I love it when a strategy comes together...

Bashar al-Assad, President of rump Syria, thinks that the Americans don't know what they're doing in the region. That's not explicitly what he said, but that's what this amounts to:

Asked whether coalition airstrikes are helping him, Assad said that the bombardments -- the Obama administration's preferred military tactic in the fight against the Islamic State -- aren't enough. "Troops on the ground that know the land and can react are essential," Assad told journalist Régis Le Sommier. "That is why there haven't been any tangible results in the two months of strikes led by the coalition. It isn't true that the strikes are helpful. They would of course have helped had they been serious and efficient."

Despite the wishful thinking of some in the West when he came on the scene to replace his father, Hafez al-Assad of "Hama rules" fame, Bashar (Opthamologist by training) is a chip off the old despotic block. I suspect that's more nurture than nature, but he has in any event survived in an environment which would have exposed and destroyed him for any weakness. In fact, the entire region is like that.

The Baath regime in Syria as in Iraq is bad news, but it was (pretty much) equal-opportunity bad news. Christians, Alawis and other non-Sunni minority groups survived as well as anyone could in Syria until things came apart in 2011. Being an enemy of the State was what would get you tortured and killed, and as brutal as that is it's something you could avoid, i.e. you weren't born into it.

Enter Da'esh/IS/ISIL/Al Queda/etc. The decendants of the Moslem Brotherhood old Hafez decimated in Hama, they are rabidly intolerant Sunni militias, so intolerant that most Sunnis don't want to live under them either. The non-Sunnis who remain have been forced to side with Assad in sheer self-preservation. In that case the "enemy of their enemy" is their only hope.

Does that mean that we should work with him? Well, that depends. In an ideal world where we all love each other and some rare zombie virus makes people turn nasty, no. In the real world where things are a lot greyer than that you don't work with a murderous sadistc regime unless of course they are less distasteful than the alternatives.The question: is Assad sufficiently less off-putting than Da'esh/Al-Queda/Nusra to be worth propping up?

I won't pretend that this is a simple decision, but I'll zoom out enough to try to put it in perspective. Until 2003, Iraq and Syria were "stable". Not Parliamentary-Rule-of-Law stable, but most people could go about their daily lives with little chance of violence which counts as stability in most parts of the world. Once the Americans broke Iraq (that is neither ideological nor debatable at this point) the whole region began to creak. The eventual result was the so-called "Arab Spring" which succeeded only in the place it began, in Tunisia. Egypt got the government it thought it wanted in the Muslim Brotherhood, but quickly realized that having the military run things was not so bad after all. Syria tried to reform but that only exposed how brittle the power structure was and of course it shattered.

Shit gets tribal pretty quickly in situations like that (civil war) and the surviving enclaves are the Alawis (Assad's "tribe") and the Kurds. The Syrian Kurds' only chance of survival is to amalgamate with the Iraqi Kurds and I have said before this is where I think we should put our efforts. Erdrogan and the Turkish government; in his/their effots to re-create the Ottoman empire has/have placed themselves in opposition to NATO's interests and should be booted out of the alliance. I mention this because the Turks are the single biggest impediment to carving out a stable safe-haven for people fleeing Da'esh.

The Iranians also have Kurdish issues, but they are a bit more pragmatic and are actively supporting their militias fighting Da'esh. Should we co-operate with them? How I work it out is that worst-case scenario, Iran spreads its' (Shia) "Islamic Republic" to parts of Iraq; that is still less miserable than Daesh/Al Queda. This would defacto split off Iraqi Kurdistan to join up with Rojava. In case you wonder why I think we should support that, go read this.

Are the Kurds perfect? Not by a long shot, but as far as I can tell they are better than all regional alternatives. My information is not based on personal experience, but by all accounts their internal tribal issues don't turn into oppressing other people which is all that I can ask of a group. The real litmus test is "would I take a trip there [Iraqi Kudistan]?". The answer in this case is "yes" because even as in infidel Westerner I would be as safe there anywhere other than home. Their proposed constitution looks pretty Socialist (not surprising, Kurdish Workers' Party and all) but Disestablishmentarianism is the law of the land making it unique in the region since Turkey has purged Ataturk.

Coming back to Assad, the Social Contract of the Rojava Cantons (linked above) recognises the "territorial integrity of Syria" which brings it in line with the rump Baath state. This is potential common ground, but there is no way the Cantons would let Assad back in control. What I don't know is what the Iranians would think about cutting loose their link to Hezbollah, inevitable if the current power structure is dissolved.

That could be grounds for some old-school "sphere of influence" talks between the US, Saudis and Iranians. The tradeoff could be recognition of defacto Iranian expansion into Iraq, sans "Sunni Triangle" in exchange for cutting the Levant loose. The Saudis would have cause to dislike this, but it wouldn't change much on the groud so it might not be a deal breaker. Hezbollah has bled a great deal for the Assad regime (really for Iran) so it's unlikely Iran would cut ties, but they would gain more Shia in Iraq than they'd lose in Lebanon so who knows?

The region (and many others) has a preference for backing "the Strong Horse". Assad's Syria was that in the immediate area for many years; it is so no longer, but it can still do a lot of damage. The Alawis are a fairly despised minority in the ME, but so are the Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, etc. I see common cause there, but there are a lot of Great and Regional Power interests to overcome before the underdogs can band together. Get rid of Assad and the Baath Party and we could work with non IS Syria against Da'esh and in spite of Erdrogan. I deduce Iran as the lynchpin of this, with Russia having some say, maybe just as an extraction plan for the Baath ruling elite.

There's your angle Obama; you still have a chance to actually earn that Nobel Peace Prize. Fat chance the USA does anything this coherently thought-out with an understanding of the region and history, but the regional players understand these things. Somebody will do something but it probably won't be us.

Beware the Ennui of the Legions

As the tide of war rises again in the Middle East, the military’s rank and file are mostly opposed to expanding the new mission in Iraq and Syria to include sending a large number of U.S. ground troops into combat, according to a Military Times survey of active-duty members.
On the surface, troops appear to support President Obama’s repeated vows not to let the U.S. military get “dragged into another ground war” in Iraq. Yet at the same time, the views of many service members are shaped by a deep ambivalence about this commander in chief and questions about his ability to lead the nation through a major war, according to the survey and interviews.
The reader survey asked more than 2,200 active-duty troops this question: “In your opinion, do you think the U.S. military should send a substantial number of combat troops to Iraq to support the Iraqi security forces?” Slightly more than 70 percent responded: “No.”
“It’s their country, it’s their business. I don’t think major ‘boots on the ground’ is the right answer,” said one Army infantry officer and prior-enlisted soldier who deployed to Iraq three times. He responded to the survey and an interview request but, like several other service members in this story, asked not to be named because he is not authorized to discuss high-level military policy.

Of course soldiers (usually) go where they're told to go, but when a large majority of veteran combat troops don't want to do something it's worth looking closely at what you have planned and why.

Obama has authorized more action (e.g. airstrikes) but still has nothing approximating a realistic plan. Hitting the oil refineries was part of a plan/strategy, but you will never manage to kill all of the jihadis so you'd better have an end-state in mind.

I have one of course, but it involves carving out enclaves and like-minded people who will defend themselves, and then giving them the means to do so themselves.

A Kurdish/Christian/Yazidi/Assyrian/etc. enclave in northern Iraq and NE Syria is do-able and a solid and largely self-supporting nucleus is in place, so there's where I'd start. This needs to be consolidated and expanded to its' natural limits i.e. what can be held with the consent of the population.

This is NOT empire building, it's closer to ethnic self-determination with the wrinkle that the "ethnicity" in common is being an oppressed minority. Underdogs unite! These are the people we should be protecting, and although no-one's perfect they are the best of the neighborhood as far as we're concerned.

I've seen some other commentary about the current activity uniting the previously estranged jihadi factions against us, and to that I give a resounding "so what?" and not in the determine-all-likely-outcomes sense. If they get upset with us, well, they already want us to convert or die, so BFD. Keeping them divided is useful tactically but not a big-picture problem since it doesn't change the net effect. Besides, radical Islam (or anything else) is a race to the bottom as they fractionate into more-and-more volatile groups, Daesh being the ne plus ultra of violent misanthropy at present.

So, in bullet points, the broad strokes of what I would do if given control of the coalition a la Ferdianand Foch during the Germans' last throw of the dice in March 1918:

• Bring in two US Heavy brigades (of volunteers), one each for Iraq and Syria, coordinate these with the Peshmerga etc. in each Kurdish area
• Reach out to all non-Salafist elements in the contiguous or nearly-contiguous areas;
• Develop a plan for how much territory needs to be secured to make a self-sufficient state, and;
• As soon as this end-state is achieved, all non-local troops are shifted home.

No notice is to be taken of the internal Iraq/Syria border when making these plans. Iran can be told to stuff it as can Assad, but I'd leave it to the locals to replace him if they can. Border establishing yes, but NO MORE NATION BUILDING.

Support your friends, thwart (or worse) your enemies, and keep the troops motivated. Professional soldiers like to fight, at least enough to say they've done so, and a quick decisive gloves-off war is just what most of them are looking for. "In-and-out clever" is how to do it, and doing it right will help a lot of people. Not least of all, your soldiers who are relying on their government to not put them in harm's way without a damned good reason.

   

We'll hold 'em, you hit 'em

I've said for some time that the Saudis should be directly involved in the mess they helped create with Daesh in Syria/Iraq, and their planes are a good start. So far there has been no official commitment to sending the Royal Saudi Army in to get dirty, but it's apparently not completely off the table. They certainly have the resources to make an impact regionally, and I imagine getting some more combat experience for their troops would be a plan also.

The concern comes from various quarters about the incursion of Saudi troops to hit Daesh and Assad (as they would want to) on the basis of Iran and the Shia in general getting bent out of shape. If there was in fact some June 1914-syle delicate balance of power in the region this would have some merit, but as things stand the Saudis don't give a flying about Iran as long as America has the House of Saud's back, nor are "we" too fussed about keeping Tehran happy.

The feared Sunni-Shia "civil war" is already happening so the Saudis doing the dirty work of removing Assad would cut the Gordian knot of disturbing the power balance which most seem to fear messing with. Reports also have airstrikes on al-Nusra, another slightly-less bloodthirsty Salafist outfit and no more a friend to us than Daesh is.

There is always the problem of the power vacuum, and hitting all of the players might seem a good idea. The only problem I see with hitting Assad is that he represents the only remaining protection (besides the Kurdish areas) for religious minorities in Syria. The Alawi sect that the Assads hail from is adjudged heretical by "proper" Muslims and they won't last a week if the Baath party goes down completely, likewise the remaining Christians and garden-variety Shia.

In the meantime the squeeze is being put on the money-making and administrative soft underbelly of Daesh, which has them scrambling to adjust. Strikes on Daesh forces besieging Kurdish etc. villages in Syria have taken some pressure off, and a further degrading of the materiel Daesh scored from the Iraqi and Syrian armies will degrade their advantage. The tanks, APCs and artillery they took from Mosul are hard to hide and useless to you if you do manage it. That is a lesson the Germans on the Normandy front in WW2 learned the hard way, and that was without smart bombs.

A random though along that track; A-10s have been deployed to theatre, but what is ideal for killing vehicles and even easier to base are AH-64D (or better) Apaches, especially "Longbow" ones. Base a few of those close behind the friendly lines and you'll be able to break up any vehicular attack in minutes.

That's tactics, but also public relations. Already the US is making some more friends as it saves them from Daesh, and confidence that the lines will hold will take the humanitarian pressure off as people stay put or return to their homes. Putting hardware where the locals can see it, making them feel like it's "theirs" has an intangible but very real morale effect.

I'm not holding my breath to see Saudi M1A2s sweeping to Damascus, but you never know. Latest I've heard of the Iraqi Army is that it's as useless as it was in Mosul so SOMEBODY has to pick up the slack.

A new Thirty-Years War?

I stole this from Jerry Pournelle's mail bag at Chaos Manor. Put aside some time and read it, I found it enlightning, albeit it asks some more questions.

By: David P. Goldman
A one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is upon us. It won’t arrive by Naftali Bennett’s proposal <http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/181501#.U6dRlvmwJcQ> to annex the West Bank’s Area C, or through the efforts of BDS campaigners and Jewish Voice for Peace <http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/> to alter the Jewish state. But it will happen, sooner rather than later, as the states on Israel’s borders disintegrate and other regional players annex whatever they can. As that happens, Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is becoming inevitable.
Last week’s rocket attacks from Gaza failed to inflict many casualties in Israel—but they administered a mortal wound to Palestinian self-governance. Hamas launched its deepest strikes ever into Israel after the IDF cracked down on its West Bank operations following the murder last month of three Israeli boys, arresting nearly 900 members of Hamas <https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/12643-israel-has-arrested-896-palestinians-since-12-june> and other terrorist groups. Humiliated in the territories, and unable to pay its 44,000 Gaza employees <http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-decides-to-go-for-broke/> , Hamas acted from weakness, gambling that missile attacks would elicit a new Intifada on the West Bank. Although Fatah militias joined in the rocket attacks from Gaza, for now the Palestinian organizations are in their worst disarray in 20 years.
The settlers of Judea and Samaria have stood in the cross-hairs of Western diplomacy for two decades, during which the word “settler” has become a term of the highest international opprobrium. Yet the past decade of spiraling conflicts in the Middle East have revealed that what is settled in the region is far less significant than what is unsettled. Iran’s intervention into the Syrian civil conflict has drawn the Sunni powers into a war of attrition that already has displaced more than 10 million people, mostly Sunnis, and put many more at risk. The settled, traditional, tribal life of the Levant has been shattered. Never before in the history of the region have so many young men had so little hope, so few communal ties, and so many reasons to take up arms.
<http://cdn1.tabletmag.com/wp-content/files_mf/population1524.png>
Source: U.N. World Population Prospects <http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm>
As a result, the central premise of Western diplomacy in the region has been pulled inside-out, namely that a resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue was the key to long-term stability in the Middle East. Now the whole of the surrounding region has become one big refugee crisis. Yet the seemingly spontaneous emergence of irregular armies like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now rampaging through northern Mesopotamia should be no surprise. The misnamed Arab Spring of 2011 began with an incipient food crisis in Egypt <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB02Ak01.html> and a water crisis in Syria <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC29Ak02.html> . Subsidies from the Gulf States keep Egypt on life support. In Syria and Iraq, though, displaced populations become foraging armies that loot available resources, particularly oil, and divert the proceeds into armaments that allow the irregulars to keep foraging. ISIS is selling $800 million a year of Syrian oil to Turkey, according to one estimate <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html> , as well as selling electricity from captured power plants back to the Assad government. On June 11 it seized the Bajii power plant oil refinery <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/world/middleeast/the-militants-moving-in-on-syria-and-iraq.html?hp&_r=1> in northern Iraq, the country’s largest.
The region has seen nothing like it since the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. Perpetual war has turned into a snowball that accumulates people and resources as it rolls downhill and strips the ground bare of sustenance. Those who are left shiver in tents in refugee camps, and their young men go off to the war. There is nothing new about this way of waging war; it was invented in the West during the Thirty Years War by the imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein, and it caused the death of nearly half the population of Central Europe between 1618 and 1648.
As a result of this spiraling warfare, four Arab states—Libya, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq—have effectively ceased to exist. Lebanon, once a Christian majority country, became a Shia country during the past two decades under the increased domination of Hezbollah. Nearly 2 million Syrian Sunnis have taken refuge in Lebanon, as Israeli analyst Pinhas Inbari <http://jcpa.org/article/syrian-war-is-reshaping-the-region/> observes, and comprise almost half of Lebanon’s total population of 4 million, shifting the demographic balance to the Sunnis—while the mass Sunni exodus tilts the balance of power in Syria toward the Alawites and other religious minorities, who are largely allied with Iran. Jordan, meanwhile, has taken in a million Syrian Sunnis, making Palestinians a minority inside Jordan for the first time in a generation. A region that struggled to find sustenance for its people before 2011 has now been flooded with millions of refugees without resources or means of support. They are living for the most part on largesse from the Gulf States, and their young men are prospective cannon fodder.
The remaining states in the region—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—will alternately support and suppress the new irregular armies as their interests require. Where does ISIS get its support, apart from oil hijacking in Syria and bank robberies in Mosul <http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/12/isis-just-stole-425-million-and-became-the-worlds-richest-terrorist-group/> ? There are allegations that ISIS receives support from Turkey <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/17/pipes-turkeys-support-for-isis/> , the Sunni Gulf States <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html> , and Iran <http://jcpa.org/article/isis-irans-instrument-regional-hegemony/> . Pinhas Inbari <http://jcpa.org/article/isis-irans-instrument-regional-hegemony/> claims that Shiite Iran is funding Sunni extremists “to be certain that a strong Iraqi state does not emerge again along its western border.” There are equally credible reports that each of these powers wants to stop ISIS. Saudi Arabia fears <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/05/isis-saudi-arabia-qaeda-terrorism-syria.html> that Sunni extremists might overthrow the monarchy. Turkey fears that the depredations of ISIS on its border will trigger the formation of an independent Kurdish state, which it has opposed vehemently for decades. Iran views ISIS as a Sunni competitor for influence in the region.
To some extent, I believe, all these reports are true. The mess in the Middle East brings to mind the machinations around Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years War between 1627 and 1635, when France’s Cardinal Richelieu paid Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus to intervene on the Protestant side in order to weaken France’s Catholic rival Austria. At different times, Protestant Saxony and Catholic Bavaria allied with France, Austria, and each other, respectively. France and Sweden began as allies, briefly became enemies, and then were allies again. Looming over this snake-pit of religious, dynastic, and national rivalries was the figure of Albrecht von Wallenstein, the Austrian generalissimo who twice saved the Empire from defeat at the hands of the Protestants. Wallenstein, commanding a polyglot mercenary army with no national or religious loyalty, played both sides, and Austria had him murdered in 1634.
There is more than coincidence to the parallels between the Middle East today and 17th-century Europe. Iran’s intervention into Syria’s civil conflict inaugurated a new kind of war in the region, the sort that Richelieu practiced in the 1620s. Iran’s war objectives are not national or territorial in the usual sense; rather, the objective is the war itself, that is, the uprooting and destruction of potentially hostile populations. With a third of Syria’s population displaced and several million expelled, the Assad regime has sought to change Syria’s demographics to make the country more congenial to Shiite rule. That in turn elicits a new kind of existential desperation from the Saudis, who are fighting for not only the survival of their sclerotic and corrupt monarchy, but also for the continuation of Sunni life around them. Today Iraq’s Sunnis, including elements of Saddam Hussein’s mainly Sunni army and the 100,000 strong “Sons of Iraq” force hired by then-U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007-2008 surge, are making common cause with ISIS. Tomorrow they might be shooting at each other. The expectation that the waves of sectarian and tribal violence that have caused national borders to crumble across the Middle East will die down in 30 years may be both incredibly grim and wildly optimistic.
***
In the background of the region’s disrupted demographics, a great demographic change overshadows the actions of all the contenders. That is decline of Muslim fertility, and the unexpected rise in Jewish fertility. The fall in Muslim birth rate is most extreme in Iran and Turkey, with different but related consequences. When Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, the average Iranian woman had seven children; today the total fertility rate has fallen to just 1.6 children, the sharpest drop in demographic history. Iran still has a young population, but it has no children to succeed them. By mid-century Iran will have a higher proportion of elderly dependents than Europe, an impossible and unprecedented burden for a poor country. Iran’s sudden aging will be followed by Turkey, Algeria, and Tunisia.
<http://cdn1.tabletmag.com/wp-content/files_mf/popover65.png>
Source: U.N. World Population Prospects <http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm>
Iran’s disappearing fertility is in a sense the Shah’s revenge. Iran is the most literate Muslim country, thanks in large part to an ambitious literacy campaign introduced by the Shah in the early 1970s. As I showed in my book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying, Too), literacy is the best predictor of fertility in the Muslim world: Muslim women who attend high school and university marry late or not at all and have fewer children. This has grave strategic implications, as Iran’s leaders unabashedly discuss.
Between 2005 and 2020, Iran’s population aged 15 to 24, that is, its pool of potential army recruits, will have fallen by nearly half. To put this in perspective, Pakistan’s military-age population will have risen by about half. In 2000, Iran had half the military-age men of its eastern Sunni neighbor; by 2020 it will have one-fourth as many. Iran’s bulge generation of youth born in the 1980s is likely to be its last, and its window for asserting Shiite power in the region will close within a decade.
The Obama Administration wants to contain Iranian aggression by accommodating Iran’s ambitions to become a regional power. As the president told <http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-02/obama-to-israel-time-is-running-out> Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg in March, “What I’ll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn’t to say that they aren’t a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they’re not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives.” Any deal with Iran is therefore a good deal from Obama’s point of view. But that is precisely wrong: Iran does not have a suicide wish, but it knows that it is dying, and has nothing to lose by rolling the dice today.

A stick in the spokes of the "Axis of Evil"

A couple of days ago, the Government of Canada cut diplomatic relations with the Islamic republic of Iran, closing our embassy and booting out theirs. I say: about bloody time.

There are the usual (Prime Minister of Canada) Harper-haters who seem to love every repressive Islamic regime the world over and have been chiming in on this, but the truth is that Iran's current government is NOT a friend we want. Working off the "company you keep" model of character, let's see who Iran's friends are; this should convince most people that we are right to keep our distance.

1. Syria, specifically the Assad regime. Do I really need to go into detail here?
2. Hezbollah. Regardless of the general anti-Israel bent of much of the media and the Left, Hezbollah is not the sort of neighbour anyone wants, at least not if they want to do things their own way. Of course the usual suspects don't care as long as it's just "Zionists" who are being killed...
3. China. China is all about business and expanding their influence, and as close to amoral about who they deal with as you care to get. China is also blocking the UN Security Council on votes to do something about the mess in Syria.
4. Venezuela: Chavez and his cronies are big fans and have gotten a lot of arms and training from the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah affiliates.

This gives you the idea. I was going to include Russia on that list, but they have been distancing themselves from Iran for a while now. I have said it before and I say it again now: the Iranian PEOPLE are not our enemy, just the current regime (which many Iranians have been tortured, raped and killed for opposing). If anything this move by my government is long overdue. When they get a decent government back in we'll reestablish regular relations; until then there is no point in even talking to them.

And if Israel/whoever else attacks Iran? I don't think going after their nuke program is worthwhile, but bombing the #%&k out of the IRGC would be a step to the good for everyone. Well, everyone we might want to help, anyway.

Better the devil you know...

Completely and totally predictable, inevitable even:

"There were always Christians in Qusayr -- there were around 10,000 before the war," says Leila, the matriarch of the Khouri clan. Currently, 11 members of the clan are sharing two rooms. They include the grandmother, grandfather, three daughters, one husband and five children. "Despite the fact that many of our husbands had jobs in the civil service, we still got along well with the rebels during the first months of the insurgency." The rebels left the Christians alone. The Christians, meanwhile, were keen to preserve their neutrality in the escalating power struggle. But the situation began deteriorating last summer, Leila says, murmuring a bit more before going silent.

"We're too frightened to talk," her daughter Rim explained, before mustering the courage to continue. "Last summer Salafists came to Qusayr, foreigners. They stirred the local rebels against us," she says. Soon, an outright campaign against the Christians in Qusayr took shape. "They sermonized on Fridays in the mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us away," she says. "We were constantly accused of working for the regime. And Christians had to pay bribes to the jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting killed."

This is about Syria of course, but it can be any Muslim-majority country anywhere in the world as soon as the non-Muslim minorities lose protection. Assad, being from a religious minority himself was the only protection the Christians, Alawis and Druze had from the influx of Salafist idiots who pop up like mushrooms as soon as repressive but stable regimes start falling. Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, now Syria are seeing the same pattern as al Queda and others rush to exploit the ensuing power vacuums resultant from the respective regime changes.

Solutions? Bullets and Hellfires again I'm afraid, as there is no reasoning with fanatics. The Americans will grease the skids for the jihadis as they have since Iran in 1979 with lamentably predictable results for anyone who doesn't want to live in a dystopian throwback to the imagined "golden age of Islam" of the 6-7th C; in practical terms "the Stone Age" as mentioned in the linked Spiegel article.

I previously suggested setting up border enclaves for the Christians and Druze, and the Golan Heights would serve this purpose well. If Israel will offer citizenship to any non-Muslims who want to re-settle there, they will have a chance to do-over the South Lebanon buffer zone to protect themselves from Hezbollah and whatever Syria metastasizes to post-Assad. It also would strengthen Israel's de-facto annexation of Golan, and in the zero-sum world of the Middle East that which makes Israel stronger makes worse groups (pretty much everyone in the immediate neighbourhood) weaker.

Of course I don't know anything about Muslims so it's all paranoid right-wing fantasy that they drive out everyone who won't knuckle under to them, right? Sorry Genie, the real world isn't what they teach in school these days (if it ever was, to be fair) and Anglo-Saxon males and/or the USA are not the authors of all the ills of the world.

The enemy of the friend of my enemy is my friend, right?

Right at the top of this blog is my rationale for its' existence, and here is a classic case of refusing to learn from history:

On his campaign website, Romney criticizes Obama for reaching out to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the past but stops short of calling for any direct action to force Assad from power such as directly arming the opposition, as his surrogates like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are demanding, or establishing "safe zones" for the Syrian opposition, as many of his campaign's foreign policy advisors are calling for.

Romney's official position (or lack thereof) makes more sense to me than McCain's idea since we've been down this road before and McCain should know better. I have yet to see any realistic assessment of what may come out of Syria's "civil war" that will be a distinct improvement for the USA or anyone else whose interests jive with mine. I am reminded of a similar situation in the 1980s when it was decided (in concert with the Saudis) to arm people resisting someone we didn't like, and that has been biting the West in the ass ever since.

Yes, Afghanistan. Syria is a train wreck mishmash of people who don't get along, and a lot of them don't like "us" either. The CIA is involved again, oh happy day, "vetting" who they give weapons to. Assad is using attack helicopters now; will the CIA decide to hand out some Stingers again to help the rebels?

More recent and likely more analogous is Iraq. The Yanks didn't like Saddam (not much to like, for sure) so they regime-changed his ass. Let's look at how that worked out: nearly 40,000 Coalition (mostly American) casualties (Blood) and somewhere around $2 Trillion in financial cost (Treasure). This makes no mention of Iraqi casualties, the "cleansing" of the few remaining Christians in Baghdad, internal and external displacement of Sunnis and widespread destruction of infrastructure. All of that got the Americans none of the oil revenue (enter: China) that might have underwritten giving the Iraqis a "better" government.

Yes, it would be nice to put a stick in the spokes of Iran and by extension Hezbollah by removing Bashar & Co. but would it be worth it in the long term? Doing things half-arsed gives you Libya as it is post-NATO intervention, the full monty gives you Iraq or Afghanistan.

In the bigger picture it's not much of the Americans' concern, as there are plenty of regional powers (esp. Turkey) capable of setting up the "safe areas" or putting the coup de grace to the Assad dynasty. Supporting America's friends at this time is a better use of resources than fighting on behalf of someone who has a better-than-average chance of turning on you later on.

There are plenty of capable friendly-ish countries (Turkey, Israel and to a lesser extent Saudi and Jordan) with skin in this game. Playing this one cagey is appropriate, but Romney needs to be as clear as the circumstances permit about what he is prepared to do about it. After that be prepared to be flexible 'cause things can always change...

Whatever happens, we have got The Stealthy Drone and they; oh wait....

The Associated Press

Date: Saturday Dec. 10, 2011 11:22 AM ET

WASHINGTON — The loss to Iran of the CIA's surveillance drone bristling with advanced spy technology is more than a propaganda coup and intelligence windfall for the Tehran government. The plane's capture has peeled back another layer of secrecy from expanding U.S. operations against Iran's nuclear and military programs.

...

Iran aired TV footage Thursday of what current and former U.S. officials confirm is the missing Sentinel. The robotic aircraft suffered what appeared to be only minimal damage.

Iran protested Friday to the United Nations about what it described as "provocative and covert operations" by the U.S. The Tehran government called the flight by the drone a "blatant and unprovoked air violation" that was "tantamount to an act of hostility."

Flying any sort of military and/or surveillance aircraft in sovereign airspace is not merely "tantamount" but a de jure hostile act. This means only that I concur that this was a military action against Iran, NOT that I have a problem with the concept. Only the execution in this particular case.

I have read that Obama (Commander in Chief after all) was presented with options to destroy (easiest) or recapture the drone. He did nothing, and the US will suffer for it as its enemies get physical access to their best drone tech. The blog title is my take on this from Hilaire Belloc:

The Modern Traveller

Blood thought he knew the native mind;
He said you must be firm, but kind.
A mutiny resulted.
I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
'Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.'

So the much vaunted F-22 is grounded more often than not due to oxygen problems, the F-35 is vastly over budget and over time, and now this. America is rapidly losing any advantage over potential competitors, and if Iran did in fact hack the drone (unverified but likely considering it didn't crash) the lynchpin of American surveillance and small conflict strategy is seriously compromised.

It has been a concern in some quarters for some time (it's occurred to me also) that the other side can have drones as well, AND anything which is remote controlled can be jammed or hacked. Appearances are at the moment on the side of the Iranian account, so this would be a efficient payback for some of the lethal shenanigans which have been played on Iran of late.

I'd like this more one-sided (to "our" side) but assuming that your enemies are stupid and incompetent is always a bad idea. The proof of that is sitting in "an undisclosed location" in Iran right now, and nothing short of an outright act of war can now prevent all of the highest bidders (China foremost) from getting their mitts on it. Nice going Obama.

They could make a lot of glass with all that sand...

America has always feared that a nuclear Iran would lead to a Middle Eastern arms race. Speaking at a regional security forum in Riyadh earlier this week, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki Al-Faisal (former ambassador to the US and intelligence chief) stepped up the pressure. The NYT reports:

Prince Turki said at the forum on Monday that an Iranian quest for nuclear weapons and Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal might force Saudi Arabia to follow suit…
“It is our duty toward our nation and people to consider all possible options, including the possession of these weapons,” Prince Turki was quoted as saying.

In case anyone had any lingering doubts about the characteristics of America's fade from the World Policeman role, this will give an indication. It is however the logical result of previous and current US and international policy toward hard-case regimes around the world.

North Korea figured this out a long time ago, and the mere suspicion that they might have (lot of qualifiers here) functional nukes will keep the merely pushy or adventurous away from military action. Libya cut a deal a few years back and relinquished "all" their WMD, particularly the nuclear aspects. We can see how well that worked for Qaddafi, and for Saddam Hussein before him, and the lesson to Iran was clear: proliferate or die.

Iran's nuclear program has taken some knocks of late, but nothing short of a massive and carefully targeted air attack and/or a suicidal Special Forces attack on the tunnel complexes that hide it will stop it in the medium term. In the long run anything can be rebuilt, but it's pointless to worry about that with the current problems we face.

I didn't predict the Saudis wanting nukes, but it didn't surprise me when I read it. The Saudis want them for standard deterrence purposes, so they don't fall into my "despot fail safe" pattern above. The US still has their back, but that too could change and the Saudis play the Monarchical long game. If things go totally off the rails and we see a Mid East nuclear arms race, I REALLY can't predict where that will go. Not that I can usually predict anything in particular; if I could do that I'd be getting paid for this.

Pakistan is falling apart, and you can be sure the Americans won't get all of their nukes when the centre completely fails to hold. There are a number of places with money who could buy some through existing contacts, and I would be shocked if feelers were not already extended.

It will never happen, but an ideal stop-gap deterrence for the Saudis already exists: Israel. It would be domestic politics suicide for the House of Saud, but I'm sure the Israelis could (for significant financial inducement) "rent" an extension of their nuclear umbrella against a common foe. Israel is already strategic depth for the Saudis whether it's intended or not, regardless of what the Americans may guarantee the Saudis in the future.

Here's my AotF strategic calculus to get that result. Iran's government and a good slice of the population hates Israel, (for no good historical reason, but no matter) and Israel takes this seriously. I am assuming a great deal with this next bit, but if Iran attacked Saudi Arabia, I can't see Israel standing idly by. This would likely take the form of opportunistic attacks on Iranian targets through Saudi airspace. The reason this might happen is that Saudi is the closest thing Israel has to an ally in the region since Turkey flaked out. There is some affinity with the Kurds, but that isn't going to be a strategic asset to Israel in the near future.

Conversely, if Iran nukes Israel the Saudis will have lost a de facto ally and it will be completely up to the (now) unpredictable Americans to save Saudi bacon from Iran. This is the strategic depth I was taking about; the advantage to the Saudis in keeping Israel around is that they have a lot of skin in the game, whereas the Americans could decide they don't care what happens between Iran and Saudi.

Even two years ago it would be unthinkable that the Americans would abandon the Saudis, but perceived National Interest can change quickly. For the time being, anyone attacking Israel can count on the Americans lining up against them, but that isn't eternal either. Egypt is getting some sort of Islamist government as I write this, so Israel is now the only proxy the US has in the area.

Pulling back to the Mediterranean, yes the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel is suddenly not to be relied upon, at the same time that Turkey is rattling its destroyers around the joint Cyprus/Israel gas projects in the eastern Med. Syria is destabilizing further by the day, and Hezbollah is making a play at a coup (again) in Lebanon. The latter is unlikely to succeed as Hezbollah's hostage "allies" in the country are starting to see daylight between Syria and Hezbollah and are getting brave now that they might have a chance.

Holy flashpoints Batman! I know I've left some things out, and I'm sure I'm missing some other stuff that going on, so it's at least this potentially messy. I don't know whether adding more nuclear weapons to the mix will make things more stable or less, but the best case is some sort of multi-sided Mid East Cold War. That certainly sounds like fun, but whatever I can imagine is a small slice of the possibilities the unpredictability of human interaction provides us with. As always, watch and shoot.

To bomb, or not to bomb?

It now seems imminent that Iran will have its nuclear weapons. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but the place is a flash point in the meantime. There is a lot of handwringing about bombing or not bombing, but I say go for it. But, NOT the nuclear program.

Leaving aside the troublesome aspects of dropping bombs on radioactive material, the nuclear program is something that virtually all Iranians are behind. Hitting this would rally them all and trigger a whole pile of proxy wars with Iranian surrogates from Gaza to Afghanistan.\

While a chance to kill a whole bunch more Hezbollah wouldn't exactly be unwelcome in Israel for example, the current situation of Syria ensures no significant threat from them. Those who say the Israelis would be "mad" to bomb Iran now are not as right as they could be.

What I have advocated before I will advocate again: hurt the regime in Iran, not the people and the infrastructure. Hit all the Quds Force assets you can, the Revolutionary Guard, and anything else that will weaken the mullahs. This will strengthen the opposition while compromising the government's ability to hit back.

Leaving the nuclear program in place is then a gamble that a more reasonable regime will take over and not hand fission bombs out like Hallowe'en candy to Islamic terrorists. To put that scenario in perspective, Pakistan has a bunch of nukes and we never bombed their program.

Pakistan is a lost cause due to fanaticism and failed-state-ishness but Iran has more potential as long as we can help them get some better leaders. Does Iran with a bomb scare you more than Pakistan, in the state the latter is rapidly devolving to? If so, why?

A Country has no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests

Debka has been described as an "Israeli spook site" and I see no reason to quibble with that but they do have some interesting bits on the Middle East and this is right up there:

In the third week of March, debkafile reveals, King Hamad agreed to hand over to Riyadh control Bahrain's defense, external, financial and domestic security affairs. The Saudi king's son Prince Mutaib was confirmed by the two monarchs as commander of the Saudi and GCC forces invited to enter the tiny kingdom to put down the Shiite-led uprising, and it was agreed that Saudi Arabia would soon start building a big naval base on the island opposite the Iranian coastline.

Sunday, April 3, the threatening recriminations coming from Tehran and Baghdad prompted the Gulf Cooperation Council to hold a special foreign ministers' meeting. It passed a resolution which "severely condemned Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain in violation of international pacts."

Language this blunt has never before been heard from GCC leaders. It is attributed by our Gulf sources to Saudi King Abdullah's adamant resolve to challenge Tehran headon on every issue affecting the Gulf region's security, to the point of Saudi military intervention when called for – even at the risk of precipitating an armed clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

There have been rumours of Saudi-Israeli co-operation and I have addressed some of the possibilities that would open up previously; the fundamentals have not changed vis-a-vis Iran. What has changed is the political climate in the entire region from Iran to Algeria. This may push Iran to start a war to focus attention outside the country, but there are a LOT of reasons why that could backfire. The recent unrest in Syria weakens the Axis of Evil 2.0, and Iraq despite it's veiled anti-Saudi language in the Debka article is in no condition to attack them, especially with thousands of American troops still in the country.

Hezbollah is of course the biggest Iranian proxy (with Syria sidelined) and can certainly tie the IDF up, more so if they and Hamas went at the same time. Hezbollah however isn't a big threat to the House of Saud, but Iran has lots of shit disturbers to foment trouble and run weapons to any Shia groups that will advance Tehran's agenda. In any event, Hezbollah/Israel 2 is only a matter of time and I have a hard time coming up with a scenario which would involve actual co-ordination of Israeli and Arab forces.

So Israel is largely out of any Persian Gulf showdown. That leaves the Saudis and their client superpower, the USA. One US carrier group can control the Gulf, especially with the bases for land based aircraft the Americans still have access to throughout the Gulf kingdoms. That could bring the Israelis back in in a limited strike role to (further) cripple or take out Iran's nuclear program. That would move that action from the main event to a side show, win-win for Israel and for a lot of other people (e.g. our side) in the medium-long term.

I try to avoid predictions so I won't speculate on how likely a knock-down war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is. I will note that in the space of only about a year I have gone from seeing Saudi as the biggest threat to Western civilization (the money behind the brainwashing Wahhabi madrassas all over the place) to the money to bankroll a new balance of power in the region.

The enemy of your enemy can at least temporarily be your friend. I have an eye on the big picture and the long term, but I think that King Abdullah's interests and our own line up in more places than one these days. A pity the American are too overstretched and out of touch with their national interests to be likely to recognize this, let alone capitalize.