.