The New Syrian Mission: Let's Enumerate the Stupidity

This morning, twitter got distracted from the Nationals winning the World Series (which is what happens when the crowd boos Trump) by the announcement that the armored unit going to Syria is a National Guard unit. The basic conversation is between those saying WTF to those saying it is normal since the NG and Reserves have been rotating units to be the one squatting Kuwait, and they are the closest to the area.  Of course, this simply invokes the classic question of just because you can do something does not mean you should do it.

So, I recalled that when I was on the Joint Staff in 2001-2002, the first Reserve unit had just been deployed to Bosnia, and there was much reluctance to do the same in Kosovo since things were far less settled there.  Of course, the next 15 years of forever wars meant that the US had to send National Guard and Reserve units to Iraq and Afghanistan, but as wise folks pointed out, our current OPTEMPO (pace of operations) is not so high that we need to use reservists for this kind of stuff.

I said this was the seventh dumbest thing about this mission, so let's see if I can find six dumber aspects

1. Most obviously, what is the mission here?  Why is the US deploying forces, particularly an armored unit to Syria?  What are the rules of engagement?  Who is to be engaged?
2. To protect oil fields?  That is the claim, but that is just how the military folks manipulated Trump, as Syria's oil fields are hardly consequential in the grand scheme of things.
3. That the military rolled Trump on this is also incredibly dumb.  It is problematic from a civ-mil perspective (the civilians should be controlling the military, not the other way around).  And if one is going to break the norms, do it for something that is really important, like not being used for domestic grand-standing (border troops?), not for refusing to leave an ill-conceived mission.
4. What is the authority to do this?  The Authorization to Use Military Force from after 9/11 was not for protecting oil fields.
5. What are the requirements to make this work?  Will the US need to threaten to shoot down Russian planes if they get too close?  There is a real risk of escalation here that no one seems to be thinking about.
6. Is anyone in Congress asking these questions and related ones?  Any oversight deficit here is incredibly dumb since this is exactly why Congress has a role in asking pesky questions of the President, his Defense Secretary, and the senior officers.  
7. Using reservists for such a high risk, cockamamie mission.

Did I cheat?  Did I miss any?

Maybe Obama was overly risk-averse, but I still think the mantra of "Don't do stupid shit!" is a good one.  Obviously, it has been forgotten not just by this White House but also by this Pentagon.

Syria Retrospective

The invasion of Syria by Turkey is making some folks look backwards and blame Obama for not doing more.  And I have put forth a challenge on twitter: what exactly could Obama have done?

I ruled out bombing, as hitting Assad directly is harder than folks think.  And it got harder still after the Russians got more involved.  Oh, and it would be the US mostly alone since David Cameron could not get a vote through his parliament.  And as Ben Dennison reminded me, NATO was out of bombs after Libya.

I ruled out a massive intervention, as the US was still winding down Iraq and was still stuck in Afghanistan, and the army was near the breaking point after nearly a decade of two wars.  And, as those two wars remind us, once you are in, how do you get out?  Especially with the Russians, Iran, and Hezzbollah seriously involved?

I ruled out safe havens as they are neither safe nor havens (thanks Doug Benson, as I am stealing your take on Safe House).  Srebrenica anyone?  To create a safe haven requires an invasion of one kind or another, so that a space is created in which people can gather (which kind of makes them targets).  And that space has to be large enough that Assad's artillery would have been far enough away that it would not be able to hit the people in the safe haven.  Or have enough arty in place to counter-battery fire to deter such stuff.  Again, safe havens require war. 

As a scholar of international relations, I simply do not have any ideas of what the intervention could have looked like that was politically feasible.  Remember, this was with a very hostile Congress that was not willing to vote for a new authorization and budgets fights were constantly risking the closure of the government. 

The US has essentially tried everything--doing a lot (Iraq, Afghanistan), doing something (Libya), doing nothing (Syria)--which should tell us both about the limits of American power and how hard it is to intervene in civil wars.  Which is why I repeat my plea for some humility.  These things are really hard, that mistakes are inevitable (we rely on unreliable proxies on a regular basis because ... that is often all there is), they are very expensive, and there is no easy way to leave. 

The other regret folks have is Obama pulling US troops out of Iraq (something Bush had agreed to), but that points to the big problem--once you get in, it is hard to leave.  Rumsfeld wanted Afghanistan to be "break the Taliban and leave" situation, and he expected to hand over Iraq to some random Iraqi exiles (who happened to have been Iranian agents) and have the US forces leave quickly.  Obama understood that entering Syria meant staying for the long term, I believe.  And that was problematic. 

Sure, now it seems like intervening would have prevented the flow of millions of refugees to Europe, which has not helped Europe very much (although I still blame much of the problems European democracies have with the embracing of austerity measures after the 2008 crisis).  But if the US had intervened forcefully (again, how?), would Syrians have stuck around?  The US way of war does create a lot of collateral damage (civilian casualties), so I still think there would have been refugee flows.

Anyhow, again, the crowd of MOAR needs to tell us what more would have looked like and how it was politically feasible.  Which is kind of like the anti-JCPOA crowd--tell us another way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons that Iran would have agreed to.  And don't tell me some bombing would have done the trick. Because bombing is wildly overrated.

So, instead of learning to blame Obama, I prefer to learn something else: humility.

US and Syria: WTF?

So, Trump is now pulling US troops out of Syria.  Yeah, the US had something like 2k troops there.  To do what?  Ah, there's the rub.  I will explain below as I respond to those who responded to my hottake:

My basic stance on Syria:
a) not all wars should be forever, so pulling troops out can be ok
b) I am squeamish about any Trump decision because he is an idiot
c) doing stuff that pleases Turkey and Russia is almost never good
d) but damn it, A.

1/2

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) December 19, 2018

Before responding to those who responded to this, why this take?  For several reasons, but most importantly, for the US to stay in some spot, there should be, like, an argument for that.  That is, the default should not be "stay" but go.  There should be a positive reason--that the troops are doing something that is important.  Even if they are not making progress, it might be ok to stay--holding the line, keeping an important commitment, etc can be reasonable reasons to stay.  I am not thrilled with the Afghanistan forever war, but it is easier to make claims about the virtues of sticking around.  The government there is one that the US and its friends have built and supported, that the government's policies may not be perfect but are better than what they would be without an American presence, that it gives the US some influence over the terms of the eventual negotiated settlement (that the presence of US troops makes far more likely).

In this US, we get the blob, the DC consensus, arguing folks need to stay (and do more, whatever more is) because they have intellectual investments in US intervention or they want to avoid being blamed when shit goes badly after we left (see Obama).  In Canada, I am convinced that it still has troops in Iraq mostly to defend the Liberals from the opposition accusing the Liberals of cutting and running (which is rich, given the Conservatives pulled Canada out of Kandahar three years before everyone else pulled out).  Again, the forever war machine is all about fear--of being blamed.

Ok, onto the questions/criticisms:

I agree that we need to assess what we are doing in Syria, but pulling out and letting Russia "win" seems very problematic to me.

— Sara Mitchell (@sbmitche) December 19, 2018

Sara is a pal and is super-smart, so I wade into twitter argument with her warily.  But, um, haven't the Russians already won?  That is, if their goal was to keep Assad in place, they have won.  If the joint goal is to reduce ISIS to an insurgency rather than a quasi-state, haven't we all won?

Exactly. I hear so much talk about how we care about the broader Iranian threat. But pulling out of Syria & withdrawing support from Yemen is not sending signals about credible US resolve in the Middle East. T's policies in the region are a joke/mess.

— Sara Mitchell (@sbmitche) December 19, 2018

My response:

A) The Iranian threat is overplayed
B) The Iranian threat is overplayed
C) What about the Saudi threat?
D) Having a reputation for resolve may be overrated.
E) If we have no strategy, the troops should be home where they are cheaper/safer.
F) The Iranian threat is overplayed.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) December 19, 2018

Iran matters, Saudi Arabia matters, but what does withdrawal from Syria do to all of this?  My basic answer is not much.

Onto another smart scholar, one who I have never met but has become a regular twitter correspondent over the course of 2018:

Questions to ask re @smsaideman multiple choice:

Can doing the correct thing for the wrong reasons end well?

Which carries more weight in international relations, action or "message"? https://t.co/2s2kz3kBdc

— Dr. J. Sargent Russell (@jsargentr) December 19, 2018

Regarding the first question, sure, why not?  If it is an independent action--that it does not teach the doer to repeat doing similar things for the wrong reasons.  If the action does good or if it does not do much harm.  I am tempted to summon the evil god of Equifinality--that there are multiple causal pathways to an action--and what matters most is the outcome.

Which gets to the second question--what matters more--actions or messages?  Well, since I tend to drink from the waters of confirmation bias, I would argue that messages will always be read by the reader in ways that confirm their previous views, so the precedent set by the US leaving a place because the President is an ignoramus will be minimal.  Actions?  They matter although they get read in ways that confirm people's biases as well, but they have budgetary impacts (troops based in US are cheaper than in Syria) and impacts on people's lives (the soldiers will not be in harm's way at home).  What impact do the troops have in Syria?  Let me know what that is before suggesting that they stick around.

It seems like it'd be difficult for right actions for the wrong reasons to end well, as the actions would be divorced from the "right" end state.

— Herr Redlegmeister (@MikeTheRedleg) December 19, 2018

Again, what is the right end state?  A democratic Syria?  Two thousand troops are not going to get us there.  Assad gone?  Again, nope.  Save the Kurds from the Turks?  Hmmm, maybe, but not really an endstate.  Deny Russia an ally in the region?  See Assad sticking around.

Some other dynamics here that haven't been brought up:

• This is something Trump has wanted to do for some time, but he got slow-rolled by the Pentagon which now has to develop quickly policies to figure this out.  Folks have cheered this on, but, well, that sucks for civilian control of the military.  Many have been rooting for lots of shirking lately, and that ain't great.  So, back to Dr. J: which matters more--stopping a US departure or respecting the chain of command?
• Holy holes in government, Batman!!!  Apparently, there was a State Department press release about the long term US commitment to Syria.  Ooops.

Anyhow, these are tough questions and Syria is the land of bad policy options.  But sticking around to avoid making hard decisions is just a way to waste money and risk the lives of American troops unless there is a good reason to stick around.

Confused About Syria

NPSIA just started a program where we have an CAF officer as a Defence Fellow.  This means we mentor him (in the current case) on his research, he learns how we think, and we get to learn how such folks think.  There is more to it than that, but his weekly presence is fostering a weekly brown bat that pushed me on how to think about the Syria bombing last week (the annual bombing?).

I have been reluctant to blog about it because I have been confused.  Why?  Because I see some merits on punishing those who cross a very important line, but I also have problems with who is doing the acting and how it is being done and the reality that Assad can just go along and keep killing people.  Let me explain as I think through this.

The Uncertainty Engine Strikes

The missile strike against the airfield in Syria raises far more questions than it answers (for an excellent initial take, see here).  As I think about it, I have to be honest that my confirmation bias might be at work: that anything Trump does is wrong in my mind.  Would I have approved of Hillary Clinton doing the same thing?  Not so sure as I have become quite skeptical about the use of force, so let's run through the situation itself before we get to the Trumpness of it all.

Hitting an airfield that was the source of the chemical weapons used against Syrians seems kind of proportionate.  However, it does not change Syria's ability to use these weapons since the actual weapons themselves were not targeted--that hitting them might expose more Syrians to them.  Nor did the personnel responsible for the chemical weapons attack get harmed.  Nor is the airfield out of commission for very long.  So, the material impact is probably modest.  The symbolic impact?

Unless this is part of a larger campaign against Assad, and thus far we have conflicting signals (Tillerson says no, Trump hints yes), then it is purely symbolic.  Will Assad be dissuaded from further chemical weapons attacks?  Maybe.  It depends in part on why he used them this week.  Perhaps he thought he had a green light from the statements last week by Tillerson and Trump.  If so, then now he knows what is beyond the pale (awful that it takes a missile strike rather than the usual restraints on the use of chemical weapons), so mission accomplished.

But remember, Assad has been killing civilians, including kids, and targeting hospitals for years.  Unless something builds upon the strike, Assad can go ahead and keep on killing.  His government has killed far more Syrians than ISIS, and has generated far more refugees.  So, unless he goes, the current crisis both in Syria and in Europe continues.

What next?  That is where the uncertainty engine that is Trump operates.  We don't know what is next.  My guess is that this is it for now, but who knows. And it is precisely that uncertainty that is problematic. Canadian media are asking what is Trudeau going to do, but how can we expect Canada or any other American partner to announce their next steps when we have no idea what Trump will do.

To be clear, the US is already at war in Syria--with Marine artillery and Rangers and Special Operations Forces on the ground and bombing ISIS from above.  But this step is now putting the US in a war-ish situation with Syria.  Whether it is war or not depends on the next steps.  And, yes, if the US goes to war against Syria, then those assets on the ground face far greater risks, the planes in the skies would now face Syrian anti-air defenses, and everything gets more complicated with Russians in harm's way.

Which is why the Obama Administration was reluctant to use force against Syria--the "then what" question matters a great deal.  The urge to do something is understandable, and perhaps this strike will stop Assad from using chemical weapons for a while.  But Syria will remain a killing field.  Let's be clear about that.

So, bombing Assad's forces, kind of, feels good, but unless it is part of a broader strategy, it will not mean that much.  But as everyone grapples with the uncertainty, lots of awkward questions and vague answers are to be expected. 

Why Safe Zones are Moronic, Oxy and Otherwise

Ok, that might be a bit strong,* but that's my first reaction to this:

Trump calls for safe zones in Syria.#StronglyEndorse

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 17, 2016

What is my problem with safe zones?  I have many problems:

1. Safe zones became targets in Bosnia, so that the collection of displaced people made genocide easier--Srebrenica.
2. Safe zones can be used by those we are helping to become bases for the opposition, which again makes them targets.
3. Here is the big one: safe zones would require..... combat.  We might also call it war.  It would require the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers to create spaces where the Syrian army cannot go AND where the Syrian artillery cannot fire.  How do you prevent Syrian artillery from firing into a safe zone?  Glad you asked.  Either by providing artillery that engages in counter-battery fire or by airstrikes.  How does that work if Russians happen to be near the Syrian artillery?  Are we prepared to kill Russians in order to create AND MAINTAIN safe zones.
4. That last bit is key--it is not just enough to create a space, which again requires war or an agreement, but it needs to be maintained for how long?  
5. Who will do this?  Who will send troops committed to fighting if necessary?  UNPROFOR did so very poorly in large part because the UN was unwilling to approve of the use of force AND countries that had sent troops were concerned about their troops becoming hostages.  So, who sends troops to Syria to create and maintain safe zones, including doing some significant combat?  The US?  Nice to volunteer the US to do this, but the last time the US intervened unilaterally in an Arab state, folks got upset.  The UN?  Nope, not with the Russians having a veto.  NATO?  It is already occupied with the Eastern Front, and many members are busy in Iraq.  Not a lot of spare capacity.  Turkey?  Oh sure, Turkey is easy to work with these days.  Arab countries?  Um, not great partners either. 

So, sure, Trump likes the phrase, but I am sure the US military is not nostalgic for the glory days of safe zones.  I am sure once General SecDef Mattis educates the new President, Trump's enthusiasm will go away.

Anyhow, hope is not a plan, edition 712.

* some credit to Doug Benson who refers to Safe House the movie as being neither Safe nor a House.

Do MOAR in Syria

There are plenty of smart, very frustrated folks in the US State Department who apparently want President Obama to do more in Syria: to engage in airstrikes against Assad's forces and not just ISIS's.  I get that, and I get that Assad is the key problem in all of this--that he has killed far more people than ISIS AND his brutality is ISIS"s best recruiting tool.

BUT

Since Russia is providing air support for Assad, attacking Assad might just lead to more confrontations in the skies between US and Russian aircraft. Indeed, these folks are aware of this:

The memo acknowledged that military action would have risks, not the least further tensions with Russia, which has intervened in the war on Mr. Assad’s behalf and helped negotiate a cease-fire. Those tensions increased on Thursday when, according to a senior Pentagon official, Russia conducted airstrikes in southern Syria against American-backed forces fighting the Islamic State.

The State Department officials insisted in their memo that they were not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia,” but rather a credible threat of military action to keep Mr. Assad in line.

Um, some magical thinking here--we don't want more tensions with Russia, we just want to be striking those that Russia is supporting.  Is Syria worth the risks of US-Russian conflict?  Sorry, but no. 

What we have learned from the past 15 years of intervention is that coherent local allies with compatible interests are key ingredient in reaching some level of success.  Any of those here?  No.  Maybe earlier?  Not so sure.

All I know is that making threats without really being able to back them up is a mistake Obama has already made in Syria (chemical weapons anyone?), so he is not going to repeat that.  If Hillary Clinton wants to do this next year, then she can do so.  But this current President has been burned by those who have advocated for the use of coercive diplomacy--threats via air strikes--in Syria and also has found past interventions to be far more problematic than advocates of said interventions have recommended.

Oh, a side note: I have seen safe havens bandied about again.  Unless one wants to create killing fields a la Srebrenica, safe havens require someone, which would end up being the US, to go to war--to push back forces and keep them back to create a relatively safe space in Syria.  So, if you want a safe haven, just go ahead and advocate war.  Otherwise, you safe haven fans are trying to fool everyone else in addition to yourselves.

And, yes, I used to be an advocate of intervention (in some cases, not all), but I have a learning curve.

Trudeau's New Anti-ISIS Policy

The new policy is entirely unsurprising even if it is, um, not entirely coherent.
Taking the CF-18s out meets the campaign promise, but is poorly explained.
Keeping the Auroras (recon) and Polaris (refueling) planes means Canada is doing stuff that is valued by the allies and is helpful ... by facilitating the bombing done by others.
Training the Iraqis and Kurds more than they have been doing so thus far?  Sure. 

The key problem in all of this is that we still don't have a good explanation for this stance.  Saying that bombing is good in the short term but not long term does not really explain why Trudeau opposed the bombing when it started.  It worked in the short term by containing and reversing ISIS's gains.  Ooops.  And if it does not make sense in the long term, why support the allied effort to bomb?  As others have argued, Canada is now doing everything in the bombing campaign except for dropping bombs. 

My problem is not with the actual policies but with the explanations.  If Trudeau is just trying to keep a campaign promise, he still needs a better explanation.  And there are abundant ones out there:

• that any military effort is costly, so it makes to develop the mix that provides the best effects for the dollars and that to train more means we need to bomb less--due to budget constraints.
• that the CF-18s are already at the end of their lives so we need to be careful about overusing them (given the need to do more flying over the Baltics thanks to Russia).  Flying less over Syria/Iraq now means that they can keep flying while we figure out how to replace them. 
• that much of the bombing in the near future will be in the cities of Iraq, and we do not want to have our pilots responsible for civilian casualties.  We would rather train the local forces to be more discriminating.  Not a great answer, but not an awful one either.

None of these explanations are super happy, but they do make sense in the larger scheme of things.  A pacifist answer will not, ahem, fly with Canadians (see recent surveys favoring Canadian participation in bombing) especially after the attacks in Ottawa in October of 2014.  The short run vs. long argument is problematic because every day we live in the short run....

But to be clear, the Conservatives are going to say a lot of stuff about this, and they will benefit from having a short memory.   How so?  They will forget that they, the Conservatives, ran Canada out of Kandahar while the allies were still fighting and taking casualties in Afghanistan.  That was far more problematic than this--a battlegroup and the rest of the stuff was far more valuable than 6 CF-18s.

So, expect much histronics.  I wish either party or both would take a mature stance on this issue, but as my new book depicts, expecting such is unrealistic.  

Is Impossible Too Strong?

I used the word "impossible" in a short twitter conversation to discuss Syria.  Was/is intervention in Syria impossible?  Well, it is a pretty strong word, and depends on the goal, of course.  Self-sustaining Syrian government?  Um, impossible?  Saving lots of lives?  Hmmmm.

When I say impossible or nearly so, it is because it would require some random actor* to do the following:

• Convince Russia and Iran to stop supporting Assad.  All we know about the international politics of intervention is that when outsiders pour in support on opposing sides, the conflict endures, which implies more casualties.  So, we need to get the folks who are supporting Assad to switch sides.  To be clear Assad is killing more Syrians than ISIS, so if you want to save lives ....   
• Figure out which local ally is going to have heft domestically and have interests that line up with the outside supporters.  Given what we know what happens when there are more veto players, um, not good. 
• Find some kind of interest that will justify for the audiences at home (that is, within random actor x) the tax dollars, the loss of life, etc. that the intervention will cost.  
• Staying power: any intervention in Syria would require not just a quick invasion, but an occupation/peacekeeping effort that would take at least twenty years (see Afghanistan).

By themselves, meeting any of these conditions is really, really hard.  Let's say that each has a 10% chance of happening, which might seem too unlikely or too likely, but take it as a guess.  Then admit that these are jointly necessary.  That success will not happen unless each and everyone of these conditions are met.  They may not be sufficient, but I think they are all necessary.  So, 10% * 10% *10%  *10% = .01%.  Good news, intervention to stop the bloodshed is not impossible.  Just very, very unlikely. 

*  And don't kid yourselves: that random actor is the US.  Nobody else has the capabilities to do the job.  It could be the US+ as in NATO or as in US and coalition of the willing, but nothing meaningful can happen without the US. 

US SF and Syria

I was on TV last night to discuss why the US is sending some Special Forces (the Army guys who are part of the larger SOF community) to Syria and whether this represented mission creep.  People love to bring up mission creep because it is scary.  So much so that it was my costume last year:

The sign says Op Enduring Mission

After all, what can 50 or so SF guys (not yet gender-integrated) can do?  Well, 100 or so helped to bring down the Taliban with heaps of air support and allies on the ground, but Assad ISIS has proven to be a bit more robust.  So, here are some random thoughts about this:

• The coalition bombing campaign (unlike the Russian one) has been constrained by the limited ability to discern ISIS targets from civilians and from local allies.  So, having eyes on the ground could help provide better targeting information (even though, yes, recent events in Afghanistan indicate this is not perfect).  
• The local allies may be more focused on Assad and his allies and less on ISIS given that the Syrian government forces have been far more destructive, killing more civilians, than ISIS.  For them, ISIS might very well be the lesser of two evils.  It may be that the 50 SF guys might be willing to be the force multipliers that they are only when the targets are ISIS.
• Perhaps this is an effort to respond to the Russian bombing campaign--that the Russians will now have to consider whether they can target the anti-regime forces since they might have Americans sprinkled among them.  Same for the Turks as they have been bombing our Kurdish allies.
• Maybe the Obama government just was worn down by the "do more" crowd at home.  Not sure why this would be the case since Obama has a year left and does not care that much about the escalation crowd.  

What effect will this have?  I have no idea.  It probably will improve the performance of our local allies, but as I keep reminding folks--the people on the ground have their own interests and incentives.  The Russians are learning that now in Ukraine and in Syria.  We should have learned it by now in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Indeed, I am pretty sure Obama's hesitancy on all of this has much to do with this exact problem--that the people on the ground will do their own bidding, not his.

I am not all that hopeful about negotiations since none of the local actors were involved.  And I just don't see Assad stepping down just because the Russians might want to move on.  That would be swell, but also not sure it would fix much.  Anyhow, it is unlikely. 

So, the best answers to give to the media are: I don't know, maybe, and Happy Halloween.

Questions About US ISIS Policy

Sending advisers to Iraq and Syria?  Of the list of options, this may not be the best nor the worst, but probably will join the list of the mildly effective at best.

I am not so worried about Americans on the ground abetting ISIS's recruitment since I have yet to hear that ISIS has had a problem recruiting.  On the other hand, if someone tells me that ISIS has had problems recruiting, then I would advise against anything that would help them. 

Sending in Special Ops to advise the Kurds and other elements of the Syrian opposition might deter air strikes on them by the Turks and Russians (respectively).  Which would be a good thing.  On the other hand, it might not.  And then what?  That is the part that bothers me. 

The Possession Arrow Goes To?

I cannot help but get really dark and cynical about stuff sometimes.  As the Russians have overflown Turkish territory in their efforts to help Assad against the various (mostly non-ISIS) rebels, the question of how should/will Turkey respond arises.  And my first, gut, response is: isn't the possession arrow pointing at NATO? 

In non-NBA basketball, jump balls only occur at the beginning of the game.  Otherwise, possession goes to the team that did not get it the last time--as demarcated by the possession arrow.  How does this apply here?

Well, the last plane (MH17) was shot down by the Russians, so isn't it a member of NATO's turn to shoot down a Russian plane?  Yes, that is mighty dark and bitter--that we can/should trade off catastrophic decisions.  My turn, your turn, my turn again. 

But if there is a country on the planet that has the least amount of legitimacy in griping about getting a plane shot down, right now that would be Russia, eh?  Food for thought?  Only if you like bitter gristle.

Do More? Do More What?

I got into a twitter conversation with a frustrated friend of mine who is appalled by the loss of life in Syria.  He is frustrated that we are not doing more to stop the bleeding.  My response: tell me what we could do.  I have long argued here that the Mideast is the land of lousy policy alternatives and that the key lesson from the past 15 years of war there is of humility.  That the locals have far stronger incentives and any solution that is lasting requires the local folks do all the heavy lifting--governing, providing security, etc. 

Anyhow, I thought to reply today in two ways: consider my war record and then consider what can be done now. 

• Iraq 2003: I was against the war.  Knew the folks behind it were bad at their jobs, saw it as a distraction from Afghanistan, thought it was just a bad idea.
• Iraq 2007 surge: I think I was ambivalent because I bought the COIN logic but distrusted the Bush administration.
• Afghanistan surge 2010: I was weakly for it, as it seemed like we owed it to ourselves and to Afghanistan to try to do it right--commit the resources that it needed and give it a chance.  Much ambivalence because Karzai and Pakistan were doing best to undermine the effort.
• Libya: I was for it, since there seemed to be a viable actor on the ground to whom we could give air support.  Ooops.
• Iran: folks in Bush administration kept leaking plans for bombing, and I kept being opposed.
• Syria: largely opposed because I just didn't see a way through that didn't require a 10-20 year commitment that was simply not in the cards.  Also, remember, it blew up as the US was still heavily committed/exhausted by Afghanistan and had just left Iraq.

So, what can we do in Syria now?  Any real intervention that would stop Assad from killing people and stop ISIS from killing people would require the US to kill a lot of people.  Yes, the US because no one else has enough deployable troops to make a difference except for ... Turkey (which seems to be intent on killing Kurds more than anything else).  Invading Syria would be hard work, but might be do-able.  But keeping it at peace?  That would require a large occupation force for how long?  And how many casualties would the American people tolerate? 

Syria would be a very complicated peace-enforcing/state-building mission that would be very, very expensive and very, very violent.  Would the outcome be better than the current one?  I am not so sure.  So, we could get a high level of violence, perhaps more in the form of car bombs and IEDs and sniping than barrel bombs, but with outsiders paying a far higher price.

As always, it comes down to politics, and I just don't see a political settlement at the moment and little that outsiders can do to foster one given that Assad is fighting for his life with the help of Iran and Russia and that ISIS is not going to go away very easily.

Outsiders can do more to relieve the suffering of those who flee.  But what else can we do?

• No Fly Zone?  Right now the air campaign against ISIS in Syria is facilitated by Assad's willingness to let this happen.  If we want to shoot down Syrian planes and helicopters, the airspace gets more dangerous.  That is ok if you acknowledge the tradeoff, but it is a cost to doing business differently.
• Safe havens?  Would require some conquest to establish "safe" places, and we learned from Bosnia that save havens become targets and resolve very little.
• Attack Assad?  We could launch strikes and perhaps land troops to get rid of the Assad regime, as Assad is the best recruiter ISIS has.  But then what?  ISIS takes over since our moderate opposition folks have not really amounted to anything there.
• Conquer and occupy?  Thanks but no thanks.

So, the problem is not that there are lousy policy alternatives but that the various choices are awful, awful, awful.  And none are attractive enough that leaders can build domestic and international coalitions to sustain such efforts.

There are limits to power.  It is time we acknowledge that.

Are We Winning Yet?

Good news: US Special Ops raids ISIS in Syria, frees an enslaved woman.
Bad news: Iraq lost Ramadi to ISIS.


So, are we winning or losing?  There are a few ways to answer this, but my overwhelming urge is to ask for patience and skepticism of all claims.  Why?  Because wars are complicated things, especially wars of this kind, where the daily news tends not to be a good barometer of progress.  Were the Nazis winning on Dec 20th, 1944?  Well, no.  The Battle of the Bulge was a setback, but by that time, Germany's future was already determined.  The only question was really where the line would be drawn between the Soviet occupation and Western occupation.  I can only imagine the abuse Ike would have gotten on twitter on June 15th: sure, you landed the troops on Normandy, but they are stuck, so #epicfail #Ikeisanidiot etc.

So, the US and its allies seem to be getting better intel if they can find the guy they sought with no serious casualties.
But the Iraq training/mentoring effort clearly has not had enough time or size to make that much of a difference, I think.

Of course, the key to all of this is not how many guns are in the hands of "our friends" but the politics of the place.  And that, alas, is not going well, at least as far as we can tell from here.  The Shia dominated government has not made a deal with the Sunnis ... worse, the government has become more dependent on the Shia militias and Iran.  This makes it harder for any Sunnis fed up with ISIS to switch sides.  No credible commitments made by the Iraq government means no flipping by the Sunnis, which means that the bad guys have easy recruitment and we may not get as much actionable intel.

In war, it is always about politics but much more so in counter-insurgency.  So, yeah, skepticism is the order of the day. 

Figuring Out My Syria Stance

I was on the radio this morning talking about the Canadian parties and where they stand on Syria/Iraq and the expansion of the mission.  I indicated that the Liberals are in a difficult spot, stuck between a Conservative party that is pushing for force to be used and a New Democrat Party focused on non-violent means.  The Liberals want voters next fall from the right and the left, and any move here will antagonize one side or another.  Sucks to be in middle.

But to be fair, this is a really hard policy problem: should Canada be dropping bombs on Daesh in Iraq and Syria? To what end?  I have been ambivalent so I am using this post to figure out my stance.  The focus here is on expanding to Syria, as it is the real question du jour, but many of the arguments apply to bombing Iraq as well.

Pro's

• Striking Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/IS) in Syria will make it harder for them to expand their territory in both Syria and Iraq. 
• Causing Daesh to lose some territory is a major defeat for them as their rhetoric and strategy have focused on momentum and inevitability.
• Helps US with "low density, high demand" assets.  Not the CF-18s but the Auroras and refueling aircraft.  Helping an ally in difficult times is a good thing.
• But it is not going to get Canada anything in its relations with the US if there are offsetting domestic dynamics--Keystone pipeline, for example.

Con's

• Hurting Daesh in Syria helps Assad.  So, hurting one set of genocidaires assists another.  
• The risk that a plane might get shot down or fail, leading to the capture of a pilot by ... barbarians.   
• Syria has air defenses that have not been knocked out.  
• So far, Syria has implicitly cooperated with the US and its Arab allies. No reason to see this change. If it does, Canada can leave Syrian air space.
• Being so very visible in this fight (only non-US Western country striking Syria) probably makes Canada a more likely target for terrorism by Islamist extremists.
• To be clear, I don't believe that Canada's foreign policy should be held hostage due to fears of retaliation.  It is a con, but not one that is large in my calculus.
• Money spent on this effort means less money for the Canadian Forces to do something else.
• What else?  Training and maintenance. Harper is not sending the CF to do peacekeeping someplace else, so no false choices between this and DRC or whatever.

 Complications:

• Responsibility to Protect [R2P] is kind of moot here.  Why?  Because it would imply helping the Syrian people with their biggest threat--Assad!  Um, yeah.  Even Lloyd Axelworthy, father or patron saint of R2P, is not saying that R2P applies in Syria.
• Talk of victory via bombing (by Canadian Minister of National Defence Kenney) is silly.  We cannot bomb Daesh into defeat.  That is the job of people on the ground.  
• International law?  I am not an expert on such stuff, but I have never found compelled by the argument that one needs a UN Security Council resolution for doing something serious in the world. Why? Because it means that one's foreign policy is subject to vetoes by Russia and China. 

Non-Complications

• Exit strategy is missing?  Yes, in the case of Syria, there is no clear strategy to win.  Bombing
  
  will not do it.  In Iraq, one can hope that the Shia government finally figures out that lasting stability requires a credible arrangement with the Sunnis.  If the Sunnis switch sides, then Daesh will have a very difficult time.   In Syria?  Not so much.  But it is very easy for Canada to leave.  Canada can say it has done what it can and put the 69 SOF back on a plane home. The logistics people are in Kuwait and can come and go at the government's whim.  The planes can obviously fly home.  This is not Kandahar.
• Mission creep?  Yes, expanding to Syria is some creep, but it is not a radical expansion of effort.  So far, no more SOF, no more planes.  So, this is a re-allocation of effort and not an increase in the personnel or expenses.  The risk is somewhat larger but not radically so.  This is not an enduring ground campaign.

Ug, no wonder I have been reluctant to take a definitive position on this.  I do think containing Daesh is worth some effort, and this is what Canada is doing--making some effort.  The risks and costs are real but not large.  The Daesh vs. Assad problem is real, but even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice (all Canadian strategy should be based on Rush songs). So, count me in favor of Canada's continuing/new mission to engage in air strikes and provide key "enablers" (SOF in Iraq, Auroras and refueling over both Syria and Iraq)

Canada Expands Its War: Qomments

The Nerdist broadcast has a thing called Qomments--questions and comments.  Which pretty much captures what this post on the news du jour. 

• Does it matter that Canada has no legal cover for this?  This is the first time I know of (and I am no Canadian military historian) where Canada is engaged in combat (by planes, if not by SOF-ish adventures) without either an international resolution (UN or NATO or both) or an invitation by the country to be protected. 
• Is the kind of bombing in Syria different than that which is going to happen now in Iraq?  That is, not that there are no targets left in Iraq but if the fighting shifts into the cities, such as Mosul, there may be different risks--more risks of hitting civilians.  Is the Syrian air campaign seen as cleaner?  I have no idea.
• The plan in Iraq is clear but hard--try to get the existing government to make deals with the Sunnis that bind them better than the last time.  Not easy at all but an exit path.  Bombing helps keep ISIS down, but lasting stability requires a deal of some kind.  Syria?  I have no idea.  Bomb ISIS helps Assad, but not bombing ISIS in Syria helps ISIS in Iraq.  Damn. 
• I hate talk of exit strategies because it means you are far more focused on the getting out rather than the doing.  But there is some need for some idea of what the strategy is here besides whacking moles.  Attrition is probably not going to work too well.
• I do prefer renewing this thing a year at a time rather than every six months.  Not just because the media time suck is then less frequent, but because none of the actors involved benefit from the spin cycle being that frequent.
• What will happen to public opinion now that the mission is expanded to Syria?  The recent poll does not ask this.  Given that ISIS is mighty unpopular here, especially after the events of October in Quebec and Ottawa, the best guess is that the public is not going to mind so much as long as it does not mean much more risk.  Which gets back to whether the air strikes in Syria are qualitatively different than those in Iraq?
• I am not thrilled that there is not much of a learning curve when it comes to the language about ground forces: "Canada will not be participating in ground combat operations."  I prefer the American language about enduring offensive operations.  CANSOF are going to be doing combat, as they have already done so.  They have fought when fired upon and put themselves into places where such stuff happens.  They have participated in the air campaign by lasing ISIS targets, which means they are abetting combat from the ground.  So, "ground combat ops" is a lousy description of what they are not doing.  What they are not doing is engaging in an enduring offensive effort.  If they want to foreswear raids (something that the American language clearly permits), then they can say that.  Oy.

Just one key certainty: humility.  Canada's contribution is meaningful but it is not going to swing outcomes by themselves.