Center for a New American Security

Steven Cook, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Shadi Hamid and Dan Byman -- smart analysts whose work I always read and admire -- have all now argued we need to consider military intervention in Syria. The problem is, for me at least, "military intervention" at once means everything and nothing. On the one hand, the decision to use force to achieve a desired political end is momentous in and of itself. On the other hand, though, I cannot determine whether or not "military intervention" is a good or bad idea until I have some idea of what, precisely, is meant by the term. Analysts who argue either for or against military intervention have an obligation to sketch out the ways in which one could possibly intervene so that we can determine which ways, if any, make sense given the circumstances. 

A broader problem here, as I was discussing with both Adam Elkus and Robert Caruso, is that regional specialists rarely understand military capabilities and options well enough to make an argument for or against, and those who understand military capabilities and options rarely understand the regional dynamics well enough to make an argument for or against. It is important, in that context, for scholars to work collaboratively to complement areas of expertise.

Along these lines, Marc Lynch is working on an analysis piece for CNAS that I hope will go some way toward addressing specific ways in which the United States could intervene militarily in Syria to better determine which options, if any, are worth attempting. This kind of analysis takes time but is, I think, ultimately the more responsible way to go about making these arguments.

Each year, around this time in the (lunar) calendar, Western newspapers are usually filled with stories about the latest exciting Ramadan soap opera everyone is watching. Nothing happens during Ramadan, the story goes, so most reporting on the Arabic-speaking world is of the human interest variety.

It's worth pausing to consider, then, how remarkable this year has been and continues to be. I woke up this morning to images of Hosni Mubarak in a cage, on trial in Egypt. This is a stunning image for me to see, so I can only imagine the effect it has on 83m Egyptians and about 250m other people in the region.

Elsewhere in the Arabic-speaking world, meanwhile, violent civil wars and upheavals continue to press for the fall of the Qadhdhafi regime in Libya, the al-Asad regime in Syria, and the Saleh regime in Yemen. If I had to place my bets, I would bet all will ultimately and bloodily be successful.

Remarkable. Ramadan mubarak indeed.

Today is the 67th anniversary of "Goddammit, Rangers, Lead the Way." If you are able, and especially if you are a youngish man thinking of trying your hand at Rangering, watch the first 25 minutes or so of Saving Private Ryan today. All of the rest of you should at least raise a glass for the Boys of Pointe-du-Hoc and all the other men who fought that day in Normandy. (And boy, think whatever you wish of Ronald Reagan, but the "Boys of Pointe-du-Hoc" speech is incredible.)

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As far as yesterday's fighting in the (occupied) Golan is considered, let me just say this, speaking as someone whose own research on the fighting in southern Lebanon is highly critical of the Israeli Defense Force and who has never been hesitant to criticize anyone's military forces (including my own) when they deserve it: You can have whatever opinions you wish to have about Israeli policy or the plight of the Palestinians, but if the IDF units did in fact employ escalation of force as is currently being described, starting with non-lethal means and then proceeding to lethal force, you can't ask any more of them tactically and operationally. That will infuriate some of you unable to divorce consideration of tactics and operations from the strategies and policies they serve, but there it is.

(Considering both Israel's leaders and Syria's leaders might want Bashar al-Asad to stick around for a while longer, a friend in Beirut only half-jokingly suggested yesterday's events were staged on both sides to take the attention off the crimes of the al-Asad regime against its own people.)

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I'll be traveling internationally for the next few days and will likely not be blogging very much, if at all. On the flights, though, here's what I'll be reading:

1. The manuscript for Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's new book.

2. Kissinger's On China. People who actually know a lot about China and know better books about China might make fun of me for this, but I know next to nothing about China and figured it might be a good time to learn something.

3. Bob Kaplan's forthcoming essay for the National Interest on John Stuart Mill and the Arab Spring. (Bob was kind enough to slip me a copy last week at the CNAS conference.)

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Speaking of the annual CNAS conference, if you did not attend, you can still watch a stellar conversation about Afghanistan and Pakistan moderated by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and featuring LTG (Ret.) Dave Barno, Amb. Anne Patterson, Steve Coll and Bing West on C-SPAN online. The five discuss, among other things, this report (.pdf) I co-authored.

You can also watch, here, the panel on internet freedom and the Arabic-speaking world for which I served as the jester. Shadi Hamid and Richard Fontaine were both excellent, and Colin Kahl, as the panel went on and as he veered off the script, just starting owning it. Highly entertaining.

So the events of yesterday do not, thankfully, seem to have kicked off a regional war, though continue to knock on wood. As predicted, though, the violence along Israel's borders (Page A1, today's Washington Post, above the fold, with a color photograph) has drowned out coverage of Bashar al-Asad's continuing war against his own people (Page A9, today's Washington Post). A few more observations to either add to or amend ones I made yesterday:

1. I promised there would be room to criticize the tactics and operations of the IDF going forward, though I also noted that as critical as I have been of the IDF in the past, I am sympathetic toward any military organization simply trying to protect the integrity of its territories. That having been said, the only place where there seems to have been an actual breach of the border was along the Syrian border. (And again, the Golan Heights are occupied territory that we assume will someday transfer back to Syria as part of a broader peace agreement, so we're not so much talking of an international border here as we are a line of control. The readers who pointed this out yesterday are, of course, correct on this point.) Yet the IDF killed how many along the Lebanese border? Let me just say that a) there was no excuse not to have been better prepared for this kind of mass protest on Nakba Day and b) that the IDF has demonstrated in the West Bank that it has the means to use non-lethal means to counter protests. So one question I would have going forward concerns how the IDF units along the border with Lebanon were prepared to respond to the protests along the Lebanese border in terms of escalation of force. What non-lethal means did they have to respond to protesters and rock-throwers? Because although a solider has the right to defend himself, Israel as much as any other nation understands that the kind of international condemnation you receive from shooting protesters carries with it strategic effects.

2. There was a lot of conversation in the Twitter-sphere concerning tactics of both violence and non-violence in support of the Palestinian cause. Much of this is poorly uninformed, and some are simply trying to crudely portray all Palestinians as violent savages while others are defending Palestinian tactics over the years without any kind of critical reflection on their appropriateness or effectiveness. Let me just say this: before anyone opens his or her mouth about strategies and tactics of the Palestinian national movement over the years, he or she should first check this book out from a library and read it.

3. As I said yesterday, the events along Israel's borders should be a wake-up call for the Israeli political class. Although the easy thing to do here will be to claim that Israel has no partner in peace, it is foolish to think the kind of non-violent protests that proved so effective in Egypt and Tunisia will not migrate to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In the eyes of the world, Israel will look like Ben Ali or Mubarak in the face of a non-violent movement for the creation of a Palestinian state. Is Israel prepared for that? When I was in Israel 18 months ago doing some research, some security analysts I talked to spoke of the West Bank and the Palestinians as a problem to be managed: sure, there would be an uprising every now and then, but it was nothing Israel could not handle through force. I'm not sure that is any longer the case, if indeed it ever was, which is part of the reason why I believe Western, Arab and Israeli policy-makers should start setting the conditions for a Palestinian state (.pdf) now rather than wait.

4. Have I mentioned before how much I hate writing about issues relating to Israel and Palestine? I think I have, so I usually avoid it and only made an exception in this case because of the Lebanon and Syria angle. Don't expect this, then, to be the new normal here on the blog. I will go back to my usual coverage of everything-but-Israel-and-the-Palestinians soon enough.

By now, you have read the news that protesters who attempted to march into Israel and Israeli-controlled territory* (here I am referring to the Golan Heights, which are disputed) were shot at by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). More than a dozen have been reported killed.

1. This will shock all some none of you, but Arab regimes have often cynically used the Palestinian cause to shift the focus away from their own failures and abuses. The clashes today are the best of news for Bashar al-Asad, and only the Lord knows how many brave Syrians will now be gunned down or thrown into prison in Homs, Douma, Hama, Baniyas, etc. while everyone's eyes are on the Lebanese, Syrian and Gazan borders with Israel. Just yesterday, we were all talking about terrified Syrians fleeing into northern Lebanon. Now Syria and its allies have either engineered or have been presented with the mother of all distractions from their own wretched and criminal behavior. 

2. The Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Palestinians and Israeli peoples are all getting played right now. If you're a Palestinian marking the Nakba on the border with Israel right now, that's all fine and well, but you should be aware of those actors for whom this distraction is most welcome and who have every interest in using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and your own suffering for their own cynical purposes right now. If you're Lebanese, meanwhile, and you're watching Hizballah mobilize, ask yourself this: is Hizballah mobilizing to protect Lebanon and its people or because escalation benefits Hizballah's allies in Damascus?

3. This kind of non-violent march into Israeli-controlled territory is not without precedent. Some brave Lebanese did this very thing in the year leading up to Israel's 2000 withdrawal from their security zone in southern Lebanon. There is a huge difference, obviously, between Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon and Israel proper, but the point here is that this is not really a first, and as far as Israeli-controlled territory like Majdal Shams is concerned, you can forgive the protesters killed there for wondering what the difference is between there and, say, Jezzine or Marjayoun a decade ago. From the Israeli perspective, the difference is a great one, but that might not be the case for the witnesses to the non-violent marches into Israeli-occupied Lebanese territories in 1999 and 2000.

4. The IDF almost always seems to do the strategically stupid thing in these situations, either using force more than is necessary or using force indiscriminately, but I will not judge the decisions or actions of the IDF just yet and, as tough as I have been on the IDF in cases, I have some sympathy for them here. What were they supposed to do in the face of a breach of the border? And what did the protesters think would happen? (I know what Syria and some particularly cynical actors in Gaza and Lebanon probably hoped would happen: exactly what did happen.) But you can't really fault a military for protecting the territorial integrity of its state by force.  

5. Israel has been kidding itself if it had imagined itself immune from the non-violent, peaceful protests that have been sweeping the Arabic-speaking world. You can dismiss today's events in northern Israel as a plot engineered by the Syrians, Iranians and their proxies. But the Palestinian cause is a real and enduring one. What happens when the Palestinians in the West Bank start demanding statehood not through violence but through peaceful protests? How will Israel respond? One option they do not have is to bury their heads in the sand and pretend like the call for Palestinian statehood will go away. And good luck whenever some clever Palestinian leader starts organizing peaceful marches on some crazy hilltop settlements in the West Bank, counting on provoking the kind of response that the media in Israel and abroad will eat up.

6. Finally, remember the one rule I follow with respect to Levantine politics: just be cynical about the motives and actions of everyone, and you will never go wrong.

*Just to clarify, the only actual breach of which I know took place on the Syrian border. I look forward to hearing accounts from witnesses regarding what happened on the Lebanese border.

Hey, Amal and Hizballah! Having that Lebanese seat on the U.N. Security Council sure was fun when it allowed you to get Moammar Gadhafi back for what happened to Musa Sadr all those years ago, wasn't it? But now that one of your patrons is brutally cracking down on his people in more or less the same manner as Gadhafi, we should probably go ahead and reject that draft resolution condemning the mass murder of political protesters, eh? I thought so.

Boy, I would love to hear Hassan Nasrallah give some morally sanctimonious speech in which he explains why Gadhafi must be driven from office but that conspiracies against Bashar al-Asad are a Anglo-Zionist plot. And I suspect I am going to get that opportunity.

From the Los Angeles Times, a yellow card for Bashar al-Asad:

Meanwhile, you can rock out in your office to this jammin' Syrian protest song. "Allah! Syria! Freedom! (And that's it!)" Also, I have been watching al-Jazeera Arabic, which has been running some shocking video of Syrian security forces punching and kicking bound detainees. Yeah, that will go over well in the rest of the Arabic-speaking world...

What I am reading today:

1. I just finished the very solid new Crisis Group report on Egypt. The first 15 pages read like a thriller, and the analysis on the Egyptian military strikes me as solid.

2. Max Rodenbeck on Tunisia and Egypt in the New York Review of Books.

3. And speaking of Rodenbeck, the Economist on Libya.

(Update II: 4. Be sure to read Michael Knights talking an incredible amount of sense about no-fly zones here.)

What am I not reading? (Okay, I actually read this.)

1. Joan Juliet Buck's breathless profile of Asma al-Assad, "A Rose in the Desert". Probably should have spiked this one, Vogue! The only thing worse than Buck's prose -- "Despite what must be a killer IQ, she sometimes uses urban shorthand" -- is seeing the skills of a fine photographer like James Nachtwey applied to taking cuddly shots of Bashar al-Assad playing with his kids. Gross. What's next, Vogue? At Home with Kim Jong-il? Dining with Grace Mugabe?

Update:

2. Gah! I have to add another one nicely illustrating that fact that the difference between the neoconservative fantasy in the efficacy of military power is really no different than the same liberal interventionist fantasy.

There are various ways in which the horror can be brought to an end. Is a no-fly zone really too complicated to negotiate? Then let NATO planes fly over Tripoli to shoot down any Libyan aircraft that make war on the Libyan population. Is the United States really prevented by its past from deploying the small number of troops that would be required to rescue Tripoli from Qaddafi’s bloody grip? Then let a multilateral expeditionary force be raised and a humanitarian intervention be launched to free Libya from its tyrant and then leave Libya to the Libyans.

We are now paying the price for having waged two very difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that far too few Americans have participated in or been made to sacrifice for. I sometimes get accused of being a hawk because I have argued that resource-intensive counterinsurgency campaigns have represented our best chance to salvage bad situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but my experiences in both countries also taught me that a) force has its limits and b) we should all be very cautious about committing U.S. troops to combat operations in the first place. I'm horrified to read liberal interventionists continue to suggest the ease with which humanitarian crises and regional conflicts can be solved by the application of military power. To speak so glibly of such things reflects a very immature understanding of the limits of force and the difficulties and complexities of contemporary military operations. And then there is this:

I do not see a Middle East rising up in anger at the prospect of American intervention.

Hoo boy. Have I read that before?

BAGHDAD — Iran joined Syria on Monday in condemning what they described as an attack by four United States helicopters on the Syrian side of the border with Iraq that they said killed eight people.

The United States confirmed that a special operations mission took place in the area on Sunday but a senior military official gave no more details for now.

U.S. missile-firing drones reportedly killed at least 20 people on Sunday in Pakistan's South Waziristan province close to the Afghan border, an area
suspected of harboring Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Andrew Exum, a former U.S. army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and founder of the influential Abu Muqawama counter-insurgency blog, suggests that the American action in Syria shows that the tactic may simply have been exported. "The precedent has already been established of crossing borders into safe havens. Operational commanders would have to be thinking, if we can do it in Pakistan, why can't we do it in Syria," he says.