Now that it seems all but certain that Obama will be unable to reach a grand accord with Putin, the window for a peaceful settlement of the crises in both Ukraine and Syria is steadily closing, opening up a small but growing possibility that both will explode in his final months in office.
By refusing to stand up to the deep state of the Beltway, which is furiously smarting from setbacks against Russia in the proxy wars of Ukraine and Syria, Obama may be sealing the fate of his legacy, at least in the short to medium term: instead of cutting its losses, the US is setting a firm course to lose even more hard-power influence in Europe and the Middle East.
In the coming days and weeks, as it becomes clear that Assad won't step down even as part of a political transition, his most implacable enemies - the CIA and the Saudis - will seriously consider launching a brand-new covert escalation of proxy warfare against Damascus and its allies Tehran and Moscow.
The problem? They've lost Turkey, since Erdogan has all but settled for his own sphere of influence in northern Syria at the Kurds' expense in return for backing off overthrowing Assad. And unless he can be convinced to risk an all-out war with Russian and Assad-backed Kurdish militants, he won't be swayed back into the regime-change-at-all-costs camp.
This puts Langley and Riyadh in a quandary: concede defeat, and their longstanding power-broking nexus in the region would suffer a seemingly fatal reputational blow with both allies and enemies; yet if they escalate with neither full buy-in from the Obama administration nor the critical cooperation of Ankara, they could bring an even worse reversal to overall American and Saudi interests than a mere loss of credibility. Unfortunately for Obama, he loses either way.
That's because the only sensible way forward at this point is to follow Turkey and get fully behind a deal with Russia: not only would it ensure the success of the main US objective of defeating ISIS, but it would give both the US and Saudi Arabia a similar opening to Turkey's to shape facts on the ground in that vast chunk of Syrian real estate that Assad has given up militarily recapturing.
Instead, caving to the sore losers inside the Beltway and their friends in Riyadh, the lame-duck president is reducing what little leverage America has left over the Syrian peace process to virtually nothing. This increases the chance that even he will finally get suckered into an ill-advised eleventh-hour military intervention against Assad, making a bad outcome for the US even worse. For one thing, such an act will give Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus a green light to mercilessly exterminate the remnants of the Syrian revolution from the face of the earth.
The inconvenient truth is that Mr. Assad enjoys far more support among the Syrian population than any one secular or Islamist opposition faction individually, and will thus retain enormous clout even in a future democratized and possibly federalized system. And because the long civil war has largely purged regime-dominated regions of dissent, even as it has also solidified Assad's standing as the most credible protector of its Christian, Druze, Shiite, and Alawite minorities, the Baath dictator probably has even more potential electoral support now than at any previous point of the conflict, when, before the Russian intervention, he perhaps would have acceded to Western demands to step down provided he be allowed to run for the presidency under a new constitution - which of course the CIA and its regional Sunni proxies have never considered an acceptable endgame.
Alas, if there's anything Obama should have learned by now about foreign policy, it's that unless he himself exercises decisive initiative on the world stage and as commander-in-chief, sooner or later he'll find himself dancing to someone else's tune. When he failed to enforce his infamous "red line" on Assad's use of chemical weapons in 2013, i.e. by following through on what was essentially a pledge to appease his own defense-intelligence establishment, he effectively allowed himself to be corralled into the present quandary by Putin and the Iranian ayatollahs instead. Yet now, having refused to wholeheartedly embrace the Russo-Iranian program for Syria, he's left himself vulnerable to being yanked violently back the other way by the Beltway apparatus.
This same dynamic is no less true of Ukraine - a crisis which from the get-go has been intricately intertwined with the one in the Middle East.
There can now be little doubt that the unusually aggressive US effort to topple the democratically elected pro-Russian regime of Viktor Yanukovych in late 2013 - even despite its slide into police-state repression - was a direct consequence of the Washington establishment's desire for revenge against Moscow for one-upping it on the Syrian chemical weapons issue, which had thrown US-Saudi designs in the Levant haywire. When this new intervention, which offended Russian interests far more directly, predictably backfired, too, Obama was caught off guard yet again: it was as though he sleepwalked right into the bear's claws because he let the neocon war party operate his defense and foreign policy apparatus on virtual autopilot with regards to the ex-Soviet space.
Unsurprisingly, given how little stomach the American public has for expending blood or even treasure on places they can't even find on a map, Ukraine like Syria became another halfhearted interventionist quagmire for the White House in 2014, as the Kremlin punished American insolence in its frontyard by annexing Crimea and then taking a bite of eastern Ukraine proper.
The two Minsk accords - the first in September 2014 and the second in February 2015 - have thus far held a tenuous overall truce despite chronic spikes of violence between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region, on top of the occasional flareup of tensions around Crimea and over ethnic Russian strongholds like Odessa and the neighboring Russian-Moldovan enclave of Transnistria. But this uneasy draw may now be drawing to a close.
Having thoroughly - though hardly surprisingly - disappointed its Western sponsors with its essentially unreformed corrupt patronage system, the "pro-Europe" post-Maidan government in Kiev is standing on its last legs of legitimacy with both its own people and its foreign backers. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has now unilaterally essentially withdrawn from Minsk II by demanding that Russia relinquish control of the Donbas border even before any political concession is made with regards to the separatists' autonomy in a new federation. This follows a sharp increase in daily violence along the Ukrainian-separatist front lines that has held up all summer.
Yet more activity involving "ceasefires" or "truces" and international "monitors" is being reported with every passing week, and although Russia and Ukraine have thankfully moved back from the brink yet again after the latter's alleged sabotage incursion into Crimea last month, the overarching geopolitical situation which underpins the localized violence has only worsened, especially from Kiev's perspective.
The way things are going, by 2018 or 2019 at the latest, without an implementation of Minsk II, the breakaway Donbas People's Republic (DPR) will de facto have either set up a completely independent full-fledged government recognized by the Kremlin, or worse, Moscow will have finally said "to hell with you" to Kiev and annexed the region outright.
Poroshenko and Putin alike both see that the West's resolve in upholding its sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict is fraying at the seams, despite yet another renewal this summer; the true storm cloud which is gathering over the former, however, is that the clock is ticking on his powerful Western and American political support.
Should Donald Trump win the US presidency, it would embolden already-surging populists in France, Germany, and Italy in their 2017 and 2018 elections - and this on top of Brexit. Like Trump, these continental European neo-nationalists in particular are strongly opposed to the whole confrontation with Moscow, and in fact the Kremlin has for years cultivated ties with them to blunt Anglo-American leverage over the EU that's largely behind the anti-Russian tilt of the bloc.
The danger for Obama, then, is that if and when Trump appears to gain such traction over Hillary Clinton between now and November 8 that the bombastic billionaire's non-enmity towards or even admiration of Putin suddenly goes mainstream in America, Washington will be dealing with a badly cornered Ukrainian client and ally. Poroshenko won't be the problem: as an oligarch with political authority as well, he has far too much to lose making hay of a deteriorating situation vis-à-vis Moscow, and judging by his recent statements, has already come to terms with far weaker Western support in the near future. The problem rather will be the embattled Ukrainian leader's own increasingly restive right flank: a Putinist tilt on either side of the Atlantic could drive these nationalists (including fringe neo-fascists) into such a tizzy that they'll make it utterly impossible for Kiev to work with Moscow on Minsk II from a position of weakness; indeed, it's probably for this very reason that Poroshenko has already preempted them by shifting rightwards on Minsk II and demanded full Ukrainian sovereignty be returned unconditionally at the outset.
We can only speculate just how far Kiev will push the envelope, and in fact even the possibility of such a dire accommodation of Russian interests by a newly confrontation-weary Washington may be farfetched or premature; but again for Obama, the underlying tension and contradiction here is deeply rooted and solidly structured, giving him far less leeway or wiggle room to find any common ground or bridge to the opposing side than his idealistic view of how the world should work has steeled him for.
But alternately, it could well be Obama himself who, feeling hemmed in by the alleged Trump-Putin nexus so darkly promulgated by the Democratic party establishment, sees fit to double down on a new uncompromising stance on Ukraine: since the US isn't even party to Minsk II anyway, all this would take is an intransigent insistence from the White House that its French and German allies go along with Kiev's new hard line regarding the Russia-Donbas frontier.
And that's when all hell could break loose. Once certain that the West's treachery on Minsk II has been given the final certification from Obama personally, Putin will then have no reason to remain in an arrangement so utterly twisted to harm Russian security. Being ever careful, the ex-KGB spook won't be one to escalate beyond the necessary precautions, and in fact will exhaust all back channels to dial down the elevated tensions inevitably triggered by a Minsk meltdown; but at such a juncture, it's Barack Obama who will be strictly at the mercy of Providence.
Should the spark of some armed incident ignite, the outgoing 44th president of history's exceptional free and democratic society will be trapped into a fateful decision whether or not to enforce yet another awful "red line" well outside the bounds of vital American interests. Only this time, having been burned by everything that's transpired since the last "red line" retreat gave his archrival an opening to challenge American credibility in the first place, Obama will be doubly trapped into actually pulling the trigger for a change: inasmuch as he believes that American credibility is a vital national interest, and inasmuch as that credibility is tied to his own legacy as an effective leader of the free world, he may have no recourse but to charge head-on into the Russian ambush.
We can only hope and pray that even if Obama truly allows himself to be dragged into such an unmitigated disaster, that the effective powers-that-be over him will be governed by far sounder realpolitik and common strategic sense, so as to be on every lookout to give him (if not his successor) the easiest and quickest way out. Perhaps it will take a tragedy, but Putin won't miss such an opportunity to endear himself with the American elite and the American people alike.
Friday, September 9, 2016
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Why Hillary will be softer on Putin than Trump
For all her tough talk of confronting Russian aggression and her dark insinuations about a Putin-Trump nexus, even a quick assessment leads to the unmistakable conclusion that Hillary Clinton will tend to go it easier on the Kremlin - far easier, probably - than Donald Trump.
As her husband bashed the elder Bush for "coddling tyrants from Baghdad to Beijing", yet was soon acting as if he were completely bought and paid for by the Chinese communist regime, we're likely to see just as quick and complete a reversal from Hillary with respect to Moscow - because the only alternative outcome is World War III, and obviously she's not suicidal.
Leaving aside the fact that Hillary's history of deal and influence-peddling for Kremlin-linked Russian oligarchs has been well documented by Clinton Cash and other exposés of the "pay-to-play" Clinton Foundation, it's easy to see why, despite all outward appearances, Putin might actually prefer America's first female president to its first purely private-citizen one.
First and foremost, Mrs. Clinton's primary foreign-policy focus will be her progressive socioeconomic agenda, not the age-old geopolitical contest between great powers. In this respect she will probably exceed even Obama, whose relative indifference to realpolitik over the last seven and a half years has already been a key factor in Washington's creeping strategic decline in the key regions of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia - in the face of accelerating Russian, Iranian, and Chinese expansionism, respectively.
To wit, Secretary Hillary's aggressive pursuit of regime change in Libya in 2011 and her earlier support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a first-term Senator were as much predicated on her antipathy towards brutal dictators from a humanitarian perspective as they were on any sound strategic sense (which in hindsight was clearly lacking on both sides of the aisle). It helped in those particular cases, of course, that America attacked a largely defenseless adversary - just as her husband did Serbia over Kosovo in 1999, also for an ostensibly humanitarian motive.
Against adversaries that can actually impose real costs on American intervention, however, there's little reason to believe Hillary will have any more stomach for risk of loss than either Obama or Bill for that matter - and in fact good grounds to think she'll have even less.
That's because authoritarian regimes have gotten ever shrewder at incremental concessions, especially with regards to the standard Western concerns of human rights and civil liberties. This means a Hillary Clinton administration will have its hands full responding to all manner of "reform" and "liberalization" peddled by dictatorships as proof of their goodness - through the considerable influence channels they've acquired abroad, including in the US itself.
We can already see this kind of dynamic in play with Iran. The Islamic fundamentalist regime has so blatantly resorted to extorting hard cash in exchange for releasing American prisoners - even considering that this has transpired in the context of the gradual easing of sanctions on it - that it's only logical to expect it to adopt similar ploys with regards to its own native dissidents, thousands of whom are still rotting in its jails. Tellingly, this has all taken place amidst an ever weaker American resolve - if any is left at all - to check Tehran from acquiring regional hegemony over the coming decade or so. And that's Iran - orders of magnitude weaker in the face of American power than either China or Russia.
Cynically, one might even speculate that much of the intensifying repression of authoritarian regimes all over the world is based neither on irrational fear nor on arrogant overconfidence, but more mundanely simply to stack up bargaining chips that can be used later to extract concessions from a reliably gullible West.
And as a liberal, feminist woman, Hillary is likely to be far more inclined to grant such concessions than the blowhard, take-no-prisoners macho-chauvinist Mr. Trump. After all, that's essentially what she's running on.
As her husband bashed the elder Bush for "coddling tyrants from Baghdad to Beijing", yet was soon acting as if he were completely bought and paid for by the Chinese communist regime, we're likely to see just as quick and complete a reversal from Hillary with respect to Moscow - because the only alternative outcome is World War III, and obviously she's not suicidal.
Leaving aside the fact that Hillary's history of deal and influence-peddling for Kremlin-linked Russian oligarchs has been well documented by Clinton Cash and other exposés of the "pay-to-play" Clinton Foundation, it's easy to see why, despite all outward appearances, Putin might actually prefer America's first female president to its first purely private-citizen one.
First and foremost, Mrs. Clinton's primary foreign-policy focus will be her progressive socioeconomic agenda, not the age-old geopolitical contest between great powers. In this respect she will probably exceed even Obama, whose relative indifference to realpolitik over the last seven and a half years has already been a key factor in Washington's creeping strategic decline in the key regions of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia - in the face of accelerating Russian, Iranian, and Chinese expansionism, respectively.
To wit, Secretary Hillary's aggressive pursuit of regime change in Libya in 2011 and her earlier support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a first-term Senator were as much predicated on her antipathy towards brutal dictators from a humanitarian perspective as they were on any sound strategic sense (which in hindsight was clearly lacking on both sides of the aisle). It helped in those particular cases, of course, that America attacked a largely defenseless adversary - just as her husband did Serbia over Kosovo in 1999, also for an ostensibly humanitarian motive.
Against adversaries that can actually impose real costs on American intervention, however, there's little reason to believe Hillary will have any more stomach for risk of loss than either Obama or Bill for that matter - and in fact good grounds to think she'll have even less.
That's because authoritarian regimes have gotten ever shrewder at incremental concessions, especially with regards to the standard Western concerns of human rights and civil liberties. This means a Hillary Clinton administration will have its hands full responding to all manner of "reform" and "liberalization" peddled by dictatorships as proof of their goodness - through the considerable influence channels they've acquired abroad, including in the US itself.
We can already see this kind of dynamic in play with Iran. The Islamic fundamentalist regime has so blatantly resorted to extorting hard cash in exchange for releasing American prisoners - even considering that this has transpired in the context of the gradual easing of sanctions on it - that it's only logical to expect it to adopt similar ploys with regards to its own native dissidents, thousands of whom are still rotting in its jails. Tellingly, this has all taken place amidst an ever weaker American resolve - if any is left at all - to check Tehran from acquiring regional hegemony over the coming decade or so. And that's Iran - orders of magnitude weaker in the face of American power than either China or Russia.
Cynically, one might even speculate that much of the intensifying repression of authoritarian regimes all over the world is based neither on irrational fear nor on arrogant overconfidence, but more mundanely simply to stack up bargaining chips that can be used later to extract concessions from a reliably gullible West.
And as a liberal, feminist woman, Hillary is likely to be far more inclined to grant such concessions than the blowhard, take-no-prisoners macho-chauvinist Mr. Trump. After all, that's essentially what she's running on.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Putin takes Obama to school in China (captioned photo series)
At the G20 in Hangzhou, China, the following snapshots of an initially icy but ultimately nuanced exchange between the leader of the free world and that of the emergent authoritarian axis may go down as the essence of Obama's global geopolitical legacy. (The captions are my own interpretation of what transpired as Putin took Obama to school - not just on the immediate matter at hand of the Syrian crisis, but more generally the unchanging norms of global realpolitik.)
Barack: Look at you, you pathetic little Russkie twerp...remember I can kick your a** on the basketball court if this really has to get nasty...let me remind you that I'm still the president of the world's only superpower...don't think for a moment that your pint-sized gas station posing as a proper G20 economy (now that I've kicked you out of the G8) can actually challenge our dominance of Europe or the Middle East, let alone both! For the last time - tell Assad he has to get his own and his entire extended family's behinds the hell out of Syria, or there will be consequences!
Vladimir: Er, are you feeling okay, dear Barack? We're here to try to meet in the middle on restarting the peace process, remember? We don't need threats now, do we?
Barack: Okay, let's cut the bullcr*p, Vlad. We had a deal that you were going to pause that son-of-a-bitch eye doctor's barrel bombing of women and children in Aleppo and elsewhere first...and only then can we plausibly work together again on the negotiations between our minions that last flopped a little while back...we've bent over backwards to concede to your blackmail on joining your vendetta against so-called "terrorists"...you understand as well as we do that the CIA has always labeled and unlabeled "terrorists" however it pleases, so we have no qualms about that...but for heaven's sake, don't you realize how big a fool you're making of me? Gimme a f***ing break for Chrissake! I'm not asking for Bashar's head on a platter anymore, but you gotta take him down at least a peg or two or you're making my office a joke!
John K: (Mm-hmm...mm-hmm...)
Vladimir: Whoa, whoa there, Barack my bro! Don't get so riled up! I told you almost two months ago we'd be having this discussion before long...yet you didn't take my advice to fire your whole CIA section advising on Syrian policy - and here I am amusing myself as to how they've trashed your whole administration in the sh*tter! I'm your best friend now - don't you ever doubt that!
Let me refresh your memory a bit, since you've had too much time on the golf course over the summer to digest how your utterly clueless spooks flushed you down the toilet...
I had a deal with my old pal Recep in Ankara way back in early July, as soon as our coalition totally surrounded Aleppo for the first time, that we were willing to cut the Turks 90 percent of the slack they wanted with the Kurds in northern Syria, as long as they were okay with the secular revolutionary opposition joining a transitional government with Mr. Assad still its figurehead...the Turks were really happy with this arrangement, and it allowed us to propose to both them and yourself that it was time to finally join forces against the real terrorists - you know, those goons who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans 15 years ago?
But conveniently, no sooner had we struck a tentative alliance with the Pentagon against Al Nusra than we noticed something strange but familiar: the jihadists started shuffling positions, equipment, and even uniforms all over Idlib and Aleppo provinces, in such a deliberate and blatant attempt to obscure who was who that your CIA and DOD could reasonably complain they couldn't agree with us just who was a Nusra-linked terrorist and who was a "moderate." Sorry bro, but they didn't fool us: we knew then and there that your Langley boys were trying to snooker us bigtime...we didn't bite...but your spooks did at least buy a crucial window for the terrorists to mingle enough with the approved "moderates" that we simply couldn't hit many of them for long enough that they could assemble a massive counterattack to break our siege of Aleppo.
In the meantime, though, some of your crazier deep-state operatives instigated that embarrassing putsch against Recep...they knew their new strategy of deception would ultimately rely on a more pliant Turkey which wouldn't cooperate with us...they failed miserably - we knew from the get-go that Recep was in danger from the CIA as soon as he publicly began to turn towards us and the Syrian regime, so we tipped him off just as your CIA plants were finalizing preparations for their strike. But I doubt you and Recep chatted about that here in Hangzhou...you were too busy pleading with him to release those July 15 traitors before they spill out more beans about Langley's miserably failed dirty insurrection - which of course we have every interest of keeping secret once our Turkish intelligence partners pass them on to us.
I must say - your CIA has done such an excellent job for us that it's become a running joke in the Kremlin and FSB that we'll one day erect a plaque for it to commemorate how it handed Syria and the Levant to Russia on a gold platter! You see, only because of the CIA has old Recep now wrought just the havoc with the Kurds in northern Syria that we agreed to let him indulge in - with your own support! Nothing like a bitch you have to keep happy because you can't lose her, is there?
So there you have it...good ole CIA couldn't keep its sticky fingers out of sovereign national interests...had to keep the 70-year gravy train going in spite of all common sense...tsk, tsk!
Anyway, as you know now, later this month I'm going to host both Erdogan and Assad at the Kremlin, if they'll both but be reasonable and sane...and perhaps we'll finally get this bloody freakin' war on a sensible path to conclusion...I'm not counting on it though...not only is your imperial intelligence and defense bureaucracy thirsty for revenge, but I've pretty much given up hope that you'll finally stand up to that sorry bunch of clowns.
But hey, just between you and I, Barack...absolutely no hard feelings! None! Like I said, I'm your best friend! I still absolutely need your help and even your initiative...no Syrian peace will be legitimate without American approval and even sponsorship...I need your credibility to be preserved so I can leverage it for my own efforts! (Smiling sarcastically) Please, between you and I...let's put a happy face on this whole situation!
And I apologize in advance: if Bashar's men and the Iranians still have their act together, that siege of Aleppo which they've tenatively reestablished might actually last and lead to surrender this time...it won't look good for you, but remember these things I've told you to both remind and educate you...if you forget again from too much golf in a few weeks, I'll be glad to rehash this lesson - updated of course - over the phone with you.
Barack: Okay thanks Vlad...you know I probably got only 50 to 70 percent of what you shared, tentatively at that...but thanks for cutting me some slack when I need it most. We're no closer to substantive agreement on policy, but yet again we've avoided the worst. I can't say I trust you yet, but all you've told me has opened my eyes to your fine grasp of the intricacies of this crisis in Syria which is needed for its eventual resolution. I see you understand and empathize that I don't want to leave the bigs in January with this fire still burning...I look forward to more of your interesting insight as to how to put it out...and in the meantime, I'm more clear than ever that what we're ultimately dealing with here is a fundamental lack of trust between us, between our nations and cultures...you could well be right on many things with regards to Syria and specifically Mr. Assad...but I take it you understand why I must stress I can't yet trust that your judgment isn't merely politically pragmatic, but ethically right too - and that's what I've always firmly believed to be the only true pragmatism.
Vladimir: You're most graciously welcome...we can eventually overcome our trust gap...let's begin by acknowledging it more honestly and openly, yet seeing that we're still not remotely enemies...it never hurts to cling to what we both know to be true without equivocation...oh, and good luck with everything in your final months.
Barack: Look at you, you pathetic little Russkie twerp...remember I can kick your a** on the basketball court if this really has to get nasty...let me remind you that I'm still the president of the world's only superpower...don't think for a moment that your pint-sized gas station posing as a proper G20 economy (now that I've kicked you out of the G8) can actually challenge our dominance of Europe or the Middle East, let alone both! For the last time - tell Assad he has to get his own and his entire extended family's behinds the hell out of Syria, or there will be consequences!
Vladimir: Er, are you feeling okay, dear Barack? We're here to try to meet in the middle on restarting the peace process, remember? We don't need threats now, do we?
Barack: Okay, let's cut the bullcr*p, Vlad. We had a deal that you were going to pause that son-of-a-bitch eye doctor's barrel bombing of women and children in Aleppo and elsewhere first...and only then can we plausibly work together again on the negotiations between our minions that last flopped a little while back...we've bent over backwards to concede to your blackmail on joining your vendetta against so-called "terrorists"...you understand as well as we do that the CIA has always labeled and unlabeled "terrorists" however it pleases, so we have no qualms about that...but for heaven's sake, don't you realize how big a fool you're making of me? Gimme a f***ing break for Chrissake! I'm not asking for Bashar's head on a platter anymore, but you gotta take him down at least a peg or two or you're making my office a joke!
John K: (Mm-hmm...mm-hmm...)
Vladimir: Whoa, whoa there, Barack my bro! Don't get so riled up! I told you almost two months ago we'd be having this discussion before long...yet you didn't take my advice to fire your whole CIA section advising on Syrian policy - and here I am amusing myself as to how they've trashed your whole administration in the sh*tter! I'm your best friend now - don't you ever doubt that!
Let me refresh your memory a bit, since you've had too much time on the golf course over the summer to digest how your utterly clueless spooks flushed you down the toilet...
I had a deal with my old pal Recep in Ankara way back in early July, as soon as our coalition totally surrounded Aleppo for the first time, that we were willing to cut the Turks 90 percent of the slack they wanted with the Kurds in northern Syria, as long as they were okay with the secular revolutionary opposition joining a transitional government with Mr. Assad still its figurehead...the Turks were really happy with this arrangement, and it allowed us to propose to both them and yourself that it was time to finally join forces against the real terrorists - you know, those goons who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans 15 years ago?
But conveniently, no sooner had we struck a tentative alliance with the Pentagon against Al Nusra than we noticed something strange but familiar: the jihadists started shuffling positions, equipment, and even uniforms all over Idlib and Aleppo provinces, in such a deliberate and blatant attempt to obscure who was who that your CIA and DOD could reasonably complain they couldn't agree with us just who was a Nusra-linked terrorist and who was a "moderate." Sorry bro, but they didn't fool us: we knew then and there that your Langley boys were trying to snooker us bigtime...we didn't bite...but your spooks did at least buy a crucial window for the terrorists to mingle enough with the approved "moderates" that we simply couldn't hit many of them for long enough that they could assemble a massive counterattack to break our siege of Aleppo.
In the meantime, though, some of your crazier deep-state operatives instigated that embarrassing putsch against Recep...they knew their new strategy of deception would ultimately rely on a more pliant Turkey which wouldn't cooperate with us...they failed miserably - we knew from the get-go that Recep was in danger from the CIA as soon as he publicly began to turn towards us and the Syrian regime, so we tipped him off just as your CIA plants were finalizing preparations for their strike. But I doubt you and Recep chatted about that here in Hangzhou...you were too busy pleading with him to release those July 15 traitors before they spill out more beans about Langley's miserably failed dirty insurrection - which of course we have every interest of keeping secret once our Turkish intelligence partners pass them on to us.
I must say - your CIA has done such an excellent job for us that it's become a running joke in the Kremlin and FSB that we'll one day erect a plaque for it to commemorate how it handed Syria and the Levant to Russia on a gold platter! You see, only because of the CIA has old Recep now wrought just the havoc with the Kurds in northern Syria that we agreed to let him indulge in - with your own support! Nothing like a bitch you have to keep happy because you can't lose her, is there?
So there you have it...good ole CIA couldn't keep its sticky fingers out of sovereign national interests...had to keep the 70-year gravy train going in spite of all common sense...tsk, tsk!
Anyway, as you know now, later this month I'm going to host both Erdogan and Assad at the Kremlin, if they'll both but be reasonable and sane...and perhaps we'll finally get this bloody freakin' war on a sensible path to conclusion...I'm not counting on it though...not only is your imperial intelligence and defense bureaucracy thirsty for revenge, but I've pretty much given up hope that you'll finally stand up to that sorry bunch of clowns.
But hey, just between you and I, Barack...absolutely no hard feelings! None! Like I said, I'm your best friend! I still absolutely need your help and even your initiative...no Syrian peace will be legitimate without American approval and even sponsorship...I need your credibility to be preserved so I can leverage it for my own efforts! (Smiling sarcastically) Please, between you and I...let's put a happy face on this whole situation!
And I apologize in advance: if Bashar's men and the Iranians still have their act together, that siege of Aleppo which they've tenatively reestablished might actually last and lead to surrender this time...it won't look good for you, but remember these things I've told you to both remind and educate you...if you forget again from too much golf in a few weeks, I'll be glad to rehash this lesson - updated of course - over the phone with you.
Barack: Okay thanks Vlad...you know I probably got only 50 to 70 percent of what you shared, tentatively at that...but thanks for cutting me some slack when I need it most. We're no closer to substantive agreement on policy, but yet again we've avoided the worst. I can't say I trust you yet, but all you've told me has opened my eyes to your fine grasp of the intricacies of this crisis in Syria which is needed for its eventual resolution. I see you understand and empathize that I don't want to leave the bigs in January with this fire still burning...I look forward to more of your interesting insight as to how to put it out...and in the meantime, I'm more clear than ever that what we're ultimately dealing with here is a fundamental lack of trust between us, between our nations and cultures...you could well be right on many things with regards to Syria and specifically Mr. Assad...but I take it you understand why I must stress I can't yet trust that your judgment isn't merely politically pragmatic, but ethically right too - and that's what I've always firmly believed to be the only true pragmatism.
Vladimir: You're most graciously welcome...we can eventually overcome our trust gap...let's begin by acknowledging it more honestly and openly, yet seeing that we're still not remotely enemies...it never hurts to cling to what we both know to be true without equivocation...oh, and good luck with everything in your final months.
Friday, September 2, 2016
Path to peace in Syria finally emerging - through partition
In the week and a half since Turkey's intervention in northern Syria, more evidence of a secret Putin-Erdogan accord to eventually draw down the five-year-old conflict into a mutually acceptable stalemate has steadily emerged. While the specifics must play out over a period of weeks or even months, the general contours of such a deal are already becoming clear. The path to peace in Syria is finally emerging - through a de facto partition of the country into no less than three statelets (regime, rebel, and Kurd, with ISIS a fourth wild card).
Assad will be allowed to survive - no question about that anymore. By "survive" it means he will be allowed to keep Damascus and other major urban centers in the west of the country, not yet including Aleppo in the far north, since that contested metropolis will continue to be the focal point of the diplomatic jockeying over the shattered country by the intervening powers. The city has effectively fallen back under regime siege in recent days aback intense airstrikes.
In the past week, starting with the key Damascus suburb of Daraya, a string of additional urban rebel holdouts along the country's main Damascus-Homs corridor have capitulated to the regime's starvation sieges: as before, the insurgent fighters and their families who wish to fight on are relocating to rebel-held Idlib province in the northwest. The total population being transferred seems to be in excess of 100,000 - a very significant portion of the hostile resistance that hasn't yet given up in core regime areas.
Damascus and Homs are now close to being fully and irrevocably secured, with even their long-restive outskirts and satellite towns cleared of rebels. The speed and suddenness with which these regime consolidations are taking place indicates Turkey's new concession of Assad's role in a political transition process. Since they were already on the verge of liquidation, these residual pockets were abandoned for good by Ankara, which two weeks ago finally buckled on its uncompromising stance that Assad must resign immediately.
In lieu of toppling the Baath regime on its home turf, Turkey is now stuffing many of its remaining eggs in the basket of solidifying the Sunni jihadistan of Idlib province: it apparently secured the unusual concession from Assad of allowing the deported fighters to retain their weapons, which will no doubt reinforce the militant ranks in their new positions in Idlib or on the still-raging front lines around Aleppo, further north and east.
So both the regime and the rebels are transferring military assets to the northwestern theater to double down on their contest for territory in Aleppo province, with Aleppo city itself still the central prize. To relieve intensifying regime pressure on the slim lifeline into insurgent-held eastern Aleppo, a new large formation of rebels and jihadists yesterday launched an offensive to cut off the vulnerable government supply road leading up to Aleppo from Hama, prompting a regime counteroffensive as well.
At this stage in the game, the key question is what degree of regional strategic capital Erdogan is willing to expend to prevent the fall of Aleppo to Assad. Turkish influence in any future Syrian polity now depends in large part on how strong a position its proxies in the northwest are able to consolidate vis-à-vis the Damascus regime; ideally, if Aleppo can be held, Ankara will wield a veto over the Baath regime it still detests because it will enjoy the political front of the surviving secular revolutionary opposition hanging on in the eastern districts.
More realistically, though, Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have every intention to expel the rebel holdouts from eastern Aleppo just as they have successfully surrendered-or-starved other pockets of resistance to date - even though this effort will be an order of magnitude greater.
To do so, they must firmly secure the sole supply route from Hama up to Aleppo, which is now threatened by the rebel-jihadist counterthrusts from Idlib province southwards into Hama province. Even with this attack contained or thwarted, precious manpower and resources will have been diverted from elsewhere by the regime to secure this sector, leaving less available to reestablish the siege ring around Aleppo.
Nonetheless, Aleppo's re-encirclement and eventual fall to a surrender-or-starve siege may be just a matter of time - if Erdogan would but be realistic about what the low-hanging and attainable fruit for Turkey really are at this point in Syria. He knows beyond any shred of doubt that it's the Sunni jihadists, not the secular revolutionaries, who are key to the opposition's leverage against Damascus; he also realizes that should the Axis of Fatima really feel endangered in its goal of ultimately strangling eastern Aleppo, Tehran will simply consent to base Russian heavy bombers on its territory again, so they can quickly finish the job of depopulating the rebel sector of all noncombatants, thereby leaving nothing left for the jihadists to "liberate." So, for the very limited actual benefit of nominal secular leadership of the opposition's transition team in talks with Assad (itself already probably little more than a wishful sham), no way would Erdogan want to pour out the blood and guts of his most valuable Syrian proxies. Sure, Assad and the Iranians must pay dearly for their final victory at Aleppo, and that's why Al Nusra and its allies in the Army of Conquest who together punctured the government's initial siege in July, and indeed the beleaguered rebels in Aleppo itself, must fight on until defeat is finally truly inevitable; but Ankara has done the proper calculations and when it comes down to it, won't go for broke on account of what will end up being little more than a symbolic pile of rubble that could soon turn into a mass graveyard for the cream of its surrogate army (courtesy of becoming a training and target practice ground for the Russian and Syrian air forces).
Rather, Turkey's hopes in Syria - indeed, the regional Sunni powers' collective hopes - now rest on locking down the statelet of Idlib province and possibly opening another "moderate rebel" statelet along the border strip previously held by ISIS. If Kurdish sources are to be believed, the second part should be a piece of cake: already the Turkish operation around Jarabulus has cleared ISIS out from a 400-square mile zone with minimal losses as the latter appears to have largely withdrawn without a fight.
Ideally, eventually the Turkish-backed rebels can shove aside both ISIS and the Kurds in Aleppo province and link up a corridor with the Idlib statelet north of the city - which along with its environs will likely have fallen to the regime by then.
At that point, all four statelets will be relatively set and each will have been largely secured with a core of extremely difficult-to-conquer loyalist sectors. The Assad regime will have "won" its war by settling for the limited objective of securing the main cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Latakia, the bulk of their surrounding governorates, and the main interconnecting roads and supply routes; it will have retained complete control of the Mediterranean coastline. The Kurds meanwhile will be all but untouchable in their distant "Rojava" federation in the north and northeastern highlands along the southeastern Turkish frontier, with a good slice of the eastern desert to boot. The rebel-jihadist, Al Nusra-led alliance - effectively the Saudi-Gulf-Turkish protectorate in Syria - will have a Sunni Sharia-run mini-state with Idlib its capital but also much territory in Aleppo province (though not the city and its immediate surroundings) and a small but strategically significant piece of Hama province as well. And finally, though severely truncated by the Kurds and Al Nusra-led rebels (as opposed to symbolically pinpricked by the regime), ISIS will still have most of the Syrian flank of its dwindling caliphate.
Interestingly, despite being considerably weaker than any of the other three mini-states and almost certain to have no place in peace negotiations that would involve those three, ISIS could still be a key strategic factor in what will have devolved into the final dismemberment of Syria into multiple sovereign entities in all but name. ISIS may yet survive if for no reason other than that the regime, the rebels, and the Kurds alike are each loath to give the other two a cheap strategic boost by bearing the cost of eliminating it. By the same token, however, ISIS may also reap the benefits of having three, not two (let alone just one) stronger enemies whose official policies will still invariably be its complete destruction, especially since the international community is likely to maintain far beyond its actual credibility an official fiction that Syria hasn't in fact permanently disintegrated - and concomitantly the half-truth that ISIS is the one common enemy of all legitimate Syrians.
So even ISIS, whose true degree of genuine suicidal spirit we'll eventually find out, might actually have a role in Syria's peace after all - that is, a peace through partition. Some might even argue that we've already been inexorably heading that way for a while.
Assad will be allowed to survive - no question about that anymore. By "survive" it means he will be allowed to keep Damascus and other major urban centers in the west of the country, not yet including Aleppo in the far north, since that contested metropolis will continue to be the focal point of the diplomatic jockeying over the shattered country by the intervening powers. The city has effectively fallen back under regime siege in recent days aback intense airstrikes.
In the past week, starting with the key Damascus suburb of Daraya, a string of additional urban rebel holdouts along the country's main Damascus-Homs corridor have capitulated to the regime's starvation sieges: as before, the insurgent fighters and their families who wish to fight on are relocating to rebel-held Idlib province in the northwest. The total population being transferred seems to be in excess of 100,000 - a very significant portion of the hostile resistance that hasn't yet given up in core regime areas.
Damascus and Homs are now close to being fully and irrevocably secured, with even their long-restive outskirts and satellite towns cleared of rebels. The speed and suddenness with which these regime consolidations are taking place indicates Turkey's new concession of Assad's role in a political transition process. Since they were already on the verge of liquidation, these residual pockets were abandoned for good by Ankara, which two weeks ago finally buckled on its uncompromising stance that Assad must resign immediately.
In lieu of toppling the Baath regime on its home turf, Turkey is now stuffing many of its remaining eggs in the basket of solidifying the Sunni jihadistan of Idlib province: it apparently secured the unusual concession from Assad of allowing the deported fighters to retain their weapons, which will no doubt reinforce the militant ranks in their new positions in Idlib or on the still-raging front lines around Aleppo, further north and east.
So both the regime and the rebels are transferring military assets to the northwestern theater to double down on their contest for territory in Aleppo province, with Aleppo city itself still the central prize. To relieve intensifying regime pressure on the slim lifeline into insurgent-held eastern Aleppo, a new large formation of rebels and jihadists yesterday launched an offensive to cut off the vulnerable government supply road leading up to Aleppo from Hama, prompting a regime counteroffensive as well.
At this stage in the game, the key question is what degree of regional strategic capital Erdogan is willing to expend to prevent the fall of Aleppo to Assad. Turkish influence in any future Syrian polity now depends in large part on how strong a position its proxies in the northwest are able to consolidate vis-à-vis the Damascus regime; ideally, if Aleppo can be held, Ankara will wield a veto over the Baath regime it still detests because it will enjoy the political front of the surviving secular revolutionary opposition hanging on in the eastern districts.
More realistically, though, Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have every intention to expel the rebel holdouts from eastern Aleppo just as they have successfully surrendered-or-starved other pockets of resistance to date - even though this effort will be an order of magnitude greater.
To do so, they must firmly secure the sole supply route from Hama up to Aleppo, which is now threatened by the rebel-jihadist counterthrusts from Idlib province southwards into Hama province. Even with this attack contained or thwarted, precious manpower and resources will have been diverted from elsewhere by the regime to secure this sector, leaving less available to reestablish the siege ring around Aleppo.
Nonetheless, Aleppo's re-encirclement and eventual fall to a surrender-or-starve siege may be just a matter of time - if Erdogan would but be realistic about what the low-hanging and attainable fruit for Turkey really are at this point in Syria. He knows beyond any shred of doubt that it's the Sunni jihadists, not the secular revolutionaries, who are key to the opposition's leverage against Damascus; he also realizes that should the Axis of Fatima really feel endangered in its goal of ultimately strangling eastern Aleppo, Tehran will simply consent to base Russian heavy bombers on its territory again, so they can quickly finish the job of depopulating the rebel sector of all noncombatants, thereby leaving nothing left for the jihadists to "liberate." So, for the very limited actual benefit of nominal secular leadership of the opposition's transition team in talks with Assad (itself already probably little more than a wishful sham), no way would Erdogan want to pour out the blood and guts of his most valuable Syrian proxies. Sure, Assad and the Iranians must pay dearly for their final victory at Aleppo, and that's why Al Nusra and its allies in the Army of Conquest who together punctured the government's initial siege in July, and indeed the beleaguered rebels in Aleppo itself, must fight on until defeat is finally truly inevitable; but Ankara has done the proper calculations and when it comes down to it, won't go for broke on account of what will end up being little more than a symbolic pile of rubble that could soon turn into a mass graveyard for the cream of its surrogate army (courtesy of becoming a training and target practice ground for the Russian and Syrian air forces).
Rather, Turkey's hopes in Syria - indeed, the regional Sunni powers' collective hopes - now rest on locking down the statelet of Idlib province and possibly opening another "moderate rebel" statelet along the border strip previously held by ISIS. If Kurdish sources are to be believed, the second part should be a piece of cake: already the Turkish operation around Jarabulus has cleared ISIS out from a 400-square mile zone with minimal losses as the latter appears to have largely withdrawn without a fight.
Ideally, eventually the Turkish-backed rebels can shove aside both ISIS and the Kurds in Aleppo province and link up a corridor with the Idlib statelet north of the city - which along with its environs will likely have fallen to the regime by then.
At that point, all four statelets will be relatively set and each will have been largely secured with a core of extremely difficult-to-conquer loyalist sectors. The Assad regime will have "won" its war by settling for the limited objective of securing the main cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Latakia, the bulk of their surrounding governorates, and the main interconnecting roads and supply routes; it will have retained complete control of the Mediterranean coastline. The Kurds meanwhile will be all but untouchable in their distant "Rojava" federation in the north and northeastern highlands along the southeastern Turkish frontier, with a good slice of the eastern desert to boot. The rebel-jihadist, Al Nusra-led alliance - effectively the Saudi-Gulf-Turkish protectorate in Syria - will have a Sunni Sharia-run mini-state with Idlib its capital but also much territory in Aleppo province (though not the city and its immediate surroundings) and a small but strategically significant piece of Hama province as well. And finally, though severely truncated by the Kurds and Al Nusra-led rebels (as opposed to symbolically pinpricked by the regime), ISIS will still have most of the Syrian flank of its dwindling caliphate.
Interestingly, despite being considerably weaker than any of the other three mini-states and almost certain to have no place in peace negotiations that would involve those three, ISIS could still be a key strategic factor in what will have devolved into the final dismemberment of Syria into multiple sovereign entities in all but name. ISIS may yet survive if for no reason other than that the regime, the rebels, and the Kurds alike are each loath to give the other two a cheap strategic boost by bearing the cost of eliminating it. By the same token, however, ISIS may also reap the benefits of having three, not two (let alone just one) stronger enemies whose official policies will still invariably be its complete destruction, especially since the international community is likely to maintain far beyond its actual credibility an official fiction that Syria hasn't in fact permanently disintegrated - and concomitantly the half-truth that ISIS is the one common enemy of all legitimate Syrians.
So even ISIS, whose true degree of genuine suicidal spirit we'll eventually find out, might actually have a role in Syria's peace after all - that is, a peace through partition. Some might even argue that we've already been inexorably heading that way for a while.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
What's behind Russia's backlash against the West
Whether it's Hillary or Trump in the White House come January 20, Russia promises to be the top geopolitical challenge for America in 2017. Its quest for security in the post-post-Cold War world is fundamentally at odds with the American vision for how the world should be and how its people should live.
On the central front of this new East-West confrontation, Moscow is beefing up its military presence around Ukraine to bolster and maintain its strategic "escalation dominance" over its smaller but vital neighbor in the two-and-a-half-year crisis that has effectively established Kiev as the linchpin of US and NATO efforts (however halfhearted) to contain Russian expansionism.
The redeployment of one particular unit near the Ukrainian frontier is telling:
This latest "Great Game" - to use Rudyard Kipling's original term for the strategic competition over the vast Eurasian landmass - which pits the land superpower Russia against an Anglophone naval superpower and its proxies, is at the same time both identical and different compared to its antecedents: the Russo-British rivalry over Central, South, and Northeast Asia in the last quarter of the 19th century, and then the global US-Soviet Cold War which consumed most of the second half of the 20th.
Unlike in the last century under communism, Russia is now a semi-market economy beholden to the Anglo-American global financial architecture; in fact, for all its recent oil-fueled struggles - which have seen per capita GDP plunge with the ruble to as little as under US $6,000 in the past year - Putinist Russia is more deeply integrated into this worldwide financial and commercial system than either the USSR or the Czarist empire ever were. And largely as a consequence, contemporary Russia is politically freer, even with a dominant Putin at its head, than it ever was under the bureaucratic-despotic regimes of the imperial or communist eras. Diversity of thought and opinion remain vibrant even among the majority of its population that appears generally pliant towards if not supportive of the existing order.
But Russia will not relinquish its Russianness - it's the vigorous defense of the parameters and boundaries of this "Russianness" that are driving its present slide into repression. Liberal and progressive viewpoints are being squelched, not as an end in itself, but in the interests of sociopolitical cohesion in the Russian historical tradition. Probably the single most representative issue in this regard is the policy towards LGBTQ citizens: they're being shoved back into the closet, where they can engage in whatever mutually consenting activity they please, so long as they don't promote it in the open as the desired norm for the younger and next generation. For a conservative society trying to reinstate a traditionalist, collective monotheistic identity after a costly experience of totalitarian atheism followed by a rocky failure to Westernize, such repression is entirely expected and legitimate. Rather, the whole Western liberal clamor over "equal rights" for "alternative lifestyles" can't be considered purely humanitarian and apolitical, because its unabashed purpose is to make any and every value system equally valid and moral, thereby rendering none of them suitable as a unifying social principle. In this sense, the very notion of "independent civil society" is indeed little more than a proxy for wholesale Westernization and in fact Americanization. And at this juncture in her history, Russia is unequivocally rejecting such cultural colonization; she may change her mind about it someday, but that's up to her own state and her own people in harmonious and symbiotic action with each other, not one segment of the people in opposition to the state.
This is at the root of Russia's multidirectional play for Eurasian security, with Ukraine at its epicenter. Until the West and specifically the US understands and empathizes with Russia's self-perception as a civilization-state, it won't resolve its contradictions with Moscow and in fact is likely to worsen the present confrontation that's already increasingly dubbed a new Cold War.
The mainstream liberal media in the West, but especially here in America, will continue to focus primarily on the unscrupulous methods and outright deceptions employed by the Kremlin and its surrogates to fight a "hybrid war" against Western interests - to now include direct meddling in our own elections, as it's already done so for years in Western Europe. Unfortunately, much like the Western obsession with Islamic terrorism, the cumulative effect of this will be to paint an irredeemably dark picture of a dark society that hates freedom and is therefore an existential threat to Western civilization itself; where in reality Russia, again much like Islamic radicals, is simply employing asymmetric strategies and tactics against a vastly more powerful global American empire.
That empire has been in apparent retreat not because of any particular Russian strength or resurgence, but because of Washington's own blunders and miscalculations - all of which are ultimately rooted in a false moralizing that essentially prevents it from even acknowledging that it's trying to run an empire at all. While this has lately made a good field day for Kremlin propaganda like this editorial, for sure, nobody should be fooled: America's problems with Russia today are a product of its own excess and carelessness, of a mismatch between perceived vital interests and actual vital interests. In other words, Russia's backlash against the West today is as much and possibly more the product of our own ideological inflexibility and political dysfunction as they are of its own defects - principally political but ultimately cultural. As always, it takes two to tango.
On the central front of this new East-West confrontation, Moscow is beefing up its military presence around Ukraine to bolster and maintain its strategic "escalation dominance" over its smaller but vital neighbor in the two-and-a-half-year crisis that has effectively established Kiev as the linchpin of US and NATO efforts (however halfhearted) to contain Russian expansionism.
The redeployment of one particular unit near the Ukrainian frontier is telling:
In the Rostov region, which is already packed with Russian military bases, contract servicemen of the 33rd Motor Rifle Brigade have returned from Maikop in the Caucasus. Russia is speedily throwing down modular housing for a third planned division in this region, situated on Ukraine’s southeastern border, and likely incorporating the 33rd Brigade. The unit will materialize in late 2017 and resume the legacy of the 150th Idritsk-Berlin Division from World War II. That bit of historical trivia is not inconsequential, because it was the 150th that raised the flag over the Reichstag in 1945. The symbolism of establishing such a unit with such a prominent legacy of defeating fascism on Ukraine’s flank is doubtfully a coincidence.Indeed, outside the former Soviet Union, places like Rostov and Maikop are typically known only in relation to the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) against Nazi Germany, appeals and allusions to which are likely to only intensify in the coming months and years. While Putin isn't betting the barn that nationalism is truly back in vogue, he's taking precautions that would be expected of any responsible Russian leader with regards to such an intimately linked neighbor as Ukraine, and the ghosts and shadows of the epic conflict of over seven decades ago are unavoidable - so best make good use of them.
This latest "Great Game" - to use Rudyard Kipling's original term for the strategic competition over the vast Eurasian landmass - which pits the land superpower Russia against an Anglophone naval superpower and its proxies, is at the same time both identical and different compared to its antecedents: the Russo-British rivalry over Central, South, and Northeast Asia in the last quarter of the 19th century, and then the global US-Soviet Cold War which consumed most of the second half of the 20th.
Unlike in the last century under communism, Russia is now a semi-market economy beholden to the Anglo-American global financial architecture; in fact, for all its recent oil-fueled struggles - which have seen per capita GDP plunge with the ruble to as little as under US $6,000 in the past year - Putinist Russia is more deeply integrated into this worldwide financial and commercial system than either the USSR or the Czarist empire ever were. And largely as a consequence, contemporary Russia is politically freer, even with a dominant Putin at its head, than it ever was under the bureaucratic-despotic regimes of the imperial or communist eras. Diversity of thought and opinion remain vibrant even among the majority of its population that appears generally pliant towards if not supportive of the existing order.
But Russia will not relinquish its Russianness - it's the vigorous defense of the parameters and boundaries of this "Russianness" that are driving its present slide into repression. Liberal and progressive viewpoints are being squelched, not as an end in itself, but in the interests of sociopolitical cohesion in the Russian historical tradition. Probably the single most representative issue in this regard is the policy towards LGBTQ citizens: they're being shoved back into the closet, where they can engage in whatever mutually consenting activity they please, so long as they don't promote it in the open as the desired norm for the younger and next generation. For a conservative society trying to reinstate a traditionalist, collective monotheistic identity after a costly experience of totalitarian atheism followed by a rocky failure to Westernize, such repression is entirely expected and legitimate. Rather, the whole Western liberal clamor over "equal rights" for "alternative lifestyles" can't be considered purely humanitarian and apolitical, because its unabashed purpose is to make any and every value system equally valid and moral, thereby rendering none of them suitable as a unifying social principle. In this sense, the very notion of "independent civil society" is indeed little more than a proxy for wholesale Westernization and in fact Americanization. And at this juncture in her history, Russia is unequivocally rejecting such cultural colonization; she may change her mind about it someday, but that's up to her own state and her own people in harmonious and symbiotic action with each other, not one segment of the people in opposition to the state.
This is at the root of Russia's multidirectional play for Eurasian security, with Ukraine at its epicenter. Until the West and specifically the US understands and empathizes with Russia's self-perception as a civilization-state, it won't resolve its contradictions with Moscow and in fact is likely to worsen the present confrontation that's already increasingly dubbed a new Cold War.
The mainstream liberal media in the West, but especially here in America, will continue to focus primarily on the unscrupulous methods and outright deceptions employed by the Kremlin and its surrogates to fight a "hybrid war" against Western interests - to now include direct meddling in our own elections, as it's already done so for years in Western Europe. Unfortunately, much like the Western obsession with Islamic terrorism, the cumulative effect of this will be to paint an irredeemably dark picture of a dark society that hates freedom and is therefore an existential threat to Western civilization itself; where in reality Russia, again much like Islamic radicals, is simply employing asymmetric strategies and tactics against a vastly more powerful global American empire.
That empire has been in apparent retreat not because of any particular Russian strength or resurgence, but because of Washington's own blunders and miscalculations - all of which are ultimately rooted in a false moralizing that essentially prevents it from even acknowledging that it's trying to run an empire at all. While this has lately made a good field day for Kremlin propaganda like this editorial, for sure, nobody should be fooled: America's problems with Russia today are a product of its own excess and carelessness, of a mismatch between perceived vital interests and actual vital interests. In other words, Russia's backlash against the West today is as much and possibly more the product of our own ideological inflexibility and political dysfunction as they are of its own defects - principally political but ultimately cultural. As always, it takes two to tango.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Eurasian dictators are now playing America like a cheap fiddle
As Turkey's incursion into northern Syria blatantly uses ISIS as a pretext to primarily attack the Kurds instead, it's increasingly clear that Ankara is blackmailing Washington: since we don't forgive your unwillingness to extradite Fetullah Gulen (the cleric blamed for masterminding the July 15 putsch), if you still want us in NATO and not fall outright into Russia's orbit, we can't have you nitpick how we press our legitimate security interests in Syria, especially vis-à-vis the Kurds.
That sounds like just the kind of cynical deal Erdogan would have concluded (admittedly roughly) with Putin when they met at the Kremlin August 9. The common denominator is unmistakable: play the US like a cheap fiddle, using Washington's fear of loss of influence in the region and broader peacemaking credibility worldwide, to bamboozle it into doing Ankara's and Moscow's respective authoritarian biddings.
So Obama is looking more like the naive fool in the region, almost like the "JV team" he once derided ISIS as: just as the Russians have extracted from him the price of non-interference with their brutal bombings of the opposition, so the Turks have now extracted the price of plausible deniability when it comes to betraying Syrian Kurdish aspirations.
It all works just fine for the dictators: they get to whack the malcontents they want to whack - provided they've agreed on how to divvy up the hit jobs - and they can count on the good ole US of A to bear the humanitarian burden of cleaning up the mess, even as they can still keep just enough facade of being a "partner" of America to wash their own bloodied hands when the dirty work is finished.
It's hardly a wonder the Iranians have been so fired up against US naval patrols lately: the Shia jihadists smell the stench of a weakness borne of a deep sense of confusion over just what in the world the US mission has become. And of course it's the same with the Chinese: Beijing's aggressively uncompromising arrogance towards its smaller neighbors these days isn't ultimately about China's evolving relationship with them - it's about proving their association with Uncle Sam is the root of their insecurity.
If this trend persists, before long America's remaining undemocratic allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, have to wonder just why on earth they're still deferring to Washington's preferences and prejudices. And even democracies with firm sense of national interest and unflinching autonomy - think India - will draw closer to the US for purely utilitarian reasons, not humanitarian ones.
Shame, just a shame...America has become the timid sheriff who relies on the local gangster bosses to keep their neighborhoods relatively orderly (or simply from becoming even more chaotic)...if not even the toothless judge in a mob-ruled society whose verdicts are valued only for the moral certification they give the oligarchs.
That sounds like just the kind of cynical deal Erdogan would have concluded (admittedly roughly) with Putin when they met at the Kremlin August 9. The common denominator is unmistakable: play the US like a cheap fiddle, using Washington's fear of loss of influence in the region and broader peacemaking credibility worldwide, to bamboozle it into doing Ankara's and Moscow's respective authoritarian biddings.
So Obama is looking more like the naive fool in the region, almost like the "JV team" he once derided ISIS as: just as the Russians have extracted from him the price of non-interference with their brutal bombings of the opposition, so the Turks have now extracted the price of plausible deniability when it comes to betraying Syrian Kurdish aspirations.
It all works just fine for the dictators: they get to whack the malcontents they want to whack - provided they've agreed on how to divvy up the hit jobs - and they can count on the good ole US of A to bear the humanitarian burden of cleaning up the mess, even as they can still keep just enough facade of being a "partner" of America to wash their own bloodied hands when the dirty work is finished.
It's hardly a wonder the Iranians have been so fired up against US naval patrols lately: the Shia jihadists smell the stench of a weakness borne of a deep sense of confusion over just what in the world the US mission has become. And of course it's the same with the Chinese: Beijing's aggressively uncompromising arrogance towards its smaller neighbors these days isn't ultimately about China's evolving relationship with them - it's about proving their association with Uncle Sam is the root of their insecurity.
If this trend persists, before long America's remaining undemocratic allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, have to wonder just why on earth they're still deferring to Washington's preferences and prejudices. And even democracies with firm sense of national interest and unflinching autonomy - think India - will draw closer to the US for purely utilitarian reasons, not humanitarian ones.
Shame, just a shame...America has become the timid sheriff who relies on the local gangster bosses to keep their neighborhoods relatively orderly (or simply from becoming even more chaotic)...if not even the toothless judge in a mob-ruled society whose verdicts are valued only for the moral certification they give the oligarchs.
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Abandoning Syrian regime change, Turkey takes its own bite of Syria
Having given up overthrowing Assad, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has wasted no time seizing what territorial leverage he still can in Syria with a powerful incursion to retake the ISIS border stronghold of Jarabulus.
Jarabulus is a vantage point on the upper Euphrates in its descent from the Anatolian highlands towards Mesopotamia, and the operation is appropriately dubbed "Euphrates Shield": by securing the river in this border sector, the Turkish and Turkish-supported Syrian rebel forces which comprise the expedition will be in a position to threaten further Kurdish territorial gains against ISIS - under the convenient pretext of fighting ISIS.
This is Turkey's response to the recent capture from ISIS of Manbij, further south in northeastern Aleppo province, by the Kurdish YPG militia-dominated, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). As the coalition effort to clear ISIS from the north of the province intensifies, Ankara is jockeying for a slice of the action, with the imperative of preventing the SDF from linking up the main Syrian Kurdish federation, predominantly along the Turkish border east of the Euphrates, with the small Kurdish enclave in the far northwest corner of Aleppo province (also bordering Turkey).
Strangely, this is the effective proxy war between the Pentagon and the CIA: the former supports the Kurdish-Arab rebel SDF while the latter backs the "moderate" rebel coalition of Arab groups such as Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Ahrar al-Sham alongside Turkic-speaking outfits like the Sultan Murad Brigade and Nour al-Din al-Zinki.
For the time being, US airpower and probably special forces are participating in the Turkish anti-ISIS campaign around Jarabulus, meaning that Langley has one-upped the Pentagon into at least partly appeasing Ankara. President Obama himself has doubtless concluded that if he wants Turkey to remain in NATO (i.e. not drift fully into Russia's orbit), he must make at least this token concession of legitimate national interest to Mr. Erdogan. It remains to be seen, though, just how he'll balance the two - the Turks versus the Kurds - as both want a role in liberating northern Aleppo province and thereby shaping its post-ISIS future.
The other wild card obviously is the Assad regime. While unsurprisingly protesting the Turkish incursion, Damascus can't do much about it: it needs to play off Turkey against the Kurds to maximize its own position at the bargaining table against the rebels. While Assad wouldn't welcome a longer Turkish presence in Syria any more than he'd recognize the Kurdish federation, he perfectly understands it's a reasonable price to pay for Erdogan's assent to keep his rump of the core of western Syria intact.
Jarabulus is a vantage point on the upper Euphrates in its descent from the Anatolian highlands towards Mesopotamia, and the operation is appropriately dubbed "Euphrates Shield": by securing the river in this border sector, the Turkish and Turkish-supported Syrian rebel forces which comprise the expedition will be in a position to threaten further Kurdish territorial gains against ISIS - under the convenient pretext of fighting ISIS.
This is Turkey's response to the recent capture from ISIS of Manbij, further south in northeastern Aleppo province, by the Kurdish YPG militia-dominated, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). As the coalition effort to clear ISIS from the north of the province intensifies, Ankara is jockeying for a slice of the action, with the imperative of preventing the SDF from linking up the main Syrian Kurdish federation, predominantly along the Turkish border east of the Euphrates, with the small Kurdish enclave in the far northwest corner of Aleppo province (also bordering Turkey).
Strangely, this is the effective proxy war between the Pentagon and the CIA: the former supports the Kurdish-Arab rebel SDF while the latter backs the "moderate" rebel coalition of Arab groups such as Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Ahrar al-Sham alongside Turkic-speaking outfits like the Sultan Murad Brigade and Nour al-Din al-Zinki.
For the time being, US airpower and probably special forces are participating in the Turkish anti-ISIS campaign around Jarabulus, meaning that Langley has one-upped the Pentagon into at least partly appeasing Ankara. President Obama himself has doubtless concluded that if he wants Turkey to remain in NATO (i.e. not drift fully into Russia's orbit), he must make at least this token concession of legitimate national interest to Mr. Erdogan. It remains to be seen, though, just how he'll balance the two - the Turks versus the Kurds - as both want a role in liberating northern Aleppo province and thereby shaping its post-ISIS future.
The other wild card obviously is the Assad regime. While unsurprisingly protesting the Turkish incursion, Damascus can't do much about it: it needs to play off Turkey against the Kurds to maximize its own position at the bargaining table against the rebels. While Assad wouldn't welcome a longer Turkish presence in Syria any more than he'd recognize the Kurdish federation, he perfectly understands it's a reasonable price to pay for Erdogan's assent to keep his rump of the core of western Syria intact.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)