Category Archives: Middle East

Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Syria, United Nations, United States

Comparing Syria today with Iraq in 2003…

ANALYSIS

Many commentators use Iraq as a benchmark when judging American foreign policy in the Middle East. Whilst no one will want ‘another Iraq’, and placing rhetoric aside, how does Syria today actually compare to Iraq in 2003?

Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s President, and Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi despot, were both Ba’athist dictators presiding over countries that are an unstable balance of varying sectarian, political and ethnic groups. Long before any suggestion of U.S. military involvement, both regimes committed grave atrocities against their civilian populations. In 1988 Saddam Hussein dropped chemical bombs on citizens in the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing around 5,000 and injuring thousands more. Prior to that, and in 1982, Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s former leader, crushed an uprising in the Syrian city of Hama, killing more than 20,000 people.

Iraq was plagued with sectarian violence (which continues today) following the political vacuum created by the US-led invasion. The bloody civil war in Syria is already dividing along sectarian lines at a time when these divides are deepening across the entire Middle East region.

Making the case for war is the second comparative. The US-led invasion of Iraq primarily centred on Hussein’s failure to co-operate with U.N. weapons inspections and the since-discredited evidence and intelligence on the country’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. When it comes to Syria, President Obama has signalled that Assad’s use of chemical weapons on unarmed civilians is a ‘red line’ and that the U.S. will want to disrupt and degrade the regime’s military capabilities against civilians.

The United Nations have said that around 100,000 have been killed in Syria so far. If the U.S. doesn’t intervene, we know that many more will perish before a political solution is found. We won’t know, however, how many will be killed if the U.S. carries out military strikes, irrespective of how accurate the missiles are deemed to be. As many as 125,380 civilians were killed following the U.S. invasion of Iraq; it’s difficult to argue that this many would have died if Iraq had not been invaded in 2003.

The cost of intervention must also be considered. An estimate of the overall cost of the Iraq war is said to run as high as $2 trillion. Whilst Washington has said that military action in Syria will be far more limited, and there will be ‘no boots on the ground’, the Cato institute suggests that the cost of a Syrian intervention would need to include $500 million for training rebels, a further $500 million for establishing an initial Syrian no-fly zone, and then as much as a billion dollars a month in military operational costs. Expect costs to inflate beyond official figures, as they invariably do.

The issue of outside involvement is also important to note. Unlike Iraq pre-2003, there is already a high level of external involvement on the ground in Syria. The Gulf States, along with Turkey, as well as the U.S. and Europe, are offering varying degrees of financial and military support to a broad range of anti-Assad factions. Assad himself can still count on backing from Iran and Russia. The Arab Spring has meant that politics across the region is now far more volatile and unpredictable than it was ten years ago; there can be no doubt that Syria’s interventions will have far-reaching ramifications across the Middle East and post-Arab Spring.

Appetite for war is the final consideration. America’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have dampened public appetite for war. A ‘war weary’ nation will have reduced expectations that any U.S. military involvement in another Middle Eastern country will be neat or quick. If Mr Obama does win support in Congress, the U.S. will have a clear mandate to go to war in Syria with France as its chief European partner. The U.S. can also expect support from the Arab League, too. In an unusual intervention it has urged the international community to ‘take the deterrent and necessary measures against the culprits of this crime that the Syrian regime bears responsibility for’. Just as in Iraq, the U.S. cannot hope for UN backing for its actions because of veto wielding Russia and China. Arguably, though, this was seen as more important in 2003 because today we have lower expectations of the UN’s divided and indifferent Security Council.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

G20 and America’s defining moment…

WATERSHED MOMENT

The G20 summit that ended in St Petersburg yesterday failed to produce any kind of agreement on the Syrian crisis. The chasm and bridge separating the United States and Russia on Syria is as wide as it has ever been. Yet, few such gatherings in recent years have offered a truer picture of how and where the real balance of global power lies. A genuine watershed in international affairs may at last have arrived; replacing a vestige of what has been referred to of late as the ‘Arab Spring’ – a term synonymous with upheaval and chaos spreading through many Islamic states.

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The two-day gathering in St Petersburg have confirmed many things. It underscored, for example, just how determined Vladimir Putin is in reasserting Russia on the world stage. It displayed quite clearly, too, that a mercantilist China will do nothing to unsettle its economic interests, and in the process laid bare Europe’s total inability to act on its own.

A senior Kremlin official was reported to have said that no one pays any attention to Britain, a ‘small island’. But could the same not be said of the rest of the EU? Germany, for instance, Europe’s economic powerhouse, is notable only for its deafening silence. France, eager to push a military agenda in punishing the Assad regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons, is unwilling to do so without America’s lead. Other G20 participants wring their hands in aghast and disbelief at what is happening in Syria, but most are keen to shriek away from any involvement. At a moment of high international drama, it leads us back – as it invariably does – to the United States and its role in the world.

It shouldn’t have required a Kremlin official to point out Britain’s diminished influence in the world; the empire ended more than half-a-century ago. But, like it or not, with the United Nations no more than a fractious and divided talking shop, the U.S. is the closest thing we have to a global policeman. No country, it has been argued, has the right to behave as such, and America’s actual ability to change history, for all its military might and superpower status, is sometimes exaggerated – not least by itself. We need to look no further than the sorry state of Iraq, a decade after George W Bush’s invasion, to provide clarity to the argument. In any major crisis, however, all eyes turn to Washington, as they are now in Syria as the regime is accused of violating a ban on the use of chemical weapons. Syria is a signatory against the banned use of such weapons, and yet here we have a paralysed UN Security Council that is powerless to enforce an international binding treaty.

With a vote in Congress on the use of U.S. military force in Syria to be held on the 9th September, the next few days will be decisive. Britain’s role on the world stage has been diminished given the veto in the House of Commons last week, but for President Obama the stakes are vastly higher. On Syria, Mr Obama’s approach has been feckless. First, he declared that Assad must go without saying how, and then laid down his ‘red lines’ over the use of chemical weapons. Later, he announced his decision to use force, and more recently has passed the buck to Congress on Capitol Hill. Deep down, many will suspect that he would prefer to stay well out of Syria given what has happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Syria is ablaze and arguably much more contentious than anything the United States has dealt with in the past 30-years. Mr Obama’s uncertainty in how to proceed in Syria is resonating in all corners of the world.

If present indications are anything to go on, the House of Representatives could well follow the House of Commons in opposing military action. If so, a definitive moment will have arrived. Unlike David Cameron, Obama will either defy his legislature and go ahead with strikes, or he will acquiesce, and there will be no military response. If military action is taken off the table, not only would Barack Obama’s presidency be gravely weakened at home, but in the eyes of the world so too would the credibility of America as a global policeman. Either way, a watershed is at hand.

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Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Russia, Syria, United States

Syrian recriminations continue. Is the tide turning towards Russia?

FRATRICIDAL SYRIAN CIVIL WAR

The continued recriminations over Syria remain fast-paced, but there is one central fact that remains unchanged: neither the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, nor his enemies have the strength to achieve outright victory. A fratricidal civil war of this scale – in which a third of the total Syrian population have now been displaced – can only end with a political settlement.

A key question is whether Britain’s parliamentary veto and abdication from military intervention (and America’s possible withdrawal under a similar scenario) will make the achievement of such a resolution of political will more or less likely? A case could be constructed either way.

The optimist might suggest that President Vladimir Putin, satisfied that his Western rivals will not tread the path that Moscow warned them most sternly against, could now become a more willing and amenable partner by delivering Assad to the negotiating table. From this stance, a combination of the G20 summit that opens in St Petersburg on Thursday, the humiliation of the British prime minister following last week’s Commons vote, and new doubts that are emerging by the day whether President Obama will execute his threatened punitive strike, all create something of a slender opportunity. If that is so, something good might yet come from the acrimony of the past few days.

Unfortunately, though, the pessimistic scenario looks more likely. Mr Putin now has the glee of satisfaction of watching Britain retreat from the Syria drama and America’s continued prevarication over whether to enforce its ‘red line’ over the use of chemical weapons. Putin is hardly the kind of leader ennobled for his munificence; instead of trying to find ground with his chastened and frustrated opponents, the Russian President is more inclined to press home his advantage and insist that he was right all along. Mr Putin is still angered over the West’s intervention in Libya, and has sought to make Syria an example in various ways.

Russia’s position has always been that the West must stay out of Syria and leave the problem to be resolved by the Kremlin. Some will baulk at that given Russia’s continued supply of arms and munitions to the Assad regime, but Vladimir Putin’s preferred solution is to help the regime in Damascus achieve a Carthaginian peace by crushing rebel units. As for the Syrian President, he is bound to feel emboldened by recent events and his acolytes hailing Mr Obama’s climbdown as the ‘beginning of the historic American retreat.’ If Assad feels that events are turning his way, what reason will he have to negotiate?

Mr Obama publicly declared that his mind was made up in using military force against Assad’s use of chemical weapons which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 civilians, more than a third of which were children. But, his insistence that he must now first ask Congress makes him look indecisive.

It is not inconceivable to believe that another attempt could be made by the British Parliament in the light of any new evidence that may emerge that action is necessary. Despite the setback of last week’s Commons vote, Britain should remain confident in itself as a nation with the will and the means to help shape a better world.

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