Senate [Middle East discussion] Syria's civil war, Egypt's elections, cyberwar with Iran, and more

Iran certainly has an interest in at least sowing doubt about whether they have a nuclear program (there is a term for this, but I forget it). They've seen how the United States and other nations have dealt with Pakistan and North Korea on one side, and how that differs from Iraq and Libya (after Qaddafi gave up his nuclear program). Still, the intelligence agencies best estimate is the Iranians have put their program on hold back in like 2003 or so. On a related note, did anyone else read the New York Times piece about the cyberwar being conducted against Iran? Fascinating.

On an unrelated note, Mubarak got a life sentence. Apparently it may not stand though.

Misinformation?

No no no, I meant some pretentious International Relations term . And I was unclear in my prior post. I meant they have a desire to deliberately make it unclear what they are doing, even if they aren't pursuing a nuclear weapon. I think its called Strategic Ambiguity or something.

This was in my state newspaper earlier this week. I feel that whilst it probably doesn't reach Senate standard of discussion, it has to be posted.

With regards to the negotiations and the op-ed, and the responses that have been to the op-ed, my understanding of what he meant was : If you want to avoid war, you should give it time. If you don't care about avoiding it, then it makes no difference. But from where I sit, if you see some kind of sabotage military action as inevitably necessary at some point, you have nothing to lose by giving diplomacy all the time and effort it requires in the meantime, until you reach that point. I don't see any downsides. There's no logical argument against diplomacy to be made here. If the timebomb is ticking, surely you can pull the plug with your last ditch military sabotage at 5 seconds left, when that becomes necessary. In the meantime, the bomb still is 5 minutes away from detonation, and you can still figure out a way to defuse it. There's nothing keeping you from doing what you need to do at 5 seconds left. But as of now, the counter is still 5 minutes away.

The challenge here is not to go to war. That's easy. Things are going in that direction by themselves. The challenge is in de-escalating the situation.

Keep in mind also that Israel defines "threat" as "nuclear weapons capable", not "nuclear weapons armed". Well, ever since Iran made its first enrichment, it has had the expertise and ability to be "nuclear weapons capable". There's really no way of going back from "capable", unless any and all reactors in the country are destroyed and anyone with expertise is killed.

Russia says they'll never agree to intervention in Syria, and that there is no alternative to what is happening.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/09/world/meast/syria-unrest/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Russia seems to forget that Americans and Europeans can act without the approval of the UN, if they feel they must. But will they?

U.S. cyberattacks increase likelihood of Iran developing nukes, experts warn

Excerpt:

The bolded part here is really key. If one looks into the "outreach" of 2009, one will find that 'half-assed' doesn't even begin to describe it.

I think the Libya intervention had only slightly more support.



Russia is sending military equipment and aircraft to Syria (why??).

Assad has also begun using tanks and helicopters to attack civilians in suspected rebel strongholds, and the UN is now calling it a civil war.

Libya had the full and vocal support of both the EU and Arab League. Everyone privately agrees Syria is bad, but no one is saying much on the record. Probably because it will be a huge disaster.

The Arab League has kicked out Syria, and some members have been calling for military action for months. The EU is preoccupied with the debt crisis at the moment, but they don't seem opposed to an intervention.

How would it be a disaster?

Because basically every major issue in the entire region is at play in a serious way in Syria, with a real potential to spill over into surrounding countries. Doing something wrong will set everything aflame. No one wants to take responsibility for dealing with such a complicated reconstruction on their own. So until everyone agrees to do something together, I would expect no one to do anything at all.

Ghost--It doesn't get much play in the media since our tax dollars aren't tied up in it a la Iraq, but Libya has basically devolved into a hellhole of sectarian violence since Qadaffi was deposed. This idea that if these despotic regimes are deposed then western-style liberal democracy will suddenly flourish has to stop.

IThe violence has already spilling over into Lebanon and Turkey. It's a civil war, and it is already destabilizing the region, and will continue to as long as it goes on. I don't think the US should act alone, but we don't need Russia and China. George H.W. Bush got the approval of the UN to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, but he would have gone in even without their approval.

Libya has always been tribal, and Gadhafi even set up a unique form of government to adapt to the tribal arrangments. I would still say Libya is a success, they succeeded in overthrowing a mass-murdering dictator and his regime.

Syria, on the other hand, has always been civilized. And while I'd prefer some kind of democratic arrangement, like what's happening with Egypt and Tunisia, I'd just like them to overthrow their mass-murdering dictator and his regime. And it makes great strategic sense in isolating Iran.





I also don't get why Russia is actively arming Assad.

The entire Syrian state is built around the Assad family. Taking him down means basically ripping apart the entire political system and then trying to rebuild from scratch. A single one of his cousins (Makhlouf) controls literally 60% of the entire Syrian economy on his own. Don't kid yourself about how much of anything functional will be left after he's gone. The only real hope is an Egyptian style maneuver where the rest of the inner circle is convinced they can survive by dumping the one who has become the focus of all the international/public scorn.

As to why Russia is arming Assad, it's quite simple. The two regimes are allies. The USSR and Syria have a relationship as old and reliable (though not nearly as rhetorically important) as the one between the US and Israel. Having invested hugely in building links to the government, they don't want to lose decades worth of work by having a new regime take over. Especially since the replacements would almost certainly be unappreciative of the Assads' main foreign benefactors. In addition to this, Syria was a friendly warm water port (again, a goal in Russian foreign policy for several centuries) and a site of major business investment. If there's any chance Assad can survive this, the Russians want to give it to him.

This also points out why this is all so complicated. As you've just noted, the Russians are supplying weapons. Iran has reportedly parked their warships in Syrian harbors. Both are fairly unsubtle signs that the two countries see major foreign policy interests at stake. They aren't going to sit idly by if the US and Saudis aid the rebels in trying to take down the current regime. So the question everyone has to ask themselves is whether they are ready to engage not merely the Syrian army, but essentially dive into a huge regional proxy war. And how would you ever end something like that? The alternative is for all the interested parties to sit down before hand, figure out what's at stake, and what an acceptable ending arrangement for everybody is. It's why I keep saying the cold feet are understandable. The situation is bad now, and as it deteriorates further the relative costs of intervention will lessen. But trying to make moves here could be wildly hellish.

I think John Bolton is trying to win a contest of "who's the biggest ***hole in America". And I think he has good chances of winning it.

Among his fever fantasies is this:

Somebody hand this guy some lotion and tissue.

Syria was a civilized place for thousands of years before Assad took over, too. There would be some temporary chaos, but a new order would eventually rise out of it, hopefully a more democratic one. Or at least one without a mass-murdering dictator and his family in charge.

If Russia is going to be so contrary to human rights and US policy, and we know Iran already is, then that's all the more reason to intervene in Syria. The Syrian people are against Assad, it would probably be over in a year, maybe less, they just need some cover. Another no-fly and no-drive zone, targeted against forces loyal to Assad. Negotiations have been happening for over a year, Russia has made a few gestures but has mostly become even more antagonistic over this, and people are dying in real time. If we intervened in Libya, why not in Syria, which is of even more strategic sense? We need to move before it's too late, Assad has proven that negotiations won't work. Russia has said that they will "never" agree to intervention. We will not come to an agreement with Russia or Syria on this. We need to either build a coalition and act, or watch them die. Russia and Assad have now ruled out all other options.

I can very much sympathize with your sentiments. It's an awful situation, war crimes are being committed, and from any even remotely humane or moral standpoint, it's easy to see why someone should step in. But quite frankly, on the question of the intersection between morality and government policies, we already have a thread for that. This kind of stuff is the whole reason we say governments are amoral.

A Syrian intervention would make far less strategic sense than the Libyan one did. As Obama said in his speech at the time explaining his response to the Arab Spring, Libya was probably the lowest hanging fruit of all. To say we couldn't participate there would have been basically ruling out any future humanitarian interventions anywhere. Syria, by contrast, is one of the hardest, for all the reasons we've been talking about.

Finally, we (in this thread) should probably temper our tone somewhat. The US and Saudis did something quite similar in Bahrain to what Iran and Russia are joining to do in Syria. Lurking behind this issue of democratization is a re-ordering of the basic power hierarchy and community influence in the Middle East. Iran is pushing for democracy in countries with Shia majorities and supporting autocratic regimes led by Shias. The Saudis are pushing for democracy in countries with Sunni majorities and supporting autocratic regimes led by Sunnis. There's not a great deal of moral high ground here. Note that I'm not trying to completely equivocate, but simply suggest that the US and its allies don't have clean hands.

RE: John Bolton. That guy is an idiot and an incredibly hawkish. I never understood how anyone credibly thought he would make a good UN ambassador. But then, I'd never seen why you'd want to take any sort of foreign policy advice from someone like that at all.

Egypt's Supreme Court has ruled that all the parliamentary elections over the last several months are "unconstitutional," giving supreme power to the military. The court also ruled that Mubarak's Prime Minister can run for President.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/06/2012614172410271831.html

Two days before the country is set to elect a new president, Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court has ruled that the Islamist-dominated parliament must be dissolved and that former regime figures must be allowed to hold political office, effectively approving the candidacy of presidential hopeful and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.

Thursday's rulings, accompanied by an announcement that Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) would now oversee the writing of a new constitution, immediately raised fears of a thinly veiled military takeover.

Mohammed el-Beltagy, the vice president of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), called the sequence of events a "fully fledged coup" in a post on his Facebook page.

The Brotherhood's senior leadership reportedly gathered to decide on an official response, including whether to keep their candidate Mohammed Morsi in the race against Shafiq.

The Brotherhood may also decide to reject the court's decision entirely. Saad el-Katatni, an FJP member and speaker of parliament, said recently that Egypt's interim constitution gave no institution the authority to dissolve parliament.

At issue on Thursday was the way in which the People's Assembly was elected, which involved a hybrid ballot, two-thirds of which was meant for political parties and one-third for independents.

The Brotherhood pushed the military to change the rules at the last moment, opening the independent seats for parties, thus hemming in the power of former regime elites to run for election.

But that push now seems to have backfired, with the court ruling that the change to the hybrid system unfairly discriminated against independents.

It relied on that principle to declare those seats invalid, and an election rerun necessary.

At the heavily guarded court before the ruling was delivered, a few hundred protesters had gathered in the hot midday sun to call for Shafiq's disqualification.

"[Shafiq] is part of the counter-revolution," said Hana Mohammed, a 51-year-old housewife and protester. "If Shafiq becomes president, that means there was no revolution."

Many protesters handed out stickers encouraging bystanders to boycott the vote or spoil their ballots, while others waved the flag of Egypt's revolutionary socialist movement.

At least twice as many military and riot police armed with shields and batons and backed by machine gun-mounted armoured personnel carriers faced the protesters from behind a barbed-wire fence.

"It's not a good sign that the Supreme Constitutional Court is supposed to be independent and is guarded by state security and the army like this," said Wissam Mohammed, a 26-year-old translator and political researcher.

[article continues at the link above]

To J-w... I still don't get how intervening in Syria would not make strategic sense. I also know what the Iranians and Saudis are trying to do, and I hope both are eventually toppled by their own revolutions. The US ignoring Bahrain, and letting the Saudis take over, was terrible. But Syria is not Bahrain, we have a real geopolitical incentive to intervene against Assad. The same reason why we turned a blind eye to Bahrain could be used to become active in Syria, the interests of both human rights advocates and cynical geopolitical experts can converge on the issue of Syria. Will it be tougher than Libya? Probably. But it's definitely possible, even very likely, that the rebels will succeed in toppling the Assad regime if we intervene... and with huge benefits that are well worth the risk.

Here is the simplest, if simplistic, way of looking at it: what does Libya border and what does Syria border?

Is there significant socio-political fallout from Syria lashing out at neighbors compared to Libya (if they even had the capability to do so)?