Tuesday, March 29, 2016 

Syria, Islamic State, and seeing conspiracies that weren't there.

War is not neat.  War is not tidy.  War is nearly always fought in the equivalent of a fog.  All three of these statements are such truisms they are practically cliches.  In times of struggle you often have to make tacit alliances with people you would otherwise go out of your way to avoid.

This is especially true when it comes to Syria in terms of oil.  Practically, everyone is guilty of buying and selling to each other: Islamic State sold to Assad.  Islamic State sold to Turkey.  Thieves stole from Islamic State and sold to everyone.  Trying to make some grand statement about how about one country or one side is in bed with another on the basis of oil is foolish.  Turkey until recently turned a blind eye to Islamic State and other foreign fighters travelling through her borders as they didn't care who replaced Assad, as long as he fell.  Of all the double games that have been played, Turkey's has been just about the most egregious.

And yet, even now, even after the retaking of Palmyra by the Syrian Arab Army, still this kind of nonsense is being spouted, including by the Graun:

The second conclusion is that when governments stop playing a double game in which they use extremists for their own purposes, they do better. Assad did this for a long time, leaving Isis alone so as to put more pressure on its other opponents. After the loss of Palmyra in May 2015, the Syrians abandoned that policy and tried to retake the areas they had lost, but they had not the resources and, in particular, the airpower to do so, until the Russians made up that deficiency.

To an extent, Assad did indeed leave Islamic State alone. This was for the reason that the territory taken by IS in the country's eastern, mostly desert regions was not strategically essential to the regime's survival.  The SAA gave up Palmyra in order to retrench and reinforce its other frontlines, primarily around Damascus, Latakia, and in Aleppo.  It was only after the Russian intervention at the end of September last year that the SAA alongside Hezbollah and other groups was finally able to make some headway, and then it took months.  Likewise, Islamic State has somewhat learned the lesson of the thrashing it received in Kobane, once the Americans decided the overrunning of the town would be an advance too far; they withdrew from Palmyra to cut their losses, as they also did in Sinjar in Iraq.

As Juan Cole writes, it's not immediately clear why the SAA would now retake Palmyra when the likes of al-Nusra are still much closer to home.  Part of the reasoning is no doubt for symbolic reasons, that expelling IS from Palmyra makes for good propaganda.  Whatever the exact motives, it does dispel once and for all the idiotic notion that there was some kind of accord between Assad and IS, or that the Russians were effectively Islamic State's air force, or any such gibbering.  The retaking of Palmyra has happened primarily because of the ceasefire with the groups other than IS and al-Nusra, which is holding to the surprise of pretty much everyone; without wanting to blow my own trumpet too loud, this is what I suggested was the more realistic outcome if a ceasefire happened.  Not the "70,000 moderates" fighting Islamic State for us, but the SAA backed by the Russians from the air.

Whether retaking Palmyra is purely symbolic, with the Russians having no intention of providing the backup required for the SAA and allies to retake Raqqa, the ultimate target once Deir al-Zor has been relieved, we're yet to see.  We don't for instance know if like in Palmyra Islamic State might simply retreat; the declared capital of their caliphate or not, Mosul seems more likely to be where IS would choose to make a last stand.

Last stand is in any case a relative notion.   Just as IS's previous incarnation, the Islamic State of Iraq, appeared to have been defeated, Islamic State seems unlikely to be defeated completely when its resurrection was far more an expression of the rage of Iraq's Sunnis at their on-going persecution and under-representation in post-war Iraq than it was sudden support for the group's internationalist ideology.  Also unlike in Syria, where those who have survived have been hardened and bloodied by the experience, in Iraq the army still seems to have fundamental issues with morale, continuing to run away at the first sign of Islamic State striking back.  Retaking Mosul remains an ideal, not something likely to turn into actuality any time soon.

As for whether or not you believe the reports about "hundreds" of foreign fighters being sent back to attack Europe, that the cell that first attacked Paris and then Brussels seems to be as large as it was hardly suggests a lack of ambition.  Even if IS loses the territory it holds, its success has been in updating the template laid down by al-Qaida, creating a banner to which both the disaffected and the deeply religious have been attracted.  Either it will rise again, or another group, even less scrupulous, even more murderous will take its place.  What will really matter is if we then repeat the same mistakes we have twice already.  I'm not betting on the third time being the charm.

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3/29/2016 07:39:00 pm | |

Tuesday, February 16, 2016 

Syria and the pessimistic imagination.

One of the best, most thoughtful posts on whether we should join the bombing of Islamic State in Syria came from Shuggy.  3 months on and if anything it's even better:

A number of people supporting this military action have said to me personally that 'things can't get any worse than this'.  This has to one of the most over-used phrases in the English language and relates to the title of this post.  What we have is a regional conflict with the Assad regime backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah on one side; Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar backing the Sunni insurgents on the other.  On top of this we have the United States and France air power.  The Assad military - depleted though it undoubtedly is - is still the largest functioning military force in the country.  It cannot win the war but now it is backed by Russian air-power, it can't lose.  Without it, the only other force capable of winning is ISIS and its affiliates.  Among the many problems the American have is that they don't want either side to win but are not - thank goodness - willing to countenance a military confrontation with both sides.  It is this horrible situation that we have been drawn into and one would have thought the dangers of this escalating into something wider and very much worse should be obvious.

In the time since things have indeed got worse, and thanks to the terror gripping the Turks, and to a slightly lesser extent the Saudis following the advances of the Syrian army towards encircling Aleppo, we are facing a situation where like it or not, the Americans may find themselves in something resembling an outright confrontation with both sides.

The strange or in fact not strange at all thing is how just as the Russians used the excuse of Islamic State to intervene on the side of Assad, despite 90% of the time attacking the other rebels, jihadist, Islamist or "moderates" alike, so our allies have done also.  Turkey claimed to be striking against Islamic State only to in fact attack the Kurds 99.9% of the time.  Now the Saudis have made the offer to send in ground forces, again supposedly to fight Islamic State.  This doesn't for so much as a moment fool Michael Clarke, former director general of the RUSI thinktank, writing in the Graun:

Militarily, the Saudi threat issued at Munich has to be made credible. If a ceasefire does not materialise soon, the Russians, Iranians and Assad himself have no incentives to quit while they are ahead. Only the possibility of Arab ground forces, from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE, heavily backed by western logistics and intelligence, air power and technical specialists, could force Assad and his backers to make a strategic choice in favour of cessation. Only the US could make that work for the Saudis and others – and only Britain could bring along other significant European allies.

How genuine the Saudi offer of ground troops is remains open to question, not least as the deployment of troops in Yemen in support of their own air strikes has been limited.  This more than suggests they have little to no confidence in their ability to achieve much that their air strikes aren't already.  Bearing in mind that the Houthis, capable as they are, do not have an air force backing them up as the SAA, Hezbollah and the other groups fighting for the government do, and that with the best will in the world the Houthis would be no match for Hezbollah, chances are the Saudis would not last long, advanced weaponry brought with them or not.

In any case, you might have imagined that after 5 years of miscalculations concerning Syria, now would be the point to fold rather than double down.  Yes, we could of course let our regional allies send in troops, and back them logistically and with air power, and possibly tempt in the process a third world war, or we could say sorry, we tried, and let everyone who still thinks Syria is worth fighting over get on with it.  Clarke sort of gets this, and sort of doesn't:

This would undoubtedly be a dangerous escalation of the conflict. But in the absence of a genuine ceasefire, the conflict is destined to escalate in any case as Russian forces and Iranian militias put a vengeful Assad back in control of a broken country. If that has the eventual effect of letting him deal with Isis in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor it will leave the west with much bigger strategic problems across the region as a whole. Fifteen years ago these would not have seemed such difficult choices. But after Iraq and Afghanistan they look like dismal options.

Yes, it's a difficult decision, isn't it? Do we put everything on black, and risk the possibility of a direct confrontation with the Russians, as would be more than plausible if things didn't go to plan and we really did have to support Arab ground forces from the air, or do we let Assad deal with Isis himself, leaving "the west much bigger strategic problems"?  These strategic problems would be seemingly not much different to the ones we faced prior to the Syrian uprising, wouldn't they?  Or is Clarke obliquely referencing how if we don't back our regional allies now, they might lose all faith in us?  Is not being aligned with governments that have backed the Syrian rebels such a terrible thought?  Earlier in the piece Clarke correctly identifies that Isis is not the crisis, but rather a symptom of the civil war within Islam in the Middle East, and the struggle for dominance between the Saudis and Iran.  Now, if we had to pick a side, my choice would most certainly not be the one that finds common cause with Islamic State, and that has armed and funded jihadist groups in Syria and around the world for that matter.  It wouldn't be the state set to be effectively fighting on the same side as Islamic State if it intervenes.

Which really does sum up how utterly deranged and mangled American policy, if not British policy also, has become on Syria.  The Americans are supporting the Kurdish YPG as the only ground force they trust against Islamic State.  At the same time Turkey, our Nato ally, has been bombing and shelling the YPG, which has also been advancing in alliance with the Syrian Democratic Forces, under the umbrella of Russian air strikes.  The Turks are once again raising the idea of a "safe zone", protected by a no-fly zone, which is just by coincidence in the same area as the Kurds have advanced into.  Germany is now apparently supporting this venture, which the Americans continue to oppose on the grounds they are still resistant to getting into a shooting war with the Russians.  While Turkey is asking the Americans to choose between it and the Kurds, probably not entirely seriously, the similar game of supporting the rebels through the arming and training of "verified" groups, who routinely ally with jihadists, including the al-Nusra Front, goes on, at the same time as condemnation of Russian attacks on these "moderates" continues to be hurled.

Clarke concludes:
The west can choose a dangerous push for a settlement now, or a tepid continuation of a policy that promises a longer war and strategic failure in the region – while hundreds of thousands of desperate people wait at Europe’s doorstep.

It comes back to what Shuggy called the "pessimistic imagination". What Clarke describes as "dangerous" looks to me about the most foolish gamble imaginable, hoping that the Russians will blink over the laughable combined forces of the Saudis, Jordanians and Emirate nations, and the not so laughable backing of the West.  What happens if they don't and they start bombing them in the same way as they have "our" rebels?  How do we respond?

By contrast, a "tepid continuation" of our policy as it stands is preferable by a factor of 50.  Not offered as an option it's worth noting is telling Turkey to stop bombing and shelling the YPG, telling the Saudis their hopes of overthrowing Assad are over and that if they must carry on with their proxy war with Iran they should concentrate on Yemen, and making clear to the rebels that now is the time for a deal.  These would also be options, although presumably would add to our "strategic problems".  Perhaps, as noted above, it's about time that regional strategy was reviewed.

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2/16/2016 08:02:00 pm | |

Thursday, February 11, 2016 

Syria: where our "best intentions" go to die.

If it wasn't for what's happening in Syria being horrific, you'd have to laugh.  Syria is where the West's best intentions, for which read best intentions in terms of what's best for our allies in the short-term, have come to die.  Gradually, slowly but surely, every claim of our politicians and often our media also have been shattered.

First, we were told that President Assad was doomed.  He would fall imminently.  Five years on, and he's still there.  Let's for argument's sake assume that prior to the Russian intervention last September that he was finally beginning to wobble.  This was not due to those within Syria who have supported the government from the outset withdrawing their consent, and whom we chose to pretend didn't exist.  It was down to attrition: territory gradually being taken by the rebels and Islamic State, supply routes being cut off, the displacement of millions, manpower shortages in the military, all of which you would expect after four years of brutal, often sectarian war.

Second, the claim that the rebels other than Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front are "moderates" of the kind we can work with, that some are even secular liberals who genuinely want democracy.  Regardless of the beginnings of the uprising, as the revolution became civil war it turned viciously sectarian in very short order, unsurprisingly considering the support and funding that was soon provided by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Emirate statelets, with Iran following in to help the regime.  Even now, when it could not be more apparent that the remains of the Free Syrian Army are allied with jihadist groups, whether they be the Saudi-backed Islamic Front or the Army of Conquest, the latter of which includes the al-Qaida aligned al-Nusra, we still hear of how terrible it is these moderates are being targeted without mercy by the Russians.

Third, that the Russian intervention was failing or would fail, that it was helping Islamic State, that it wasn't achieving anything.  Suddenly, as soon it became clear from the shrieks of said moderate rebels that Aleppo was in danger of being encircled, starved, according to today's Guardian editorial being "exterminated", subject to a siege equivalent to that of Sarajevo, we've been getting articles either grudgingly respectful of Putin while still slandering him, or ones that remarkably have some relationship to what's been going on quietly for months.

The most obvious example being this fine summary by Jonathan Marcus for the BBC.  He only really errs in saying many of the so-called moderate rebels are being "forced" into alliances with groups close to al-Qaida, when the truth is they've been fighting with them for months and in some cases years.  The Russian goals in Syria have been simple, and make sense, agree with them or not: ensure Assad doesn't fall in the short-term, then build his forces up in the medium-term in order to support them in regaining the territory the government needs to survive long-term.  In the process Putin has shown that Russia is still a military power to be reckoned with, displayed his new weaponry in the field to buyers around the world, and prevented a regional ally from potentially falling.  Whether once these goals are achieved Russia will turn its attention fully to Islamic State or not, who knows.  It doesn't matter so much as IS is relatively contained, if not in danger of losing as some of the more wishful thinkers imagine.

Meanwhile, just what has our policy been in Syria all these years?  Has it made even the slightest sense?  Has it looked like achieving our supposed goal, which is the end of the Assad regime and some sort of inclusive governmental system to replace his one-party rule?  As Marcus says, essentially our policy for some time has been to ally with al-Qaida against both Assad and Islamic State, while pretending that in fact we're helping moderates.  Has it worked?  The Ba'ath certainly looked in danger of falling last year, but what would have replaced it?  Something better, little different, or in fact worse?  If your answer is anything other than one of the latter two, try again.

So here we are.  Rather than say encourage genuine peace talks when it looked as though the rebels were in the ascendant, we preferred to allow them to make excuses about why they couldn't attend.  We preferred to go along with the foreign policy objectives of our regional allies, the Saudis and the Turks, helping to fund and arm the rebels through their auspices, while knowing full well who their backing always goes to.  We carried on doing this even as hundreds of thousands of refugees fled and came to Europe, as we still apparently believed that our side could win, whatever winning would look like.  Even now, we talk about "stains" on "records", as though anything we've done in Syria has been about protecting civilians at any point.  The more deranged talk about moral bankruptcy, and would it seem quite happily push the world to the brink of war to prove our "moral commitments" and "humanitarian objectives".  Sorry, boys.  You've been outfought, outplayed and outmanoeuvred.  Time to admit it and cut our losses.

Except, of course, we won't.

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2/11/2016 03:23:00 pm | |

Thursday, January 21, 2016 

The state's monopoly on violence and Litvinenko.

Killing Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector who, variously, worked for MI6, the Spanish security services, private security companies, oligarch asset-stripper in chief Boris Berezovsky, and accused the Russian state of being responsible for various false flag attacks on itself while in the employ of those foreign intelligence agencies, not to mention accusing Vladimir Putin of being a paedophile (PDF), was a "blatant and unacceptable breach of the most fundamental tenets of international law and of civilised behaviour".

Killing Reyaad Khan, a jihadi halfwit who allegedly was plotting attacks on the UK despite seemingly no one being arrested in connection with those plots, was fully justified under international law (PDF), essentially because in the classic formulation of Jimbo and Ned, HE WAS COMING RIGHT FOR US.

International law is remarkably malleable.  A state making a decision on how and when to kill its enemies can nearly always be justified in some way.  The murder of Alexander Litvinenko was outrageous and despicable, but hardly unforeseeable given whom he was working for.  MI6, as usual, failed to foresee it, and as usual, continues to so much as confirm or deny if he was an agent.  The evidence it did provide to the inquiry, which itself only got going after Marina Litvinenko challenged the home secretary's decision not to grant one, seems to have led Sir Robert Owen to point the finger of blame directly at Putin.  Rather a shame they didn't reckon on the threat the Russian state considered him to be before he was slipped a polonium nightcap. 

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1/21/2016 02:14:00 pm | |

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 

Our NATO allies, everybody.

There are, as you'd expect, a whole load of ways of interpreting why Turkey decided it was a fabulous idea to shoot down a Russian jet that may or may not have invaded their airspace, and most of them will have some measure of truth to them.

You could for instance start by saying that Putin's tears and rage at the action are both hysterical and hypocritical.  Maybe, just maybe if you could keep your raging war boner somewhat under control Vlad, things like this wouldn't happen.  You are after all the one apparently bombing the Turkmen, and the Turks are notoriously defensive about anyone sitting near their border, whether they be friend or foe.  Going into Turkish airspace, no matter for how brief a period is probably not a wise thing to do, especially when they made clear previously their feelings on such invasions.  Besides, there is also the little matter of MH17: the Russians might not have been personally responsible for downing the Malaysian Airlines flight, but giving Buk anti-aircraft missiles to halfwitted militants who don't or can't know the difference between a commercial flight and a Ukrainian military jet was an accident waiting to happen.  Instead of owning up and apologising, Russia has of course since denied it was their tame separatists and obstructed the investigation in every way possible.  Feel your pain we don't.

Then there's a more sympathetic to the Russians interpretation.  The Americans have said any breach of Turkish airspace was limited to seconds; the radar released by the Turks in an effort to justify their actions suggests precisely that.  If every country shot down every plane that went into their airspace without explicit permission for as much as a matter of seconds, no one would ever fly again.  The Turkish account that they supposedly repeatedly radioed the Russian plane telling it to stay out therefore doesn't tally with the evidence of the radar.  The reaction of NATO, which has essentially been to distance itself as much as it can from whichever trigger happy commander ordered the shooting down, has been to say this is a matter between the Turks and the Russians.  In other words, they're on their own on this one, even if in public they're saying Turkey has the right to defend itself from 16 second incursions.  When you bear in mind that the reaction of ourselves and most other European nations is to scramble jets to escort Russian planes if and when they decide to venture into airspace they've not received permission to and then complain about it later for the reason it's not worth the repercussions of doing otherwise, the Turks deciding to shoot one down for a breach of a matter of seconds is not going to win them many new friends.

Next there's a slightly more conspiratorial interpretation.  It is as Lindsey Hilsum has tweeted somewhat odd there just happened to be a TV crew in place to film the shot down jet hitting the ground.  It might have been sheer luck, but there are certainly good reasons to believe the rebels in the area have a hotline to their friends over the border.  They could well have informed the Turks, who apparently now believe that back in power with a majority they have little to lose, especially when they can rely on NATO to back them up.  Using the excuse of the slight breach of their airspace, making clear to Russia and Putin precisely what they think of their intervention on the side of Assad might have made something approaching sense in theory.  In practice, not so much.

Lastly, to keep this somewhat brief, there's the full on conspiratorial interpretation.  Turkey has a lot to lose if as looked possible there was an accommodation or deal between the various powers, whether it comes at the Vienna talks or more informally between the American-led coalition and Russia.  The Paris attacks have finally concentrated minds, making clear that the Western policy of letting the Sunni Gulf states + Turks fund whichever rebel groups they felt like while hoping it's not enough to actually defeat Assad cannot go on.  We can't of course lose face by admitting as much, but thankfully the Russians had already intervened to ensure Assad wouldn't fall.  Dealing directly with Assad is off the table, but the Russians with a little persuading can do that for us.  The Syrian Arab Army can then be the ground force we lack against IS, only they'll be liasing with the Russians instead.  Bearing in mind the only other ground force we can rely on, the Kurds, are also in direct conflict with the Turks, there are a myriad of reasons as to why the Turks would want this alliance of convenience to fall apart before it can so much as come together. 

That's without getting on to the relationship between Islamic State and Turkey.  Evidence has been mounting for some time on the links, but there really isn't any better than the Turkish reaction to the siege of Kobani.  It was only thanks to the Americans realising letting the border city fall as the Turks advised them to would be a propaganda victory too far and send a terrible message to about the only genuinely moderate forces in Syria that they started co-ordinating with the YPG.  Add on how the Islamic State attacks in Ankara just before the election undoubtedly helped the AKP to their majority, and not that much more needs to be added.

As said, there's something to all these interpretations.  Yes, Putin's reaction has been absurdly over-the-top, but then it's a fair bet ours wouldn't be much different if say the Iranians shot down one of our jets if it strayed into their airspace while carrying out sorties in Iraq.  His remarks on the links between Turkey and Islamic State are fairly sound also, as Erdogan has without doubt been playing the same double game in Syria as the Saudis and Qataris  have.  Indeed, if I wasn't a subscriber to the cock-up rather than conspiracy school of history until there is overwhelming evidence suggesting otherwise, then the full on conspiratorial interpretation would make the most sense.  You can't though seriously believe the Turks would do something so unbelievably stupid, not knowing whether or not NATO would back them when they know full well the game they've been playing all along.  They might well be trying their best to sabotage the Vienna talks and will be making clear the risks their allies are playing by working with the Russians, but the best explanation for this is a trigger happy commander going out on a limb in an area where nationalist passions run hot.  Turkey has way too much to lose and far too little to gain.

The other obvious conclusion from today is there are already too many nations operating in Syria or at the margins, all with competing agendas and all with grudges against each other.  There is incredibly little to be gained and much to be lost by as David Cameron heroically put it "getting to grips with the Isil menace".  Still, come Thursday the prime minister's explanation as to what distinct and unique role the British military can provide in Syria as demanded by the foreign affairs select committee should be worth a laugh.

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11/24/2015 10:13:00 pm | |

Thursday, October 22, 2015 

Trouble at Milne.

(I am very sorry for the title.)

The response to Jeremy Corbyn appointing Seumas Milne as his director of communications has been pretty much as you would expect.  Considering every past statement and allegiance of Corbyn himself was excavated to be considered fairly and properly by both the media and every other informed person with a social media account, going through Milne's back catalogue of columns in the Guardian has become something of a fun parlour game.  Ooh, look, he said the murder of Lee Rigby was not terrorism in the true sense!  He accused NATO of being the one intent on expansion, rather than Russia!  Milosevic in his view should not have been tried at the Hague!

And so on.  Without a doubt, choosing Milne is the equivalent of a middle finger to all concerned: the media, whom he'll supposedly be dealing with; the rest of the party; and specifically the Guardian, currently going through throes over its next political editor and whether or not he or she will be more sympathetic to Corbyn than Patrick Wintour and his likely successor, Nick Watt will be.  This said, it's of a piece with what's happened to Corbyn so far.  Both he and the media have made it clear where they stand: they don't like each other, it's not likely to change, so what's the point of doing much other than continuing the mutual antagonism?  It's not much of a strategy, but is there another on offer?  The same goes for the party: paranoia is so rife about Momentum, Corbyn's post-campaign campaign group and how as a result every MP millimetres to Corbyn's right will be shortly on notice for deselection it's a wonder the parliamentary Labour party is operating at all.

Few seem to have considered if Milne was anything like Corbyn's first choice, nor have there been many suggestions forthcoming as to whom he should have picked instead.  How many would have drank from what looks such a poisoned chalice?  Milne himself has not left the Graun, apparently instead taking leave, so he doesn't seem sure of how long it's going to last either.

All this said, the response has been as laughable as it has predictable.  Milne is not a great columnist, but he makes what are often fairly standard socialist arguments with force.  Some weeks he's dead wrong and some weeks he's right in spite of himself.  Probably his most objectionable column is the one dealt with by Adam Barnett on Left Foot Forward, as written in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack.  Let's not pretend Milne is the only person on the left to have sullied himself on that score, as hopefully most of those who also equivocated at the time now recognise.  That said, one has to hope his "still less" statement on the Jewish victims was just a slip rather something more revealing.

Milne's appointment should then be considered in relation to the reasons why Corbyn won in the first place.  Lesser factor as it is, foreign policy cannot be discounted entirely.  Labour can essentially be divided into four camps when it comes to interventionism: the irreconcilables, like Corbyn and a few others; those who can be convinced, but are always sceptical; the humanitarians, like Jo Cox; and the prestigious, as Jim Murphy has revealed himself to be in his quite remarkable article for the New Statesman.

It's a fair assumption that not many of those who voted for Corbyn are keen on interventions full stop, let alone missions without any apparent point, as the one proposed for Syria is.  Despite the defeat of the coalition almost by mistake on Syria in 2013, if anything it seems there are now more MPs in the latter two groups than there were previously, as suggested by the 50 or so reckoned to be likely to vote for joining the raids on Islamic State if and when the Conservatives decide to bring it before the Commons.  Some of these are no doubt part of the "spite" group, determined to vote against Corbyn given the slightest opportunity, but others genuinely do think getting involved in Syria despite everything that's happened is a fantastic idea.

There's not much I can add to the Rodent's post on Murphy's raging bone-on for air strikes that he openly admits won't achieve anything, but will still be a "legitimate posture for a P5 nation".  It does seem odd for him to quote Dean Acheson, on how Britain after Suez and the empire had not yet found a role for itself.  This was in 1962, when US involvement in Vietnam was already beginning to ramp up.  Acheson, notably, later turned against the war despite originally supporting it.  

If nothing else, Murphy is at least being honest.  And yet shouldn't the public and the troops themselves know if essentially what they're being asked to do is not in any sense practical, but merely to keep up with our allies, expressing our power by blasting fuck out of a country on the other side of the world?

Which is precisely the problem with the argument being made by the government for joining in the bombing of Islamic State.  There is absolutely no sense of strategy behind it; what difference will our involvement make beyond taking a tiny amount of the slack off the Americans and others that have been taking part up till now?  Into this breach have stepped the likes of Jo Cox, and yet as previously argued, they apparently don't see any point in explaining how either a no fly zone or safe havens would work in practice, rather than merely in rhetoric.  I tried getting an answer out of Clara Connolly when she wrote in support of Cox, only to be told that it would be a "doddle" to impose a no fly zone, although understandably it would be far more difficult to persuade the Russians to cease operating in such zones.

As for the safe zones, answer came there none.  Others, like Dan Fox, have set out how, posing six questions, none of which are easily answered and almost certainly never will be.  He nonetheless supports intervention, although he also voices the bizarre opinion that only two forces are currently bombing in Syria: the Syrians themselves and the Russians, rather overlooking all the other nations that have done so in the very recent past or still are.  The fact of the matter is that for all these fine words, we're not interested in establishing such zones, and even if we were the problems and potential to be playing into the hands of one side or the other were we to try are all but insurmountable.  Turkey has been arguing for some time for such zones, only for it be dismissed out of hand by the Americans and ourselves, most likely for the simple reasoning that no group on the ground in Syria can be trusted to protect civilians in such a way, and so it would require either a UN peacekeeping force or Western "boots on the ground", in the cliche.  Whom would straight away be a target for the jihadists who prize killing Westerners over everything else.

In spite of all this, for some, like Kate Godfrey, something must be done even if it is simply to bomb for the sake of it.  To her, Seumas Milne is an apologist for fascism, and she knows because she has been to Syria and Iraq, rather than just sat here and pontificated about it.  She appeals to authority, her own, makes clear how she has seen the suffering, and that as a result to appoint Milne is to devalue everything Labour stands for, to be ashamed in front of the world.

Her argument, taken on its own, is fair enough.  Over the top, but fair enough.  It is this very argument though, as well as the way that it's made, the self-righteousness combined with the belief that we have to help such people without considering the practicalities, all while ignoring past failures, that is a factor in the rise of Corbyn.  As Murphy urged us to get over Iraq, like Connolly in her response to me blamed Iraq for the failures in Syria, both are forgetting Libya.  It's easy to forget, so I don't blame them.  Nor is it just Libya, it's Afghanistan too.  Many are tired of war for the sake of the war, not least when the arguments made in its favour are so lacking or completely transparent.  Much of what has happened in Syria for instance is a direct result of the Libyan intervention, the invoking of the responsibility to protect and the subsequent using of the UN resolution to force regime change, without anyone accepting the concept has been devalued by that very abuse.  When these arguments are still being made after the Russian intervention has changed everything, and still the same people would like us to go further to the point where they're seemingly willing for there to be a showdown between the West and Russia to see who blinks first, it's difficult to not respond in kind.  

Over to you, Seumas.

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10/22/2015 10:53:00 pm | |

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 

Never seen a tinderbox I didn't want to light.

(This was written yesterday, but I unfortunately arrived home to find my desktop no longer so much as wants to power on.  Updates are likely to be sporadic until it's fixed, as while writing posts on a phone is fine, formatting and adding links in the usual way is an utter chore.)

Let me get this straight.

Israel looks to be in the first stages of the third intifada, the Palestinians having lost hope in either Hamas or Fatah being able to deliver their own state.  The world looks on as the Israelis themselves become ever more hardline, as ever more territory is stolen and as ever more settlements are built.  Resistance now is to throw stones, stab ordinary Israelis.  Both are responded to with bullets.

In Turkey, for the second time, a march by Kurds and socialists is attacked by suicide bombers.  As on the first occasion in Suruc, the Kurdish HDP accuses President Erodgan's AKP party of being involved, either turning a blind eye to Islamic State plotting, or actively collaborating with the jihadists.  For it to happen once can be dismissed.  For it do so again, with the AKP having embarked on a new conflict with the PKK as part of a cynical manoeuvre to try and gain a majority in the second general election in the year, the charge is all the more difficult to dismiss.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the Saudi coalition continues under the authorisation of a UN Security Council resolution to bomb whatever it feels like, the aim supposedly being to defeat the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.  Thousands are dead, and there is practically no media coverage as it is all but impossible for reporters to gain access, not to forget the potential danger of being in what may as well be a free fire zone.

And then we have Syria and Iraq, where currently pretty much everyone and their mother is either bombing one or the other, or if not bombing then funding or funnelling arms to one side in what are both civil conflicts, but also proxy wars and grand theatres for leaders to show just how serious and tough they are by chucking high explosives at people who might be bad men but might equally be secular and moderate or civilians.

Somehow, quite incredibly, despite politicians knowing all of this, not least because some of them have been authorising the vapourising of British citizens who otherwise would have been coming right for us, one of the few people saying hang on, perhaps we shouldn't add to this chaos by getting even further involved is the one getting criticised.  According to John Woodcock MP, Diane Abbott is trolling her own party by continuing to argue that what's being proposed currently will not help Syrian civilians one iota.

The very best case currently being made for our own little intervention in Syria was set out jointly by Andrew Mitchell and Jo Cox.  According to them, Syria is our generation's test, our Rwanda, our Bosnia, our Kosovo, our responsibility.  They say we must get back to basics, that primarily Syria and the Syrians themselves are the issue.  Their first two recommendations are that both the humanitarian effort to help refugees and the diplomatic effort to try to reach a political solution must be intensified.  No one could disagree.

Then we have the proposed military component.  The word how is not used once.  It is "not ethical to wish away the barrel bombs", they write, without explaining how they can be stopped.  "We need a military component that protects civilians", they say.  They do not propose how.  Any safe havens will need to be protected by forces on the ground, and a no fly zone, which would also be needed, would have to be enforced.  They do not suggest which or whose ground forces would be used, whether it would be the Kurdish militias (now also being accused of razing villages), "moderate" rebels, Turkish troops or Western forces.  They do not explain how a no fly zone could possibly work when the skies are full of planes and drones from numerous nations, nor how the Russians would react when just this weekend they have been in talks with the Americans on how to avoid any potential misunderstandings or clashes between the two sides.

"Preventing the regime from killing civilians, and signalling intent to Russia, is far more likely to compel the regime to the negotiating table than anything currently being done or mooted," they argue.  This is about as absurd a reading of the conflict as it's possible to imagine.  They seem to imagine that if only the Syrian government was prevented from killing more civilians it would throw in the towel, when the Russian intervention makes it pretty clear it was the gains being made by the non-Islamic State rebels that were causing real concern. The Russian involvement has changed everything, and yet still they seem to think there's room for yet more slinging around of missiles, as the safe zones idea is now even more of a non-starter than it was previously.  

When those making the best possible case still can't answer the most basic questions of how and who, it makes clear just how removed from reality our discourse has become that it's the critics who get the articles written about them.  We simply cannot get used to the idea of not getting off when everyone else has already shot their bolt.  Not even the potential of an incident with the Russians and all that would involve dissuades them.  We see chaos, and the only response is to want to create more.

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10/13/2015 01:35:00 pm | |

Wednesday, September 30, 2015 

Syria: hell on earth, and made worse by each successive intervention.

When it comes to the great worst place in the world to live debate, there are many favourites that immediately come to mind.  Your North Koreas, Saudi Arabias, Eritreas, Irans, etc.  All with highly oppressive authoritarian governments, all set on either outright killing their own people, or just making life as miserable as possible.  Then you have the places where plain old insecurity and crime are the main problem: countries like Honduras and El Salvador, currently battling over which has the highest murder rate per capita of population, while one of the BRICS, South Africa, is also averaging 49 murders a day.

Few though are likely to disagree (Islamic State supporting cretins excepted) that right now Syria is the closest equivalent to hell on earth.  Beyond argument is the root cause of the civil war was the reaction of the Assad regime to the protests that broke out as part of the wider Arab spring; less widely accepted is that the regime's almost immediate resort to violence was not wholly surprising considering events in Egypt.  There the Mubarak government pretty much surrendered without a fight.  It has since resurfaced in the form of the Sisi government, but whether the Ba'ath party would have been able to come back to power in the same way had Assad also quickly left the scene is dubious.

Besides, let's not indulge the view that had the initial uprising succeeded Syria would now be rivalling Tunisia in the Arab spring stakes.  That so many extreme Islamist groupings emerged as quickly as they did to fight the regime, not including either the al-Nusra Front or Islamic State, suggests there would have soon been a battle on the hands of the secularists and liberals to maintain their revolution.

In any case, the peaceful uprising quickly became an armed one.  These groups were soon funded by the usual suspects: the Saudis, the Qataris, Kuwaitis, etc.  Whether any Arab governments directly funded the most notorious jihadist groups is uncertain, but certainly the usual benefactors in their countries did.  At the same time, the Syrian government turned to its own allies, the Iranians and the Russians, both of whom have helped it to survive through direct aid, weaponry and in the case of Iran, fighters from Hezbollah.  Also helping out have been our good selves in the West: we quickly declared that Assad must go, his government was entirely illegitimate, and that the Syrian opposition, whichever group we've decided that is this week, are the only de facto representatives of the Syrian people.  As well as helping to equip the "moderate" armed groups, it's fairly apparent that our approach throughout was to let the Arab states get on with doing whatever they felt like, even if that meant funding and arming jihadists, at the same time ironically enough as the Saudis and Emirate nations were helping with the overthrow of the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Confused yet?  We're only just getting started.  Ever since Islamic State took advantage of the Sunni uprising in Iraq against what they saw as the sectarian central government to take over vast swaths of the country, enabling it to also grab a massive part of western Syria, such was the collapse of government authority there, a veritable smorgasbord of nations have decided the best way to defeat them is to drop bombs from a great height on their general position.  This roll call of countries includes the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE and France.  Technically we are yet to join in ourselves, but when you remember that British servicemen have taken part in sorties over the country and we felt the only way to protect ourselves from attacks on events that had already passed was to splatter some Islamic State morons across the Syrian desert via drone, you can basically include us also.

And now the Russians have joined in, only they are quite clearly intervening directly on the side of Assad.  For a few moments it looked as though the way was clearing for the sort of precursor to a peace initiative a few of us have long called for: to recognise that however terrible the crimes Assad has committed are, the only way to deal with Islamic State is to work with him and his forces, at least in the short term.  In exchange, Assad would be required to give up power once Islamic State had been defeated in Syria, but be allowed to remain a free man.  With Assad gone, a peace deal would hopefully then be easier to broker with the other rebel groups.  Free elections would follow, and so forth.  Yes, it's a plan with myriad problems that almost certainly wouldn't work, but it's a far more realistic one than all the others offered so far.  It seemed as if the arrival of new Russian weaponry and forces was to help purely with a renewed offensive against Islamic State, as suggested by the Syrians bombing targets they previously felt unable to.  That the Americans appeared to be acquiescing to this rather than complaining about it in the usual incredibly hypocritical style looked a good sign.

That today's first attacks by Russian planes seem to have targeted rebels other than IS rather undermines any lingering hopes on that score.  It could of course have been faulty intelligence, might have been merely an opening salvo designed to minimise any potential threat to the bases where the Russians are operating from, or it may be those on the ground are lying; any statement by rebel groups has to be treated with great caution, so often have they resorted to falsehoods.  More likely however is that this is just the start of a wider Russian offensive against all opposition to Assad.  Considering very few of the remaining rebel groups are "moderate" in the true sense of the word, this isn't the greatest tragedy.  What is a tragedy is the Russians have the same sense of compunction towards civilian casualties as everyone else, i.e. none.

Putin's motives are fairly transparent, as are the arguments being deployed.  All his forces are doing is going the extra mile the Americans and the rest haven't: attacking Islamic State from the air hasn't worked, so the next step has to be to coordinate with forces on the ground.  The Americans have effectively betrayed the Kurds who were playing that role, leaving only the Syrian army.  It's been apparent ever since the US airstrikes began that there is low-level plausibly deniable cooperation between the Syrians and the Americans, hence why there have been no unfortunate incidents in over a year of missions.  Why not simply make this formal, the Russians ask.

They have a point. Of course, these motives are far from pure: as much as the Russians do have more to fear from Islamic State than the Americans do, their intervention has the exact same downsides as ours in the region have.  It will likely increase the terrorist threat rather than decrease it, while the presence of Russians in the country will provide a further rallying cry for the jihadi recruiters.  Putin hopes an intervention that brings the end of the war closer will somewhat make up for the on-going conflict in Ukraine, raising the possibility of an early lifting of sanctions.  It also re-establishes Russia's influence in the region, building on the role played in the Iran nuclear programme negotiations.

Were Russia merely stepping up in this way, there would be little to protest about.  Clearly the hope of the Americans was the Russians were going to do what they weren't prepared to.  Instead, it looks as though there is no plan beyond propping up Assad indefinitely.  If there are to be joint operations with the Syrian military, there is no indication of them starting any time soon.  For a long time the harsh reality has been that we and our allies have been happy with a murderous stalemate in Syria.  Even now, as the refugee crisis is not really directly affecting us as it is the rest of Europe, we're still not especially bothered.  The only logic behind joining in with the bombing is for the sake of appearance; there's certainly no military necessity behind it.

With the Russians deciding to join the list of nationalities determined to make Syria even less liveable, the case for our getting involved becomes ever weaker.  Rarely has there been a case of a country already going through hell being fucked over so utterly by so many others.  The argument that only more war will solve the conflict applies only if that war targets Islamic State exclusively.  Russia's intervention seems likely only to result in yet more suffering.  And sadly, our hands are just as dirty as theirs.

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9/30/2015 10:32:00 pm | |

Tuesday, July 22, 2014 

It's so fucking funny.

Supposedly, the older you get, the more right-wing you become.  It's strange then that at least when it comes to foreign policy, the more I age, the more to the left I shift.  Perhaps it's because the propaganda accompanying those shilling for war becomes ever more egregious; maybe it's because those selling leaden death are about as plausible as a pig dressed as a chicken; or it could be that as my anger on much else has dimmed, and boy has it dimmed, if anything it still hasn't peaked when civilians are massacred by the "most moral" army on the planet, supported and backed to the hilt by our own wannabe bombers.

We must start though with the shooting down of flight MH17.  Here is the worst example imaginable of what happens when you give heavy weaponry to amateurs, or as could be the case, when professionals are made to answer to dilettantes.  As soon as the news emerged a civilian plane had came down in the area where the eastern Ukrainian rebels have been pushed back to it was apparent what had happened.  Regardless of how the Donetsk People's Republic fighters got their hands on a Buk, whether supplied directly by Russia or captured from the Ukrainians, they couldn't have kept fighting this long without the tacit, barely disguised support of Putin.  He bears a heavy responsibility for the tragedy, and the fact he either refused or failed to pressure the rebels into allowing immediate access to the crash site so investigators could carry out their work speaks of the inhumanity of the Russian president.

This said, there is little many in the west like more than the certainty of past battles.  To hear some commentators and politicians over the last few days you could be forgiven for imagining the Russians themselves had carried out the most heinous, despicable atrocity of recent times.  The strike on MH17 apparently occurred in a vacuum, few of the reports setting out how the Ukrainians had carried out air strikes in the area before last Thursday, at least one missile destroying a house and killing those inside.  Nor have there been such shootings down in the past, it would seem, neither the Korean flight brought down by the Soviets in 1983 or indeed the USS Vincennes incident of 1988 being recalled.

Those quite rightly demanding justice and the handing over of those responsible might well reflect on the punishment given to the US navy crew whom unintentionally killed 290 civilians on Iran Air Flight 655: they received their medals, while the captain got the Legion of Merit.  Few have considered the irony either of the media traipsing all over what would normally be a crime scene, access carefully controlled so as not to lose evidence or contaminate the area.  Indeed, if the scene had been quickly handed over to investigators, it's possible the bodies of the victims could have stayed where they landed just as long if not longer than they did; that was certainly the case with Lockerbie.

Watching last Friday's session at the United Nations Security Council was an instruction in how diplomacy does and doesn't work.  The anger of US ambassador Samantha Power was palpable, her words at times mawkish.  "We now all know the letter I stands for infant," she said.  It doesn't of course when it comes to Gaza, where instead it must stand for irrelevant.  If the same politicians who have barely been able to contain their contempt and rage at Russia over MH17 directed even a tenth of that feeling at Israel, the pressure would have almost certainly already told on Netanyahu.

Israel instead is held to different standards, always has been, always will be.  "No one understands Israel but Israel," as the Israeli prime minister apparently told John Kerry.  It's the story taken up by apologists, as well as those who don't bother to sugar the pill.  When we highlight the disparity in the number of casualties between the two sides, the context is we want more Israelis to be killed to even things up.  It's also extremely distasteful to share pictures of dead children, because doing so "devalues the currency of shared humanity", while if we do it for the Palestinians, we should also do it for the children of every other conflict or disaster.  God forbid that we see the victims of a war where one side has rudimentary rockets and rifles and the other has tanks and the finest weaponry the west can supply.

If it wasn't apparently designed to infuriate, the IDF Twitter account could be taken for satire.  We're told the ground invasion is to destroy the tunnels Hamas hides its missiles in, but they conceal them in every civilian building too.  Israel is threatened by Hamas fighters using the tunnels to attack settlements just outside the Strip, despite them being obliterated the moment they step out of them, yet when Hamas kills Israeli soldiers inside Gaza they're still terrorists, rather than resisting an invading force.  The media can't repeat enough the great lengths the IDF goes to avoid civilian casualties, despite multiple incidents every day that suggest at best either lack of care or at worst a complete indifference, yet similar statements from Hamas never make the cut.  When civilians don't leave despite being warned to flee, they're either human shields or Hamas wouldn't let them go.  That nowhere in Gaza is safe doesn't matter.  Hamas is responsible.

We've heard it all before, and no doubt we'll hear it again.  One thing we do seem to have been spared this time is the Palestinians don't feel pain such is their martyrdom ideation line, perhaps because the grieving for those killed has been there for all to see.  So too we've seen more reports from the "Sderot cinema" or other vantage points where an extreme, tiny minority of Israelis go to watch the carnage being wreaked on Gaza, cheering it on, just as vengeful and filled with hate as we're so often informed Palestinian children are brought up to be.  Whether they really approve of the horrific consequences on the ground, when 19 children were killed in a single strike, apparently just as guilty as the solitary target, we can't know.  They surely however demand justice just as much as the infants on board the MH17 did.

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7/22/2014 11:12:00 pm | |

Thursday, April 17, 2014 

Russian imperalism triumphs over US/NATO imperialism.

The "de-escalation" agreement reached at the Geneva meeting between Russia, Ukraine, the EU and the US is, obviously, to be welcomed.  It does however signify just how quickly Ukraine and in turn the West have adjusted, first to the Russian annexation of Crimea and now it seems to the loss of major parts of the country's east, something that less than two weeks ago the Americans and many commentators were denouncing as being an effective Russian forced break-up of a sovereign state.

It must be all the more painful as that remains precisely what the occupation of buildings and declarations of autonomous regions has been.  Regardless of the involvement of some pro-Russians on the ground, we've seen practically a carbon copy of the operation in Crimea.  Armed men without insignia seized government offices and police stations, somewhat supported by civilians, while the Ukrainians simply let them get on with it, apparently powerless to do anything, in spite of the police themselves having weapons.  All this despite there being far less support in the east of the country for alliance with Russia than there was in Crimea.  Whether out of fear or feeling no real allegiance to Ukraine as a state, the numbers of those objecting to the seizures seems relatively slight, not withstanding an apparently well-attended pro-Kiev protest in Donetsk today.

The most obvious illustration of this ambiguous relationship with Ukraine as a sovereign entity was the seizure yesterday of the 6 APCs in Kramatorsk.  As Jamie says, those in charge were from the 25th Airborne Division, meant to be some of the most capable in the Ukrainian army, and yet they surrendered it seems with little more than a shrug, not willing to countenance getting into a situation where they might have to shoot their fellow citizens.  The unit has since been disbanded by the interim president, although whether other divisions will be more willing to put up a fight should it come to it remains in question.  Admirable in one way as it is that they stood down, can you imagine our very own heroes letting protesters, armed or otherwise, take any sort of vehicle off them in a similar situation?

A state doesn't fall apart as quickly as Ukraine has without grievances and discontent being allowed to fester for a long time.  The much exaggerated involvement of Svoboda and others on the far-right first in the Maidan protests and now the interim government has just been an handy excuse for those who have long wanted increased autonomy, with the Russians taking full advantage.  The aim it seems is not full annexation as in Crimea, instead something more akin to that in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where the country pulls the strings with figureheads in nominal power.  The Geneva agreement therefore suits Putin down to the ground: if those who have seized government buildings do pull back, it removes the threat of increased sanctions, while the promise of a new constitutional process will be open to all kinds of manipulation once attention has switched elsewhere.

As much as this is a triumph for Russian imperialism, and it really can't be described as anything else, it's also a tale of imperial overreach, mainly of the US and NATO, but also the EU.  Just as secretary of state Victoria Nuland seemed to believe the Maidan protests were there to be manipulated to the advantage of the US, deciding for Ukrainians whom their new political leaders should be, so have the Russians, just far more effectively and aggressively.  For all the posturing of NATO, including yesterday with the announcement of further deployments meant to "reassure" member states, it has been powerless to do anything to prevent Putin and friends from doing anything they feel like.  As for the EU, it can't even agree on the most basic of sanctions, such are the barriers when Russian business interests are so intertwined with those of our own top companies.

When it came down to it, we just didn't care enough about Ukraine.  Others looking to the West for hope will have to remember this hypocrisy.

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4/17/2014 10:48:00 pm | |

Monday, March 17, 2014 

Interventionists: the biters bit?

The more you consider recent Western foreign policy, the more it doesn't make even the slightest sense.  Or rather, it doesn't so long as you consider it from the viewpoint that within reason, we try and encourage the spread of freedom and human rights, a notion that has become fashionable over the past couple of decades.  One of the favourite arguments of interventionists when it came to Libya in response to critics saying why now and why not somewhere else was just because we can't act everywhere doesn't mean we shouldn't take action when we can.

Our intervention against Gaddafi seems to gain ever more significance at the same time as the questions about why Libya increase with time.  How, when we have failed to intervene in Syria despite three years of brutal, horrific civil war, did we end up backing the Libyan rebels in the space of three weeks?  The stated reasoning, that Gaddafi was threatening a bloodbath in Benghazi seemingly carried enough cachet for both Russia and China to abstain on UNSC resolution 1973 and so allow what turned into NATO effectively acting as the air support for various militias.  Those militias duly summarily executed Gaddafi after NATO "protected" his fleeing convoy from the air, with the country remaining in utter turmoil a couple of years on, although it seems we don't much care any more.

The obvious answer is because we could.  Libya's military apparatus was in a far worse state than Syria's; we had significant business interests in the country whereas China and Russia had relatively few; Gaddafi had little in the way of actual support, relying on a hardcore of supporters backed up with hired mercenaries; and the military themselves it seems felt it was doable.  Despite seeming a success though, even if what actually happened went far beyond what UNSCR 1973 authorised, it also exposed a number of problems.  First, the Americans were not pleased at what they saw as having to do the heavy lifting when it had been the UK and France who had pushed for action with the most vigour.  Fatally for the Syrians perhaps, second is both Russia and China felt fooled by what NATO decided the resolution authorised, despite it calling for a ceasefire and negotiations.  While Russia would always have been more inclined to oppose action in Syria considering her long term ties with the Assad family, it emboldened opposition to any repeat.

My opinion remains that had we really wanted to intervene against Assad, we would have done.  By any measure there was a far stronger case for doing so as the civil war began in earnest, as compared to Libya when the action was meant to prevent a massacre, the Assad regime had already carried out mass killings.  It would have been far more difficult to be sure, and there has never been anything approaching a serious plan set out for how such an intervention would begin, but that has never stopped us in the past.  Indeed, as we came so close to doing something, although it was explained precisely what, there must have been contingencies in place.  The decision instead seems to have been made to do just enough not to invite the accusation of indifference while at the same time keeping up a false level of rhetoric: sort of arming the sort of moderates, and not a lot more.  Our real attitude was summed up by how the government had to be all but humiliated into allowing a tiny number of Syrian refugees into the country, the impossible aim of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands being far more important to the Tories than relieving incredible human suffering.

Which brings us to the Crimea and the truly laughable sanctions that have been imposed today after the weekend's phony referendum in the province.  For all the talk of illegality and standing in solidarity with the Ukraine, what it's amounted to is freezing the assets of a whole 32 people.  Taking the likes of Bill Hague at their word that more will follow if Russia continues to destabilise Ukraine or goes further and attempts to repeat the Crimean action in the east of the country, it still makes a mockery of how our leaders have puffed themselves up in ever greater flights of rhetorical fancy.  True enough, the media more than anyone else have tried to turn this into Cold War 2.0, but it doesn't excuse the nonsense we've heard or at times, the hypocrisy, even if the real hypocrites reside in Moscow.

It might be this is the best approach: Russia is isolated, China abstaining on the vote at the UN at the weekend, and the economy looks likely to continue to suffer.  The threat of far more stringent sanctions could well deter Putin from any repeat in the restive east, and the last thing we need at this point is an overreaction that would threaten the (slight) Eurozone recovery.  It does however stick in the craw: far from this being an example of what happens when we are weak, it's rather a perfect example of what happens when you abuse the sound in principle but unworkable in practice notion of responsibility to protect.  The west has spent the 2000s intervening wherever it feels like, most egregiously in Iraq, but has also had no qualms about violating national sovereignty across the entire globe under the pretext of rubbing out terrorists wherever they're to be found.  The US/UK actively encouraged Israel to decimate the south of Lebanon in 2006, and now have the temerity to complain when Russia stages an all but entirely bloodless annexation of a highly sympathetic area of a neighbouring state.  We also aren't averse to staging pointless referendums when it has come to both Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands: in the case of the 2002 plebiscite in the former, 98.48% rejected the notion of sharing sovereignty with Spain, an absurdly high percentage that obviously didn't come close to reflecting real opinion.

One suspects that in a genuinely free vote not held under such intimidation and where the status quo had been offered an an option, the result would have been far closer.  A poll last month suggested only 41% wanted union with Russia, but whether the number of respondents from Crimea was statistically significant enough to make that an accurate barometer of opinion is open to question.  When it comes down to it, we're right to impose sanctions, and right to denounce what is a flagrant breach of international law by an aggressor state made to look foolish by the people of a nation who want to take their own path.  Our politicians though would do well not to make promises they cannot keep, while they should also take a long look at themselves and think about whether the positions they have taken over the past few years have encouraged others to also see the treaties of the 20th century as there to be broken without consequences.  Our own interventionists however tend to see no such shades of grey.

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3/17/2014 11:46:00 pm | |

Monday, March 03, 2014 

Charge of the shite brigade.

It seems a bit passé to instinctively kick Fox News, especially when MSNBC has effectively become its liberal counterpoint over in the States, but I've been reminded the past few days of a study which found those who watched Keith's pride and joy turned out to be less informed about what was happening than those who, err, didn't watch any news.  Not that MSNBC scored much better, as it turned out.

The obvious thing to do when confronted with what seems like a seismic geopolitical event is to look back to see if there are any comparable lessons from history.  Problem is, we don't turn to actual history, we turn to our own version of it.  More precisely, we often return to the comforting prejudices of the past and don't go much further.  Hence instantly we have the Sun and others reaching to dust off the Cold War metaphors, not that they really ever dispensed with them when it's come to Vladimir Putin in any case.  Those who were sympathetic towards Russia in the past are, unsurprisingly, sympathetic towards Russia now.  Those who are big fans of intervention when we do it or think we should do it more often demand to know why those who criticise them aren't up in arms over Russia walking into the Ukraine with even less justification than we usually attempt to make.  Those who insist Obama is secretly a peacenik despite having expanded the drone war worldwide in ways Bush never imagined think this is all his fault for drawing back.  John McCain is, well, John McCain.

Combined, it can transform into a mush that leaves you not just none the wiser, but even more confused.  When some of the aforementioned also have something resembling a point, it can obscure the actual events.  The invasion and occupation of Crimea is a flagrant breach of international law; when though John Kerry says, without apparent irony, that you don't just invade another country on a false pretext, it's difficult not to snort at the lack of awareness.  Understood as part of Putin's efforts to recreate the perceived strength and projected power of the Soviet Union with his Customs Union and proposed Eurasian Union, it doesn't come as the greatest surprise.  Apparently unwilling to wait out another period of pro-Western rule as happened after the Orange Revolution, the wheels were set in motion with Yanukovich's sudden disappearance from Kiev, along with the withdrawal of the police.  Hindsight may now suggest there was something in the offing, but more were concerned about eastern secession through legitimate political means rather than for it to be carried out in less than a week through the unopposed seizing of the Crimean parliament and the territory's airports.

If there's a echo here, it's more of the 2008 Georgia conflict than with anything else.  Then Georgia was baited into action while the world's attention was on the Beijing Olympics, Georgia seeing South Ossetia and Abkhazia de facto annexed as a result; this time while Russia's eyes were on Sochi, the Ukrainian activists were unexpectedly finishing what's being called the Maidan revolution.  Despite all the rhetoric then, and there was plenty of it, South Ossetia and Abkhazia remain firmly under Russian control.  Any protests were swiftly forgotten about, and regardless of the increasing authoritarianism of Russia under Medvedev/Putin, relations continued as was normal.

At this precise moment it seems as though Putin has overreached himself.  Not due to the response from our politicians, which has been equal parts hypocrisy, bluster and bellyaching, but due to the precipitous collapse in the value of the rouble, leading the Russian central bank to pump what it says will be an unlimited amount of money into propping it up.  Putin's gambit will have been informed in the knowledge that central Europe is dependent on Russian gas supplies flowing through Ukraine, with the Germans while critical unlikely to immediately back sanctions.  Not that we're going to either, as the half-wit with the briefing paper has informed the world.  Take sanctions and asset freezing off the table, and we're left with kicking Russia out of the G8 club, something they'll clearly never get over.

The most likely end games, either the Russians withdrawing after a suitable length of time or the SO/Abkahzia option, are hardly going to affect us in the long run.  For all the wooing that was being done, Ukraine joining the EU, let alone NATO, was more than 10 years away, and that was if someone with more credibility while still being pro-Russian hadn't turned up in Yanukovich's stead.  We talk a good game sure, as the intercepted phone call between the US officials nonchalantly chatting about different opposition leaders and the uselessness of the EU made clear.  We're amateurs though when compared to the Russians, who while being richer than they were but nowhere near as rich as us and who can project power while remaining relatively weak can act as they seemingly please.  They can only do so though because we don't care enough when it comes down to it: if we had really wanted to intervene in Syria, we would have done; if we had really wanted to do something about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko we could have done; and if this really was the gravest crisis of the 21st century so far in Europe, then we wouldn't be rejecting using our meagre powers of influence.

Nothing justifies the invasion of Crimea, whether it be the apparent welcome from some of those in the territory to the Russian troops, or our own military adventures.  Putin is of course the biggest hypocrite of them all, arming and supporting a brutal dictator in Syria, demanding that national sovereignty be respected, then acting as he sees fit within his own sphere of influence.  This doesn't however alter the fact that after more than a decade of constant war, whether it be our own involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya (the last being especially significant as both the Chinese and the Russians felt they had been tricked into supporting a resolution that NATO took to authorise regime change), or the Americans deciding that essentially the entire globe is a battlefield when it comes to the war on terror, bombing Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia also, the bigger surprise perhaps is that no other country has taken it upon themselves to launch an intervention and claim humanitarian aims up until this point.  As yet, there also hasn't been a single shot fired.  Contrast that to our plan for Syria, which was to bomb a country already in ruins and hope for the best.  Whether we learn something from this once it's reached a sort of conclusion or remain as ignorant as usual will also be worth evaluating in time.

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3/03/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

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