Before going to war in Syria, the Obama
administration should heed the lessons of history.
By Edward Luttwak
It was for several good and solid reasons
that U.S. President Barack Obama's administration long resisted pressures to
intervene more forcefully in Syria's civil war. To start with, there is the
sheer complexity of a conflict at the intersection of religious, ethnic,
regional, and global politics, as illustrated by the plain fact that the most
Westernized of Syrians (including its Christians) support the Assad government
that the United States seeks to displace, while its enemies are certainly not
America's friends and, indeed, include the most dangerous of Muslim extremists.
But no matter: After two years of restraint, the administration -- having
decided to send "direct military assistance" to the rebels -- has
chosen sides and is now choosing sides within sides.
By now, after failed attempts at
managing complexity in Iraq and Afghanistan, all should soberly recognize that
any successful intervention requires the terrible I-win, you-lose simplicity of
war. When that is absent, so too is success. In the end, regardless of the
costs in blood and treasure of U.S. efforts -- costs that in this case also
include a greater enmity with Russia -- it is still likely that all sides will
blame the American infidel for anything that displeases them, as in
Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Libya. Neither complexity nor the inevitable
accusations of sinister American motives (greed for oil, war on Islam, or both)
can be helped, but the Obama administration has stepped forward anyway. Even if
conditions on the ground in Syria virtually exclude the possibility of a good
outcome, the following five rules -- derived from bitter experience in arming
other rebels (some of it personal) -- could at least serve to minimize the
damage.
Rule 1: Figure out who your friends are.
The first rule, politically, is to
identify one's allies. When Obama finally, officially, makes the announcement
that Washington is arming the rebels, it must include the key phrases: "We
are acting with our allies in the region" or, better, "our close
allies in the region and beyond it." But once the obligatory words are
spoken, it is essential that all U.S. personnel all the way down the chain of
command be fully aware of the brutal truth that explains the survival of Bashar
al-Assad's regime: America's "allies in the region" are remarkably ineffectual,
in spite of every apparent advantage. Early on, Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa
Al Thani proclaimed his total support for the "Syrian people,"
sending money and buying weapons at ridiculous prices (and delivering very few). And though his armed forces are small and
poorly placed to provide any combat support, he does have billions of dollars
at his disposal that he can and does spend on every passing whim. The same goes
for the Saudis, who are much less noisy than the Qataris in supporting the
rebels but are the real leaders of the Sunni crusade against Assad -- and they
too are not short of funds.
Yet in spite of the most ample promises
by Qatar and the Saudis, Syrian refugees in Jordan have been living in misery
-- there are even persistent reports of the sale of child brides by desperate
families. Likewise, the actual flow of weapons to the rebels has been notably
meager. In neither case it is just a matter of simple avarice, but rather
reflects the operational incapacity of both governments. For more than a year,
Washington has been content to allow others
to funnel weapons and money, but with Assad's recent victories against the
rebels, Obama was forced into action. The Saudi and Qatari rulers just do not
have honest, efficient officials whom they can rely on to distribute money or
weapons wisely. In the bad old days, the Saudis would just hand over sacks of
$100 bills to Osama bin Laden, before he turned against them. Now, too, they
would willingly hand over sacks of bank notes to a chief if there were one, but
they simply cannot field officials on the ground who can choose between the
great number of Syrian claimants, given U.S. injunctions not to arm the most
extreme jihadists, including those who accept the "al-Nusra" label.
A much greater surprise is Turkey's
all-round incapacity. Early on, with characteristic bombast, Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan more or less ordered Assad to stop shooting and start
talking. With 75 million inhabitants, a fast-growing economy, a million men
under arms, and a 510-mile border with Syria, Turkey should have been the
dominant power in the confrontation. But instead of being intimidated into
surrender, or just moderation, the Assad regime publicly ridiculed Erdogan and Turkish imperial
pretensions, denounced Turkey's Islamist government as nothing more than Sunni
fanatics, and then proceeded to shoot down a stray Turkish jet fighter before
repeatedly sending artillery rounds into Turkish towns. The Turkish response to
this insult and attack? Nothing. And that is what Turkey will do as an ally of
the United States in Syria: nothing.
It turns out that the country's 15
million to 20 million Bektashis and other Alevis, long cruelly persecuted by
Sunni rulers, oppose any action that would strengthen the Sunnis of Syria. In
addition, there are also some 2 million Alawites along the border with Syria,
mostly in Hatay, the piece of Syria annexed by Turkey in 1939, who vehemently
support their compatriot Assad. Then there are the Kurds who predominate in the
provinces along the border with Syria and automatically oppose any action by
the Turkish armed forces they have so long resisted. On top of that, Turkey's
ruling AKP Islamist party has used conspiracy charges, arising from the
supposedly vastErgenekon plot, against
dozens of very senior officers to immobilize the armed forces, which are guilty
in the party's eyes of both defending secularism and menacing democracy. They
have succeeded all too well, but this leaves Turkey as a non-power -- a richly
ironic outcome given the solemn debates of recent years on whether Ankara is a
regional power, a middle power, or a neo-Ottoman power as Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu kept claiming. The world has discovered that Turkey
is not even a small power. The bottom line is that the United States will not
only lack an ally in fighting Assad, but will also have to operate in a hostile
environment, given the many people in Turkey who support the Syrian regime --
some of them ready and willing to attack any U.S. personnel they encounter, or
at least help Assad's agents in trying to kill Americans.
Rule 2: Be prepared to do all the work.
Given these "allies," the
United States will have to do the lifting -- and not just the heavy part. There
should be no illusions now that anyone will be of much help, with the possible
exception of whatever money can be extracted from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. That,
in turn, raises the issue of which Americans should do the dirty work of
funneling weapons. Always bureaucratically adept, even if operationally
incompetent in far too many cases, the CIA already has the Washington end of
the action. But if weapons are to be supplied, it is essential to call on the
only Americans who can tell the difference between Sunni bad guys who only want
to oppress other Syrians and the really bad guys who happen to be waging their
global jihad in Syria. What's needed are true experts, people who really speak
the region's Arabic: the regular U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers who
successfully sponsored and then effectively controlled the Sunni tribal
insurgents in Iraq whose "awakening" defeated the jihadists who were
attacking U.S. troops. Some of them are already involved in supporting the
rebels under Joint Special Operations Command, but if the mission were expanded
it would be a good idea to call for volunteers from the reservists who did the same
job in Iraq.
Rule 3: Don't give away anything that you would want
to have back.
That includes expertise in identifying
and handling any chemical weapons that might be encountered, as well as the
supply of any portable anti-aircraft weapons. There are likely already a great
number of them in Syria, some of them much more effective than the old 9K32 "Strela-2" or SAM-7 models that have already
been used by terrorists against civilian aircraft.
Whatever happens, the U.S. counterpart to these weapons -- the current
version of the FIM-92 Stinger -- cannot be
supplied, as it iseven more lethal than the
original that was used to such great success against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Indeed, the Syrian government's use of aircraft for bombing rebel targets might
have to be deterred by threats alone -- under-the-table threats, of course,
given the impossibility of obtaining Russian or Chinese consent at the U.N.
Security Council. Any U.S. intercepts of Syrian aircraft would amount to a
drastic escalation, but Assad knows full well that American strike aircraft
could reach Syrian airspace in minutes from nearby bases, including from the
British staging facilities in Cyprus.
Rule 4: Do not invite an equal and opposite response
by another great power.
The prospect of any such drastic
escalation immediately brings us to Rule 4, which might as well be Rule 1, or
Über 1: Nothing should be done, not even the supply of the smallest of small arms,
without a serious, full-dress effort to find some understanding with Russia,
for which Assad is not one ally among many, but arguably its only extant
military ally. After being cheated over Libya, where a no-fly zone was
illegally converted into a free-bombing zone, the Russians will want
compensation in Syria if they cooperate at all, including a continuing if
diminished role for Assad. That will not satisfy Sunni supremacists but should
satisfy Washington, for which neither a rebel defeat nor a rebel victory
constitutes a successful outcome. In exchange for the keeping of Assad, the
Russians would have to secure the essential quid pro quo for Washington: a
clean and final break with Iran and Hezbollah -- which, by the way, would
satisfy the Saudis too, as well as Israel.
Rule 5: Lay some ground rules for the endgame.
The fifth and final rule reflects some
more bitter experience: Whatever happens, but especially if the regime
collapses, it is imperative to maintain a sharp distinction between the government
that must be purged and the state that must be preserved. This includes
institutions like the regular army and police, as well as the Ministry of
Agriculture and other such agencies. Under the Assads, decades of nominally
Baathist (but actually secular) rule favored the rise of Alawites, Christians,
Druze, and Ismailis in the bureaucracy. If U.S. arms prove to be the factor
that gives Sunni rebels victory, and if Sunnis fire them all, the Syrian state
will disintegrate -- with all the disastrous consequences experienced in Iraq.
Unpaid soldiers and police become bandits and insurgents; public services and
utilities, including water and electricity, go to pot; chaos and sectarianism
flourish. As it is, Syria after Assad is likely to fragment into ethnic ministates,
but if its state apparatus is also dissolved, the ensuing anarchy will be
especially miserable and uncontrollably violent, with plenty of evil
consequences for all near and far. The last thing the Levant needs is another
Somalia, or several of them. The rebels must be told from the start that if
they start firing state employees en masse (as happened in Iraq and
Afghanistan), all aid will be cut off.
* * *
The Obama administration has displayed
prudent restraint in dealing with Syria until now. After recent regime
successes against the rebels, it can convincingly argue (despite the somewhat
inconclusive and murky assertion that Assad's use of chemical weapons has now
been verified) that it must provide some help to the rebels simply to deny a victory
to Iran and Hezbollah. Even so, one hopes that it retains its prudence -- and
keeps these five rules in mind.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario