The West’s half-hearted efforts will not end Syria’s civil war

Dan Trombly 10.23am

The pressure has increased for more forceful intervention in Syria. Despite the presence of international observers, the Assad regime refuses to adhere to a ceasefire demanded by the UN.

Whether it involves arming the rebels or a repeat of the NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995, the ongoing strife in the country calls for further action, and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry recently urged consideration of both options. Yet despite the frustration of diplomatic efforts, military options seem bleak.

Those who argue that past success in Bosnia could be replicated in Syria both ignore the history of the Bosnian war and its differences with the current conflict. The UN’s attempts to create “safe zones” resulted in the horrific massacres of Srebrenica and elsewhere. The Bosnian war was ultimately won when the numerically superior combined force of Croatian and Bosnian troops launched ground offensives, not when NATO began air strikes.

Similar attempts to implement “safe zones” in Iraq following the first Gulf War required the threat of ground assault in the south of the country, and the tactic failed frequently in the north, such as at Irbil in 1996. Even after the Desert Fox bombing campaign, forces withdrew once a Baghdad supporting faction secured that area. Notably, Saddam Hussein’s rule was not ended until troops fought their way to the capital in 2003, despite “safe zones” having been declared alongside frequent US air patrols and strikes.

In Syria, as in Bosnia and Iraq, neither protection of civilians nor regime change can be assured without superiority on the ground. Even air strikes would require a bombing campaign larger than in Iraq in 2003.

And enormous obstacles stand in the way of arming the Syrian rebels. In Bosnia, for instance, it was Croatia’s invasion that brought about a Serb defeat, not Bosnian forces. In Syria, without a ground invasion of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of troops - from Turkey, the Arab states, or the West - Syria’s rebels will remain woefully outmatched in conventional capabilities. Indeed, Turkey rarely conducts cross-border raids against PKK terrorists without several thousand soldiers.

The Syrian rebels need artillery batteries, armour and air support, not just man-portable anti-tank or anti-aircraft weaponry.

Even with Western air support, the rebels would likely continue to use the guerilla tactics befitting the outmatched force that they are, avoiding pitched battles and ceding territory to draw out hostile forces. While these might be effective tactics in a long-term insurgency, they are unlikely to result in regime change or effective protection of civilians in the short-term. Even the maintenance of a safe haven for rebel forces would need to be done outside Syrian territory, rather than in “safe zones”.

Simply arming rebel forces is more likely to cause a protracted civil war than a quick victory. The United States and others learned this is Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan during the Cold War. But in those cases, there was thought to be some value in attrition, and supporters of proxy groups were relatively indifferent to civilian casualties and the collateral damage of prolonged conflict. In Syria, such outcomes are unjustifiable on humanitarian grounds, nor on strategic aims (seeing Assad depart quickly).

Moreover, an influx of arms leaves lasting consequences. The behaviour of Libyan militias is a case in point.

An authoritarian regime such as Assad’s can hold on until hostile armoured columns roll on Damascus. Therefore the only strategically feasible option for a quick victory in Syria is a full-scale invasion. Yet no Western state is willing to undertake such a mission and a Turkish or Arab effort seems very unlikely.

Ultimately, Syria’s civil war will drag on. In the meantime, Western powers must work with Syria’s neighbours to prevent WMDs and other arms from leaving the country; they must provide aid to refugees that manage to escape Syria; and continue to exercise diplomatic options to the best of their ability.

Unless Western policymakers can convince their own populations and their Middle Eastern allies that an invasion is justifiable, providing military aid or half-hearted intervention can only worsen the consequences of Syria’s conflict - for both that country’s neighbours, and the interests of the West.

Dan Trombly is a student of International Affairs at George Washington University. He blogs at Slouching Towards Columbia.

Talking to the Taliban will not solve our problems in Afghanistan

Aaron Ellis 10.34am

The debate over Afghanistan is like a boom & bust economy: repeatedly rocked by speculative financial bubbles that promise to end the war quickly.

As with financial bubbles, these get-peace-quick schemes show good returns initially but soon collapse under the weight of their own hype. Their investors - politicians, media pundits et al - are left feeling cheated, and so begin looking for the next big idea. The cycle continues.

In 2009, many ‘investors’ bought into population-centric counterinsurgency (P-COIN). That bubble burst when the following year when President Obama fired ISAF commander General Stanley McChrystal, the architect of the P-COIN strategy in Afghanistan. If you’re looking for the proverbial get-peace-quick investment today, the smart money’s on talking to the Taliban.

Like bubbles before it, talking to the Taliban is not a solution to our Afghan problems. It will not achieve our stated objective of stopping al-Qa’ida from returning to the country and using it as a safe haven from which to plan attacks on the West.

David Cameron signed a strategic partnership with President Hamid Karzai in January, which states that both their governments:

“…recognise the threat posed by terrorism and violent extremism, particularly from Al-Qaeda, and will strive unceasingly to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for any insurgent or terrorist group…”

The West’s strategy is two-fold. First, we will build up the country’s security forces so that they can expel al-Qa’ida if they try to return after our troops leave in 2014. Second, we will persuade the Taliban to break from the terrorist group by luring them into a power-sharing deal. The Prime Minister mentioned this during his press conference with President Karzai.

Regrettably, this strategy is conceptually flawed.

The first part assumes that Osama bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan in the 1990s because it was a defenceless failed state. The second part assumes that if the Taliban agree to keep al-Qa’ida out of the country then they will be able to impose their will on local powerbrokers in a way no Afghan government has been able to do since the Iron Amir in the nineteenth century.

Both assumptions are undermined by the Haqqani network, which is allegedly responsible for the attacks in Kabul on Sunday.

When Osama bin Laden was kicked out of the Sudan in 1996, he did not flee to Afghanistan because it was a failed state; he fled there because of the protection offered by his close relationships with local powerbrokers like Jalaluddin Haqqani. Indeed, the grizzled guerrilla leader was crucial to al-Qa’ida, according to a paper published last July by West Point’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). Haqqani provided al-Qa’ida with space to develop.

The CTC paper warns that Haqqani’s network retains strong ties to al-Qa’ida, suggesting it is unlikely the former will meaningfully disengage. If we are to contemplate talking to the Taliban, we have to understand the important role the Haqqanis play in the war. They are the most militarily effective force among the insurgency and the only conduit for the Taliban to project power in the direction of Kabul and south-east Afghanistan.

It is likely that the Haqqani network orchestrated the attacks on Sunday, as well as similar attacks in the Afghan capital last September. These ‘spectaculars’, as they are called, are meant to convey the simple message that the Taliban (via the Haqqanis) can strike anywhere irrespective of how secure an area seems.

Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador in Afghanistan, captured the insurgents’ dynamic when he commented tartly: “The Taliban are very good as issuing statements, less good at fighting.”

The historian Thomas Barfield explains, and is worth quoting at length:

“…[t]hose Afghan leaders who would best succeed during the [twentieth] century employed a ‘Wizard of Oz’ strategy. They declared their governments all-powerful, but rarely risked testing that claim by implementing controversial policies.

Conversely, the leaders who were most prone to failure and state collapse were those who assumed that they possessed the power to do as they pleased, and then provoked opposition that their regimes proved incapable of suppressing.”

Afghanistan is perhaps the most complex conflict in history. It contains all the problems of modern warfare and is the sum of decades of internal strife and great power politics.

The downside to this is the difficulty in finding solutions. “In Afghanistan, things are rarely as they seem,” General McChrystal once said. “If you pull the lever, the outcome is not what you have been programmed to think.”

This applies to the many get-peace-quick schemes that have dominated the Afghan debate, whether in counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, or talking to the Taliban. All produce outcomes that their many ‘investors’ do not anticipate, so putting the war effort at risk.

If we truly want to achieve our stated objective in Afghanistan - a relatively stable  country that can block al-Qa’ida’s return - then our solutions need to be as nuanced as the war is complex.

And of course, more and more governments are concluding that this just isn’t worth the effort.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Remember the Falklands and never forget its beginnings

Nik Darlington 8.32am

Today is the 30th anniversary of Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. Events are taking place in Britain, Argentina and on the islands to mark the occasion.

In 1982, 2nd April fell on a Friday, meaning that Parliament met on a Saturday for the first time since the Suez crisis to talk over what Russell Johnston, Liberal MP and member of the Falkland Islands Association, called that “shameful day”.

Julian Amery, the Conservative MP, blamed a lack of preparation and the Government’s defence cuts, lamenting, “the consequences of our defeat yesterday will be a good deal more expensive.”

However heroic, the campaign to recover the Falkland Islands was costly, particularly in the aftermath, albeit not as costly as regularly believed. From 1982 to 2006, the war and the subsequent defence of the islands had a net cost to Britain of approximately £25 billion (2006 prices). The British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), by comparison, was costing £3 billion per year in the early 1990s.

However, no one can put a price on the cost of 258 British and 649 Argentine personnel who lost their lives during the war, nor the many hundreds more wounded in action. It is them who we remember most today.

What of the future defence of the islands, and how to prevent another conflict from breaking out?

The lesson for Mr Cameron’s government, undergoing its own round of defence cuts (especially to long-range naval capability), is to be as prepared as possible.

Argentina, led by her ebullient president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has waged sustained diplomatic skirmishes in the months leading up to the anniversary. Yet this emotional fervour masks a struggling economy and threadbare armed forces.

On the surface, the proxy aggression is irritating rather than damaging. Argentina’s Latin American neighbours murmur their support but few are willing to make too concerted a stand on behalf of the Argentine claims to the islands.

And the Falkland Islands today are relatively well protected by the couple of thousand military personnel at RAF Mount Pleasant, with its four Typhoon aircraft. The state-of-the-art Type 45 destroyer, HMS Dauntless, is also on deployment.

Military sources say that Argentina’s military is largely under-equipped, badly equipped, and - in comparison to 1982 - poorly organised. The generals do not wield the influence they once did, and the funding simply isn’t there to update weaponry and train troops.

The exception, however, is Argentina’s special forces, which I am told are well trained and well resourced. In March 1982, a band of Argentine soldiers disguised as scrap metal workers stole on to the island of South Georgia, south-east of the Falklands, in the first offensive action of the war.

Following the war, South Georgia housed a small garrison of British soldiers, to protect it and surrounding islands from any repeat Argentine invasion. These soldiers were replaced by civilian members of the British Antarctic Survey in 2001.

If even a small detachment of Argentine special forces managed to gain a foothold on South Georgia, or other islands in the group such as Southern Thule (also invaded during the 1970s, but kept quiet by the Callaghan government), it would pose grave problems for Britain’s diplomatic standing.

It might be difficult to justify heavy military retaliation for such a relatively minor action. In all likelihood, it would drag British officials to the negotiating table, precisely where we refuse to be as long as Falkland islanders profess their allegiance to Britain.

As we remember the last Argentina invasion of the Falkland Islands, let us leave no stone unturned, and no entry route open, to prevent any such thing taking place again.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

Iran might be many things, but it is not the Soviet Union

Aaron Ellis 9.30am

Some of the worst decisions in history have been influenced by bad historical analogies. In an essay on the part played by such analogies in American foreign policy, Robert Dallek dubbed their malign influence “the tyranny of metaphor”.

“For all their pretensions to shaping history, U.S. presidents are more often its prisoners.”

The tyranny of metaphor is especially strong in this perennial debate over the Iran Problem. Those who want to attack the country often justify their position by comparing its regime to the Nazis.

One commentator noted recently:

“No other historical episode gets mentioned as often by pundits and policy makers in arguing that some menace or supposed menace needs to be confronted firmly. What is drawn from the Nazi analogy is an adage that a threat must be stopped forcefully now to avoid a bigger and costlier fight later.”

The comparison is ridiculous for any number of reasons, but it serves an important purpose: it is an easy-to-grasp analogy that helps coax those unsure about the use of force.

Yesterday in the House of Commons, in an urgent question to William Hague (video), Robert Halfon boldly described Iran as “the new Soviet Union of the Middle East”. Though his subsequent description of Iranian behaviour did not explain the comparison, there are two ways one can interpret it.

A generous interpretation would be that Mr Halfon believes the regime in Tehran is so crooked, contradictory, and such an aberration of Persian history that its eventual collapse is inevitable. It was this prophetic insight about Communism that led to George F Kennan devising the idea of containment, which won the Cold War. If we just applied continuous but restrained pressure, the Soviet regime would either yield to the West or be overthrown by the Russians and other subjected populations themselves. Going to war with the Soviet Union would not only be disastrous, but also unnecessary.

The more likely interpretation is that Mr Halfon genuinely believes that Iran poses the same degree of threat as the Soviet Union did, which is as absurd as thinking it poses the same threat as Nazi Germany.

Both Israel and the United States dwarf Iran militarily, whereas the Soviet Union’s conventional forces dwarfed those of the West years before the Russians successfully tested an atomic bomb in 1949.

Iran has only one friend in the Middle East - Syria - and it is unlikely that friendship will continue if the Assad regime falls. Until the final years of the Cold War, Moscow had almost all of Eastern Europe under its thumb and, until the 1960s, the important support of Mao’s China.

If Iran is like the Soviet Union in any way, it is the Soviet Union of 1991, a basket case. The influential commentator Fareed Zakaria wrote earlier this month:

“The real story on the ground is that Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed the economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fractured and fragmenting.”

I wrote yesterday that the only way we can come to an informed decision about Iran is by raising the standard of the debate. Nik also wrote that a debate of such direct import must take place in the House of Commons before any substantive military move. Thankfully, Parliament was granted a preliminary murmur later yesterday afternoon.

Those who claim to have a solution to the problems posed by Tehran and its nuclear programme should furnish us with a coherent strategy, as well as explaining how to offset the trade-offs and indirect consequences of their preferred policies.

And yesterday highlighted another problem, which perhaps we shall never escape: the use and abuse of history.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

When will Parliament have its proper say about Iran?

Nik Darlington 12.20pm

Last November, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague refused to rule out military action against Iran. Ten days ago, William Hague again refused to rule out military action against Iran. And today, the Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, has signalled a reinforcement of Britain’s military presence in the Gulf - in particular around the strategically important Straits of Hormuz. HMS Argyll already set sail to join US forces at the weekend.

Aaron has an excellent article on the blog this morning, which I strongly encourage you to read. In it, he criticises the blindly relentless march towards war from some quarters, and ineffective sanctions from others. The situation in Iran, always bubbling beneath the surface of the 24/7 news cycle, is escalating terrifyingly fast.

If Britain is genuinely set to commit more troops to the region, out of a combined forces that are already under pressure from the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan, the recent Libyan campaign and the heightened rhetoric surrounding the Falklands, then Parliament must have a say. The case for threats of force towards has not convincingly been made.

Supposing we do reinforce the area through which we receive approximately one-fifth of our oil and more than four-fifths of our LNG, what is the plan? Who, aside from the United States - and predictably enough, Israel - is on our side? China? Russia? The UN? What about the Arab League, so crucial to the Libyan sorties?

These are the questions the Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary and, eventually, the Prime Minister needs to stand up in Parliament and answer. And they need to do it soon.

David Cameron has chosen the wrong replacement for Liam Fox

Aaron Ellis 7.01am

There are few pastimes as pleasurable for politicos as ministerial musical chairs.

They are opportunities for them to show off their smarts about the Westminster bubble: listing the virtues and vices of one obscure politician after another, weighing up their chances; dismissing absurd suggestions.

On Friday, as soon as it was confirmed that Dr Liam Fox was resigning as Defence Secretary, all kinds of names were put forward as his replacement.

Andrew Mitchell was the most credible candidate in the Cabinet: he is an ex-Army officer and has proven to be a success as International Development Secretary.

There were occasional mentions of Philip Hammond, the grey Transport Secretary, but at the time I dismissed this as absurd. How was he qualified for the role, apart from having a reputation for administrative competence?

Perhaps the Prime Minister would choose a figure from outside the Government to avoid a reshuffle. Sir Malcolm Rifkind was talked of, and what about Bernard Jenkin? Maybe he would pick a Lib Dem heavyweight like Lord Ashdown? Oh hell, make it Bill Cash!

I thought it was important to consider what David Cameron could be looking for in a new Defence Secretary. They had to have experience and knowledge. “When the country is at war, when Whitehall is at war, we need people who understand war in Whitehall”, Mr Cameron said at the Conservative party conference in 2009.

They needed to be dissimilar to Liam Fox, in terms of their personality, but also considered as ‘sound’ by Tory backbenchers.

Once all these things had been tallied, it was obvious to me who it should be: James Arbuthnot, MP for North East Hampshire.

Mr Arbuthnot combines experience with knowledge, having served as a junior defence minister under John Major and as Chairman of the Defence Select Committee since 2005. He is not ‘charismatic’ in the risky mode of Liam Fox, but he is a solid figure and favourable to his party’s right wing. His candidacy is strengthened by the fact that he is standing down as a MP at the next election - it would give Mr Cameron the opportunity to bring in ‘fresh blood’ should he win in 2015.

But the Prime Minister did not choose Mr Arbuthnot, or Sir Malcolm Rifkind, or, indeed, any of the many experienced, knowledgeable politicians on offer to him in the Conservative party. He chose Philip Hammond instead, who, according to Fraser Nelson, “has little interest” in defence. It was a bad choice by Mr Cameron, if only because it undermines further his grand ambitions for British foreign policy.

The dominant media narrative about ‘Cameroon foreign policy’ is that it was simply about selling stuff to foreigners until it found a purpose in the Arab Spring. In reality, Mr Cameron and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, have always fancied themselves as grand strategists who will reverse the drift of the Labour years, revive damaged institutions like the Foreign Office, and ready our country for the challenges of the 21st century.

Since October 2010, however, they have consistently fallen short of these goals: the National Security Strategy (NSS) was bland; the defence review (SDSR) was a mess; and Libya was a distraction. The elevation of the competent but uninformed Hammond to the MoD is just the latest in a long list of things that have shown up this Government’s claims to be re-making British foreign policy.

We have had seven Defence Secretaries since September 11th, 2001, one of whom doubled as the head of another department. David Cameron reassured many in the military when he promised there would be no “revolving door” at the MoD if he were Prime Minister. Liam Fox’s unavoidable resignation means that we are stuck with Mr Hammond for another four years in order for him to keep that promise. Four years of awkward photo-ops in Helmand, of feigning interest in the jargon of the generals, of polite applause at RUSI events after dull speeches on the future of our Armed Forces.

This does not bode well for the Government’s desired reforms. A vignette from the memoirs of Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the former UK Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, makes this point best:

I suggested to one of the Cabinet Ministers considering the paper that he might want to question whether the deployment made any sense…His reply illustrated all the difficulties of civilian politicians with no military expertise assessing military advice. “Sherard,” he said, “I don’t know the difference between a tornado and a torpedo. I can’t possibly question the Chief of the Defence Staff on this.”

I hope to be proven wrong about Philip Hammond. Perhaps he will be the Robert Gates to Dr Fox’s Donald Rumsfeld, only without the decades of experience that Mr Gates brought to the Pentagon – so making the comparison redundant.

But unless he displays even a fraction of the wisdom and leadership of that great US Defence Secretary, I shall view Philip Hammond’s appointment as a mistake. A mistake that the Prime Minister is responsible for.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

L’Entente Frugale: is the Anglo-French defence treaty a Good Thing?

Aaron Ellis 7.46am

Those who were sceptical of the Anglo-French defence treaty will find it absurd that the House of Lords are due to discuss it today three months after it was signed. Countries don’t do confession boxes, so there is no good agonising over the virtues and vices of a deed if the deed was done some time ago. A lack of prior parliamentary scrutiny of a treaty is an unarguable criticism, but scrutiny now ought not to be as ignorant or as offensive as the reaction of some sceptics at the time.

Of the many things which encourage a mix of nostalgia and xenophobia in this country, being nice to the French is at the top of most lists. The mix is more potent when it comes to military co-operation. Peter Hitchens accused the Prime Minister of betraying the memory of Nelson; presumably the Royal Navy vacating the Mediterranean for the French before the First World War had not betrayed it already. Historian Andrew Roberts wrote that Britain has habitually found itself drawn into catastrophic wars whenever it has made an alliance with France. Even intelligent, critical commentators succumbed to la haine de la France.

The policy implications also excited hysteria. Hitchens raged that the treaty is “intended as the beginning of Federal European armed forces. These will be controlled by…the European Superstate they keep telling us doesn’t exist.” One serious blog on defence issues, Think Defence, took the same line as the not serious Hitchens.

We made the treaty with France because it was necessary for both countries to preserve their great power capabilities through this tough decade. As the expert Etienne de Durand wrote last year, “operational demands and the consequences of the financial crisis mean that Britain and France can no longer preserve independent military capability that fully support their aspirations as global powers.” This point was emphasised by The Economist a month later in it’s take on the treaty.

I believe the treaty is a Good Thing, and is not as extensive as the Treaty of Saint Malo, which Tony Blair negotiated with Jacques Chirac soon after coming to power. My concern is that the Government has not adequately explained this treaty in terms of its own grand strategy. That is a slippery slope towards making foreign policy according to treaties already made, and not the other way around.

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