It’s “Third Force” Time in Syria

[Subsequent to e-mailing this piece to China Matters subscribers, I went back and added a paragraph about the "28 pages" and the legal jeopardy they might pose to Saudi Arabia in US courts, and some thoughts about the "anti-IS campaign" as a harbinger of a new US approach to pursuing limited goals in the region. CH, 9/16/2014]

Ever since President Obama gave his crISis ™ speech, I’ve pushed back against what I considered to be simplistic predictions of the effort’s doom, along the lines of “air power cannot occupy” and “arming anti-Assad ostensibly moderate Syrian rebels is always an exercise in futility”. 

 

On September 12, I wrote:

The depressing part of the US strategy is that, as far as I can tell, it views the anti-IS campaign as a Trojan Horse, a chance to favor, strengthen, and advance anti-Assad forces.  So instead of cooperating with literally the only Middle Eastern state willing to field an army against IS—Syria—the US is refusing to work with Syria and instead will train and equip an anti-Assad and anti-IS force, reportedly in Saudi Arabia, that is less of a US-backed militia of venal “insurgents” and more of a controlled and disciplined military strike force created, controlled, and deployed by the CIA and, unlike our most famous previous experiment in this vein, the Bay of Pigs invasion, this force will have lots and lots of airpower. 

The idea, presumably, is that as IS is pummeled by drones and air strikes (and its fleet of tanker trucks ferrying crude oil to Turkey is destroyed) and retreats, the US-backed force will advance and occupy the vacated territories before Assad can.  And hopefully, the force will attract the fairweather allies of IS who prefer a US paycheck and immunity from air strikes to getting plastered.  And then the US can orchestrate demands from a finally viable Syrian opposition for Assad to step down in the name of national unity, full US support, and an all-out war against IS.  Victory!

My admittedly imperfect knowledge of US government decision making implies to me that somebody had to bring President Obama a proposal like this for an American win in Syria—or at least a borderline plausible case for a chance for an American win in Syria--before he made the politically unpalatable decision to re-enter the Middle East quagmire.   

A clear harbinger of this approach was the statement by the Free Syrian Army that it would not join the anti-IS coalition.  You got that right.  Not join.  Even the FSA is totally getting its ass handed to it by IS and could certainly use some US help.

The group’s founder, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, stressed that toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is their priority, and that they will not join forces with US-led efforts without a guarantee that the US is committed to his overthrow.

Most likely, Colonel al-Asaad was justifiably suspicious of the new US initiative since it was clear that the CIA was already dealing and negotiating directly with his most viable and capable commanders to poach them from the FSA.

Patrick Cockburn had the story on September 9, with some help from McClatchy:

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), once lauded in Western capitals as the likely military victors over Mr Assad, largely collapsed at the end of 2013. The FSA military leader, General Abdul-Ilah al Bashir, who defected from the Syrian government side in 2012, said in an interview with the McClatchy news agency last week that the CIA had taken over direction of this new moderate force. He said that “the leadership of the FSA is American”, adding that since last December US supplies of equipment have bypassed the FSA leadership in Turkey and been sent directly to up to 14 commanders in northern Syria and 60 smaller groups in the south of the country. Gen Bashir said that all these FSA groups reported directly to the CIA.

Well, excuse me for a brief victory jig.  The fat lady has bawled her lungs out on this tune, fer sure.

From the Guardian on Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Dempsey’s testimony before Congress:

In Syria, the US is seeking to train “vetted” Syrian rebels to capture Syrian territory from Isis. Hagel and Dempsey acknowledged that an initial cohort of 5,000 Syrian opposition forces would not be ready until eight months at the earliest.

…

“Five thousand is not going to be able to turn the tide, we recognize that,” Hagel said. Neither he nor Dempsey ruled out requesting additional authorities and funding for building a Syrian proxy army in the future.

As for Assad, I think it’s pretty clear that if the strategy is “Isil-first”, it’s “Assad-second”:

[Dempsey] and Hagel demurred when asked by Senator John McCain…if the US’s new allies would receive American air cover if attacked by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. 

“We’re not there yet, but our focus is on Isil,” another name for Isis, Hagel said. 

Dempsey – whose resignation McCain has called for, owing to the general’s reluctance to use the US military against Assad –conceded that “if we were to take [fighting] Assad off the table, we’d have a much more difficult time” persuading Syrians to join the coalition, but said the administration nevertheless has an “Isil-first strategy”.

The Guardian, as I did, had a certain amount of difficulty coming up with the suitable nomenclature for this force.  I don’t think “proxy army” cuts it, because I expect this army, though composed of Syrians and not a US military unit, will be under the day to day command of the CIA and it will not be allowed to slip the leash and pursue its own political, strategic, and tactical agendas as happened with the feckless Free Syrian Army.

“Third Force” is perhaps the mot juste here.

I don’t necessarily think this strategy will work, and certainly has less chance of working than enabling an alliance with the three actors actually putting the famous “boots on the ground” and committing effective forces to battle IS in major engagements: the Syrian and Iranian governments and the Syrian Kurds.  We’re basically hoping that money, airstrikes, CIA direction, and fairy dust will push back IS enough for the US to turn its baleful attention to the Assad regime and demand regime change—cloaked in calls for a “government of national unity” as in Iraq—as the price for additional US anti-IS effort.

The U.S. has tried its luck with “Third Force” strategies before, but US backing, while ensuring short-term success, has often turned out to be the kiss of death for the local force’s legitimacy and ultimate viability.  Assad, ISIS, Iran, and Russia are all busily preparing counter-measures to make sure that the slowly-evolving US strategy doesn’t bury them.

But I think it’s an important reminder of how President Obama and government bureaucracies, indeed all bureaucracies, work.

Failed policies like the blunder of outsourcing the overthrow of Assad to jihadi-dominated rebels aren’t simply repackaged.  Not just because President Obama is a cerebral, failure-averse guy.  Also because there is a whole support network of government, military, and think tank planners whose job is to come up with a plausible plan that has some chance of success—even if the only reason it has a chance is because its infeasibility has not already been clearly demonstrated by prior failure.

It might also mean that the United States has decided to wean itself of its reliance on proxies and release of uncontrollable regional forces to remake the Middle East when the Powell Doctrine of massive, decisive US power could not be brought to bear, and use a limited force largely under its control to pursue, and maybe even achieve, limited goals. That will have certain implications for countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, which have relied on their willingness to do--or fund--America's ambitious dirty work in order to inflate their own regional stature.

So criticize President Obama’s plan all you want.  But if the critique is “this has failed before”, nobody will listen.  Because the whole point of this iteration is, if the United States does fail, it will fail in new and novel ways.  And the fact that the grinding process is scheduled for at least three years—and failure, if it does occur, will be delivered in a bloody package on the doorstep of presumptive next President Hillary Clinton—has perhaps not escaped President Obama.

As a P.S., since the China Matters crystal ball appears to be in reasonably good working order, I am beginning to think that the alliance between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may have reached its sell-by date.  A key indicator will be whether President Obama follows through on Candidate Obama's promise to release the 28 pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission Report.

The general outline of the redacted material is quite well-known and addresses the culpability of individuals and apparently officialdom in the KSA in the 9/11 attacks.  Since this material was considered to be embarrassing to the Bush administration, because of its close ties to Saudi Arabia and its willingness to let key Saudi figures escape the US via an emergency airlift to avoid FBI questioning, the unwillingness of the current administration to proceed with the release and, for one thing, stick it to Dick Cheney and his cynical and irresponsible criticisms of the Obama anti-terror policies, has been considered something of a mystery.

However, I suspect the key to the mystery is that Saudi Arabia formed a protective alliance with Israel, whose ability to get things done in Washington vastly exceeds that of "the Kingdom".  As I see it, the cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia is founded on a joint desire to keep Iran safely in pariah status, and away from a normal relationship with the United States, one that would push Israel and Saudi Arabia toward the periphery of US Middle East policies.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, determinedly stokes the crisis in Syria, since Iran's need to support Assad puts it at odds with the United States.  Israel beats the drum concerning Iran's nuclear threat and, I suspect, makes the case to the Obama administration that attention to the Wahabbist and anti-American excesses of the Saudi government--like the redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission report--would destabilize Saudi Arabia and give aid and comfort to Iran.

When one considers that throwing the 28 pages into the US anti-terrorist, criminal, and civil law mix might expose the Saudi government--and extremely wealthy and powerful members of the nation's elite--to imprisonment and literally hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties, it seems plausible that the Saudi government would want to keep a lid on the redactions despite Prince Bandar's public protestations to the contrary--and perceive further incentive for shaping its regional diplomatic and military strategy around an otherwise reckless anti-Iran/pro-Israel play.

Now, however, IS has slipped the leash in another bloody embarrassment for Saudi Arabia's brutal and inept campaign of regional subversion; the US fracking boom has convinced the United States that its energy security is no longer hostage to KSA and ostentatious groveling to an odious regime that beheads people for "sorcery" is no longer a US imperative; President Obama would like to see rapprochement with Iran as his legacy; and it is possible that Obama is also repelled by the base opportunism he was compelled to exhibit in the matter of the Israeli push into Gaza.  And of course, Barry and Bibi detest each other.

Maybe President Obama decides it's in America's interest to keep that Sword of Damocles hanging over Saudi Arabia, continuing to use the threat of releasing those pages to wring value from the Saudis.

But maybe, if President Obama thinks he can thread the needle, conclude the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and maybe even convince Iran to throw Assad under the bus at the cost of the deal!, he might decide it's time to pull the plug on a colossally toxic relationship with Saudi Arabia--a deadly folly punctuated by the 9/11 attacks and has encompassing 15 years, over two trillion dollars, and millions of shattered lives--and let those 28 pages find their way into the world.

Saudi Arabia Goes All In on Syria Regime Collapse With a Quiet Assist from the US

A year ago there was a certain amount of back and forth as to what it meant that Saudi Arabia had pushed Qatar out of the leadership position on Syria and whether the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was going to go along with the Syria peace process.

I was of the opinion that the Kingdom would go all in on regime collapse.  A shattered Syria was preferable to a Syria that was tottering along with foreign forbearance under Assad or some government of national reconciliation that included Ba'athists and had the Muslim Brotherhood (beloved by the Qataris and detested by the Saudis, as subsequent events in Egypt demonstrated to even the most casual observer) nose in the tent.

After all,chaos in Syria would deny that country to the MB and also have spillover effects into Iraq, which has already become a charnel house.  If anything, the budding US rapprochement with Iran would strengthen this tendency.  With direct US action off the table, the best way for Saudi Arabia to stick it to Iran was by deposing its vulnerable allies in Syria and Iraq, and by taking another swing at Hezbollah.

Well, according to Patrick Cockburn's recent piece in the Independent (which, for some reason, is in the comment section), Saudi support for regime collapse in Syria--and by that, I mean explicit government support, and not just a nod and a wink encouragement to well-heeled private Saudi citizens with an enthusiasm for foreign jihad--is pretty much a done deal:

The directors of Saudi policy in Syria – the Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, the head of the Saudi intelligence agency Prince Bandar bin Sultan and the Deputy Defence Minister Prince Salman bin Sultan – plan to spend billions raising a militant Sunni army some 40,000 to 50,000 strong.

Now we know why Saudi Arabia made the otherwise inexplicable decision to purchase over 15,000 TOW missiles from Raytheon.  TOW missiles are surface to surface wire guided missiles used by ground forces at short range over line of sight to take out tanks.  The most plausible place to use them is Syria.

Mr. Cockburn is of the opinion that the Saudis will screw it up.  Indeed, a certain contempt for Saudi Arabia's aspirations to Israel-like levels of skullduggery in manipulating events and advancing its interests in the Middle East through covert applications of violence seems to permeate the expert commentariat.

But I don't think victory is Saudi Arabia's priority.  Chaos is.  Chaos that bleeds the Syrian regime, bleeds Iran and, ironically, bleeds the violent jihadis who otherwise might find the corrupt and sclerotic Saudi kingdom a suitable focus for their militancy.

Over the next few months it will be interesting to see if a side product of US-Iran rapprochement (and conciliation with an offended and threatened Saudi Arabia) is a willingness by the US (and perhaps accepted as a matter of realpolitik) by Iran to keep the meatgrinder of insurrection churning in Syria as long and as fiercely as Riyadh wants it--with the US providing TOW missiles (if not the helicopter-killing surface to air missiles the insurgents crave) to keep things going.

From the War of 1812 to the War Against Obamacare: American Exceptionalism in Action

Is letting the government shut down going to get politicians in trouble?

That’s the fond hope of Democrats watching the Tea Party-powered Obamacare tantrum in Congress. 
  

Maybe.  Maybe not.

During the War of 1812, the Madison administration let the whole capital get burned down and suffered minimal political damage.

Instead, it was the hapless Federalists, who were right about the wrongness of the war, who were destroyed as a meaningful political force.

Modern historians seem to be at a bit of a loss as to what the War of 1812 was about.  Nominally, the war was about British maritime affronts—seizure of American merchant ships and impressment of sailors off American ships—relating to Great Britain’s global economic and military maneuverings against France during the Napoleonic Wars.

Actually, the Madison administration had been engaged in continual negotiations with Britain over these issues and, just before the US declared war, the British withdrew the noxious “Orders in Council” that had permitted its navy to feast on neutral US merchant shipping.  Even as the war continued, so did trade, with the British military machine in Europe hungry for supplies served by American merchants (largely, but not solely from New England) hungry for profit.

The actual bottom line was that there was an eager war party—the so-called “war hawks”—of the US western states, who made common cause with the pro-French and Anglophobic Virginia faction controlling the federal administration to stick it to John Bull.

Pro-British, pro-trade Federalists—concentrated in New England--vocally opposed the war, and pointed out its logical, strategic, and fiscal flaws.  More significantly, they viewed the war as a Republican political charade and refused to knuckle under to the “rally around the flag” rhetoric.  Federalists criticized the conduct of the war, dragged their feet in implementing measures relating to mobilizing and dispatching New England militias out of state, and convened the “Hartford Convention” in 1814 to coordinate New England’s pushback to the Madison administration and strive for a New England voice—preferably a New England minority veto—in national affairs.

The war was largely a ridiculous screw-up.  The greatest victory of US arms, the Battle of New Orleans, famously occurred after the peace treaty had already been negotiated in Ghent.

Ruinously expensive bounties (cash bonuses equivalent to a workingman’s annual salary and grants of 160 acres of land) had to be offered to fill the ranks with relatively unenthusiastic soldiers.  Initially, the US Army was terribly led and it was not until 1814 that US land forces gave a good account of themselves in some remarkably fierce but strategically inconclusive engagements along the US-Canada border.  Notably, the successful new commanders, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Harrison—both of whom subsequently rode their military successes into the White House—had demonstrated their leadership abilities and honed their skills during prior campaigns against the Indians.  (To me this demonstrates the old truism of the US military: that over the last two centuries, the effectiveness and credibility of US military might has relied to a certain extent on the continual presence of convenient, feisty, but underpowered enemies that can be beaten up at close and regular intervals to keep the military muscle well toned and ready for The Big One.)  

The Madison administration decided that escalation and mission creep were the panaceas for the military and political problems of the war, mounting “we will be welcomed as liberators” military campaigns against Canada that opened the Republicans up to extremely well-founded Federalist accusations that the war was not, as sold, a defensive war, but an opportunistic venture in partisan politics and empire building.

In the event, the Republican hope that Napoleon would kick England’s ass and drop Canada in the lap of the United States was disappointed.  Instead, 1813 saw a flood of British ships and troops (freed up by Napoleon’s defeat) to North America, driving the US government to consider conscription—regarded as the hallmark of Napoleonic tyranny—to get enough troops into the field.  The Madison administration was also compelled to make large investments in the US Navy to challenge British control of the seas, abandoning the Jeffersonian ideal of small coastal vessels in favor of a big, capable, and effective Hamiltonian fleet of frigates.

The Madison administration had taken on disastrous levels of debt in order to fund the war, whose duration and expense it had completely underestimated.  

An excellent account by Donald Hickey, The War of 1812—A Forgotten Conflict, provides this description of the state of affairs in early 1815:

“[The Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Dallas] sent two additional reports to Congress.  The first…outlined the Treasury’s problems in paying the national debt.  The second…contained Dallas’s estimates for 1815.  Disbursements for the year were expected to top $56,000,000 (including $15,500,000 merely to service the debt), while income—even with new taxes—would be a paltry $15,100,00.  This meant that the government would have to raise $40,900,000 through loans and treasury notes.

…Republicans were dumbfounded…After reading the report, [Speaker of the House John] Eppes ‘threw it upon the table with expressive violence’ and, turning to Federalist William Gaston, half in jest said: ‘Well, sir, will your party take the Government if we will give it up to them?”  “No, sir,” replied Gaston, “not unless you will give it to us as we gave it to you.” [page 247]

Thomas Jefferson offered his solution, issuing paper money, and told Madison: “[O]ur experience…has proved [paper money] may be run up to 2. Or 300 M[illion] without more than doubling…prices.”[246]  Considering that at the time US treasury securities was selling—not trading, but selling, straight out of the gate—at a 20% discount, the Sage of Monticello’s optimism seems misplaced.

Of course, as a debtor of long standing, Jefferson was well attuned to the inflation-loving attitude of the debt-loving (and bank-hating) Republican base, and hostile to the hard discipline of the financial markets and sound money championed by the Federalists.

Jefferson himself was something of a feckless amateur in economic affairs, personal as well as national, as this account of his indifferent management of his personal presidential finances reveals:

As he prepared to leave office, Jefferson was shocked to learn that by trusting “rough estimates in my head,” he had exceeded his salary by three to four months, which meant he had a debt of about $10,000 that had to be covered.

After the Library of Congress got torched by the British in 1814, Jefferson’s protégé, President Madison, thoughtfully replenished the nation’s strategic supply of books by purchasing Jefferson’s library for the sum of $23,950.  The Federalists, of course, were not interested in this piece of Republican self-dealing—especially since Jefferson had promised to donate his books to the nation at his demise at no charge and the nation perhaps had more pressing priorities than restocking the library.  One Federalist spluttered that Jefferson’s books would help disseminate his “infidel philosophy” and were “good, bad, and indifferent...in languages which many can not read, and most ought not.”  The measure passed narrowly, along partisan lines. 

The Library of Congress windfall might have assisted Jefferson in some of his temporary financial embarrassments (he immediately used the proceeds to pay off $15,000 in debts), but did not spare him the misery of dying in debt (after a dodgy scheme to maximize revenue from some property by awarding it as a prize in a state-sanctioned raffle fell through), leaving his heirs to liquidate his estate and sell off his real estate, art, chattels, and slave holdings to partially settle accounts.

Anyway, back to the War of 1812. 

In the end, the Republicans were forced to resort to that despised instrument of the Federalists, chartering a national bank to make sure, at the most vulgar level, that there was some bank out there that would have no choice but to buy government securities.

The Madison administration also botched the defense of the capitol—the panic-stricken encounter at Bladensburg, Virginia, was mockingly called “The Bladensburg Races” for the dearth of US valor displayed—and in August 1814 the British marched into Washington and burned the key edifices of the city to the ground.

Good lefties will recall that it was a distant ancestor of the late and lamented Alexander Cockburn, one Sir Admiral George Cockburn, who burned Washington.  Alexander Cockburn’s brother, the journalist Patrick Cockburn, provided an appreciation of his ancestor and his handiwork to the Independent in 2012.  

Mr. Hickey provides a helpful guide to the proper pronunciation (“Co-burn”) and remarks: “Cockburn was a bold and able officer in the prime of a long and distinguished naval career.”  [153]   

Contemporary US opinion cared to differ, especially after his forces laid waste to the Chesapeake region unopposed for 12 days in April 1813: “’Cockburn’s name was on every tongue, with various particulars of his incredibly coarse and blackguard misconduct.”   At the fall of Washington, Cockburn refreshed himself at the White House with the supper that President Madison had hurriedly abandoned, and then put the building to the torch.  British forces also fired the Capitol, the Treasury, and the building housing the state and war departments.  

The Admiral displayed the trademark Cockburnian combativeness when dealing with his adversaries in the press.

According to Wikipedia: 

The day after the destruction of the White House, Rear Admiral Cockburn entered the building of the D.C. newspaper, the National Intelligencer [a quasi-governmental newspaper that handled the British very roughly], intending to burn it down. However, several women persuaded him not to because they were afraid the fire would spread to their neighboring houses. Cockburn wanted to destroy the newspaper because its reporters had written so negatively about him, branding him as "The Ruffian." Instead, he ordered his troops to tear the building down brick by brick, ordering all the "C" type destroyed "so that the rascals can have no further means of abusing my name".

Once the National Intelligencer replenished its supply of “C” type, it resumed publication and sniffed that Cockburn acted “quite the mountebank, exhibiting…a gross levity of manner, displaying sundry articles of trifling value of which he had robbed the president’s house” and berating the absent editors “with much of the peculiar slang of the Common Sewer.” [199]

Admiral Cockburn was apparently not haunted by remorse over the burning of the American capital.  The formal portrait of Cockburn painted circa 1817 by John James Hall shows him posed triumphantly before the flaming ruins of Washington.  The painting resides at that shrine of British naval derring do, the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

The War of 1812 was by no stretch of the imagination an American victory.  The peace settlement simply returned conditions to the antebellum status quo.   The United States, while perfecting its world-class army and navy (and preparing it for non-stop exercise in the wars of expansion to come and, of course, the Civil War), was near bankruptcy and had its capital burned down.

But there was intense national pride (and, I expect, relief) that the US had fought Great Britain to a draw. Federalists ended up taking a public relations beating for their lack of war enthusiasm, the Hartford Convention was rather unfairly labeled as a treasonous convocation, and Federalism retreated from the national stage to become a sectional affectation of the New England rump.  

Jeffersonians touted the War of 1812 as “America’s Second War of Independence.”   This ridiculous and self-serving formulation, reflecting a desire to cut New England—Federalist vanguard of the somewhat more authentic first revolution—down to size and inflate Jeffersonian pretensions, is in some ways completely correct.

The War of 1812 declared the independence of the rest of the United States from Federalist preoccupation with international commerce, prudent fiscal policy, and careful accommodation with Great Britain.  In fact, by fighting a botched war about British maritime issues markedly remote from the Republicans’ continental, agricultural, and expansionist interests but dear to the hearts, pocketbooks, and power of the Federalists, the Jeffersonians and the war hawks casually trampled upon existential Federalist priorities, counsel, and opposition, and demonstrated the utterly peripheral and disposable character of Federalist interest in the national discourse. 

The war was the event that confirmed that a hell for leather dash for a continental empire (and into civil war) would drive American politics for the next decades.  Federalists would be passengers on this juggernaut, not the driver.

The war also affirmed a uniquely American brand of impunity: the reality that, on top of democracy and economic freedom, a miraculous combination of geographic distance, vast resource wealth, military capability, virulent nationalism, a youthful and rapidly increasing population, growing commercial and financial heft, and lucky accidents in Europe (such as the global supremacy of America’s primary trading partner, Great Britain) made it possible for the United States to start and then survive a totally screwed up war.

In other words, the War of 1812 can be seen as the birth of American exceptionalism, especially if one defines “exceptionalism” as “exceptional national resilience that not even exceptional stupidity can overcome”.

In fact, the greater the stupidity, the more awesome the resilience, and the greater the victory!

I see the same defiance—defiance of expert opinion, defiance of consequences, the fundamental defiance of the idea that genuine limits exist--in Republican Tea Party flirting with government shutdown and default over Obamacare.  

  

It will be interesting to see who reaps the political benefits—and who reaps the whirlwind—in this confrontation.